The Cincy riots in Spring 2001 are what made me a dedicated FReeper. The coverage here was amazing.
Not much came of it, from a national perspective, due to 9/11 coming so soon (relatively) afterwards. But not a good event.
I moved here in the Summer of 2002. I live downtown across from P&G. The City is a ghost town after 6pm.
I had relatives living there at the time so was on those threads. It was amazing coverage listening to the police radios.
I was by chance in Europe during the Riots of 2001. The press coverage over there was unbelievable! (I guess it was similar here).There was a special bulletin handed out to the passengers on our ship between Casablanca and Lisbon. When a bartender in Madrid admitted that things were not perfect in Europe either (actually hundreds were dying and hundreds of thousands were abandoning their homes in Kosovo at the time), that put it in perspective for me. The media and the Federal Government put a small group of criminals in control of Cincinnati that spring. The increasingly ghettoized city of Cincinnati may in fact never recover. Incorporated Cincinnati is however less than 1/10 of the Cincinnati urban area, and shrinking every day.
It is a pity that the Cincinnati riots are what defines that town. Cincinnati is really rather safe. Yes, there are hooligans. But, truthfully, it is not a bad place.