Some Black leaders and residents in greater Cincinnati expressed dismay after armed, masked neo-Nazis were allowed to gather on a freeway bridge without arrest.
Some have called for a quick investigation of the response by Evendale police and Hamilton County sheriff’s deputies after the demonstration Friday afternoon on the Interstate 75 overpass between the Village of Evendale and Lincoln Heights, the latter a historically Black community.
The biggest question for critics of the response is why none of the neo-Nazi demonstrators was arrested after the group was confronted by community members, firearms on display on both sides.
The Rev. Julian Armand Cook of Lincoln Heights Missionary Baptist Church said in an interview that the demonstration of hatred, which included swastika-adorned flags, was shocking.
“To see it show up at the gateway to this historic community, the first, the oldest Black self-governed city north of the Mason-Dixon Line, it is very clear what message it is sending,” he said. “So it was — I was angry. I was hurt. I was shocked.”
Evendale police said in a statement Tuesday that officers were bound to protect the First Amendment rights of demonstrators and that, even though the demonstration was carried out without a permit, it was legal. The police department said ticketing demonstrators for smaller matters such as transporting people in the back of a box truck — which they boarded as they left — without belted seats was overlooked in the name of preventing violence.
The department did not address the nature of the demonstration, which some Black residents described as existentially threatening.
Lincoln Heights resident Eric Ruffin said at Tuesday night’s village meeting that one of the demonstrators called him a racial epithet.
“Do you want a community you don’t feel safe in?” he asked.
The police department said officers were put in an incendiary situation that was resolved without injuries or loss of life.
“One of the groups was heavily armed with multiple firearms and tensions among opposing groups were escalating,” it said. “As such the overriding priority was to continue efforts to isolate groups, limit new participants and further deescalate the situation.”
To reach that goal, the department said, officers allowed a U-Haul box truck to safely get through counterdemonstrators, and an officer gave a ride to a neo-Nazi demonstrator who was told it was unsafe to return to a vehicle because counterdemonstrators were in the pathway.
In a separate statement, Hamilton County Sheriff Charmaine McGuffey said de-escalating the situation on the bridge so no one was hurt was a top priority for responding deputies.
“Lincoln Heights residents are understandably upset,” she said. “We continue to work with the community, and emphasize that there is no place for hate in Hamilton County.”
The Village of Evendale has held two town hall meetings about the matter in two days, and the neo-Nazi demonstration was a topic of discussion for Hamilton County’s Board of County Commissioners on Tuesday.
“We had questions about why there was no arrests made when there were clear violations of the law,” Cook said.
State Rep. Cecil Thomas, D-Cincinnati, said he would support legislation to ensure authorities have tools they can use to arrest such demonstrators in the future.
“I can guarantee you we will get some action so that if this happens again, law enforcement will have the authority to take action,” he said at a community meeting Monday, according to NBC affiliate WLWT of Cincinnati.
County Commissioner Alicia Reece, speaking at the commission meeting, supported calls for an investigation into the law enforcement response, saying demonstrators were made too comfortable.
Residents, she argued, fended for themselves.
“They had to go in they own house, get they own guns, go out there and risk they own life,” Reece said at the meeting, captured on video she posted to Facebook. “And they felt the only thing that happened was a defense, in their mind, of the Nazis.”
Cook praised a community with a noted history of self-governance for taking care in the face of hatred.
“What must be kept at the forefront of this story is the way this community stepped in to de-escalate this situation themselves, and they did it in a way that preserved their dignity and their integrity,” he said.
