The rain kept coming June 23, starting around the same time Hamilton County Judge Leslie Ghiz announced at 2:15 p.m. that the jury in the retrial of Ray Tensing could not reach a verdict. It steadily gathered force from there as the angry ghost of Tropical Storm Cindy glided over Cincinnati, dousing protesters and police alike gathered at the Hamilton County Courthouse.
Nine white and three black jurors voted 8-4 against murder charges for Tensing and 7-5 against manslaughter charges in prosecutors’ second attempt to convict former University of Cincinnati Police officer Tensing for shooting unarmed black motorist Sam DuBose.
The crowd waiting at the courthouse for the decision that day was small at first. But it grew in number and intensity even as the rain did the same, eventually reaching 150 soaked and shivering people chanting, holding signs and flat-out yelling for a resolution to the case.
The question on their minds, and no doubt on the minds of city leaders and those watching the trial elsewhere: What now?
It was the third such case that week nationally in which a jury did not convict a police officer for shooting an unarmed black citizen. Tensing’s second mistrial leaves Cincinnati, and America, little comfort in the face of burning questions around justice system reform and killings of unarmed black citizens by police.
Will Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters seek a third retrial? Will the federal government, through the U.S. Department of Justice, get involved in the case, as it did following civil unrest here over a series of officer-involved shootings in 2001? What course will activists take as the number of people angered by the issue, and DuBose’s killing in particular, seems to grow?
The answers to those questions are just starting to emerge.
“We want the Department of Justice to review this case and to charge Tensing with violating Sam’s civil rights,” DuBose’s sister Terina Allen said during an emotional news conference June 27.
In addition, the family is calling for Deters to undertake another retrial at the state level.
“This is not over,” Ebony DuBose, a cousin of Sam DuBose, told reporters previously. “This is just the beginning. My family has been sentenced to a life without probability of peace because your opinion in this case proves to be greater than the evidence brought forth.”
The day of the verdict, DuBose’s family, including his mother Audrey DuBose, pushed through a throng of reporters without comment. Tensing’s family likewise avoided the public, and his lawyer, Stew Mathews, has said only that he is “frustrated” by the results, which leave open the possibility that Tensing will once again face murder, manslaughter or other charges in a third trial.
In the moments after the mistrial was announced, a contingent from the Countdown to Conviction Coalition — made up of Black Lives Matter Cincinnati, faith group the Amos Project, the Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless, University of Cincinnati’s Students for Survivors and other groups — wrestled with what to do. Would a crowd show up in the miserable weather? Should a rally be postponed? They settled on a demonstration at 4 p.m. followed by an organizing meeting the following week.
Then, the crowd started coming.
“We have to organize,” said Pece Marshrri, who came with his son on his shoulder and an umbrella in his other hand. “For the people who are out here in the rain, this isn’t a pastime. This is real.”
Marshrri was especially interested in a petition pushing Deters to retry DuBose again. The usually conservative prosecutor, who called DuBose’s killing “chickenshit,” has said he will decide the week of July 10 whether to retry Tensing.
Councilwoman Yvette Simpson, who is vying to become mayor this year, was at the post-trial rally in a raincoat, speaking with organizers and veterans of Cincinnati’s 2001 reforms, including Collaborative Agreement project manager Iris Roley. While Roley gave out a kind of focused calm, Simpson wore a more obvious sense of urgency.
“I think the people here want elected officials with them,” she said. She would later tell reporters that DuBose’s killing presented a “clear case” and that lack of a conviction was a tough moment for the community.
On the other side of downtown, a dry Mayor John Cranley, City Manager Harry Black and Cincinnati Police Chief Eliot Isaac addressed a largely dry group of reporters, assuring everyone that the city is safe and “open for business.”
Cranley noted his deep consternation with the outcome of the trial while assuring citizens that the city would carry on as usual. He would be taking his wife out for dinner in Over-the-Rhine, he said, and hoped he could serve as an example that the city is safe.
“Just because we don’t like the way things happened in this case today doesn’t mean that Cincinnati is not going to move forward,” he said.
After Cranley spoke, Pastor Peterson Mingo also called for peace, saying DuBose’s family doesn’t want violence or destruction.
But activists draw a distinction between nonviolent, non-destructive protests and the concept of peace. They say they are aiming for the former while hoping to disrupt the latter.
At an organizing meeting hosted by the Countdown to Conviction Coalition at the downtown branch of the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County June 26, about 70 attendees worked through ideas for ways to disrupt business as usual in the city to call for a new trial and conviction for Tensing.
“Unless we’re out making Cincinnati uncomfortable, none of that will happen,” Black Lives Matter organizer Brian Taylor told the group.
There, too, uncertainty lingered. Was the best course to focus on one massive march? Or to work on a number of events that might draw fewer people but diversify the group’s efforts?
In that moment, younger, newer activists — some coming to a Black Lives Matter event for the first time — sometimes butted heads with seasoned organizers who have been with the group since before Tensing shot DuBose in July of 2015, as well as activists whose involvement in police accountability issues date back to the days of 2001. Those disagreements brought some tough moments, activists say, but also encouraging signs that their movement is growing.
“There needed to be a youthful presence here,” said Siri Imani, 22. “They do a great job, but because there are a lack of youth that come to support, there’s a lack of our voice and our opinions. We’re not going to have a bigger effect than they are, and they’re not going to have a bigger effect than us. We all have the same goal, it’s just how we go about it.”
Eventually, the diverse group settled on a multi-faceted course of action starting with a 6 p.m protest June 28 at the University of Cincinnati during an FC Cincinnati soccer game. After that, subgroups will picket at Deters’ office and flyer and canvas to boost attendance for a July 7 mass rally.
The UC protest was among the ideas younger activists like Imani and Azizia Love, 21, brought to the meeting, along with longer-term efforts to address the trauma that comes with confronting incidents like DuBose’s death. They might work with a contingent of black psychologists the Coalition has relationships with toward that end, giving activists times and places to process their experiences.
“We want to bring a holistic view to fighting the ugliness we see in our community,” Love said. “We’re breaking down here. We’re mad. There will be people who say, ‘These are the times and dates.’ And then there has to be another group of people who say, ‘This is how we move forward from this emotionally.’ ”
It wasn’t just youth coming for the first time. Reggie Hill says he was close to DuBose and that he came out to the June 26 meeting as a way to grapple with his feelings over the loss of his decades-long friend.
“All of his friends are fired up, angry,” he says. “They’re pissed off and they don’t know how to vent their frustrations. Sam was the kind of person who cared about everybody. He bought people groceries when they were in need. That’s why I came out here. I wanted to show my support.” ©
This article appears in Jun 28 – Jul 5, 2017.
