Speaker 1: Seven oh five at fifty five ker CD talk Station.
Speaker 1: A very happy Tuesday. I hope you're as happy as
Speaker 1: I am. And it's Tuesday because Peter Bronson is in studio.
Speaker 1: Of course, author, he is a publisher. Chili Dog Press
Speaker 1: dot COM's where you find his publishing company, and maybe
Speaker 1: an opportunity to get your book if you're someone in
Speaker 1: the listening audience that's interested in publishing. Does a wonderful job.
Speaker 1: He's also a terrific author, former columnist for the Cincinnion
Speaker 1: Inquiry and an award winning columnist back when the editorial
Speaker 1: page used to win awards. Things have changed over at
Speaker 1: the Inquire a little bit. I'm going to miss them
Speaker 1: too much. But Peter Bronson, you always did such a
Speaker 1: wonderful job. And I just got done asking you. Your
Speaker 1: very very first book was a compilation of your columns.
Speaker 2: Yes, that was called Cincinnati for Peace for Pete's Yeah,
Speaker 2: and then you segued over and actually your first book book,
Speaker 2: and it's a book.
Speaker 1: It's work of nonfiction, of course, behind the lines the
Speaker 1: untold stories plural of the Cincinnati Riots, and believe it
Speaker 1: or not, it has been twenty four years. Tomorrow's the
Speaker 1: anniversary of the outset of the Cincinnati riots. It took place,
Speaker 1: and you know, maybe people don't remember these specific facts,
Speaker 1: and I will fall into that category. I remember sort
Speaker 1: of about them when they happened. It led to that
Speaker 1: consent decree that got worked down. Yeah, yeah, we'll get
Speaker 1: some details.
Speaker 2: Consultants that flew in like vultures to feed on Cincinnati.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, But what kicked it off? What was the
Speaker 1: impetus for all this? Like George Floyd. Everybody remembers George
Speaker 1: Floyd and M and BLM and defund the police and everything.
Speaker 1: This was sort of a precursor to that type of reaction.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 2: This was the first major incident of its in ten
Speaker 2: years after the Rodney King incident, which goes back ten
Speaker 2: years previously, right, So when you go all the way
Speaker 2: back to that, you can look at this pattern that occurred.
Speaker 2: And I have to say compliments to you for bringing
Speaker 2: this topic up again, because I would wager that very few,
Speaker 2: if any of the other media platforms in this city
Speaker 2: will even mention it today that this is all these
Speaker 2: twenty four years since this happened, and it was a
Speaker 2: huge cataclysmic event in the history of our city.
Speaker 1: Well, that's why it's worthy of bringing up. I mean,
Speaker 1: did we learn lessons? Are things better now? I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a point of a moment of reflection. That's why
Speaker 1: you think about anniversaryes. What's theal line. If you don't
Speaker 1: learn from it, you repete it. So well. I just
Speaker 1: I remember reading about and my dad telling me stories
Speaker 1: about the sixties riots, the Watts riots. Yeah, and the
Speaker 1: National Guard had to be parked out in front of Detroit.
Speaker 2: They had tanks rolling down the streets of Detroit nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty seven, and they had a fifty caliber machine guns
Speaker 2: mounted on the tops of those tanks that were firing
Speaker 2: at rooftops in Detroit because there were snipers up there
Speaker 2: trying to kill the National Guard and the police.
Speaker 1: See and can you believe that these are the facts
Speaker 1: that I was not aware of. Dad told me a
Speaker 1: story about locally, when these studios used to be at
Speaker 1: nineteen or six Highland Avenue, that they had to have
Speaker 1: a National Guard vehicle posted out there because they were
Speaker 1: concerned about maybe either studio is getting stormed or something
Speaker 1: along those lines. Because the television studios as well as
Speaker 1: the radio studios were all into that, you know, WKRC Moniker.
Speaker 1: So things are different now than they were then, but
Speaker 1: that's the one story remember back then. But we felt
Speaker 1: the effects of that eras riots as well.
Speaker 2: It was really bad in Avondale in sixty seven, But
Speaker 2: when you look at what happened in two thousand and
Speaker 2: one was certainly not as bad as those sixty seven riots.
Speaker 2: But it is such a template of what has occurred
Speaker 2: in all these cities since. What occurred in the Rodney kincase,
Speaker 2: what occurred and Ferguson, Missouri, what occurred in Baltimore with
Speaker 2: fed Freddie Gray, what occurred with as you point, George Floyd,
Speaker 2: but so many other cases. All of these patterns fit
Speaker 2: right back to Cincinnati in two thousand and one.
Speaker 1: How about that? And I think about somebody's gonna say
Speaker 1: scream with the radio and say, Thomas, you're full of it.
Speaker 1: But there seemed to have been in some cases, some
Speaker 1: of these cases, a gross mischaracterization of what happened and
Speaker 1: people's reaction immediately blaming the police, when you know, police
Speaker 1: were following the way they had been trained, and they
Speaker 1: didn't do anything necessarily untoward, but it led to bad outcomes,
Speaker 1: you know, the you know, I mean you can't defend
Speaker 1: them literally beating the crap out of Rodney King. If
Speaker 1: you watch that video, it's like, I mean, come on.
