Tensing trial triggers more apprehension than hope

Mark Hughes Jr. drives no more than necessary.

"Sometimes, I am terrified," says the 24-year-old black man from Westwood.

"I'm always nervous," Hughes says after a pause. "I try to keep the police from riding behind me. I have to be the perfect black guy, which is artificial, which doesn't exist. I shouldn't have to live like this when I'm being responsible and trying to do everything right."

These fears and precautions reflect what’s in play for many African-Americans in Greater Cincinnati as the Raymond Tensing murder trial approaches. In the social media age, this case and the deaths of black citizens shot and killed by police across the United States feel intimate, reverberating in homes, on the streets and in people's consciousness.

What court records tell us about Ray Tensing

Tensing, a former University of Cincinnati police officer, shot and killed motorist Samuel DuBose on July 19, 2015, during a traffic stop in Mount Auburn. Tensing, who is white, pulled DuBose. who was black, over a missing front license plate. Tensing's body cam video shows the officer shooting DuBose without warning. The ex-officer's lawyer says DuBose was trying to drive away and that his client feared being dragged under the car.

The trial is not occurring in a vacuum. It has become one more factor in the nation's growing polarization regarding the relationship between law enforcement and people of color. When Tensing was indicted, the story led The New York Times.

As a result, many eyes will be watching the trial beginning Oct. 25, eyes that might see the testimony and outcome in very different ways, depending on the observer's race, political beliefs and economic situation. What's more, it will coincide with the final two weeks of the presidential campaign. The Trump-Clinton battle highlights complicated questions about race and policing in America.

Police are under greater scrutiny, much of it the result of the Black Lives Matter movement since Michael Brown was shot and killed by a police officer two years ago in Ferguson, Missouri. NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick's national anthem protest has called greater attention to the issue of police misconduct. Yet even as more black athletes and sports fans have knelt or raised a dissenting fist, so, too, have more people stood up publicly for police. The gap widens.

The Tensing trial is a hot topic the studio of radio station Praise 1230 and 101.5 in Centennial Plaza, behind Cincinnati City Hall. Veteran host Lincoln Ware is on the air from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

He says the city's black community is angry about DuBose's death but doubts there will be a riot if Tensing is acquitted. The reason: UC in January announced it had settled with the family for $4.85 million, plus free undergraduate educations for DuBose's 13 children, a settlement valued at about $500,000.

"There is frustration," says Ware, 66, who has been on Cincinnati radio for 43 years. "They see this happen over and over again and how the police officers hardly ever go to jail. They might be indicted. A conviction is another thing."

On the eve of Tensing's trial, The Enquirer interviewed multiple people, inside law enforcement and out, spotlighting the breadth of opinion and the range of perspectives in Greater Cincinnati.

A mother's fear: Hover, text, call

In a flood-damaged Paddock Hills church sanctuary, the Rev. Vera Cole and her daughter fear for the life of the minister's 21-year-old grandson, Michael Kinebrew. His father, Jerry Kinebrew, is a sergeant and 22-year-year Cincinnati Police veteran.

Cole and her daughter, Jamie Harris, who is Michael's mother, sit in folding chairs in the sanctuary of Keys to the Kingdom United Methodist Church. The building, a former restaurant, flooded when 4.4 inches of rain fell in a few hours on Aug. 28. The transition to a shared worship space in Finneytown is not what most troubles these women.

"It feels like it's open season on black men," Cole says. "It's enough to shake your faith. Why are we targeted?"

"It's the scariest thing in the world," says Harris, 45, who has worked for several years in guest services in a hotel.

The women say their greatest fear is suburban police departments serving communities that are predominantly white, where officers might lack the training and diversity of city law enforcement. Too often, they say, African-Americans hear these words from police: "You fit the description ..."

The women have talked to Michael Kinebrew about moving from Cincinnati.

"I don't know," Harris says. "It's scary everywhere."

She communicates with her son, who declined to be interviewed. She asks him to send her a text when he's leaving his apartment. She wants a text when he arrives at his destination. She calls. She sends a text while talking with a reporter. She says her son has been pulled over for driving while black and riding while black as a passenger.

"Our young men are adults but are not safe," Harris says. "I hate to hover. I have to. It aggravates him. If I walked up on police with my son pulled over, I am ready to die. They are not going to kill him.

"I apologized to my son. I told him, `I am so sorry for bringing you into this.'"

