CINCINNATI, Ohio, Around 500 police and state troopers were to be deployed throughout the city of Cincinnati Saturday, in advance of the funeral for an unarmed black youth whose shooting here by a police officer touched off several days of rioting.

Officials said the police presence would be visible throughout the city, but they hoped that the deployment would not be viewed as a heavy-handed response to the unrest, in part out of respect to the family of the shooting victim, Timothy Thomas, 19, who was to be buried Saturday, AFP reported.

"We intend not to be seen anywhere. We want to give the family members ... the opportunity to mourn the loss of their loved one," said Major James Walkers, of the Ohio Highway Patrol.

Thomas' mother, Angela Leisure, has repeatedly called for peace at Saturday's funeral services. Reports surfaced Friday that members of the nation of Islam would help provide security at the services, and that civil rights activist Al Sharpton would also be on hand.

Thomas was gunned down last Saturday while running from police.

Authorities said that at the time of his death there were 14 outstanding warrants charging him with misdemeanor offenses, including traffic violations.

Mayor Charlie Luken has vowed that any inquiry into the shooting -- the 15th killing of a black man by the Cincinnati Police Department in six years -- will be independent and above reproach.

"I want to make sure our practices and procedures are what they should be, and ... if they are, I want the public to understand exactly what an outside source thinks of the police practices and procedures," Luken told a local TV network.

"We have nothing to hide," he declared.

The city's predominantly white police force has come under intense scrutiny since Thomas was fatally shot last Saturday while fleeing police officer Steven Roach.

U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft dispatched several civil rights attorneys to Cincinnati Friday to begin a review of the Police Department following the shooting. Lawyers met with Mayor Luken late Friday.

Leaders of the black community, while endorsing the mayor's appeals for calm, have charged that the incident has spotlighted a propensity for an "excessive use of force," and racial profiling of blacks by the force.

"The Police Department has got to step up and say there is a problem, and as long as they continue to deny there is, they will continue to have questions like this raised," said Kweise Mfume, leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a renowned black advocacy group.

Stung by the criticism, the chief of the Police Officers' Union struck back Friday, charging that the string of deaths was justified, and that in the majority of cases officers had faced individuals who were armed.

"Our police officers are not some band of rogue Nazis roaming Cincinnati hunting down and killing black men," said Keith Frangman, president of the fraternal order of police.

Since Monday, large groups of rioters have roamed this city's predominantly poor, African-American neighborhoods, throwing rocks, smashing windows, setting fires, and assaulting white motorists, raising racial tensions in this city of 331,000, which is 43 percent African-American, 54 percent white, and highly racially segregated.

Police Chief Thomas Streicher acknowledged at the same press conference Friday that Thomas' funeral could be a critical test of the city's newly restored calm, calling it "a crucial day for us."

Intelligence reports suggest there will be huge crowds for the public funeral services for Thomas, which will begin around 11:30 a.m. (1630 GMT).

His burial afterwards is a private family affair.

It took a state of emergency and a dusk-to-dawn curfew, imposed Thursday by Luken, to subdue the unrest that marked the earlier part of the week, resulting in 350 arrests and dozens of injuries. The curfew was in effect again overnight Friday for the same time period, from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m.

Authorities expressed relief Friday that the disturbances, which featured running battles between rioters -- mostly black youths -- and riot police, equipped with rubber bullets, bean bag ammunition and tear gas, had subsided.

"Last night went well beyond our expectations," Streicher said, as he reflected on the success of the first night of curfew, but Saturday could still be "a turning point," he admitted.