Speaker 2: Well, except in my research, I was really surprised to
Speaker 2: find this in the Rodney King incident that when the
Speaker 2: jurors were shown the entire tape, ah, then they came
Speaker 2: up with a verdict that kicked off the riots. So
Speaker 2: the tape that we saw on television was heavily edited
Speaker 2: to only show the police responding to him and his attacks.
Speaker 2: He refused to be subdued. The actual transcript of what
Speaker 2: happened is shocking. I mean, they tried everything. Now, did
Speaker 2: they go too far? Of course, yes they did. Police
Speaker 2: are not inhuman when their adrenaline gets pumping after a
Speaker 2: police chase, right, they're just like you and me. They're
Speaker 2: capable of all kinds of.
Speaker 1: Things, especially if their safety is in jeopardy because the
Speaker 1: behavior of the purp in this particular tax. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: he's attacked them, or you know, if they use a taser,
Speaker 1: if I don't even know if there's existed back then,
Speaker 1: but if the taser doesn't work and the guy continues
Speaker 1: to become aggressive.
Speaker 2: And they tried tasers, they tried everything was short of
Speaker 2: firing their revolvers and killing him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, and.
Speaker 2: They did not do that. Now, if you mentioned that,
Speaker 2: the first and the initial reactions are often sort of
Speaker 2: a shoot ready aim, especially in the media, and this
Speaker 2: was especially true in Cincinnati. Now, the actual shooting occurred
Speaker 2: on April seventh. On April eighth, a young black men
Speaker 2: had been shot by a police officer. On April eighth,
Speaker 2: the headlines in the Cincinnati Enquirer and in the media
Speaker 2: throughout Cincinnati, but mainly in the Inquirer, included the words
Speaker 2: police brutality, no facts are in Remember police brutality, trigger
Speaker 2: happy and excessive force. Yeah, I mean, this was absolutely
Speaker 2: just setting the table. And it reminded me when I
Speaker 2: was coming in this morning, Brian, that today our judgment,
Speaker 2: I respect, our esteem of the media is at a
Speaker 2: record low. It's at eleven percent set. But in these days,
Speaker 2: bringing up the idea that the media might be wrong,
Speaker 2: that they might be pushing an agenda was heresy. This
Speaker 2: was immediately suppressed or smothered by any platform of media
Speaker 2: because they just thought anybody would suggest bias was a
Speaker 2: tinfoil hat kook.
Speaker 1: Right, And now we sort of default to that. Well,
Speaker 1: this is obvious media bias that we waited around and
Speaker 1: find out what the real facts are down the road. Okay,
Speaker 1: so yeah, you have to remember context is everything. This
Speaker 1: is twenty four years ago, yes, and this is I
Speaker 1: guess that's before social media as well, very much.
Speaker 2: So you didn't have the drivers on this. One of
Speaker 2: the main drivers was WDBZ. If you remember the Black
Speaker 2: Ross Love station that was in Avondale, I think, yeah.
Speaker 2: I used to go up there for interviews from time
Speaker 2: to time and it was a wild, wild trip. But
Speaker 2: that's another story. But they just poured kerosene on this
Speaker 2: around the clock. Remember all of CPS schools were out
Speaker 2: for spring break, so there are all these kids hanging
Speaker 2: around with nothing to do, and the radio just kept
Speaker 2: pouring out this police brutality story. How they're out there
Speaker 2: killing young black men. Cincinnati police are hunting down and
Speaker 2: killing young black men. This is the story they were
Speaker 2: broadcasting constantly, and our paper that where I was working
Speaker 2: at the Inquirer, had done this. It was a prize
Speaker 2: package designed to win some kind of a pulitzer or something,
Speaker 2: you know, in their dreams. But the prize package was
Speaker 2: this long report that really massaged the data to come
Speaker 2: up with this narrative of police brutality in Cincinnati. So
Speaker 2: this was like this incident was just kind of they're
Speaker 2: just waiting for the one to come along where this
Speaker 2: this whole thing can be.
Speaker 1: Well, as a journalist, then you come from the responsible
Speaker 1: factual reporting journalism era. You know, you don't draw conclusions,
Speaker 1: you don't jump the gun. Now, editorial pages are different,
Speaker 1: But when you're just doing general reporting, did you ever
Speaker 1: look into and in your research doing behind the lines
Speaker 1: the until it's sort of this insant, right, what the
Speaker 1: motivations were for them doing that and painting such a
Speaker 1: salacious headline and such a well a headline was guaranteed
Speaker 1: to generate this kind of response.
