When the Badge Becomes the Target: The Tragic Chain of a Justified Shooting and a Deputy’s Murder

A stolen car, a loaded gun, a justified shooting and how a father's rage ignited a deadly assault on justice

May 12, 2025

Sane society must never accept fleeing in a stolen vehicle with a loaded crime gun while being pursued by police as a reasonable behavior. After church last Sunday, a friend sent me a message about a tragic case out of Ohio—a story involving the murder of a deputy sheriff and the events that led up to it. I was thankful for the message, even though the details were heartbreaking. The story was told by a police chief - who I interact with discussing issues online - who personally knew the deputy. The sequence of events, not in dispute, is an armed 18-year-old fleeing a stolen car with a loaded (presumably stolen) firearm was shot and killed by Cincinnati Police when he failed to drop the gun despite commands, and his father, shortly after seeing the body worn camera footage of the shooting intentionally murdered a deputy sheriff working a traffic detail.

Deputy Larry Henderson courtesy Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office

A normal call

Depending on where you work, even depending on where you work within a city or a county, this tragic call of a stolen vehicle being intercepted via GPS or license plate reader technology is normal police work. Teens were fleeing in a stolen car pursued by uniformed police in marked vehicles, on Thursday, May 1, 2025, and when the cops cornered the vehicle Ryan Hinton exited the vehicle with a stolen gun in his hand to run away and evade arrest. We don’t know whether he was driving or not. Hinton, exits the car, clumsily drops the firearm and quickly retrieves it again before again sprinting away. The image of the dropped gun, the distinctive sound of the firearm hitting the ground, are captured on police body worn camera. A few strides later, despite clear commands to drop the gun, Ryan disregards those orders and was shot and killed by the pursuing Cincinnati Police Officers.

The following day, shortly after viewing the police body worn camera of the death of his son at his lawyer’s office, Ryan’s father, Rodney Hinton, Jr., targets a uniformed law enforcement officer and intentionally murders him in some twisted retribution by crashing his vehicle into him. It was no accident that Rodney brutally and intentionally murdered the recently retired 33-year Hamilton County Deputy Sheriff Larry Henderson, working a University of Cincinnati graduation detail.

The first account that I heard of these events was via a social media post by Chief Scott Hughes of Hamilton Township Ohio. He personally knew Deputy Larry Henderson and despite the distant association and the tenuous connection, I was, and remain, grieved by this law enforcement officer’s murder.

Sardonic pundit Matt Walsh offered that if the father wanted to take revenge on anyone who had caused his son’s death, that he should take revenge on himself. He posits that Rodney Hinton’s failure as a father is inescapably clear and if he needs a target to execute profound judgment, that he should adjudicate himself. He won’t do that when there is someone else to blame.

The worst well intentioned move ever

I’ve said it before: The barbaric practice of showing the body camera video to the family of their relative being shot by the police, prior to it being released to the media is the stupidest idea that has ever infected command staffs and to date it has been 100% inflammatory and destructive. No one ever says, ‘You cops were right for shooting my kid.’

What demented thought process ever considered that it was a good idea to show a family the video of their family member’s violent death - what many already prejudge as an extrajudicial execution by the police - and think that this would help calm the situation? This has always been among the top vacancy of reason by command staffs nationwide. It has never worked! It has failed so reliably that activists who fabricate rage against perceived tyranny owe their careers to this unsound practice by law enforcement leaders.

Are we still waiting for the first success of showing distraught, sometimes hysterical, relatives the moment of death of their loved one? If there is one colossal lie out there, it is that we will all agree what we see on video. Ironically, that has been the chief justification for body worn cameras and other surveillance solutions.

Share American Peace Officer

red and white petaled flower — Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash

We must be courageously honest

Cops have little choice until they have agency seniority to which beats they are assigned. Criminals are the ones who have choices. Consider that most car thieves and joyriders have never gotten rich, even in fictional movies. The few successful have gotten free rides without getting arrested. Some have been successful shipping high end cars and trucks out of ports to other continents, but those are the exception and not the rule.

‘Riding dirty’ in a stolen car armed with a loaded gun limits the options for the police officer, a dangerous proposition. Currently, we are openly discussing legal theories like induced jeopardy or peril with officers, such as standing in a position that unnecessarily risks the officer’s safety. Can we possibly apply that to criminals and their actions too? Hinton’s vehicle was located by law enforcement via vehicle GPS, likely a factory installed services similar to OnStar. Few can dispute that Ryan Hinton would be alive today if he exited the vehicle without the stolen loaded gun.

This article is not broad enough to fully address the impact of black crime on the black community, but this will be addressed appropriately and fairly in a future article that focuses on the complete impact among all Americans with every single murder resulting from black-on-black crime. This future article will discuss facts including how 249 black persons of 1,164 total died in officer involved deaths (99.9% not murdered) in 2023 while 460 black people were murdered in Chicago from May 2023 to April 2024 in primarily black on black crime. The comparison is a nation of 346,000,000 to a city of 2,700,000.

The lives saved, several stadiums full, in New York City during the 1990s administrations of Mayor Rudy Guiliani and Commissioner Bill Bratton during ‘broken windows’ policing were primarily brown and black lives. Today, in a destructive dial-back and erasure of progress, pro-black dedicated publications like The Root plant stories that suggest the murder of Deputy Henderson was simply a traffic accident and “Rodney Hinton Jr. Scares the police. That’s not supposed to happen. The watchman is not supposed to be afraid of his watch. The situation is actually more delicate than the police in Cincinnati realize because how they treat Rodney will likely lead to more dead cops,” wrote one X user. Disgusting.

woman in dress holding sword figurine — Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash

Not equivalent: an eye for an eye justice fails

My concern is that reason has taken the day off and the sentiment is ‘you take out one of ours, we’ll take out one of yours.’ That militant race-focused mentality is extremely dangerous. But these actions are not equivalent. The police did not commit an offense against society; they were working to protect all society from criminals. Deputy Henderson, murdered, was no enemy of the public. Instead, he was a dedicated public servant, even in retirement who worked for nearly three and a half decades to preserve both peace and liberty for everyone in the community he served.

Wearing the badge has always meant accepting risk, but that risk has, for more than the past decade, included being targeted for revenge or in most cases, random ambushes just rooted in the hatred of authority. Deputy Larry Henderson had no connection to the officers involved in the justified shooting of Ryan Hinton. But in the twisted logic of Rodney Hinton Jr., the badge itself became a target.

This is a reminder of the current reality for law enforcement: that any officer, or any uniformed civilian or volunteer, regardless of role or responsibility, you may be hunted simply for representing the rule of law. Every time a lie is told about policing, every time the truth is obscured, and every time cowardice masquerades as activism, the danger to those who bear the badge grows. Deputy Henderson’s death was more than a murder—it was an attack on the very fabric of civil order.

Please keep all of the law enforcement representatives in your prayers during this Police Week in Washington D.C.

I am joining the inaugural cohort of law enforcement supporters to serve as citizen lobbyists with the Police Officers Defense Coalition. For three action packed days, I will be in the Congressional office buildings fighting for pro-police legislation. If you are going to be there during Wednesday the 14^th through Friday the 16^th, I hope we run into one another! I would love to meet you!