NEW YORK — A University of Cincinnati police officer was indicted Wednesday on a murder charge in what a prosecutor called “a senseless, asinine shooting” during a minor traffic stop. It was the first time such a charge had been leveled against an officer in the city.
The Hamilton County prosecuting attorney, Joseph T. Deters, released a much-anticipated video of the shooting of Samuel DuBose, and described it as providing crucial evidence that the officer had lied about being dragged by DuBose’s car.
A grand jury, Deters announced, had indicted Officer Ray Tensing for murder, punishable by life in prison, and voluntary manslaughter.
“It was a senseless, asinine shooting,” Deters said at a news conference in Cincinnati, using stark terms to denounce the July 19 episode, Tensing’s statements about it, and the 25-year-old officer himself. “This office has probably reviewed upwards of 100 police shootings, and this is the first time we’ve thought, ‘This is without question a murder.’
“He wasn’t dealing with someone who was wanted for murder,” Deters said. “He was dealing with someone who didn’t have a front license plate. This was, in the vernacular, a pretty chicken-crap stop.”
During an interview with an Ohio television station, a lawyer for Tensing, Stew Mathews, disputed the prosecutor’s comments, and said other video of the shooting would tell a completely different story. Mathews said Tensing cried when he heard of the indictment.
The prosecutor’s office said it was the first time that a law enforcement officer in Hamilton County had been indicted on a murder charge for use of force while on duty. At the news conference, Deters said Tensing “should never have been a police officer,” but he declined to elaborate.
Asked whether he thought Tensing had tried to mislead investigators with his account of the shooting, Deters said, “Yeah, yes, I think he was making an excuse for the purposeful killing of another person.
“I think he lost his temper because Mr. DuBose wouldn’t get out of his car,” he said.
The death of DuBose, who was black, at the hands of Tensing, who is white, joined a string of recent episodes — in Staten Island, N.Y.; Cleveland; Baltimore; North Charleston, S.C.; and Ferguson, Mo., among others — that have raised hard questions about law enforcement’s use of force and the role of race in policing.
Video cameras have recorded many of the episodes and nonlethal encounters — like the arrest of Sandra Bland, who died three days later in a Texas jail cell — and offered disturbing evidence of the confrontations that often contradicts the accounts of people involved.
“I’m so thankful that everything was uncovered,” DuBose’s mother, Audrey, said at a separate news conference. “I thought it was going to be covered up.”
Even so, she said of Tensing, “If he asks for forgiveness, oh yeah, I can forgive him.”
She and other family members said that if it were not for the body camera worn by Tensing, his story would have been accepted, and he would have gone unpunished. Choking back tears, Terina Allen, a sister of DuBose, said, “Every day now, I’m going to be marching for video cams.”
Rashanda Reid said her twin sister, Dashanda, and DuBose had gotten engaged the day before he died. “They didn’t get a chance to set a date,” she said.
Tensing turned himself in for arrest, and the university, which had put him on administrative leave, said Wednesday that he had been fired from the police force.
Cincinnati officials, religious leaders, and members of DuBose’s family pleaded for peace on the city’s streets, hoping not to see the kind of violent unrest that shook Baltimore in April after a black man, Freddie Gray, died in police custody.
“The officer was wrong, and when we’re wrong, we have to be held accountable,” said Jeffrey Blackwell, Cincinnati’s police chief. However, he added, “make no mistake, we are operationally ready to respond. Violence and lawlessness will not be tolerated.”
DuBose, 43, a father of 10, was just south of the university campus, driving a green 1998 Honda Accord without a front license plate, at about 6:30 p.m. when Tensing began following him, according to an account that Jason Goodrich, chief of the university police, gave on Monday. Moments later, the officer pulled DuBose over on a side street a few blocks from the campus.
On the body-camera video released by the prosecutor, Tensing repeatedly asks DuBose to produce a driver’s license. DuBose says several times that he has a license before admitting that he does not have it with him. He shows that he has the missing license plate with him, in the glove box.
At one point, the officer asks, “What’s that bottle on the floor?” Dubose reaches down, picks up a bottle of gin and hands it to the officer.
Tensing begins to open the driver’s door and tells DuBose to remove his seat belt; DuBose pulls the door closed and starts his car. What happens next is a flurry of blurred movements: The officer steps to his left; the car’s engine can be heard revving; and the officer reaches into the car with his left hand, yells “stop” twice, draws his gun with his right hand, fires the weapon, and appears to fall backward. Then he gets up and runs after the car as it rolls off down the block before coming to a stop on the sidewalk, its driver fatally wounded or already dead.
From the moment the officer touches the door handle to the fatal shot, less than five seconds pass.
Another university officer who arrived shortly after the shooting, Eric Weibel, wrote in his report that Tensing had told him “he was being dragged by the vehicle and had to fire his weapon,” and that “Officer Tensing stated that he was almost run over.” A third officer, Weibel wrote, said he had seen Tensing being dragged.
