Tag: Cincinnati

Cincinnati braces for black violence after police shooting

An Ohio police officer who shot a black man during a routine traffic stop was charged with murder Wednesday in what prosecutors called a “senseless” act motivated by anger.

“He wasn’t dealing with someone who was wanted for murder — he was dealing with someone with a missing license plate,” Hamilton County Prosecutor Joseph Deters told reporters.

The case comes as the United States grapples with heightened racial tensions in the wake of a series of high-profile incidents of African Americans being killed by police in disputed circumstances.

Deters said he hopes the swift action by his office will show that justice is being done in this case.

University of Cincinnati campus police officer Ray Tensing initially told investigators that he shot Sam DuBose in the head after DuBose tried to drive away and dragged the officer along with him.

“You will not believe how quickly he pulls his gun and shoots him in the head. It’s maybe a second. It’s incredible. And so senseless,” Deters said as he prepared to release the video.

A lawyer for Officer Tensing, Stew Mathews, disputed Deters’s comments during an interview with an Ohio television station and said that other video of the shooting would tell a completely different story.

The university shut down its campus and placed barricades at entrances out of concern that the news could lead to protest or even violence.

City officials pressed for peace and said they were prepared “for any scenarios that present themselves.”

A series of sometimes violent protests have broken out across the United States in response to other high-profile police shootings over the past year.

Cincinnati was struck by days of violent unrest following the police shooting of an unarmed black man in 2001.

Tensing, 25, had been a police officer for four years, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported.

Police deny brutal beating of white man was racist

New video out of Cincinnati shows a black mob viciously beating and choking a white man, but police have distanced themselves from an initial explanation that the incident was an “anti-white” attack.

The altercation began in Fountain Square on Saturday night at around 11pm shortly after a music concert and 4th of July fireworks.

The video shows several black teens punching and choking 27-year-old Christopher McKnight, while another individual wearing a red t-shirt appears to be attempting to deter the attackers.

McKnight suffered serious internal injuries and was taken to hospital. Riot police later arrived on the scene and arrested seven young men. Two officers and a bystander were injured during the unrest.

A police report initially stated that the incident was being treated as an “anti-white” racial attack, but Capt. Mike Neville subsequently backed off that explanation, asserting that the beating was not a racial attack.

Another video of the incident appears to show bystanders laughing at and taunting the victim as he lay on the ground unconscious and bleeding.

21-year-old Jy Quynn Britten was also arrested for punching a police officer, despite claims of mistaken identity by his defense attorney.

An eyewitness called Louis asserted that Britten was responsible for attacking the officer, stating, “The guy hit the police officer, his lip busted. Everybody started running, there were fireworks thrown toward the police officers. It was really wild. I don’t know why it was like this, but it was crazy.”

Many are citing the incident as another example of black on white violent crime that has largely been ignored by the mass media, arguing that if the roles were reversed and it was a white mob beating up a black man, the story would be a national issue.

Source: Infowars