Speaker 2: Well, it was a lot of things that combined and
Speaker 2: contributed to this, maybe a perfect storm of incendiary reporting
Speaker 2: that contributed to the violence. I would say part of
Speaker 2: it was ideological. The people that were being brought into
Speaker 2: the newsroom had this attitude. A lot of it was
Speaker 2: the Rodney King case, which everybody, let's face it, people
Speaker 2: in the news business they like to follow the herd,
Speaker 2: the herd animals, and if somebody gets a lot of
Speaker 2: attention for a story. Then all over the nation we're
Speaker 2: seeing these another Rodney King. Every confrontation between police and
Speaker 2: a black suspect. All over the nation, you'd see headlines
Speaker 2: another Rodney King, without anything that necessarily matched up. So
Speaker 2: there's this whole kind of copycat.
Speaker 1: It's called clickbait now online, but back then it sells newspapers,
Speaker 1: Yes it did.
Speaker 2: And there's that there's the whole prize. I get under
Speaker 2: that in the book. I was looking back at it
Speaker 2: this morning, and I get into that the whole prize,
Speaker 2: like every newspaper was kind of shameless in their pursuit
Speaker 2: of prizes, of whatever kind of prize they could get
Speaker 2: from the National Conference of Investigative Reporters, or it might
Speaker 2: be the Ohio Press Association, whatever it is. Pulletrer is
Speaker 2: of course the moby Dick, that's the holy grail. But
Speaker 2: it was kind of I thought it was kind of
Speaker 2: shameful the way these packages were often designed with the
Speaker 2: prize committee in mind and not the readers or not
Speaker 2: the community.
Speaker 1: All right, we'll pause right now. On the twenty fourth
Speaker 1: anniversary tomorrow of the Cincinni Riots kickoff, Peter Bronson was there,
Speaker 1: and he saw it all and wrote the book about it.
Speaker 1: Behind the lines, the un told the story of the Cincinnairiots,
Speaker 1: which you can get of course on Amazon. Widely received
Speaker 1: and big thumbs up on that book. Will continue in
Speaker 1: a moment, but if you wake up with joint pain
Speaker 1: and seven twenty year fIF five KRCD talk station by
Speaker 1: the Timas with Peter Bronson, author, publisher, former editor of
Speaker 1: the since An Inquirer and of course a man who
Speaker 1: remembers all the facts behind the riots that started Cincinnati
Speaker 1: on April ninth, and as Peter explained, really kicked off
Speaker 1: and went ballistic when the Cincinnai Inquirer posted the headlines
Speaker 1: that it was all you know, rogue cop, there'll be
Speaker 1: a bad sho, trigger happy.
Speaker 2: Police, brutality excessive for us.
Speaker 1: But that was before any of the information had been
Speaker 1: looked into. There had been no internal investigation, and the.
Speaker 2: Police chief was out of town, so they didn't even
Speaker 2: have a press that was a sue striker right as
Speaker 2: it was. And he was at a conference in Indianapolis,
Speaker 2: and so he was shocked when he's driving home and
Speaker 2: he and I think it was Vince Demasi was in
Speaker 2: charge of me. He said, by the way.
Speaker 1: Next door events.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, he said, by the way, chief, Oh
Speaker 2: what so who was responding?
Speaker 1: Who was responsible for addressing the public right after it happened,
Speaker 1: because it's always you know, at least a lieutenant on
Speaker 1: the scene, unless it's you know, really a chief level
Speaker 1: respond That would have been the case in this one
Speaker 1: had the chief Striker been in town exactly. So who
Speaker 1: had the laboring ore of dealing with the press and
Speaker 1: the immediate aftermath.
Speaker 2: Well, it probably should have been Demassi who would have
Speaker 2: checked in with Striker and said, how do you want
Speaker 2: to handle this? And Striker said, I'll be back in
Speaker 2: two hours, right, and we will hold a press conference.
Speaker 2: They did discover that one of the keys to preventing
Speaker 2: this kind of outbreak of violence is to get everything
Speaker 2: out there in the public as.
Speaker 1: Fast as possible. Amen, If you got a.
Speaker 2: Guy that's involved in a confrontation with police, he said,
Speaker 2: he was carrying a weapon. You want that weapon on
Speaker 2: the evening news, the morning news, any place you can
Speaker 2: show it, Okay, And that really does diffuse the whole
Speaker 2: well violence, it does.
Speaker 1: For it explains the justification for the shooting. I had
Speaker 1: a back and forth this morning. There was a recent
Speaker 1: police shooting and Hamilton County prosecutor said the police were
Speaker 1: okay on this one. The facts are a little questionable
Speaker 1: and we're still sort of waiting for the full all
Speaker 1: the information to come out. But you have to provide
Speaker 1: the public with the information along the lines of, you know,
Speaker 1: police shootings are justified much in the same way I
Speaker 1: am entitled to defend myself with deadly force if I
Speaker 1: am faced with the eminent apprehension of grievous bodily harm
Speaker 1: or still death. And you know, for example, if I've
Speaker 1: been through the process of trying to command a person
Speaker 1: to you know, not resist and settle down, get on
Speaker 1: your knees, put your hands on your head, they stop
Speaker 1: doing that, and they get aggressive toward me. Of course,
Speaker 1: face two now in modern policing is use your taser
Speaker 1: if pop. And if they continue to be aggressive and
Speaker 1: that doesn't work and they continue to come out with you,
Speaker 1: most notably if they are armed, then you have a
Speaker 1: legitimate justification for using deadly force. It all makes sense.
