By TERRY KINNEY, The Associated Press
CINCINNATI (AP) -- Cincinnati’s mayor says he would shrink city government to find money for stun guns for police, facing nationwide criticism in the death of a man following a struggle with six officers a week ago.
The money -- about $1 million -- could come from not filling 34 middle management vacancies that Luken expects by next year, he said Sunday.
That would buy about 1,000 new-technology Tasers for the 1,050-officer department.
“Like all of you, I have been listening carefully to our citizens with their opinions on the tragic death of Nathaniel Jones,” Luken said. “I am looking for any avenue to avoid another struggle, if possible, through new technologies.”
Jones, 41, died Nov. 30 after wrestling with police in a restaurant parking lot. A cruiser videotape showed the 350-pound man lunging at one officer before he was brought down and struck repeatedly with nightsticks.
“While it is unclear whether the incident would have changed if our officers had the latest technology in Tasers, I believe we must equip our police with the very best equipment,” Luken said.
The coroner ruled Jones’ death a homicide but said that did not imply that police used excessive force. The direct cause of death was the struggle, the autopsy showed, but Jones had an enlarged heart, was overweight and had illegal drugs in his blood.
Jones’ family and activist groups plan independent investigations, adding to probes by police, prosecutors and a citizens’ panel. The Justice Department also is gathering information.
A new model of Taser was demonstrated to city officials about five months ago, Luken said.
“We have been waiting on a federal grant,” Luken said. “Because of what happened a week ago, the city manager and I have concluded that we cannot wait.”
Police Chief Thomas Streicher told council members on Wednesday that he stopped use of older Tasers because he considered them inefficient and unreliable. They required an officer to touch a person to activate the stun capability -- not practical in a case where the suspect is lunging and swinging at officers, he said.
The new models fire small, needlelike projectiles that can shock a person up to 25 feet away, Luken said.
“They look like little harpoons,” said Ken Cooper, a Kingston, N.Y., firearms consultant to police departments. “They are very effective.”
Cooper said Taser is the only weapon he knows that is non-lethal but can cause a great deal of pain. He has tested them on himself.
“I’ve been hit by Tasers too many times. It is the most profound pain I have ever felt,” Cooper said. “You get total compliance because they don’t want that pain again.”
Because the new models are so popular with police nationwide, supplies are short, the mayor said, so he doesn’t expect to be able to buy them immediately.
On the day after the memorial service for Jones, the Baptist Ministers Conference of Greater Cincinnati and Vicinity called off a march Sunday on City Hall, in deference to the Jones family’s wishes.
But other groups, including members of the New Black Panther Party, rallied at police headquarters. Then about 80 people marched through the nearby Over-the-Rhine neighborhood that was the epicenter of the April 2001 riots that followed the police shooting of an unarmed black man who fled arrest.
Fred Hampton Jr., of Chicago -- whose father was a member of the original Black Panther Party and was killed in 1969 -- said the city could expect more activism.
“Cincinnati has been designated a ‘Code Red’ national terrorism area,” Hampton said.
Washington, D.C., attorney Malik Shabazz, who is president of Black Lawyers for Justice and national chairman of the New Black Panther Party, said the violence of April 2001 was “not a riot but a righteous rebellion” and urged blacks in Cincinnati to resist white authority “by any means necessary.”
“Chief Streicher is running a criminal organization and has blood on his hands,” Shabazz said.
He said the mayor’s proposal to equip police with new-technology Tasers was “too little, too late,” and evidence that police did not have proper procedures in place to deal with someone like Jones.