'The War on Cops' and Black Lives Matter

In the Cincinnati Fraternal Order of Police hall in Over-the-Rhine, union President Dan Hils shows a YouTube video about the "Ferguson Effect." The video posits that concern over police killings of black men has resulted in less vigorous policing of the black community.

Hils says that effect has taken hold here in Cincinnati and could lead to an increase in African-American homicide victims.

When asked "what's at stake" in the Tensing trial, Hils wants first to show a reporter a 15-minute interview with conservative commentator Heather MacDonald. She promotes the "Ferguson Effect" in the video and in her book, "The War on Cops." In the video, MacDonald speaks with conservative black radio talk show host Jesse Lee Peterson. In the interview, MacDonald talks about a 17-percent increase in the homicide rate from 2014 to 2015 in the country's 56 largest cities. National Review published a similar story in May.

Cincinnati had a 12-percent increase in homicides from 2014 to 2015. Including police-involved fatal shootings, the number rose from 66 to 74. With 54 homicides through the end of September, the city is on pace for 72 in 2016, including four police shootings.

From Jan. 1, 2014, through Sept. 30 of this year,161 of 194 (83 percent) of the city's homicide victims have been African-American. Those figures include the 10 police-involved fatal shootings, of which eight of the victims are African-American.

Hils watches and listens carefully to the MacDonald video, then nods in agreement. MacDonald and Peterson talk about African-Americans living in Los Angeles, Chicago, Cleveland and Baltimore who respect police and want law and order. MacDonald says their voices are not heard in what she refers to as the "mainstream media," which she says does not report on the "animosity" that many blacks have toward whites and white police.

Hils pauses the video and says Black Lives Matter is exaggerating the issue of deadly use of force as it relates to minority communities. As the Tensing trial approaches, Hils says, "We are going to be watched nationally on this. Certain political forces are driving opinion that, in some cases, are unjustified and flat-out incorrect."

The result, in his eyes? The Ferguson Effect. Police "are hesitant to engage in proactive policing. Proactive policing is when you are not dispatched."

Hils, like MacDonald and other critics of Black Lives Matter, says the mainstream media does not report on the numbers of intraracial black homicides. "Why is no one protesting when they are killing themselves?" Hils asks.

The interpretation and intersection of violent crime statistics and race are highly disputed. The U.S. Department of  Justice reports that 84 percent of white homicide victims are killed by other whites, and 93 percent of black victims are killed by other blacks. Government statistics show that blacks are offenders at a rate eight times greater than for whites, and are victims at a rate six times higher.

A real-time Washington Post database shows blacks are 2.5 times more likely to be shot and killed by police than whites. Since the start of 2015, police have shot and killed the same number of unarmed white people and black people, the data shows, even though the white population is roughly five times greater than the black population. Indeed, unarmed blacks are five times as likely as unarmed whites to be shot and killed by a police officer.

Regardless of the data, the tension between the black community and police permeates society.

"I have not seen animosity like we're seeing today," says Hils, a 29-year police veteran. "And the animosity is creeping into the police department."

'The faith that the dark past has taught us'

In front of the Hamilton County Courthouse, site of Tensing's trial, several dozen Black Lives Matter members gather.

The national anthem protest has spread across the country, including to the Withrow High School football team.

On this steamy early-autumn Saturday afternoon, when leaves are just beginning to curl and reveal a hint of fall yellow, this multiracial group does not sing "The Star-Spangled Banner." Joining hands and forming a large human circle at the end of the 90-minute rally, they instead chant the words to "Lift Every Voice and Sing." It's known as the Black National Anthem.

"Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us."

Brian Taylor, one of the group's leaders, delivers an angry speech. References to black-on-black crime are, he says, "a racist attempt to divert attention away from the fact that cops are killing black people." He then sounds a warning about the Tensing case.

"A mistrial or not guilty verdict will send an unmistakable message to a fed-up and increasingly cornered people, that the process we are told to have faith in renders no justice," he says. "That is a powder keg those in a position to convict Tensing should consider very carefully if they want it to blow."

Police outreach officer: `Comply. Simply comply.'

In the Woodward High School library in Bond Hill, Cincinnati Police Officer Louis Arnold Sr. leads a seminar, "The Police and You," at a men's conference. An ordained Protestant minister and community liaison officer, Arnold puts police-community relations in biblical context.

