Dead man driving
A man gets shot in the head for lack of a license plate
Samuel Dubose was a 43-year-old unarmed black man who was shot in the head and killed by a University of Cincinnati police officer, Ray Tensing, during a traffic stop a few blocks from campus.
Mr. Tensing stopped Mr. Dubose on July 19 because his car didn’t have a front license plate. Wednesday, when Mr. Tensing was indicted on murder charges, Hamilton County prosecutor Joe Deters said, “This is without question a murder.”
Mr. Deters called the stop a “chicken-crap stop,” the shooting “the most asinine act I’ve ever seen a police officer make” and Mr. Tensing’s recounting of the events “nonsense.”
Authorities also released Mr. Tensing’s disturbing bodycam video of the stop and shooting.
In an exchange with the dispatcher just after the incident, Mr. Tensing said: “I’m not injured. I almost got ran over by the car. He took off on me. I discharged one round, struck the man in the head.”
Indeed, the report about the shooting repeats that claim: “Officer Tensing stated that he almost was run over by the driver of the Honda Accord and was forced to shoot the driver with his duty weapon.” It continues: “Officer Tensing stated that he fired a single shot. Officer Tensing repeated that he was being dragged by the vehicle and had to fire his weapon.”
The video proves that none of that happened. To watch that video is to be witness to an execution. What kind of person takes another person’s life so cavalierly? How little must an officer think of the person at the other end of the barrel to shoot him in the head when, per the video, there appears to be no threat?
NBC News reported that an annual review of Mr. Tensing described him as “extremely proactive” with traffic enforcement. It continued: “It was unclear whether that was meant to be high praise or an indication that he was overzealous in his policing. But a supervisor said the officer, Ray Tensing, ‘only meets the standards when it comes to community service,’ according to records released by the university. The supervisor wrote that Tensing should interact with the public more outside of traffic enforcement to improve his demeanor.”
Mr. Tensing joined the police force a year ago and was generally well-rated .
There are some blessings in this tragedy.
The bodycam video, refuting the officer’s account, was vital. Also, the prosecutor moved quickly to charge the officer. But even those steps are not fully restorative.
Body cameras must be made mandatory countrywide. This would help with investigations and may alter behavior, but no equipment can fix a personnel problem.
What is happening between police officers and people of color in this country is a structural issue and must be deconstructed as such. Cameras won’t change character.
This incident adds to a drumbeat of falling black bodies after interactions with police officers. It adds to distrust about officers’ accounts of what leads to these deaths. It adds to a corrosion of trust in the criminal justice system.
The police may not pose the greatest threat of violence to black lives — that would be community violence, sadly — but the disproportionate use of force by some officers against black and brown people does appear to be a specific — and real — threat that must be addressed.
And the very idea that this violence is conducted by people acting as an arm of government, in your name but against your body, is too hard a pill to swallow. How can my taxes pay your salary while your actions drain blood from my body? How is it that I have to be afraid of cops as well as criminals? Whom do I turn to when the cops become the criminals?
How often must we hear the lamentations for justice emanate from dark faces streaked with tears and burning with a righteous rage?
Something has to give. The carnage must be abated. Trust must be built.
People cannot long shoulder this weight — nor should they be required to.
Police and criminal justice reform has to be a priority. We cannot wait for interpersonal racial reconciliation to remedy systemic racial inequities.
As the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once put it: “It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.”