In more out of control cop rampage news
The family of Samuel Dubose, father of 13 children, is asking why a traffic stop escalated into another cop homicide
via cincinnati.com
In the wake of Dubose’s Sunday shooting death by a University of Cincinnati police officer during a traffic stop, Johnson said she’s worried that people will take one look at his lengthy rap sheet – and his suspended driver’s license – and figure he had it coming.
What they really should be asking, she said, is: How does a missing license plate escalate to a shooting?
and a little more background from the story:
Over the past 20 years, Dubose has been charged more than 75 times in Hamilton County. Most of the charges were indeed non-violent: driving without a license, joyriding, having windows tinted too dark, misdemeanor drug possession. An assault charge in 2013 was dismissed. He’s faced eviction seven times, and he had his license suspended indefinitely in January by the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles.
Samuel had been battling the death-by-1000-cuts type policing for all of his life. Charged more than 75 times, most were bullshit petty offenses.
The story goes on to say that Samuel wasn't a violent person, had given up drugs and was trying to live a clean life before he was brutally killed by UC police.
And now the family of the man who was shot in the head because of a missing license plate is left to pick up the pieces, forced to ask why their father, brother, nephew, husband and son's life was viciously snuffed out in an instant.
The fact now that the family has to worry about their dead relative's criminal record and the fact that he might not be considered an "angel" or "upstanding citizen" only adds insult to the death. But the worry is there, because the threat of Samuel being smeared not only by the cops, but other racists in this country is very real, if history is any indication.
I'll leave you with this from near the bottom of the article.
“He was just an overall good person with a big heart,” Russell Dubose said. “If I was having a bad day, he was always able to turn it around. He was a joker.”
(snip)
“You could just see it,” Johnson said. “He was maintaining and he was living his heart. He paid his time, and now he’s gone.”
RIP Samuel Dubose.