A Cincinnati City Council budget hearing quickly devolved Thursday when one resident called for increased funding to the police department.
A little over two hours after the meeting began, the unnamed resident stood at the microphone and attempted to address the council, but was quickly drowned out by boos and jeers from the audience. (RELATED: Charlottesville City Council Meeting Goes Wild)
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“The police department should have the sole discretion on how to spend the money as it sees fit,” the man said as people began to shout him down. “Reasons for funding the police department — the police department is underfunded and unprepared …”
He was quickly drowned out by the protests, and while several council members attempted to regain control of the meeting, City Councilman David Mann eventually banged his gavel on the table and walked out.
Cincinnati budget hearing devolves: David Mann leaves, protests grow outside https://t.co/7Uu90FTwC0 via @enquirer
— Chris Mayhew (@reportermayhew) June 19, 2020
According to a report from the Cincinnati Enquirer, protesters took down an American flag that was hanging in front of the Duke Energy Convention Center, where the meeting was taking place, and they burned it in the street. They replaced it with a Juneteenth flag.
Councilwoman Jan-Michele Lemon Kearney attempted to continue the meeting despite the growing chaos outside, saying, “We still have a quorum. We want to hear your voices.”
A resident named Kevin Farmer came to the microphone after that. “They said on the news this would go to midnight. … Bulls—. What you all need to do right now … you are all going to reap what you sow. And I’m telling you when you got a racial powder keg in sitting in your lap … you all have a very bad history of not defusing racial powder kegs,” he said.
David Mann, who had left the meeting by then, told the Enquirer why he had chosen to do so.
“Then I said, ‘Look folks, part of what we’re doing here is listening to each other.’ I was shouted down,” he explained. “It was like, ‘what we want to hear is what we agree with.’ The whole place was in an uproar. I was like this is not what democracy is supposed to be about. We’re supposed to listen to each other.”