On Thursday, Tensing pled not guilty to murdering DuBose and his lawyer said the charges were unwarranted. Stewart Mathews also gave a possible preview of his client’s defense, saying that the officer was knocked to the ground, dragged, and “feared for his life.” This account—which appeared to be contradicted by the video from Tensing’s body camera that showed him firing his gun and then falling down—was very similar to the stories initially given by two of Tensing’s fellow University of Cincinnati officers on the scene, Phillip Kidd and David Lindenschmidt, who have both now been placed on leave.
Furthermore, the body cameras of Kidd and Lindenschmidt—made public on Thursday—show just how quickly Tensing and his colleagues coalesced around a false narrative of how the incident occurred. The footage should serve as a powerful lesson to anyone who automatically believes the accounts of police officers in these types of shooting incidents, for which cops are rarely prosecuted.
