CINCINNATI HOMICIDES HIGHEST SINCE 1987

CINCINNATI -- Homicides hit a 14- year high in Cincinnati during a year in
which the city experienced racially motivated riots and unprecedented
street violence.

The number of homicides, 61, increased 52.5 percent from a year ago, when
40 people were murdered.

The number of homicides had not reached that level since 1987, when 66
people were murdered, 24 of them by serial killer Donald Harvey.

"2001 is a year I don't want to remember a heck of a lot," Hamilton County
Prosecutor Mike Allen told The Cincinnati Enquirer. "It has been the most
stressful year in my professional career without question. It truly is
turning into an epidemic."

Still, Cincinnati's 61 homicides remained behind Ohio's two other biggest
cities. Cleveland recorded 77 this year, and Columbus had 76.

Nationally, the number of homicides increased slightly in the first six
months of the year, according to the FBI.

In Cincinnati, the killings have been attributed to a surge in violence
that followed three days of rioting in April.

The riots were sparked by the shooting of an unarmed black man by a white
police officer on April 7.

Nine of the homicides this year in Cincinnati were in the Over-the- Rhine
neighborhood where Officer Stephen Roach fatally shot Timothy Thomas.

Fatal shootings, many connected to drugs and street robberies, occurred
almost nightly in the summer.

At that time, shootings jumped 600 percent from a year earlier. Of the 61
homicides, 44 died of gunshots wounds.

"It is a tragic number, but I am not surprised given what we have seen this
year," Mayor Charlie Luken said. "We have got to do a better job in getting
our neighborhoods involved in crime fighting."

Officer Eric Smoot, gang expert in the police department, said dozens the
killings stemmed from drug-selling gang members who were either
establishing territory or getting revenge for previous killings.

Most of the victims are between the ages of 15 and 35, a generation the
Rev. Aaron Greenlea, president of the Cincinnati Baptist Ministers
Conference, said he thinks already is lost.

"The crux of our problem is we have young men on the street with no skills
and no jobs," he said. "These guys know they can push drugs, but we have to
offer them another alternative."