Cincinnati. Beanbags = little bags of buckshot. Christine Jones may lose spleen.

"Ms. Jones was admitted to Jewish Hospital in Louisville with a fractured rib, bruised lung and spleen from two bean-bag projectiles, a hospital spokesman said Sunday. She was in good condition today. Doctors are closely monitoring the internal bleeding in her spleen; if it continues, her spleen may have to be removed." --April 16 Cincinnati Post.

Monday, April 16 2001, Cincinnati Enquirer and Cincinnati Post, articles follow the comments, quotes, and news links.

The Associated Press photographer who witnessed the beanbag driveby of Timothy Thomas mourners Saturday says that beanbag rounds from police shotguns are "little bags of buckshot."

There are many credible witnesses to this aggravated assault, yet these police officers are unlikely to go to jail, at least not from local authorities. That is because in Cincinnati there is NO local, independent, police review board with subpoena powers.

Many police are notorious for finding new ways to hit, injure, and hospitalize people. Fists, feet, batons, high-speed batons, teargas, sleeper-death holds, compliance holds, phone books, flashlights, rubber-coated-steel bullets, plastic bullets, beanbags, etc.. Now, with beanbag shotguns, police can injure, bruise, and even hospitalize people, and they don't even really have to get out of their cars. You know, that is the problem with obese America today; almost everyone is a couch and car potato. Whatever happened to the good old days, when police would beat people directly with clubs, as when Rodney King was beaten and hospitalized, before the Los Angeles riots in 1992.

Quotes from April 16 Cincinnati Enquirer article Monday:
"Cecil Thomas, a former police officer who now leads the Cincinnati Human Relations Commission, stood at Elm and Liberty streets on Saturday afternoon after Timothy Thomas' funeral. ... He saw three Cincinnati cruisers and one Ohio State Highway Patrol car drive up. Officers and troopers jumped out, he said, fired into a small crowd that `wasn't doing anything.' They then got back into their cars and were gone in seconds. ...FBI agents quizzed witnesses too, including photographer Tom Uhlman of Camp Washington, who was on the scene working for the Associated Press. Neither Mr. Uhlman nor Mr. Thomas heard any warnings before the shots. ... Mr. Uhlman said calling the ammunition bean bags `makes them sound harmless. They're actually little bags of buckshot.' ..."

Video, audio, text, photos, breaking news and more about the Cincinnati Ohio protests, riots, killings of 4 blacks (one by asphyxiation) by police since November, investigations, politics, racial profiling, police brutality, beanbag hospitalizations, etc.. 15 blacks killed by police since 1995. No whites. Corporate and progressive news URLs:
http://www.cincinow.com --TV 9. Video, audio, text, photos.
http://www.channelcincinnati.com --TV 5. Video, audio, text, photos.
http://www.cincynation.com --Various news sources compiled.
http://enquirer.com --Cincinnati Enquirer.
http://www.cincypost.com --Cincinnati Post.
http://www.citybeat.com --alternative weekly. Early firsthand reports.
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/fc/Local/Cincinnati_Riots/ --Yahoo Full Coverage.
Check AP and Reuters wires. Watch for Cincinnati articles to show up:
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ts/nm/?u --Top Stories - Reuters.
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ts/ap/?u --AP text and photos.
http://www.newsday.com/ap/text/topnews/index.htm --AP text.
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/US/index.html --Off The Wire. Raw news.
http://www.ohiovalleyimc.org --Ohio Valley Independent Media Center has many Cincinnati Unrest articles on the homepage and/or in the archives. To see more, click the "display all articles" link at the bottom right, and then keep clicking "display next articles." Post articles! Links (full URLS) in articles are made clickable.

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Monday, April 16, 2001. Cincinnati Enquirer.
http://enquirer.com/editions/2001/04/16/loc_bean-bag.html

Bean-bag shooting unprovoked,
says ex-cop, now city official

-----------------------------------
Human relations director saw incident

By Jane Prendergast
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Cincinnati's human relations director Sunday joined the call for an explanation of why Cincinnati Police fired bean-bags into a crowd Saturday in what he and other witnesses called an unprovoked attack. A 37-year-old teacher was hospitalized Sunday with a cracked rib, bruised lung and bruised spleen. Two children were also hit.

Jahcol Lowry, 7, was one of four people hit by police beanbags at Liberty and Elm Streets Saturday.
(Brandi Stafford photo)
| ZOOM |

Cecil Thomas, a former police officer who now leads the Cincinnati Human Relations Commission, stood at Elm and Liberty streets on Saturday afternoon after Timothy Thomas' funeral. He said he was thinking about how lucky the city was that no rioting broke out after the services for the man shot April 7 by a Cincinnati police officer.

He saw three Cincinnati cruisers and one Ohio State Highway Patrol car drive up. Officers and troopers jumped out, he said, fired into a small crowd that “wasn't doing anything.” They then got back into their cars and were gone in seconds.

“I knew how hard we had worked to keep these people calm,” he said Sunday. “I'm just hoping that there's some (provocation) that I might've missed.”

Officer aims at marchers Saturday with a shotgun loaded with beanbag ammunition.
(Brandi Stafford photo)
| ZOOM |

The police division released no new information about the incident Sunday, although more is expected today. The division's internal affairs unit started investigating immediately, Mr. Thomas said. FBI agents quizzed witnesses too, including photographer Tom Uhlman of Camp Washington, who was on the scene working for the Associated Press.

Neither Mr. Uhlman nor Mr. Thomas heard any warnings before the shots. Division officials have said officers generally warn crowds to disperse before shooting at them.