Speaker 1: It's like put yourself in the same damn position, you
Speaker 1: would have done it as well. Exactly now, in this
Speaker 1: particular case, what specifically happened, I think it's worthy that
Speaker 1: we go over ultimately what was concluded, happened, how the
Speaker 1: confrontation started, and that what led to the deadly force.
Speaker 2: Well, you had this kid who was wanted on I
Speaker 2: think of his nineteen different warrants for mainly minor stuff
Speaker 2: like being out past curfew. He was an nor failure
Speaker 2: to appear again and again and again, so they spotted him.
Speaker 2: The officer Officer Roach gets out of his squad car
Speaker 2: and goes around into an alley because they're going to
Speaker 2: head him off because they knew where he was running.
Speaker 2: As soon as he saw the police, he ran and
Speaker 2: the kid comes over around the corner and he's probably
Speaker 2: as far as we can tell, the best explanation is
Speaker 2: that he was pulling up his sweatpants or his jeans
Speaker 2: and Roach thought he was going for a gun and
Speaker 2: fired and shot him, killed him. Beyond that, what really
Speaker 2: was another I don't know if you remember this, but
Speaker 2: there was a period when the refrain or the battle
Speaker 2: cry of the protesters riders was fifteen black men killed fifteen.
Speaker 2: This went out nationally and was a major reason for
Speaker 2: the boycotts that really crippled Cincinnati for a while. And
Speaker 2: the fifteen black men killed. Was came directly from that
Speaker 2: excessive force series in the Inquirer. And what I did
Speaker 2: is I circled back to say, Okay, who are these fifteen?
Speaker 2: I can read you just a couple examples here very shortly.
Speaker 2: One of them was Daniel Williams, who flagged down Cincinnati
Speaker 2: police officer Kathleen Conway in nineteen ninety eight, slugged her
Speaker 2: in the face, and shot her four times in the
Speaker 2: legs and abdomen with a three point fifty seven magnum
Speaker 2: Holy is he carjacked a police car? Okay, it's one
Speaker 2: of the fifteen victims of police brutality victim? Yeah, another one?
Speaker 1: Is you spent on victim? Isn't it? Really?
Speaker 2: You have Harry Price, who brutally raped a fifteen year
Speaker 2: old girl in nineteen ninety five, beheaded her with an
Speaker 2: axe and held off police for four hours, attacking them
Speaker 2: with a steak knife after being hit repeatedly with mace
Speaker 2: and stun guns. He was shot when he lunged at
Speaker 2: the police with a knife.
Speaker 1: All right, Since in the interested time we go to
Speaker 1: take a break, I mean, we get some more of those.
Speaker 1: But what you're suggesting is in this reporting this fifteen
Speaker 1: black Man. The narrative that was presented that they were
Speaker 1: all innocent people who were not justifiably shot by the police. Yes,
Speaker 1: and the two you just read there just really kind
Speaker 1: of burst the bubble of that narrative, don't they.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all but about three were not even questionable.
Speaker 1: Let's pause, We'll bring back Peter bro seven twenty nine.
Speaker 1: If you about KRCD talk station Brian Thomas with Peter Bronson,
Speaker 1: author of many, many books, all worthy of reading. Just
Speaker 1: go to Amazon dot com and you find Peter Bronson's
Speaker 1: page and you can see how The Sin City and
Speaker 1: the other wonderful books he's written, they're just they're just
Speaker 1: really genuine page turners. And uh, that's one of the
Speaker 1: things I love about it. I'll put you in a
Speaker 1: category like a bill O'Reilly. Once you get going Peter,
Speaker 1: you just can't put him down. And the fact that
Speaker 1: it's so local, we all have a connection with it,
Speaker 1: you know, Yeah, you were mentioned, you know, like, uh
Speaker 1: the Junkyard Dog alligation. You know, Ken Lawson is in
Speaker 1: your book, and I actually went to law school with Ken.
Speaker 1: I think it was a year two ahead. I mean,
Speaker 1: we know what a troubled problem in the difficult time
Speaker 1: he had with his you know, the drug issues and
Speaker 1: the I guess disbarment or whatever he went through. But
Speaker 1: he was integrally involved in this and maybe they was
Speaker 1: made a bit of a scene.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh. Yes, but yea of all places the
Speaker 2: law and public safety. Yeah, many where it was completely
Speaker 2: lawless in.
