Although Cincinnati rioting last week triggered by the fatal police shooting an African-American teenager caused the cancellation of Lil Bow Wow’s opening concert for his first nationwide tour, some local observers say that violence would have been 10 times worse if a more popular act had been expected.
The 13-year-old rapper had been scheduled to perform April 13 in the Ohio River town’s Taft Theater. Those concert plans were derailed after a white Cincinnati police officer shot Timothy Thomas to death April 7 while pursuing the teen with several misdemeanor traffic warrants in the inner city Over-the-Rhine neighborhood ad touched off a violent response that has not been witnessed in the city since Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. Steve Roach, the 29-year-old police officer who shot Thomas, says he thought the teen was reaching for a gun.
Thomas’ slaying led to at least three days of intense street protests, vandalism, and looting most visibly by African-American youths that Cincinnati and Ohio state police are still struggling to contain despite a state of emergency and 8 p.m.-6 a.m. curfew declared by Mayor Charlie Luken. After Cincinnati street clashes characterized by police firing beanbags, rubber bullets, and tear gas at protesters, vandals, and looters alike, the city’s embattled public safety director Kent Ryan announced his retirement April 15 for health reasons. Thomas became the 15th suspect slain, all African-American, by police in six years.
“If this had been OutKast for the Stank Love Tour, it would have been its own riot,” said Chris Donnelley, an account executive with a Cincinnati music distribution company who has also gigged and recorded with Bootsy Collins as a bass guitarist with the nouveau funk bang Shag. “It they had had it [an OutKast concert], their would have been a riot. Even if they had had it, it would have been a riot because here you have the most clannish white behavior and southern black behavior.”
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No gun was found on Thomas’ body, and Luken says there are official doubts about Roach’s account of the teen’s slaying. Lil Bow Wow’s Cincinnati concert has been pushed back until May 15.
