Last August, when activist Julius King told Clinton that white people shouldn’t tell black people how to deal with institutional violence and systemic racism, Clinton said, “Well, I’m not telling you, I’m just telling you to tell me”.
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From different angles, the videos show the same scene. Quite the opposite, he walked away from Shelby with his hands up. The penalty for PCP possession is jail time as decided by a jury, not an execution-style death as decided by a police officer. Crutcher told a bystander the vehicle was going to blow up and Officer Shelby is a Drug Recognition Expert that understands the dangers of PCP. Terence Crutcher, a 40-year-old, unarmed black man, was holding his hands in the air when he was confronted near his SUV.
There was particular anger at a comment made by the pilot of the police helicopter moments before Crutcher was shot by Officer Shelby.
And the police videos of the incident are fueling mounting criticism online about the case.
Crutcher’s death has prompted a state and federal investigation into whether the shooting was justifiable.
Crutcher’s vehicle stalling in the middle of a road precipitated his interaction with the police.
But from the video, it appears that the lead officer, Betty Shelby fired her weapon nearly at the same time.
But to Arlando Jasper, he was the man who 15 years ago pulled up to a bus stop and said, at random, “God told me to take you wherever you want to go”, NBC News reported.
On Friday, two callers reported that a man had left his vehicle in a traffic lane with the doors open, according to police.
Officer Betty Shelby, who is white, was the first to arrive.
But Damario Solomon-Simmons, another attorney for Crutcher’s family, said Shelby and other officers had no way of knowing about Crutcher’s background or the potential for drugs in his vehicle when they approached him Friday.
Her husband was in the police helicopter that recorded the shooting. The footage is “very disturbing and hard to watch”, Tulsa Police Chief Chuck Jordan told reporters.
“There were several officers on the scene”, Crump said.
However, videos from a second patrol vehicle as well as the helicopter show Shelby pointing her gun at Crutcher as he walks towards his auto with his hands in the air. Shelby’s lawyer said Crutcher ignored officers’ commands, kept touching his pocket and was reaching through one of the vehicle’s windows when she fired. Then, Crutcher put his hands up, without receiving instructions to do so, which she thought was unusual, Wood said.
Since that happened, though, attorneys for both the Crutcher family and Shelby have laid out conflicting accounts about what happened on the night of September 16. The conversation between the two officers in the dash cam footage is also incredulous- “Time for a Taser, I think”, an officer can be heard saying, while another says, “That looks like a bad dude, too”.
Then nearly immediately, someone can be heard saying, “Shots fired”.
In the video, Crutcher lies in the middle of the street, motionless, soon to be dead.
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“The Justice Department is committed to investigating allegations of excessive force by law enforcement officers and will devote the resources necessary to ensure that all allegations of serious civil rights violations are fully and complete investigated”, U.S. Attorney Danny Williams told a press conference in Tulsa.