Speaker 1: A riot broke out, and a riot broke out, yeah,
Speaker 1: behind the lines, the untold stories of the since in
Speaker 1: riots the name of the book, So I imagine, you know,
Speaker 1: and at least again, going back twenty four years, we
Speaker 1: have evolved as a society, and I think in many
Speaker 1: cases for the better, you know. You know, a light
Speaker 1: has been exposed on some of the terrible problems that
Speaker 1: we've had with police departments. Yes, there have been instances
Speaker 1: of racism. Yes, there have been instances of brutality, and
Speaker 1: I think so one of the positive steps we've gone
Speaker 1: through in spite of the fact that maybe none of
Speaker 1: this outrage in any given instances was justified. There was
Speaker 1: a percolating general anger between members of certain communities and
Speaker 1: the police department that was built in what we called
Speaker 1: the unrest. Yeah, the unrest was there. Yes, everybody knew
Speaker 1: somebody who had been pulled over for they always say
Speaker 1: drive while black. You know, they're just hassling me and
Speaker 1: shaking me down. You know, my buddy Rudy was, you know,
Speaker 1: being clubbed over the police officer with PR twenty four
Speaker 1: that I know that kind of thing existed. So when
Speaker 1: a pretext comes along as inaccurate as the details were,
Speaker 1: as you talk about in your book, and as you
Speaker 1: pointed out this morning, it's like, Okay, the kindling's already there.
Speaker 1: It just takes a spark. And even if the spark
Speaker 1: is not the one that should have started it. And
Speaker 1: I'm not going to justify political or violence in the streets,
Speaker 1: and the extent of the reaction, you can kind of
Speaker 1: understand on the level where it came from.
Speaker 2: Yes, And so much was done after during right after
Speaker 2: the riots, we had the can Commission, which was Cincinnati Action.
Speaker 2: Now it was largely ineffective. We had a federal consent
Speaker 2: decree that came in for about a year or more.
Speaker 2: We had federal monitors that were in the back pocket
Speaker 2: of every police officer, looking over the shoulders of all
Speaker 2: the police. It drove Striker crazy because I couldn't do
Speaker 2: his job and really, I think what changed was the
Speaker 2: police learned some things out of this, almost independent of
Speaker 2: the ten or fifteen million or whatever it was the
Speaker 2: city spent on all these consultants. A lot of these
Speaker 2: consultants just came here to shake the city down, and
Speaker 2: of course, yeah it was crazy.
Speaker 1: Nothing's changed, nothing has changed. We need a non governmental
Speaker 1: organization and here taking a look at this, right, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: I five hundred thousand dollars a year working for an NGO. Yes,
Speaker 1: I'll be happy to do the work.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, what city elected official isn't glad to shift
Speaker 2: the blame and let somebody else take responsibility for something
Speaker 2: by giving him a million dollars. So, but the police
Speaker 2: learned some key lessons, which one of them we discussed
Speaker 2: was getting the weapons or any kind of evidence out
Speaker 2: there as soon as possible, get out in public, have
Speaker 2: a press conference, tell everybody what happened as much as
Speaker 2: you know, to correct these myths that are perpetrated by
Speaker 2: the media in many cases. The next thing they found out,
Speaker 2: which was very surprising, was that curfews work on the
Speaker 2: fourth day of violence, when they were they had just
Speaker 2: experienced the worst day of violence on the eleventh, with
Speaker 2: people being dragged. An elderly couple was dragged out of
Speaker 2: the car and beaten severely. We had this happening pretty
Speaker 2: regularly in the streets, and the police and the mayor
Speaker 2: declared a curfew and it worked, and everybody's like, wow,
Speaker 2: that's kind of a surprise. People are burning down businesses,
Speaker 2: smashing windows, throwing rocks at the police. But you tell
Speaker 2: them that that, you know, eleven o'clock everything ends.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it worked. It's like parents know that
Speaker 1: about young people. Most of the problems occurved sort of
Speaker 1: after eleven pm. Start worrying about what your kids are
Speaker 1: up to.
Speaker 2: But there were a lot of lessons like that that
Speaker 2: were applied. But we went through a really bad period too,
Speaker 2: where the police they they layered on so many layers
Speaker 2: of review, of second guessing for the cop, they had
Speaker 2: seven layers of oversight, so if they couldn't really do
Speaker 2: anything and they kind of backed off. They called it
Speaker 2: drive by policing, of course, and.
Speaker 1: We saw that a lot of the aftermath of Black
Speaker 1: Lives Matter riots through it any worth it.
Speaker 2: Yes, it was kind of a self defunding of the
Speaker 2: police without the defunding part, and it took about a
Speaker 2: year year and a half before, Striker had a big
Speaker 2: meeting with all the cops and said, look, do your job.
Speaker 2: Get back on the street and do your job, and
Speaker 2: I'll back you up one hundred percent. And I got
Speaker 2: a credit Mark Mallory too as the new Mara. He
Speaker 2: came in and said, look, I will play it fair,
Speaker 2: i will look at the evidence and I'm not gonna
Speaker 2: throw kerosene on any fires unless i know there's something there.
Speaker 1: Well see, and I will call that responsible leadership because again,
Speaker 1: moving over to the post, let's say George Floyd area,
Speaker 1: you had politicians that were joining in the ridicule of
Speaker 1: the police departments and not supporting them at all. And
Speaker 1: you know what that does the morale within a police department.
Speaker 1: You can't even get your elected officials on your side
Speaker 1: when your job is to try to keep the community safe.
