University Of Cincinnati Officer Charged With Murder Of Man At Traffic Stop
By aaroncynic in News on Jul 30, 2015 6:10PM
A grand jury has indicted a University of Cincinnati police officer for murder following the shooting death of Sam Dubose, an unarmed African-American man pulled over for a routine traffic stop in mid-July.
Dubose, a 43-year old man, was shot and killed by University of Cincinnati police officer Ray Tensing, a 25-year-old white man, on July 19, just a few minutes into a traffic stop after Tensing requests Dubose exit the vehicle. Body camera footage released yesterday shows the officer drawing his weapon and shooting Dubose in the head mere seconds after requesting the man take off his seatbelt to exit the vehicle.
“It was a senseless, asinine shooting,” said Hamilton County prosecuting attorney, Joseph T. Deters. “This doesn’t happen in the United States, OK?” said Deters, according to the New York Times. “This might happen in Afghanistan. People don’t get shot for a traffic stop."
The officer’s bail has been set at $1 million.
Tensing’s version of events, corroborated by his fellow officers, conflicts significantly with the footage from the body camera. Slate reports that Tensin said he was dragged by the car before he fired his weapon at Dubose. A report by officer Eric Weibel says “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.” Later, it says that Tensing complains of pain in his left arm and a possible injury, and that his uniform looked “as if it had been dragged over a rough surface.”
A Guardian analysis of the video shows two other officers corroborating Tensing’s story on three separate occasions.
But the body camera footage shows something different, according to Deters. Speaking to reporters Wednesday, the prosecutor said:
“It is our belief that he was not dragged. If you slow down this tape you see what happens, it is a very short period of time from when the car starts rolling to when a gun is out and he’s shot in the head.”
(Warning: the video footage is graphic.)
Dubose’s sister, Terina Allen said she believes that without the body camera footage, Tensing would not be facing murder charges. “If it were not for that video camera, Sam would be no different than all of the other [unindicted police shootings of black men], because the second officer was ready to corroborate every lie that the first officer said in the report.”