Riggs said that the shooting was not justified even if Crutcher was intoxicated.
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For Tulsa, Friday’s deadly encounter is the second time in as many years that police have been involved in a controversial fatal shooting that was captured on video. He also found it odd that there were four officers at the scene and Shelby was the only one who fired a shot.
“Yesterday, in America, we witnessed a person who bombed a building and injured 29 people, in fact, and he wasn’t taken down with lethal force”, Crump said, referring the the arrest Monday of the man suspected in a series of explosions in NY and New Jersey. He says criminal charges should be filed in the shooting death.
With understatement, the local police chief called the videos “very disturbing” and “very hard to watch”. “None of the other officers felt the need to fire their weapons and use force”.
“Tulsa Police Officer Betty Shelby should be arrested today for killing Terence Crutcher”, King argues in his piece.
Tulsa Police Sgt. Dave Walker confirmed to the Tulsa World (http://bit.ly/2d6cYIh ) that investigators recovered a vial of PCP in Terence Crutcher’s SUV.
At this point, the evidence strongly indicates that a police officer shot a man she took as an imminent threat only because he appeared to be out of touch with reality, failed to respond to orders and approached a auto where she thought he might have a gun.
A separate police dashcam video also shows the officer with a weapon drawn and following Crutcher as he walks to his vehicle with his hands in the air. The pilot was recorded saying that the 40-year-old, who was walking slowly back to his auto with his hands up at that moment, looked like “a bad dude” who “could be on something”.
In a news conference Monday, Tulsa Police Chief Chuck Jordan revealed that Crutcher was unarmed. Muterspaw said he always wear his Taser and gun on different sides to avoid potential mistakes.
“He has his hands up and is facing the auto and looks at Shelby, and his left hand goes through the vehicle window, and that’s when she fired her shot”, Wood told the Tulsa World for a story published Tuesday.
Crutcher couldn’t have reached into the vehicle, Crump said, because enhanced photos of the vehicle taken from police video show that the window was rolled up.
“Let us not be throwing a red herring, and to say because something was found in the auto that was justification to shoot him”, said attorney Benjamin Crump, one of the family’s lawyers.
Lois Shelby told The Associated Press in a phone interview Tuesday that Shelby “thought she had to protect her own life” when she fatally shot Crutcher. However, the police discovered after the shooting that Crutcher was unarmed, and one of Shelby’s fellow officers fired his taser gun at the same time she opened fire.
Tulsa Police and the city, along with district attorneys and a representative from the Department of Justice, detailed what they knew so far of the incident, investigation and the timeline for release of the dash cam video. On April 2, 2015, an undercover Tulsa sheriff’s operation went wrong – and a white reserve deputy sheriff shot and killed an unarmed black man, Eric Harris. There’s some audio, but listeners can not hear what officers said to Crutcher or what he said to them. Google reported more than a million searches Monday for Crutcher’s name and related topics.
Officer Betty Shelby was among the officers who responded.
Although PCP was subsequently found in Crutcher’s vehicle, it was not immediately clear whether he was under the influence of the hallucinogen in the moments leading up to the fatal shooting. The group’s executive director, Ryan Kiesel, said Crutcher’s death shows “how little regard” Tulsa police have for the community’s minorities.
Shelby’s mother-in-law said her daughter-in-law is grieving for the victim’s family and isn’t prejudiced.
Shelby’s lawyer, Scott Wood, says his client initially believed Crutcher was on PCP.
Crutcher’s death has prompted a state and federal investigation into whether the shooting was justifiable.
Shelby has been placed on administrative leave.
A video from a Tulsa, Oklahoma, police vehicle shows Terence Crutcher walking toward his SUV with his hands up and a female officer following behind him.
The vehicle is stopped in the middle of the road. As Crutcher approaches the driver’s side of the SUV, another officer walks up followed by two others and Crutcher appears to lower his hands and place them on the vehicle. Crutcher died at a hospital later that evening.
“This is just unbearable and it needs to be intolerable”.
After the police footage in Crutcher’s case was released, King took to Twitter to share 25 ways to reduce police violence, including drug testing among police officers, the elimination of quota systems, testing officers for racial bias and mandatory body cameras for every police officer. Then nearly immediately, someone can be heard yelling, “Shots fired!” and Crutcher is left lying in the street. Crutcher’s head then drops, leaving him lying completely out in the street.
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After that, someone on the police radio can be heard saying, “Shots fired”.
