At a news conference Monday, Jordan struck a candid tone about the officer-involved shooting that left Crutcher dead.
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We the People Oklahoma organizer Marq Lewis called for the “immediate” arrest of Officer Betty Shelby, who fatally shot Terence Crutcher on Friday.
Shelby is now on paid administrative leave, pending the outcome of a criminal investigation.
There are two videos of what happened next.
His family members and community leaders are calling for justice after reviewing the dashcam footage of the fatal shooting. One young boy held up a sign that read “Don’t Shoot”.
One of the officers in audio from the helicopter says Crutcher is not following instruction. They said Crutcher refused to follow officers’ commands in the minutes before he was shot.
Crutcher’s family and local community leaders were shown the video footage on September 18. When police responded to reports of an abandoned vehicle running, they ordered Crutcher to put his hands in the air.
“It was a vehicle that was stopped on the road”. The video then shows Crutcher falling to the ground after being shot. He followed orders, yet one officer fired a Taser at him and another fired her gun.
Then nearly immediately, someone can be heard saying, “Shots fired”.
“Just know that our voices will be heard”, she said. We’re treated as, I guess, criminals – suspects that they fear, ‘ said Mr Crump.
The shooting comes just four months after former Tulsa County volunteer deputy Robert Bates was sentenced to four years in prison on a second-degree manslaughter conviction over the 2015 death of an unarmed black man. “I want to assure our community and I want to assure all of you and people across the nation watching this: We will achieve justice”.
Tulsa Police Chief Chuck Jordan said in a press conference Monday that no weapon was found on Crutcher or in his auto. A police spokesperson said officers shot Crutcher after he reached inside the vehicle, though video from the incident does clearly show Crutcher’s hands before police kill him.
The Tulsa, Oklahoma, Police Department released dash cam and helicopter video (below) on September 19 that shows Terence Crutcher, an unarmed black man, with his hands up before being fatally shot by a police officer on September 16.
Pastor Mario Johnson, who said he watched the dashcam video before it was made public, believes Crutcher did not deserve to die.
In past police shootings, Lewis has also called for an outside investigator, saying the District Attorney’s Office has a working relationship with the local police department that is inherently biased. “We’re incredibly heartbroken, I can say that, ” Dr. Tiffany Crutcher, Terrance’s twin sister, told Tulsa World.
“That big bad dude – his life mattered”, she said.
The department hasn’t commented publicly on the video or said whether police recovered a weapon from the scene.
According to Tulsa World, Police Chief Chuck Jordan called the video “very disturbing – very hard to watch”, but would not elaborate on the details.
The Washington Post, which has a similar database, says police in the USA have killed 697 people this year.
Terence Crutcher, top, is pursued by police officers as he walks to an SUV in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The first call came from a woman who said an abandoned vehicle was blocking a road. One protester, Tulsa resident Mark Whited, said more needed to be done to “bridge the mistrusts” between communities.
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A Tulsa Police officer murdered Terence Crutcher in cold blood.