Speaker 2: And it was terrible at Cincinnati City Hall. I mean
Speaker 2: we had the Law and Public Safety Committee on April
Speaker 2: ninth was literally taken over. They were held hostage in
Speaker 2: that room by protesters who filled the entire room, stood
Speaker 2: on their desks, took their chairs from them, and they
Speaker 2: were completely intimidated and not even allowed to leave the
Speaker 2: room for a rest break. And what happened then is
Speaker 2: that the city council just kind of adopted this whole
Speaker 2: idea that it was all the police fault.
Speaker 1: Capitulated.
Speaker 2: They capitulated it was a lot easier.
Speaker 1: Well, and I must observe the other development we have
Speaker 1: and you know, no Orwellian fanom I at least these
Speaker 1: days we have body camera footage. Yes, and that has
Speaker 1: burst the bubble of so many people who claim it
Speaker 1: was police were in the wrong. It's the police who
Speaker 1: did this. It's reduced the number of complaints that there
Speaker 1: was police brutality. Come and no, here's the body camera things.
Speaker 1: You go ahead and draw your own conclusions. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: it's it's I think it's solved more problems for the
Speaker 1: police department than it has well provided, you know, documented
Speaker 1: proof that the police were in the wrong.
Speaker 2: And there's been improvements in technology for non lethal force.
Speaker 2: So the tasers were a huge breakthrough because that gave
Speaker 2: them an option short of the club.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, and when the taser showed up, the
Speaker 1: PR twenty fours went the way of the Dodo exactly.
Speaker 2: And so but the other interesting thing is that tasers
Speaker 2: were absolutely considered like a horrible cruel and unusual tool
Speaker 2: for the police by the media, and the police had
Speaker 2: to weather that storm of all these bogus reports about
Speaker 2: how many people were going to die. And this is
Speaker 2: absolutely you know, it's a deadly jolt of electricity.
Speaker 1: And that's hilarious because all the all the cadets of
Speaker 1: the police department go through they get tasered, that's they
Speaker 1: get shot with a taser, so they know damn well
Speaker 1: how it feels and what it does to you exactly.
Speaker 2: And you don't hear of anybody getting killed or going
Speaker 2: into the hospital.
Speaker 1: No, no, you know. Pause, we'll bring Peter back. Got
Speaker 1: a couple more segments with him. I'm really enjoying this, teacher.
Speaker 1: If you about case talk station taking a walk through
Speaker 1: history not one of the high points in Greater Cincinnati's history,
Speaker 1: but one's certainly worthy of exploring. In Peter Bronson's in studio,
Speaker 1: his book Behind the Lines, the Untold Stories of the
Speaker 1: Cincinnati Riots, and we're kind of walking through the practical
Speaker 1: reality of what happened and then sort of paralleling it
Speaker 1: with or comparing it to how the media just twisted
Speaker 1: the narrative on it and actually fed the fuel for
Speaker 1: these riots and fed the fuel for the fire. And
Speaker 1: it's just been a real eye opener because you know, honestly, Peter,
Speaker 1: it's been so long, and I'm not quite sure how
Speaker 1: close closely connected I was with the facts at the
Speaker 1: time it was going on. But which count older year
Speaker 1: was this again? Two thousand and one, two thousand and one, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I had been back in town. We came back in
Speaker 1: ninety eight from Chicago.
Speaker 2: And everything that happened, remember, is completely eclipsed by the
Speaker 2: World Trade Center attack, which followed shortly thereafter. So this
Speaker 2: was in April, and that happens in September. So for Cincinnati,
Speaker 2: this was still huge, and the effects lingered for about
Speaker 2: two or three years. I don't know if you were
Speaker 2: here then, but we had a thriving entertainment district on
Speaker 2: Main Street that was pretty much just died from the
Speaker 2: boycotts and from the violence, and that kind of went away.
Speaker 2: Now it's kind of over it in OTR it's but
Speaker 2: I mean a lot of cool places like Neons were there,
Speaker 2: and yeah, all kinds of places. But you know, the city,
Speaker 2: a lot of restaurants failed. There was really terrible boycotts
Speaker 2: and a lot of confrontations and nasty. The whole city
Speaker 2: was just in a terrible kind of hostile, divided climate.
Speaker 1: This you know, go back to go back to Watts,
Speaker 1: and go back to you know, Rodney King, and it
Speaker 1: seems to have like a cyclical effect. Yes, I don't
Speaker 1: know if there's any connection with the political environment generally
Speaker 1: speaking and this type of rioting behavior happening, because you know,
Speaker 1: you could see with anti fo now they had their
Speaker 1: own separate issues, but a lot of fires and looting
Speaker 1: and destruction and anti police activity.
Speaker 2: I think, same thing, and just burning police stations. It's
Speaker 2: just another escalation on this ladder that we saw and
Speaker 2: it's pretty much the same things that happened in Cincinnati,
Speaker 2: but in a little bit more expanded scale, and it
Speaker 2: keeps getting Worrise and Morris and I really, because I'm
Speaker 2: in the media, maybe yeah, Well, you know the guy
Speaker 2: who has a hammer looks at everything like a nail,
Speaker 2: maybe that's me. But I think the media, with many
Speaker 2: good intentions perhaps of trying to unite the country, has
Speaker 2: done more to divide us on the issues of race
Speaker 2: than anyone.
