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But Luken, who took office in 1999, and other city leaders cannot claim they have done everything possible to prevent the chaos. In October 1999, while activists warned of mounting unrest, state senators asked the police department to review its deadly-force policy. They never received a report. No officer has been fired following the 15 fatalities since 1995, although some investigations are ongoing. And the city has resisted attempts to change the insular, 1,020-person department's policy of refusing to hire chiefs from outside. "There has been a material distrust between the police and the black community, even though the force has become increasingly black," says Scott Johnson, former city manager and current Cincinnati resident. "The problem is, there are no blacks in the upper echelons of the force." To change the police culture, says the Rev. Damon Lynch III, head of the Cincinnati Black United Front, "some people need to be fired. If nothing changes, nothing will change."
The head of the police union has repeatedly denied that a problem exists. "Our officers don't have time to play these little racist games. Like, 'Ha, ha, I pulled you over because you're black,'" Keith Fangman told the Cincinnati Enquirer before the riots. Even after, Fangman refused to concede. "Our police officers are not some band of rogue Nazis roaming Cincinnati, hunting down and killing black men," he said Friday. "That is inflammatory, it's racist, and it's wrong." Then he made a new claim that was just as wrong--declaring that 10 of the 15 suspects killed were armed with guns. (In reality, seven had guns; of those, five fired first.) When asked to explain the discrepancy, Fangman told TIME, "I'm not going to quibble over [numbers]. That isn't the point. We want people to understand that what color the suspects were doesn't matter."
Luken believes his city was headed in the right direction. James Fyfe, a former N.Y.P.D. lieutenant who teaches criminal justice at Temple University in Philadelphia, says slow progress can be dangerous. "Riots tend to occur when expectations are rising," he says, "when positive change is starting to happen, but not fast enough." Once the glass is swept up and the KILL COPS graffiti painted over, Cincinnati will have to try rapid progress for a change. --With reporting by Sarah Sturmon Dale/Milwaukee and Andrea Tortora/Cincinnati