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Tenuous order came with dawn, and Stokes, on the advice of black leaders, devised a bold gamble to pacify the troubled area the next night. All white law-enforcement officers, including the National Guardsmen, were withdrawn, and some 100 Negro policemen—nearly all Cleveland has—and 500 Negro civilians, mostly militants, were sent in. Stokes' bet paid off. Rioting stopped and no one was injured, though looting continued. Two nights after the flare-up, Stokes returned the Guard and an integrated police force. The Cleveland Insurance Board estimated damage from both fire and looting at a relatively low $1,000,000 to $1,500,000—a figure that does not cover small shop owners who could not obtain insurance.
The mayor was severely criticized by owners of looted stores for entrusting the ghetto to its own activists for 24 hours. But his decision may well have made the difference between confrontation and conflagration. On the other hand, Stokes might be faulted for not having taken more action to forestall trouble. Cleveland, fortuitously, had received solid warning from the FBI and its own intelligence sources that something was brewing. The only hitch was that the warning was for 8 o'clock Wednesday morning, half a day after the actual zero hour.
The Glenville eruption, said the mayor, was "uniquely different from any other in any other city in the country. The others were a spontaneous reaction to an unresponsive environment. But this was a small group of determined men who planned an attack on the police." Reports that other cities—including Chicago, Detroit and Pittsburgh—were targeted for riot turned out to be merely rumors.
Jammed Carbine. For all the car nage and damage they caused, the Cleveland snipers gave every appearance of bizarre amateurism, brutally inspired. Proclaiming himself their leader, Fred ("Ahmed") Evans, 37, an astrologer, calmly surrendered in the midst of the battle and just as calmly informed cops that he would have knocked off more of them if his gun had not jammed. Police found the weapon, a .30-cal. carbine, in a bush where Evans said he had dropped it. Evans, who affects the loose African dashike robe, received a $7,350 grant this summer from "Cleveland: Now!", Stokes' action group for civic betterment. He seems to have used the funds to better the community by buying weapons to disrupt it.
At week's end Cleveland was relatively quiet. However, Stokes cautioned that there was "still cause for concern." Of the alleged snipers, three are dead and two in jail. Ahmed Evans was charged with first-degree murder, along with lesser offenses, such as the possession of narcotics and an automatic rifle. If the snipers hoped to cause outright insurrection in Cleveland, they did not succeed. If they wanted merely to create local turmoil and national apprehension, they succeeded all too well.