The shooting of Mr Terence Crutcher on Sept 16, recorded by dashboard cameras and a police helicopter, led to heightened tensions between yet another United States police department and African Americans.
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On Sept. 16, Tulsa Police Officer Betty Shelby killed Crutcher after his SUV stalled on a north Tulsa road. “The department has picked her to train new officers, and people will tell you this isn’t Betty Shelby to overreact to a situation”. Crutcher’s family attorneys maintain that the window was up, pointing to the blood spattered on it when he was shot. After the shooting, Shelby claimed that she saw him reaching into his window to get a weapon.
An attorney for Shelby maintains Crutcher was using PCP, and a Tulsa police spokesman has confirmed the drug was found in his SUV. Crutcher’s vehicle had been stranded on the Oklahoma highway when Shelby and a fellow officer arrived on the scene.
Mark Sawa, a retired major with the Travis County Sheriff’s Office in Austin, Texas, who trains police officers on use of force, said: “If somebody is not contained, if they’re walking away from you, your opportunity to defuse that encounter is greatly diminished if they’re mobile and not stationary”. Shelby says his client drew her gun instead of a stun gun because she thought Terence Crutcher was armed.
Shelby has been charged with first degree manslaughter and turned herself in Friday. An autopsy reports that Crutcher died from a fatal gunshot wound to the chest; however, the medical examiner is still waiting for a full toxicology report on the victim.
NBC News reported that Shelby’s husband, Dave, also a Tulsa police officer, was in the helicopter that caught the final moments of Crutcher’s life on camera.
Shelby joined the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office in 2007 and stayed until 2011, resigning with a salary of $39,516. In both cases, Shelby said a judge agreed to dismiss the orders.
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Tulsa police have said Crutcher was unarmed and there was no weapon in the vehicle. She says a student in a group of 13- and 14-year-olds said other police shootings were quickly forgotten, but this one feels “real” because it happened “so close to home”. Her attorney, Scott Wood, has said Crutcher repeatedly ignored Shelby’s commands and did not respond to her questions. “She is the only one that can testify to what she was thinking”.
