America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s

Hinton begins this chapter with the funeral of Timothy Thomas, a young Black man who was murdered by police in Cincinnati, Ohio, in April 2001. Thomas was approached by the officers while buying cigarettes, and when he ran from them, they chased him down and shot him. Thomas technically had a criminal record at the time; police frequently stopped him and ticketed him for things like driving without a license, and because Thomas received so many such tickets he chose to ignore them, leading to a warrant for his arrest. This arrest warrant led the judge to acquit the officer who murdered Thomas of all charges, since Thomas clearly had a “history” (259).

Thomas’s death was the final straw after several more deaths of Black men at the hands of police in Cincinnati, due to a “zero tolerance” (260) law enforcement policy that targeted Black men substantially more than any other group. An uprising broke out in Cincinnati following Thomas’s death, but this time the response from authorities was different, as more diverse policymakers began to shift the focus to reform rather than violent suppression. Hinton proposes that the Cincinnati rebellion of 2001 marked a shift from the Black rebellions of the 20th century to the current