Mr. Thomas, a Cincinnati officer for 27 years before retiring last year, said policy dictates that an on-scene supervisor order when shooting can start. Officers, he said, do not have blanket approval to fire.

Police use bean bag (right) and rubber bullet for crowd control.
(Michael E. Keating photo)
| ZOOM |

Christine Jones, 37, a high school French teacher from Louisville who was hit by the bean-bag fire, was being treated Sunday night in a Louisville hospital. She was standing in a crosswalk and helping hold a banner that read “Citizens Against Police Abuse” when the officers pulled up.

“Nothing was going on, other than the funeral let out,” she said in a telephone interview from the hospital Sunday. “People were just chatting. They didn't say to disperse, stop, get out of here, nothing.”

Mayor Charlie Luken called the incident troublesome.

“As soon as it happened, my phone started ringing off the hook with calls from people at the scene,” he said. “We're determined to find out what happened and why.”

Mr. Uhlman said calling the ammunition bean bags “ makes them sound harmless. They're actually little bags of buckshot.”

Fraternal Order of Police President Keith Fangman said Sunday he did not yet know details of the incident.

“Our officers fired hundreds of bean-bag rounds throughout this ordeal,” he said.

Cindi Andrews contributed.

-----------------------------------------

Search for solutions begins
Bean-bag shooting unprovoked, says ex-cop, now city official
Civility turned to anarchy: How it happened
Schools hoping for normalcy
RADEL: Why did he run?
Heads of NAACP, police union clash on talk show
Federal investigators on dual mission
Sharpton: Police need federal-level oversight
Easter worshippers pray for healing
Curfew relaxed, may end today
Not everybody opposed curfew
Council seats reconfigured to face audience

========================================

end of Cincinnati Enquirer article page.

========================================

Monday, April 16, 2001. Cincinnati Post.
http://www.cincypost.com/2001/apr/16/bnbags041601.html

Beanbag guns fired at peaceful marchers

By Jennifer Edwards, Post staff reporter

Cincinnati Police and the FBI are looking into why five officers fired beanbag ammunition at a small group of protesters Saturday at Elm and Liberty streets, just a few blocks from the church where services were held for 19-year-old Timothy Thomas.

Four people were hit: Christine Jones, 34, a French teacher from Louisville, Ky., two unidentified girls, ages 11 and 7, and an unidentified 50-year-old man, authorities said.

Police Chief Thomas Streicher and FBI officials did not return calls for comment Sunday but Assistant Police Chief Ronald Twitty confirmed that about seven beanbag rounds had been fired and acknowledged that the officers may have overreacted.

Internal affairs investigators were looking into the matter, and 12 witnesses have told them their account of what happened, he said.

''The complaint looks pretty legitimate,'' Twitty said. ''If something like this occurs in broad daylight and as many as 12 witnesses come forward, you know it happened.

''We just have to find out now if there was some type of order given or if there was something connected to it. You have to give those officers their chance to tell their side of the story. But from the witnesses, it's apparent the officers hopped out of a car, fired a few bean bags and hopped back into the car and drove off.''

Twitty would not speculate further on the incident, but at least one of the shooting victims still is in the hospital recovering.

Ms. Jones was admitted to Jewish Hospital in Louisville with a fractured rib, bruised lung and spleen from two bean-bag projectiles, a hospital spokesman said Sunday. She was in good condition today.

Doctors are closely monitoring the internal bleeding in her spleen; if it continues, her spleen may have to be removed.

In a phone interview from her hospital room Sunday, Ms. Jones said she attended the funeral of 19-year-old Timothy Thomas with her husband, Tom Pearce, because they and other Louisville activists wanted to show their support for Thomas's family and to talk to community leaders about Louisville's similar problems.

Thomas is the 15th African-American male to be killed by Cincinnati police since 1995 -- and the fourth since November.

His death sparked four days of riots last week that lead to damage and looting to local businesses, racial attacks and a city-wide curfew.

Ms. Jones said she was standing at the intersection of Elm and Liberty streets after the funeral about 4 p.m. with other activists, holding banners and pamphlets bearing Thomas's picture, chatting, when the police cruisers peeled up out of nowhere.

''It was like a drive-by shooting. All of a sudden, out of the blue, several police cars screeched to a halt at that intersection, jumped out of cars and just immediately started shooting people with their shotguns. No warning. No nothing,'' Ms. Jones recalled. ''There were kids, there were elderly people hit.

''I got hit in back twice, on the spine, right below my neck and on my ribs. There's a welt the size of a grapefruit on the back of one of my ribs. That right there tells you I was not in a confrontation. No one was. As soon as I saw that gun pointed in my direction, I took off running. And when they were done shooting, they just got into their cars and took off.''

Ms. Jones said five officers fired the shots, but the episode unfolded so fast, she didn't catch their names or badge numbers - although other witnesses wrote down the cruiser numbers and have provided those to police.

After she was shot, Ms. Jones said she waited an hour and 20 minutes for an ambulance because emergency vehicles aren't responding to the area without police escorts.

''I clambered to find a place to hide so I wouldn't be shot anymore. I found a place on the breezeway between two buildings and laid there,'' she said.

Ms. Jones was taken to Good Samaritan Hospital, where an X-ray was taken of her chest, but doctors said she was okay, wrote her a prescription for a painkiller and released her. She and her husband then drove back to Louisville without filing a formal complaint with the police division because they could not find a station before the curfew. But by 1 a.m. Sunday, she was in so much pain, she checked herself into a hospital near her home, and a CAT scan revealed her injuries.

arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)