[Last updated (7/29/2015, 3:13 p.m.) with footage from the officer’s body camera and details from a news conference held by city leaders.]
The University of Cincinnati police officer who shot and killed an unarmed black man during a traffic stop this month has been indicted by a grand jury and charged with murder, the Hamilton County prosecutor, Joseph T. Deters, announced on Wednesday.
The Associated Press reports that Mr. Deters said during a news conference that the officer, Ray Tensing, had “purposely killed” 43-year-old Samuel Dubose, and “should never have been a police officer.” Mr. Deters also disputed the claim, made on the university’s police report, that Mr. Tensing had been dragged by Mr. Dubose’s vehicle and had been forced to shoot.
Mr. Deters also expressed frustration with the University of Cincinnati’s police force. “I just don’t think a university should be in the policing business,” he said.
The body-camera footage of the shooting was made public and shown at the news conference. The shooting occurs at roughly 1:56.
The incident prompted the university to overhaul its police procedures, at least temporarily, including to focus its patrols within the campus boundaries.
The university canceled classes on Wednesday in anticipation of the announcement. That afternoon, city leaders held a news conference where Santa J. Ono, the university’s president, announced that Mr. Tensing had been fired and that there would be a top-to-bottom review of the campus police department.
“We are fully committed to doing anything, even retraining officers,” he said, “so we can be really a model of public safety from a university setting.”
For more, see this Chronicle article.