He starts with a list of names of black men who've died in conflicts with police: Michael Brown, Philando Castile, Alton Sterling, Freddie Gray, Walter Scott, Eric Garner. DuBose is among those listed.

He asks for input. An uncomfortable silence gives way to a slow-starting discussion about what happened to each man. Outside on a hot, muggy August Saturday morning, the sound of a police siren fades north on Reading Road.

"What do they have in common?" asks Arnold, 64, a nine-year police veteran. "If they'd complied, they would be alive today. Never fight your battle with police on the street. Comply. Simply comply."

He encourages listeners to use the Citizen Complaint Authority, which investigates allegations of misconduct by Cincinnati police officers. "Fight there, fight in court, not on the streets," Arnold says. "You're not going to win out there."

About 50 men and boys are in attendance.

Anthony Reed, 58, is there with his three pre-teen stepsons.

He once did prison time in the 1980s for drug dealing. He acknowledges he did not "raise my kids the way the I was supposed to."

Now, they're grown. Reed says he turned his life around since 1990, when, as an inmate at the Hamilton County Justice Center, he committed to serving Jesus. He's remarried and owns a home painting and cleaning business, living in Evanston.

Reed's advice to his stepsons, a 12-year-old and twins, 10:  "Do what they say to do. They have jobs to do. Respect what they say. Do everything they say to do."

Reed does more than talk. He is providing his stepsons tools that help them lead safe, productive lives, he says: He makes them do their homework. He limits their time playing video games and disciplines them by taking away privileges. He does not put his hands on the boys, he says, and teaches them manners, in part, by treating their mother with respect. He takes them to church at Christ Emmanuel Christian Fellowship in Walnut Hills. He attends a weekly men's support group there.

He is not naïve and knows racism still exists, including inside law enforcement. Yet, he explains, "If I take care of my business, I don't see us having any problems. I struggle at times. I've got to set the example. I have to be humble."

`A sentiment that nothing will stick'

In the pulpits of predominantly black churches, preachers are talking about the Tensing trial.

They plead for justice.

They pray for calm.

They take the emotional temperature of cross-sections of the community.

"People are watching and will be watching closely," says Pastor Lesley Jones of Truth & Destiny Covenant Ministries in Mount Airy. "There is a sentiment, a vote of no-confidence, that nothing will stick. There will be no conviction."

She notes a generation gap. Older African-Americans think they would not still be fighting. They are tired. Some younger people are angry, needing to be convinced that they must communicate with police.

"Young people – 15, 16, 17, 18 years old – tell me that their lives are not valued," Jones says. "Some of them are saying they won't live to be 21. There will be action. They will take to the streets."

An attentive father, a careful driver

Mark Hughes, the 24-year-old from Westwood, makes sure his 5-year-old son, Mark, is secure in his booster seat for the morning drive. The car sits in the driveway of the house Hughes shares with his father in Westwood. Little Mark wears Batman headphones connected to his iPad. Political yard signs litter the street.

A plastic U.S. Army frame surrounds Hughes' rear license plate. Hughes is a member of the Army National Guard in Springfield. He joined five years ago when he learned he was going to be a father, when he realized he had to get serious about his life.

Hughes slides an educational CD into the car stereo. Little Mark begins to sing. He knows all 50 of his states and most of the presidents.

Hughes drives a couple of miles an hour slower than the posted speed limit. He rolls no stop sign.

"I do everything in my power not to get pulled over," he says.

If he's stopped, he will turn off the engine and place the keys on the roof of the car. When an officer arrives, his hands will be on the steering wheel, at 10 and 2 o'clock. He will tell them he has a concealed carry permit. He has that permit, his driver's license and military ID ready.

"I don't want to be perceived as a young black thug," says Hughes, who works 20 to 30 hours a week in an information technology job in Mason. He is taking 12 hours of classes at UC toward an associate's degree in IT.

The family has discussed the Tensing trial. The nature of DuBose's death has made Hughes more aware of his place in society and what, he says, is his reality as a young black man. They arrive at Dater. Father and son walk, hand in hand, toward the school door.

When it's time for little Mark to go, they exchange a secret handshake — hitting the rock, pounding their hearts and sharing a tight hug — similar to the one Hughes still has with his father, Mark Hughes Sr., a retired commercial driver.

"No matter what I do," Mark Hughes Jr. says slowly while walking back to his car, "sometimes, I feel like if I get pulled over, I will be just another, you know, just another you-know-what."