Posted on 09/22/2016 1:46:01 PM PDT by Trump20162020
Tulsa County DA: Charges of manslaughter in 1st degree will be filed against Officer Betty Shelby.
Tulsa officer charged with manslaughter for fatal shooting seen on video
TULSA, Okla. (Reuters) - The white Tulsa police officer who fatally shot an unarmed black man
was charged with manslaughter on Thursday and a warrant has been issued for her arrest, Tulsa
County District Attorney Stephen Kunzweiler said.
Officer Betty Shelby was charged with first-degree manslaughter for the death of Terence
Crutcher, 40. The incident, captured on widely broadcast police videos, is one in a series
that has raised questions of racial bias in U.S. policing.
“Although she is charged, she is presumed innocent until a judge or jury determines otherwise,”
Kunzweiler said. “I don’t know why
things happen in this world the way they do.”
Crutcher, whose car had broken down and was blocking a road, can be seen in two videos provided
by Tulsa police on Monday with his hands in clear view before he was shot by Shelby.
A lawyer for Shelby has said she acted because she feared for her life, believing Crutcher was
reaching into his vehicle for a weapon during the encounter, which took place last Friday.
Tulsa police have said Crutcher was unarmed and there was no weapon in the vehicle. In a bid
for transparency, they released the videos, one of which was taken from a police helicopter
and the other from a dashboard camera in a patrol car.
The U.S. Justice Department has launched a separate investigation to see if the officers on
the scene violated Crutcher’s civil rights.
I did not use the term “passive aggressive”.
Victim may have been a verbal threat, deaf, slow, or non-compliant, or swearing like a sailor, but the guy was unarmed and obviously never observed to be a physical threat.
Except in the cops own mind.
Otherwise, she's going to be made into one of the biggest PC "examples" in the history of mankind by Tulsa's liberal and ethnic strongholds.
Leni
Not saying it is easy. And your supposition is unfounded and wrong; I do have experience and appreciate the difficulty.
That said, these cops are professionals and they were in fairly close proximity. Even under the stress of the moment, it was possible.
Nope, killing people because they don’t obey orders is the root of the problem.
Deadly force should only be used if an officer’s life is at risk, not if the arrestee doesn’t obey your orders.
Ed
Agree. . .and a step to try and pre-empt riots.
Zimmerman and the Duke Lacrosse team might have something to say about politically motivated prosecutions. . .
Can’t shoot in the air, bullets land somewhere.
There is no such thing as a “kill shot.” .....DING, DING! That must be a new phrase from steroid hyped, SWAT trained wannabes who teach newbies how to handle arms, apparently. I had a guy on here a week or two ago who asked “What do you consider to be a kill shot?” I couldn’t believe I answered him, but he seemed to be a wannabe gunfighter. In essence, I said it was the shot to stop whatever action it was that made me pull the weapon to shoot his ass in the first place.
“I hope this was done based on evidence and not out of PC or fear of riots.”
That’s the $64,000 question that will never be known except for the inside crowd.
All I can say is that yes, it’s a tragedy, but these are dangerous times we live in, particularly if you wear a blue shirt. Unless she’s convicted by a jury of her peers, I will always wonder if justice was truly served.
Hey, maybe you can get ahold of all those other cops around her and tell them they screwed up, tell them they should have shot the guy, too!
Only one cop knew what she was doing, I guess, the others all screwed up.
Ed
“...or you use traditional compliance techniques that were in effect for the past 10,000 years - before the other two existed.”
And on our next episode of...Jurassic Cop... :)
She should have chilled in the car and let the guys handle it once they got there.
“The fact that her partner used a Taser instead of his gun really worked against her in this case”
Someone used a taser?
If that is true, and he was still standing and walking away after being tased then it works to her favor if the thug was tased because they already used non-lethal force to stop an apparent lethal threat.
Not necessarily. A taser is for an uncooperative subject. A gun is for a threatening one.
Yeah. I always thought it was the Injun with the bashed in head who never said “Shoot SOB, again, Kemosabe.” Was there EVER an episode where old Jay DIDN’T get whacked on the head?
The first rule about shooting someone is that you should not do it unless you would have been justified in killing them if they died.
The difference between a “disabling shot” and a “killing shot” is as small an nicking an artery. Bullets do weird things when they hit hard objects - bones, buttons, belt buckles - they turn and tumble.
“4 cops and nobody thought to just arrest the guy...a couple of cops from 1956 hearing an account of this would be left scratching their heads. They would not understand a second of it and they wouldn’t know where to start in asking questions about it.”
Post of the day.
That motion would not be granted.
Maybe they could move the trial to Oklahoma City.
She won't be convicted.
I hope you are right here. First of all this officer had no idea what this man might do. Next I will use the old axiom.
Hindsight is better than foresight.
I wonder what the law enforcement should do in this instance. If it was suspected a person was going to detonate an explosive device, reaching for something. If it was a device, the officer is a hero. If it was not. the officer is condemned. Most of the public aided and abetted by a corrupt and spite driven media fail to put themselves in the officer's shoes.
“She should have chilled in the car and let the guys handle it once they got there. “
I bet she’s going to be spending the rest of her life - regardless of how any trial turns out - wishing to Hell she had.
I haven’t seen any “official” timeline of this incident. Had she already tazed him before the camera car got there, or was he not tazed until he got back to his vehicle?
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