Will Cameo shootings result in more violence in Cincinnati?

A violent breakout such as the early Sunday morning shootings at the Cameo nightclub in East End would have resulted in further rounds of retribution in past years here in Cincinnati.

But at least one leader within the city's African-American community hopes this time might be different, even though the shootings might have been sparked by an ongoing conflict.

“This is just crazy. The community is in an uproar,” said the Rev. Peterson Mingo of Evanston’s Christ Temple Church. “We’ll be out there talking and listening to folks. But no one wants this kind of thing to happen – we all want to feel safe."

He's optimistic that could make a difference this time.

“There are a lot of people distancing themselves from this and don’t want to be tied to it, so they are letting people know who was associated with it,” Mingo said. “People have been giving us names and we’re sending them to the police, and they say they’re cooperating.”

Mingo said that he and other leaders of the African-American community will be working over the next few days to ease tensions to prevent further retaliation.

16 shot, 1 killed at Cameo nightclub in Cincinnati; suspects still at-large

He also said there were several rumors flying around as to how the shootings started, but none could be substantiated.

Cincinnati Police officials said Sunday there were multiple shooters. The violence broke out as part of a dispute inside the nightclub that might have started earlier in the day, or even earlier than that.

"I'm not going to spread those around," Mingo said, "but it's unfortunate this would all start as a fight on a dance floor."

All told, 16 people were shot, one fatally. Two more are in critical condition as of press time.

The city experienced such a spiral of violence two years ago, when there were a near-record number of shootings. Mingo and others said one shooting would beget another one. Revenge and retaliation were the norm.

What's behind the rise in Cincinnati shootings?

In fact, many said a single shooting in April 2015 in Over-The-Rhine led to nearly a dozen more that year.

"This is the kind of thing that leads to a downward spiral," Ohio state Sen. Cecil Thomas, D-North Avondale, said at the time.

That cycle has become common in other major cities such as Chicago, although there is no indication shootings or homicides are on the rise in the nation as a whole, national experts say.

"But to someone who just lost a loved one, the trends don't matter,"  said Jim Bueermann, president of the Police Foundation, a nonpartisan police research group based in Washington, D.C. "This becomes a community issue that needs to be solved with more than just more cops on the street."

Another expert says most mass shootings -- defined as four or more people shot in one instance -- are like the violence that broke out at Cameo.

"These are not just folks going berserk or terrorists," Northeastern University criminology professor James Alan Fox said. "In many cases, these are deliberate and planned, but it's more out of anger or revenge. This one may or may not fit that description, but it fits in where groups are in dispute and violence remains an option.

"And if I were the Cincinnati police," Fox added, "I'd be worried this would continue."

That could add to this year's rise in shootings and homicides. After hitting a five-year high in 2015, shootings declined last year only to go up so far this year.

So far this year, Cincinnati has seen 15 homicides.

Availability of guns remains factor

Another issue that hasn't changed, however, is the relative ease of acquiring a gun. In 2014 and 2015, the Cincinnati Police Department partnered with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to expand a local task force created to take illegal guns off the street.

The effort, which included adding two new CPD officers to the task force, resulted in more than 1,000 guns seized in 2014 and 2015. Up-to-date statistics on guns seized locally weren't yet available for 2016,

But agents and officers said the rise in guns seized wasn't an indication there were more guns on the street.

"You can pretty much get a gun whenever you want," Mingo said.

ATF officials were on scene Sunday morning at the nightclub. Agency officials said ATF had seized an unknown number of guns and were doing "emergency traces" to determine their origins. In addition, agents submitted any found bullets into the National Integrated Ballistics Network, which can track guns nationally by the ballistics reports from bullets found at crime scenes.

Cameo nightclub shooting in Cincinnati: What we know now

CPD has its own ballistics network machine at the Hamilton County Coroner's Office, which was reinstalled last year after the department lost it because of a lack of funding.

Such a trace will discover the gun's initial legal owner. Agents will then need to conduct interviews to track it from there. It is unclear, however, what information would be made public since Congress shut off access to such reports earlier this decade.

Mingo says the efforts in the wake of the Cameo shootings should be focused on reducing any further violence.

"Even though this happened down on Kellogg Avenue, we can't just say this was just affecting one neighborhood," Mingo said. "This could have effects through all the neighborhoods."