Speaker 1: Well again, it goes back to clickbait, you know, unification
Speaker 1: uniting speaking a message of you know, enjoying and living
Speaker 1: under collectively in peace, in the name of freedom and
Speaker 1: liberty and respecting your neighbors. You know, that doesn't that
Speaker 1: doesn't get clicks. It doesn't get people buying you know, murder, mayhem, ray, pestilens, police, brutality, brutality.
Speaker 1: You know you're going to buy a paper. You know,
Speaker 1: It's like you can go back to the movies in
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties and forties, headlines headlines murder of so
Speaker 1: and so, and that of course is why people would
Speaker 1: buy papers. Absolutely so. Yeah, well, human nature is what
Speaker 1: it is. It is, at least I think I have.
Speaker 1: I'm as much of as much problems as many problems
Speaker 1: rather are created by the Internet. And this way that
Speaker 1: the Internet has a being to reach so many people
Speaker 1: in such short period of time that you can get
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of idiots and don't know what they're
Speaker 1: talking about, showing up on a Saturday to protest cutting
Speaker 1: out ridiculous government ways and claiming that medicaid is somehow
Speaker 1: being gutted, when in fact the polar opposite is happening.
Speaker 1: That's a downside. An upside is though that you and
Speaker 1: I actually can go out into the world and get
Speaker 1: a broader view and more opinions and a broader swath
Speaker 1: of how the information is being presented, which if you're
Speaker 1: smart enough, you'll get a clear picture of what reality is. Well.
Speaker 2: I think you make a great point. And social media
Speaker 2: and the online websites have really it's like giving the
Speaker 2: most irresponsible people in the media back in two thousand
Speaker 2: and one an amplifier and a bull horn. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: now they can spread it even faster with less research,
Speaker 2: less reporting, less.
Speaker 1: Evidence, less accountability.
Speaker 2: And it's like you said, it's clickbase. So if they
Speaker 2: have to correct if the next day, who cares? Because
Speaker 2: they got the income that they can show advertisers from
Speaker 2: those million clicks.
Speaker 1: Let's puzzle worring Peter back for one more. I'll be
Speaker 1: right back after these brief words here fifty five kerc
Speaker 1: Detak Station and I have been thoroughly enjoying his look
Speaker 1: back in history with Peter Bronson regarding the riots which
Speaker 1: took place tomorrow twenty four years April ninth to kick
Speaker 1: off of the riots here in the Cincinnati if you
Speaker 1: want to read about it. He wrote the book along
Speaker 1: a while back two thousand and six was the published
Speaker 1: date behind the lines, the untold story of the Cincinnati riots,
Speaker 1: And you brought up some great elements about this that
Speaker 1: I'm sure so many people have forgotten, but all the
Speaker 1: parallels that we can draw with other almost identical situations.
Speaker 1: To me, it's been rather fascinating connecting the dots and
Speaker 1: showing the parallels, and most notably the idea that quite
Speaker 1: often these things are if not only tiny bit baked,
Speaker 1: but half baked at best, when people start flying off
Speaker 1: the handle and drawing conclusions and engaging in outright acts
Speaker 1: of destruction and violence, when they themselves. While they may
Speaker 1: be angry at this system, or they may be angry
Speaker 1: at you know, law enforcement generally, in these particulars, many
Speaker 1: of these circumstances, the anger isn't justified.
Speaker 2: No, as you pointed out, there may be a background
Speaker 2: climate that is contributing to this, but I think by now,
Speaker 2: by now, after we've been through this so many times,
Speaker 2: we've seen this rodeo before, that climate, especially in police practices,
Speaker 2: is for all intents and purposes gone. Will there be exceptions,
Speaker 2: Oh sure, of course, ye. That's human nature, that's life.
Speaker 2: But the idea that there is a systemic racism and
Speaker 2: a police department or that police are out there looking
Speaker 2: for excuses to be racist and kill or arrest or
Speaker 2: beat people because of their ethnicity. It's ridiculous.
Speaker 1: I think it is too. And you know, there was
Speaker 1: a guy named Corey that called in and he said
Speaker 1: he just through these broadbrush conclusions cops want to be
Speaker 1: costs because they want to go out and shoot somebody,
Speaker 1: that they're all trigger happy. And I'm listening to this
Speaker 1: thinking about my sister, who, after twenty five years, you know,
Speaker 1: served since I police department and her community. Well, she
Speaker 1: had stories that she used to talk about being spit on, punched,
Speaker 1: having to get you know, wrestle people to the ground,
Speaker 1: getting abused herbally and orally all and never once did
Speaker 1: she had to pull her firearmar to the best of
Speaker 1: my knowledge, I know she never had to shoot anybody.
Speaker 1: But he was being insistent upon this, and so I looked.
