RIOTS: THIS ONE WAS PLANNED

The riot that transfixed Cleveland last week was more ominous, in a sense, than any of the upheavals that have rent American cities in the hot summers of the '60s. In the stark statistics of death and destruction, it was less than cataclysmic. But all the other ghetto uprisings have been the result of chance or bad judgment, some random local incident or emotional shock, such as Martin Luther King's murder, that put the spark to the fuse. Cleveland's battle was planned.

The conflict erupted when one of the city's bright yellow tow trucks stopped at the corner of Beulah and 123rd Street, at the edge of the Glenville ghetto, to haul away a junked 1958 Cadillac. Guns opened up from every side. One of the truckers called for help on his two-way radio.

Rain of Bullets. Squad cars arrived within minutes, and within seconds thereafter became the targets of a well-coordinated ambush. Police, most of them equipped with only the standard .38 revolver, were outgunned. "It was worse than Saipan or Tinian!" exclaimed Detective Robert Bennett, a veteran of both. "They shot at us from every direction imaginable." Three policemen--two patrolmen and a lieutenant--were dead and another 14 wounded within 30 minutes. "We were sucked in," said Detective Gerald Viola. "They were just waiting for us." Three men tried, one by one, to rescue Sergeant Sam Levy, who had been hit in the chest and one arm and lay in the street. One by one, each was wounded.

The pitched battle lasted for about four hours, as shadowy snipers ran from house to house. Eventually several commandeered a neat two-story frame house on Lakeview Road. Now more than 100-strong and armed with automatic rifles, police bombarded the dwelling with bullets and tear-gas grenades. During the early morning, flames burst out of one of the windows. A gunman shouted from the top floor: "It's hot up here!" "Then why don't you give up?" asked a cop. The man began firing once more. Within minutes the whole house was ablaze. Two charred bodies were later found in the ruins.

Bold Gamble. Though fewer than a score of black guerrillas were engaged in the battle, the slum telegraph swiftly rapped out reports, igniting a full-scale riot. Looters and arsonists rampaged through a six-square-mile area, as well as in nearby Hough, which suffered a five-day riot in 1966. Mayor Carl Stokes, who as the Negro candidate for the office last year inspired the slogan "Cool Cleveland for Carl," hoped that he might again stave off trouble. He was reluctantly forced to call on Ohio Governor James Rhodes for help. Within twelve hours, 2,700 National Guardsmen were on the streets.

Tenuous order came with dawn, and Stokes, on the advice of black leaders, devised a bold gamble to pacify the troubled area the next night. All white law-enforcement officers, including the National Guardsmen, were withdrawn, and some 100 Negro policemen--nearly all Cleveland has--and 500 Negro civilians, mostly militants, were sent in. Stokes' bet paid off. Rioting stopped and no one was injured, though looting continued. Two nights after the flare-up, Stokes returned the Guard and an integrated police force. The Cleveland Insurance Board estimated damage from both fire and looting at a relatively low $1,000,000 to $1,500,000--a figure that does not cover small shop owners who could not obtain insurance.

The mayor was severely criticized by owners of looted stores for entrusting the ghetto to its own activists for 24 hours. But his decision may well have made the difference between confrontation and conflagration. On the other hand, Stokes might be faulted for not having taken more action to forestall trouble. Cleveland, fortuitously, had received solid warning from the FBI and its own intelligence sources that something was brewing. The only hitch was that the warning was for 8 o'clock Wednesday morning, half a day after the actual zero hour.

The Glenville eruption, said the mayor, was "uniquely different from any other in any other city in the country. The others were a spontaneous reaction to an unresponsive environment. But this was a small group of determined men who planned an attack on the police." Reports that other cities--including Chicago, Detroit and Pittsburgh--were targeted for riot turned out to be merely rumors.

Jammed Carbine. For all the car nage and damage they caused, the Cleveland snipers gave every appearance of bizarre amateurism, brutally inspired. Proclaiming himself their leader, Fred ("Ahmed") Evans, 37, an astrologer, calmly surrendered in the midst of the battle and just as calmly informed cops that he would have knocked off more of them if his gun had not jammed. Police found the weapon, a .30-cal. carbine, in a bush where Evans said he had dropped it. Evans, who affects the loose African dashike robe, received a $7,350 grant this summer from "Cleveland: Now!", Stokes' action group for civic betterment. He seems to have used the funds to better the community by buying weapons to disrupt it.

At week's end Cleveland was relatively quiet. However, Stokes cautioned that there was "still cause for concern." Of the alleged snipers, three are dead and two in jail. Ahmed Evans was charged with first-degree murder, along with lesser offenses, such as the possession of narcotics and an automatic rifle. If the snipers hoped to cause outright insurrection in Cleveland, they did not succeed. If they wanted merely to create local turmoil and national apprehension, they succeeded all too well.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.