‘Context’: Gutfeld blasts police chief for omitting key part of Cincinnati street brawl

By: Hailey Gomez

Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld ripped into Cincinnati Police Chief Teresa Theetge on Tuesday, saying she failed to give full context to the street brawl that went viral.

This, after Theetge said the videos of the brawl did not depict the entire incident.

On Saturday, video footage began to circulate online showing a chaotic street fight at Elm and Fourth Streets, with five suspects later officially charged for the incident. While discussing Theetge’s comments on “The Five,” Gutfeld called out the hypocrisy of context only mattering in “one direction.”

“I used to think that New York was the city of the free punch, where somebody could walk up, slam their fist in your head, and then they’d be released an hour later. The police chief said [she] was upset about this, the smartphone [recordings], saying that ‘Oh, you’re not getting the whole story,’” Gutfeld said. “She said, ‘You don’t know the context of what happened.’”

“She should have told us what the context is. If you’re going to say that what we’re seeing isn’t real, then tell us what is real,” Gutfeld added. “You can’t just say, ‘Oh, my God, this is terrible. Social media makes everything worse.’ We know that, but it’s interesting how the argument of context only goes in one direction.”

At a press conference Monday, Theetge said officers arrived on the scene just six minutes after the first 911 call came in at around 3:06 a.m.

The police chief pushed back against social media and “mainstream” journalists, accusing them of making it “more difficult” for officers to handle the incident due to allegedly misrepresenting it.

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Theetge said the online “commentaries” and coverage of the fight “distorts the content of what actually happened, and it makes our job more difficult.”

Gutfeld pointed to cases like Marine veteran Daniel Penny, who was accused of manslaughter after placing a man in a chokehold when he began acting erratically on a New York City subway.

“No one cared about the context for the Covington kids. They charged Daniel Perry with murder because they ignored the context completely, that he was being a hero. We ignored the context for George Floyd, i.e., the lethal ingestion of drugs,” Gutfeld said. “I wonder what the context for this will be.”

“I’m sure it will come,” Gutfeld said. “I mean, there are people that build context for October 7. We saw hours of tape. And there are people going, well, you know, ‘In the context of the political situation in the Middle East,’ shut the — you know, shut up!”

The footage circulating online shows a massive fight occurring in Cincinnati’s streets, which allegedly broke out after a man who appeared intoxicated returned to the scene and reportedly made racial comments, according to FOX19. In the video, a man was seen knocked to the ground as three other men began to stomp on him, with other fights breaking out and ending with a woman appearing to be knocked unconscious.

While only five have been charged, Theetge said that she expects more charges to come, as about “100 people” witnessed the assault.

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