WLWT captured Cincinnati Councilman Jeff Pastor, who is black, on video delivering an emotional dressing down of the violent protesters in his city’s downtown.
The riots are in protest of the death of George Floyd by Minneapolis police.
The video is available here.
What follows is a partial transcript.
This is Cincinnati police. This is not Minneapolis police.
And what they are doing…is absolutely horrendous.
I can’t understand for the life of me what is going on right now in the city of Cincinnati. There are people down here who are encouraging 14-year-old kids — these babies are 14 years old, man, and they’re encouraging them to throw bottles at these ******* cops.
And these grown people are encouraging our babies to fight. This is not their fight.
And I don’t give a **** about how mad or angry you are with the ******* — what’s happening with the police, but these 15-year-old kids have nothing to do with this, man.
I’m so nervous, and I’m so scared for these kids. These are kids. There are kids around, kids across the street, who live downtown … and these people are encouraging them.
He said he was not taking any sides, but he called out any blacks who were encouraging the kids to attack police.
Pastor’s official biography says, “He knows Cincinnati’s small businesses are the engine of job growth and that investing in our education system is central to our youth. For Pastor, education and job creation are the keys to reducing poverty.”
The military veteran holds a master’s degree in Divinity and an MBA.
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Jason M. Reynolds has more than 20 years’ experience as a journalist at outlets of all sizes.
Photo “Jeff Pastor” by Jeff Pastor.
