Cincinnati Police Chief Says Viral Social Media Video of Weekend Racial Melee Misrepresents Circumstances of Brawl
The police chief says videos on social media are distorting the ‘content of what actually happened.’
The police chief of Cincinnati, Teresa Theetge, is accusing journalists and social media users of distorting the details of a brawl involving a white couple and Black attackers that has inflamed racial tensions in the Ohio city and across the country.
In what appears to be a racially motivated attack over the weekend — the victims are white, the attackers Black — one man is thrown to the ground and repeatedly kicked in the face and head by up to a dozen assailants. A woman who steps in and appears to try to calm the situation gets sucker punched, knocked unconscious, and left bleeding on the sidewalk.
Five people have been charged in connection with the violence. However, the specific charges were not disclosed by Ms. Theetge. A spokesman for the Department of Justice told the Washington Examiner that the FBI is investigating the incident.
Speaking to reporters on Monday, Ms. Theetge scolded journalists and social media users, saying they were making law enforcement’s job harder by circulating graphic video of the incident.
“Another topic I want to discuss real quick: social media and journalism and the role it plays in this incident,” Ms. Theetge said. “And yes, guys, that’s you. That is you. Social media — the posts that we’ve seen — does not depict the entire incident. That is one version of what occurred. At times, social media and mainstream media and their commentaries are misrepresentations of the circumstances surrounding any given event.”
The police chief said the social media posts are making investigators’ jobs more difficult by distorting “the content of what actually happened.”
When a reporter asked for specifics about how social media had allegedly distorted the circumstances around the case, Ms. Theetge said, “It just shows one side of the equation quite frequently, without context, without factual context. And then people run with that, and then it grows legs and it becomes something bigger that we then have to try to manage as part of the investigation.”
Ms. Theetge also criticized bystanders for not calling the police when the brawl broke out, and said people only started to care after the video surfaced on social media. The police chief was widely criticized for her comments.
A conservative legal commentator, Phil Holloway, wrote on X, “The Cincinnati Police Chief is big mad the latest example of urban decay in her city went viral on social media. She says it distorted what happened, yet she can’t say how it distorted anything except that it may only show ‘one side.’’’
The editor of the New Criterion, Roger Kimball, wrote that Ms. Theetge should “resign immediately or be fired” after her comments. Donald Trump Jr. posted, “Maybe one of the reasons there is so much crime and violence on the streets of Cincinnati is because they have this absolute moron as their Police Chief?”
Throughout the brawl, which took place at about 3 a.m. on Saturday after the city’s Music Fest, dozens of people stood nearby, holding their phones to record it. Cincinnati police say they are seeking at least eight suspects, Times Now News reported.
Ms. Theetge called the behavior “nothing short of cruel and absolutely unacceptable,” Fox News reported. The city’s mayor, Aftab Pureval, also reacted, saying on X that he is “outraged by the vicious fight” and assured residents that arrests are coming.
The Friday melee drew reaction from far higher forces, including the White House. “Engaging in this level of barbaric violence is unacceptable, and those responsible must face the full weight of the justice system,” a White House spokesman, Harrison Fields, said.
Vice President Vance was asked about the incident during a stop in Ohio on Monday and went on a tear. “What I saw is a mob of lawless thugs beating up on an innocent person, and it’s disgusting,” he said.
“I don’t know how the fight started, but the one part that I saw that was really gruesome is you had a grown man who sucker punched a middle-aged woman. And where I come from, at least, when you have a grown man who sucker punches a middle-aged woman, that person ought to go to jail for a very long time,” the vice president said.
“The only way to destroy that street violence is to take the thugs who engage in that violence and throw their asses in prison,” Mr. Vance concluded, drawing applause from the audience.
Because so many people were taking videos, there are numerous angles of the brawl. In one, played by the Dayton 24/7 Now news site, it appears that the white man slaps the Black man at the start of the melee, and then others jump in.
Within seconds, more than a dozen Black people are on top of the white man, some kicking him in the face. At one point, another white man gets knocked unconscious and a Black man bodyslams him.
When a white woman attempts to step between the two fighting groups, a Black woman takes a swing at the back of her head before a Black man sucker punches her in the face. She falls back unconscious, striking her head on the pavement.
