Cincinnati Police Department Chief Teresa Theetge claimed during a Monday press conference that viral footage of a violent brawl that broke out in Cincinnati, Ohio, is missing “context.”
Footage from around 3:06 a.m. on Saturday showed a group of people brutally beating a man and appearing to knock a female witness out cold in a downtown neighborhood. While holding a press conference to address the incident, Theetge accused social media and “mainstream” journalists of misrepresenting the incident and of making it “more difficult” for law enforcement to adequately handle the incident.
“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,” Theetge said. “What that does, that causes us some difficulty in thoroughly investigating the activity and enforcing the law. Because what happens, that social media post and your coverage of it distorts the content of what actually happened and it makes our job more difficult.”
The video shows a man being chased into the street and then repeatedly kicked, stomped and body slammed by multiple people, according to The Cincinnati Enquirer. A woman who rushed to his aid got attacked by a woman and then a man punched her in the face, causing her to be knocked unconscious.
Authorities said that they were unaware of the violent incident until the video began circulating on social media. One witness told Fox19 NOW that one man, who appeared to be intoxicated, engaged in a verbal dispute with one of the victims, left the area for about 15 minutes and then returned with a group, which prompted violence to break out.
Theetge told a reporter that the video lacked “context” and factual information by only showing “one side of the equation.”
“I think the irresponsibility with social media is that 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,” Theetge said.
Five people have been charged thus far in the incident and more are expected to face charges in the coming days, Theetge confirmed at the press conference. She called out the estimated 100 witnesses, stating that it is “unacceptable” that only one person called the police.
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