Excuse me, but “unruly” sounds like a bad hair day. “Wilding” sounds almost glamorous.

        Why can't we just call it what it was: stupid, ugly, vicious violence.

        “If you compare it to what happened with the riots, it was not that bad,” said a veteran cop who was there.

A bad situation

        “But if we didn't get down there as quickly as we did, we would have had a really bad situation.”

        The cop, who did not want his name used because it might get him in trouble, described the scene this way: “They were just like a pack running from one end to another. We had 2,000 to 3,000 young adults down there, and I didn't see any adult supervision.”

        Here's the good news: Nobody tried to blame “rage,” “oppression” or “racism.” Nobody blamed the cops this time.

        In fact, several people said things that needed to be said long ago.

        “The responsibility clearly rests with the individuals and the parents of those individuals,” Cecil Thomas of the Cincinnati Human Relations Commission said in an Enquirer story Tuesday. “I don't see two ways about it.”

        Urban League President Sheila Adams said, “We can't continue to blame everything on the conditions in our community. There may be some frustration on the part of our youths, but that's no reason for destroying property. We need to stop making excuses when behavior is not appropriate.”

        And Ken Lawson, attorney for the plaintiffs in the collaborative agreement to improve police-community relations, said more needs to be done “to educate children and their parents that this path is nowhere, it leads to prison or death.”

        “Those who commit such crimes obviously need to be arrested and prosecuted,” he said.

Kids don't "do that'

        There were a few isolated outbreaks of denial. “They were doing what kids do when they get together in large numbers,” said Cassandra Robinson, organizer of the Black Family Reunion, which drew the mob to a hip-hop concert on Saturday night.

        Say what? Since when is it normal to injure 10 people, use brass knuckles, fire guns, throw rocks at buses and terrorize the downtown?

        WDBZ-AM host Jay Love insisted he didn't condone the violence, “but young people do that.”

        Well, maybe they do that because people who are old enough to know better keep making excuses for them. It's a lot easier to blame racism and oppression than to hold the parents accountable for the kids they neglect.

        The cops who were there know what causes “unruly wilding.”

        “They lack any kind of parental control,” one cop said. “They lack any respect for authority of any kind. And too many excuses are made for violent and vicious behavior.”

        Oppression? Hardly. They aren't oppressed enough — by their parents.

        E-mail pbronson@enquirer.com or call 768-8301.

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