the city overall. Author David Waddington attributed the poverty of the area to high unemployment resulting from a loss of manufacturing jobs in the city, as well as cuts in youth programs in the city. The neighborhood had a high rate of crimes, in particular drug-related offenses. The array of poverty-associated problems resulted in heightened tensions between African-American residents in the neighborhood and the Cincinnati Police Department. Between 1995 and April 2001, fifteen black males suspected of crimes had been killed by Cincinnati police during confrontation or while in custody, including four since November 2000, while no white suspects were killed in that period. In particular, two recent deaths had sparked tensions: Roger Owensby, Jr. died November 7, 2000, allegedly of asphyxiation from a chokehold from a police officer, and Jeffrey Irons died the next day in a scuffle with police. One of the officers was acquitted, while the other case ended in a mistrial and the officer was not re-tried. This string of deaths led to claims by the community that the police were acting discriminatorily. Three weeks before the protests and growing unrest, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and a group of local organizations filed a civil lawsuit against the police department and city, alleging 30 years of racial profiling. A number of other civil suits were initiated against the department, including one African-American man who alleged he was handcuffed and beaten during a traffic stop. Bomani Tyehimba filed a lawsuit in 1999 against the city of Cincinnati. He claimed that during a routine traffic stop, police illegally ordered him out of his car, handcuffed him and held a gun to his head. A local independent newspaper, CityBeat, published research that an "analysis of 141,000 traffic citations written by Cincinnati Police in a 22-month period found black drivers twice as likely as whites to be cited for driving without a license, twice as likely to be cited for not wearing a seat belt and four times as likely to be cited for driving without proof of insurance." The NAACP argued that such statistics were the result of police targeting "driving while black," rather than actual differences in the rate of offenses committed by different groups. Incident In little more than two months preceding this incident, Timothy Thomas had received numerous traffic citations: he "was pulled over 11 times by six different white officers and four black officers.