Cincinnati Mayor Charlie Luken lifted the city's curfew today and pledged to shake up its police force and empanel a high-level commission to tackle the problems of race relations in the wake of the worst rioting here in more than 30 years.
Seeking to draw a line under the events of the past week, Mr Luken immediately suspended the dusk-to-dawn curfew and promised to take the "historic opportunity" afforded by the crisis to mend the city's tattered race relations.
"Curfew will not exist as of today," Mr Luken told reporters. "The state of emergency continues ... in the unlikely, and unanticipated event that it would be needed as a tool. But we don't expect that to happen."
More than 800 people were arrested here last week during three nights of rioting, and four nights of a city-wide lockdown following the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager by a white police officer, according to authorities.
City officials are still trying to tally the cost for the property damage inflicted in mostly black neighbourhoods by rioters who looted stores, set fires and in some cases attacked white motorists in protests sparked by Mr Timothy Thomas' death.
The conflagration forced the mayor to impose a dusk-to-dawn curfew to quell the unrest, and drew national attention and most of the nation's most prominent black leaders to this southern Ohio town, which one called "ground zero for race relations," in the United States.
"We have been a community in crisis. Now that the disturbances have subsided, they must never occur again," Mr Luken said today at a press conference, flanked by some of the city's black community leaders.
"It is time for leaders to step forward, and that is happening.Out of this crisis comes an historic opportunity for our community to make meaningful progress."
Central to Mr Luken's proposals is a plan to shake-up Cincinnati's overwhelmingly white police force, which is distrusted by many in the minority black community, because of a string of police killings of black men - 15 since 1995.
Just last month a coalition of civil rights groups and the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit against the city, alleging a 30-year pattern of racial profiling, or singling out suspects based on their colour.
The police officers' union maintains the statistics are being taken out of context and that in most cases the shootings were justified.
AFP
