A 10-year-old teases police at Vine and Green in Over-the-Rhine. 'I'm gonna be doin' some looting tonight,' he said. (Glenn Hartong photo) | ZOOM |

        Three days of street riots in Cincinnati have brought out hundreds of African-American teen-agers. Some come to vent and throw bricks. Others come out of curiosity. Missing from the TV images are their parents.

        Some parents were home, some at work. Some whose kids were involved didn't know it. Some who live nearby wanted to make sure their kids weren't.

        Up to this week, they were parents afraid of the streets and the police. Now they are afraid their children will get hurt protesting what hurts them too.

        “I feared I wouldn't see him again,” Yolanda Sherman, 32, said of her son, Andre, 16, who wanted to leave their Walnut Street apartment to see Tuesday's rioting. She refused to let him go.

        “My husband was mad (at police). But as far as hurting innocent people, that's not good. I want them to fight for their rights, but mostly (the rioting) was young kids. And it was wrong.”

Roberta Bishop took her kids to see riot damage. "This isn't the right way to deal with it," she told them. (Michael E. Keating photo) | ZOOM |

        Ms. Sherman spoke on Clay Street on Wednesday. A half-block away stood a car with Kentucky plates, its windows shattered, its sides smashed. People passing by, black and white, seemed to take little notice even as broken glass crunched under foot. Finally, a white man came, got in the car and quietly drove away, nervously looking around.

        “It's really sad how it's affected so many people's lives,” said Belinda Washington of the West End. Her son, Anthony Frakes, 14, was arrested Wednesday during a confrontation with police and charged with a curfew violation.

        “Lot of kids,” she said, “they don't know. They're just caught up with what's going on.”

        Ms. Washington works the night shift. The rules of the house changed this week.

        “He's not allowed out,” she said. Period.

        James Roper Sr. of Westwood has an 18-year-old son, James Jr., who has his own apartment in Westwood. James Jr. was arrested Tuesday in Over-the-Rhine and charged with criminal damaging. He told his father he was just on his way to see relatives in Over-the-Rhine and did nothing wrong.

        “As a parent, you get afraid,” he said. “What do you tell your youngest kid who sees your 18-year-old out there breaking property that doesn't belong to them?”

        “All I can do is raise him best I can,” the father said, “but it's time for him to take responsibility, put in play what I taught him. I can't hold his hand, but yet when he's out there, he represents me.”

        Like a number of black parents, Mr. Roper also expressed sympathy for the family of Cincinnati Officer Steve Roach, who shot Mr. Thomas, sparking the week's unrest.

        Some parents even count police officers among their friends, and said stereotypes cut both ways.

        “I don't have a problem with them (the police), because I know how to talk to them,” said Dee Dee Rogers, 34, of Mount Auburn, whose two sons are 14 and 7. “It's just, communicate.”

        Others say one fear has just replaced another. The old fear was of the police. The new fear is of losing their children to the unrest.

        Marcia Giles, 25, lives in Over-the-Rhine with her five children, a son, 6, and two sets of twins, ages 4 and 1.

        “People is not playin' anymore. (Police) need to go get us some answers, but it's only going to escalate,” Ms. Giles said. “If they had been straight up, right away, people wouldn't have been acting this mess.”

        Elizabeth Saunders of North Fairmount has a 19-year-old son, Shamell, who was charged Wednesday with breaking and entering. She criticized police.

        “I think they're collecting (suspects) just to keep them off the streets,” she said. “A lot of people are arrested for nothing, and Shamell's one of them.”

        Some parents said the riots were regrettable but necessary to wake up authorities to long-simmering resentments. They mentioned other deaths involving police, as well as noise ordinances in Eden Park and crowd control in Corryville they feel unfairly target young African-Americans.

        Other mothers were more concerned with breaking down walls of miscommunication and mistrust so they would not lose their children.

        “Let's just keep it at peace,” Roberta Bishop, 40, of Over-the-Rhine said as her two children, Marcus, 11, and Aissia, 9, shared an orange soda. She was leading her children on the half-mile walk from their home on West McMicken to one area where rioting occurred. She wanted them to see the damage, as a lesson.

        “Maybe police is wrong,” Mrs. Bishop said, “but this (unrest) isn't the right way to deal with it. ... Kids now just want to distrust police, but if you get in trouble, stop them and ask them for help. I've been to jail and I don't want that to happen to them.”

        Gloria Jackson also lives on McMicken. At 52, she now has two grandchildren. One is 18, the other, walking with her on Main Street Wednesday, is 12. Her name's Shatoria.

        “I'm just scared,” the girl said.

        Mrs. Jackson's daughter, Penny Owens, was a newborn when racial unrest tore through Cincinnati in 1967.

        Curling an arm around her granddaughter's shoulder, Mrs. Jackson said the rioting brought back fears she thought were long gone.

        “I never thought,” she said, “I'd experience this again.”

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