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American Morning

Cincinnati Protests: NAACP President Urges `Restraint'

Aired April 13, 2001 - 09:04   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Cincinnati police have killed 15 black men since 1995. Some of them, we understand, were armed. Some of them were not.

Nineteen-year-old Timothy Thomas, the most recent to be shot, was not armed. He was wanted on 14 misdemeanor warrants, most of them for things like driving without a license, or expired license or for seat belt violations.

NAACP national President Kweisi Mfume took part in a meeting last night in Cincinnati, as you just heard from Bob Franken. Mr. Mfume joins us now live from Cincinnati.

We thank you for your time today. It's good to see you, nice to talk to you again, unfortunately, though, under these circumstances.

Can you give us an idea, for those of us who are on the outside looking in here, exactly how it is that things came to be so tense and so volatile there in Cincinnati?

KWEISI MFUME, PRESIDENT, NAACP: Yes, you know, one of the interesting things is that this has not happened in the twinkling of an eye.

This community here has been appealing to the police department and to officials for years to pay attention to what they thought was excessive racial profiling and excessive use of force. The fact that, apparently, that did not happen, and the fact that this situation exploded as the result of this young man being killed unarmed, I think has called the nation's attention to this. But the people here in Cincinnati have known for some time there's been a problem.

It's exacerbated when there's this excessive use of force by the police. These are shell casings that hit people yesterday. They've been shooting them with beanbags here, instead of using tear gas to disperse them. And it's got to be, at least, on behalf of the police department, a desire or at least a willingness to admit that there's a problem.

We've called for calm. We don't believe that anybody ought to be hurt or injured beyond what has happened already. Innocent people cannot be attacked in this city. There's got to be some level of restraint. But there's got to be calm and there's got to be restraint also on the part of a police department, who, in some instances, have taken the law in their own hands. The good men and women who put on badges and uniforms and go out and patrol these communities each day, and who offer respect, get tainted by those who do not, who instead take the law in their own hands.

HARRIS: Let me ask you something else. I'd like to know about what you've learned in the last -- I guess you've been there some 24 hours or so.

About 24 hours ago, we had live coverage of a press conference that Mayor Charles Lukens had there when he made the announcement about the city going into an emergency status and everything. And he was shouted down by a bunch -- by some hecklers that we heard in the back of the room, that were calling him a liar, saying that this has been brought to his attention a number of times and that he has ignored it. Have you found that to be the case?

MFUME: Well, as I said before, this has been brewing for a long, long time -- for years, as a matter of fact. I don't think that this mayor started it, but he certainly inherited it and has a responsibility, I think, to find a way to end it.

And so, I think, as the mayor went to make those remarks, the reasons that people were shouting was that there's a great deal of pent-up feelings, a great deal of anxiety. People here in Cincinnati want their communities back. They want respect, they want calm. But most of all, they want law and order, particularly law and order on behalf of the police.

And until we are able to get people talking, this great issue of race, which continues to divide our country, will continue to divide communities like this.

HARRIS: Let me ask you about that, because you made a comment in some of your comments from yesterday about this being -- Cincinnati representing a microcosm of some kind. What did you mean by that?

MFUME: Well, this is ground zero. If you're talking about race relations in America in 2001, this is ground zero right here, because what you're seeing really becomes a microcosm of what's happening in so many other communities that feel that, because of police brutality or policing in a strange way or racial profiling, that they have been singled out. We've got to deal with this issue.

My comments to Attorney General Ashcroft two days ago was not just for calm and for a wider investigation, but also an appeal that there's got to be a willingness at the highest levels of government to deal with the vexing issue of race. We cannot continue to allow racial differences and racial stereotypes to divide this nation.

But it's not going to just happen willy-nilly. It comes from the bottom up and the top down. And this, as a result of that, represents, I think, the epitome of where, in many respects, race relations are in this country when they're at their worst. HARRIS: Well, let me ask you, finally, if I can: Are the African-Americans there, who are participating in what's happening there on the streets, are they actually helping their cause by doing so? And have we seen the end of that?

MFUME: Well, I don't know. I would hope and I pray, quite frankly, that the violence that we've seen comes to an end on both sides. We've got a community of citizens here, black and white, who, at the end of the day, when we're all gone, have to live together and work together and live and die together as citizens of this community.

I'm appealing, quite frankly, to those persons who are very angry, to just hold their anger a little longer, until we're able to bring some justice here. But I have to tell you, their anger is justified. Their feelings of frustration are justified. And we have an obligation to hear them, to listen to them and to embrace them, so that we don't repeat this situation in communities like this all across this nation.

HARRIS: President of the NAACP, Kweisi Mfume, thank you very much for your time. And we'll be watching to see how things...

MFUME: Thank you.

HARRIS: ... turn out during your visit in Cincinnati. Good luck.

MFUME: Thank you.

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