Speaker 1: I looked up the fun fact. In twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: in the United States, they were over one point two
Speaker 1: eight million sworn law enforcement officers, with about one hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty seven thousand of them working for federal agencies
Speaker 1: and the rest at state, local levels, and I see
Speaker 1: you know, of course there are going to be jerks
Speaker 1: in there, yea, just like the general populations. That's why
Speaker 1: in prison, that's why they find murderers and rapists are
Speaker 1: the vast majority of people murders and rapists. Do we
Speaker 1: have this collective mindset that we're all, you know, justifying
Speaker 1: committing these horrific acts. No, they're always going to be
Speaker 1: a few bad apples. But going back to the social
Speaker 1: media part, they do make the headlines. Yes, And when
Speaker 1: you have this mentality of the George Floyd mentality, this
Speaker 1: particular mentality what comes from the riots and people you know,
Speaker 1: immediately using it as a vehicle to attack the entire
Speaker 1: police department, No one thinks contextually about it.
Speaker 2: It's sensationalism has been monetized. It has That's what we
Speaker 2: look at in our media today at all levels. I'm
Speaker 2: talking about network news, cable news, everything, especially social media
Speaker 2: and online platforms. The more sensationalists, the more readers click it,
Speaker 2: the more money you make.
Speaker 1: Well listeners, uh, you can still get a copy behind
Speaker 1: the lines, the untold stories of the Cincinna riots. Also
Speaker 1: the man who saves Cincinnati promised Land, how the Midwest
Speaker 1: was one forbidden fruit, sin City, the Underworld, and the
Speaker 1: supper Club Inferno not in our town. The Queen City
Speaker 1: versus The King of Smut, which of course talks about
Speaker 1: hustler publisher Larry Flint and the whole I mean, you
Speaker 1: even did the Cincinnati Art Museum Maplethorpe thing in that one.
Speaker 1: It's all great stuff. Peter writes a hell of a book.
Speaker 1: They're all there. You can get him at Chili Dogpress
Speaker 1: dot com. That's his publishing company. So I recommend you
Speaker 1: buy him from there, as opposed to getting him through
Speaker 1: wherever you might get him, like Amazon. But I can't
Speaker 1: recommend him enough. He writes a terrific book and a
Speaker 1: great storyteller. You are, and you want to I don't
Speaker 1: want you to give it up. And if you don't
Speaker 1: want to say anything, I know you're working on a
Speaker 1: new book.
Speaker 2: Yes I am, and I won't say anything.
Speaker 1: Okay, I won't give it up then, But you know, suspicious,
Speaker 1: you know this is going to be a fascinating book.
Speaker 1: You got. I don't want to. I can't tease it
Speaker 1: too much because I'll give away the subject matter. But
Speaker 1: another really locally based story, and since we brought up
Speaker 1: Ken Lawson earlier in all his troubles, Oh gosh, man,
Speaker 1: he had a really serious problem going on at the
Speaker 1: time of these riots.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, he's cleaned himself up. He has. The last time
Speaker 2: I talked to him, he was clean, had been for
Speaker 2: a long time. He was in Hawaii and he was practicing.
Speaker 2: He was teaching at the University of Hawaii, teaching legal ethics, which.
Speaker 1: It just sounds hilarious nas irony, But the off air
Speaker 1: you mentioned, I think it is we're pointing out since
Speaker 1: we're closing out the segment here. Ken was one of
Speaker 1: the people at that law and Public safety meeting during
Speaker 1: the riot that he was.
Speaker 2: One of the instigators along with the Reverend Damon Lynch.
Speaker 1: He admitted to you at that time that he was, Oh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was deep into his opioid addiction at that
Speaker 2: time and doing all all kinds of terribly unethical and
Speaker 2: illegal things to keep feeding his habit. When you watch
Speaker 2: the tape of that was I went back when I
Speaker 2: researched the book, Uh yeah, his behavior definitely backs that
Speaker 2: up about that, and he kept he knew better, and
Speaker 2: we now know that he did know better that the
Speaker 2: police couldn't release what he kept telling them he wanted
Speaker 2: to get, and they couldn't do it. It was it was
Speaker 2: just not available or it was not legally proper, and
Speaker 2: so he kind of exploited the situation too to cause
Speaker 2: a lot of violence. And that's where the riot really
Speaker 2: erupted right there. In law and public safety.
Speaker 1: What a shame anyway, read about in Peter's book, Peter,
Speaker 1: It's been a real pleasure. I can't think you if
Speaker 1: we're coming to the studio and talk always with pleasure.
Speaker 2: It's always pleasure, man, You always enjoyed this.
Speaker 1: You're always welcome here. Man. We'll have something else to
Speaker 1: talk about real soon. I am certain. Seven to fifty
Speaker 1: five come up with seven fifty six Inside Scoop London
Speaker 1: Bureau Chief Oliver Lane returns to the program. He's learning
Speaker 1: to power Youse semon Art later this evening seven for
Speaker 1: that what's going on in Europe and what it means
Speaker 1: for us? Daniel Davis deep dive at the bottom of
Speaker 1: the next hour plus. Kesey cares with the Fabulous Cancer
Speaker 1: Doctors from OHC Today Doctor Joseph Shaughnessy in studio to
Speaker 1: talk about head and neck cancer stick around,