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Publication Date

5-2016

Document Type

Casenote

Abstract

The deaths of Black men at the hands of law enforcement officers-or vigilantes, as in the case of George Zimmerman-have received consistent and sustained media attention in the United States in recent years. The primary incidents on which the media focused occurred in several geographic regions, indicating that the problem was not concentrated in only one or two "problem" areas. For the first time since the Rodney King beating in 1991, American society-at-large was-at least to some degree-able to see how often Black men are the targets and victims of police brutality, sometimes through firsthand video recordings of the incidents. On July 19, 2015, one such video recording documented a facet to this phenomenon that the nation had not yet collectively witnessed: it broadcast to the viewing public that campus police units present a threat similar to Black men that municipal, county, or state police forces present. In this recording, University of Cincinnati campus police officer, Ray Tensing, shoots and kills Samuel DuBose after what appears to be a routine traffic stop for driving a car without a front license plate. After extensive media coverage on several news outlets, the public later learned that this traffic stop occurred outside of the territorial limits of the university's campus.

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