On July 19, 2015, a campus police officer from the University of Cincinnati, Ohio, Police Division (UCPD) shot and killed an unarmed black male motorist, Samuel DuBose, who had been stopped for a missing front license plate on his vehicle. This occurred during a U.S.-wide spate of police killings of unarmed black males, as scrutiny continued to mount on police agencies worldwide after the 2014 high-profile police-involved shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Former UCPD Officer Raymond Tensing was subsequently charged with murder and tried twice in Hamilton County, Ohio; both trials resulted in hung juries. Of note, when Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters—a long-standing Republican prosecutor widely considered to be pro-police—announced the indictment and murder charge, he also unleashed a tirade stating, “this is the most asinine act I’ve ever seen a police officer make,” and calling the reason for the encounter the result of a “chicken-crap stop,” concluding that “this should not happen, ever… I’m treating him like a murderer.” The prosecutor further expressed concerns about the UCPD as a law enforcement agency, stating that the Cincinnati Police Department (CPD) should assume jurisdiction over the campus, arguing that “being police officers shouldn’t be the role of this university.”

Following this and other calls to eliminate the 70+ sworn member police department, the UCPD underwent a series of leadership changes and intensive reform efforts, including voluntary external monitorship. Less than seven years later, on April 22, 2022, Assistant Chief Dudley Smith accepted the Herman Goldstein Award for Excellence in Problem-Oriented Policing on behalf of the UCPD for a sophisticated burglary reduction project. Their efforts resulted in a 30 percent reduction in residential burglaries in the high-crime areas off-campus, and the UCPD received international recognition for being among the most innovative and effective promising agencies.