Absolved Again: Betty Shelby's Acquittal

Tulsa PD officer Betty Shelby acquitted in the
shooting death of Terrence Crutcher

If not for the intense mainstream media focus on the latest of the seemingly endless stream of ethical bombshells coming from the White House last week, the acquittal of Tulsa PD officer Betty Shelby probably would have garnered far more attention than it did.

With racial polarization in America already enflamed by the enraged delusional rhetoric of the Trump campaign, 40-year-old Terrence Crutcher's violent death caught on video on Friday September 16, 2016 horrified the nation.



If you recall it dominated the news cycle heading into that weekend eight months ago, compounded by nervous media rumblings about racial unrest.

That's an interesting term when you think about it, isn't it? "Racial unrest."

As if the default state of racial tensions in a nation founded on an agrarian economy based on enslaved African labor, is somehow at "rest".

The dash-cam and helicopter videos, as well as recordings of police dispatch radio transmissions, that were quickly released by the Tulsa PD three days after the incident on Tuesday September 19th arguably made many restless - regardless of their ethnicity, socio-economic background or religion.

The facts of Terrence Crutcher's shooting were at once disturbing and familiar to people around the globe - an unarmed man of color being shot and killed by an American law enforcement professional for reasons that didn't seem to warrant the use of deadly force.

Tulsa PD officers Betty Shelby and Tyler Turnbough were only doing their duty when they responded to multiple 9-1-1 calls from motorists at 7:36pm reporting an SUV stopped in the middle of a two-lane road with the driver's side door wide open and a driver, Crutcher, who was walking around outside the vehicle acting oddly.

Terrence Crutcher with his hands raised seconds
before being shot by Betty Shelby

One driver stopped to ask if he needed help and claims that Crutcher replied that he thought his SUV was about to explode.

When Shelby arrived she quickly recognized that Crutcher was under the influence of some kind of substance.

He didn't seem coherent, he ignored her commands and casually walked away from her and Turnbough with his hands raised.


He never threatened them or charged them.

He just didn't listen to them.

But as toxicology reports would later show, it's possible he wasn't able to actually understand them as he had both PCP and TCP (a hallucinogen and psycho-stimulant even more powerful then PCP) in his bloodstream at the time of his death - a Tulsa PD homicide investigator claims to have found a vial of PCP inside Crutcher's SUV.

But was Crutcher "wacked out" on PCP to the degree that he represented a physical threat to the officers at the scene as Tulsa PD and Shelby's attorney seemed to suggest?

Or did his skin color and physical size magnify the sense of danger that Betty Shelby said she felt that prompted her to shoot him while he was standing next to his SUV with his hands in the air?

Take a minute to look at the helicopter footage taken just moments before Crutcher was shot, he's walking slowly away from the officers with his hands in the air - if you're queasy about that kind of thing you can't actually see him being shot though when the helicopter comes around you can see him laying on the ground with blood on his shirt.

Betty Shelby (right) with her gun on Crutcher
as he walks away from her toward his SUV 

As you can see from the dash cam video image at left taken from Tyler Turnbough's police cruiser just after he pulled up to the scene to assist Betty Shelby, she had her gun drawn on Crutcher and he was walking away from her with his hands up.

He wasn't running, he was walking.

Officer Turnbough quickly pulls up to offer assistance and as the two approach Crutcher near the back his SUV, Turnbough tasered him and Shelby shot him in the chest.

The bullet she fired broke four of his ribs and pierced two of his lungs.

He died in the hospital several hours later.

As the autopsy report states, "The cause of death is penetrating gunshot wound of chest with musculoskeletal and visceral injuries. The manner of death is classified as homicide."

Two days after the video was released showing Crutcher with his hands in the air, even Donald Trump (while polling at historical lows with African-Americans) weighed in on the Crutcher shooting saying he was "very troubled" by the shooting and speculated that Betty Shelby had "choked" because she was scared.

From the time that she was charged with first-degree manslaughter, Shelby's attorney did everything possible to characterize Terrence Crutcher as some kind of dangerous raving lunatic on PCP with a prison record for selling crack - they even talked about Crutcher being obese, (as if the fatal gunshot wound to his chest wouldn't have killed him if he'd been thin.)

But the problem is Officer Shelby didn't know any of that when she drew her handgun and later fired the shot that killed Crutcher, she only knew that he was an African-American who was acting strangely after parking his SUV in the middle of a road.

If she was so scared, why didn't she just wait for backup?

If you watch the video, there are two other officers responding to assist her and Turnbough as she fires that shot - and Crutcher isn't in an elementary school parking lot or in a mall, he's wandering around his SUV parked in the middle of a rural stretch of road surrounded by woods.

Terrence Crutcher with his son

Had Crutcher turned suddenly towards Shelby, or rushed the officers her shooting him in the chest would at least make some kind of sense.

But he had his hands in the air and he was walking, not running, away from her.

From my point of view, her decision to shoot him was a totally unjustified use of deadly force in a situation where it wasn't warranted.

Therefore she should have faced at least some kind of legal responsibility for taking his life.

But the court ruled there will be no legal repercussions for her pulling the trigger.

She will soon return to duty.

The outcome of this trial represents yet another example in a disturbingly long line of American law enforcement professionals who've shot and killed unarmed African-American boys or men, only to be absolved of legal responsibility for their actions in a court of law based on a specious legal argument that the officer's fears of a situation or threat that did not actually exist - was justification for taking someone's life.

At the core lies an unresolved examination of the complexity of how racial bias influences the thinking and decision making of members of law enforcement under stress.

This case, and many like it, seem to elevate the presence of that stress or fear above the life of innocent citizens - many, like Terrence Crutcher, who were unarmed when they were killed.

Officer Betty Shelby

Step back for a moment and consider this case in the context of the Tulsa Race Riot.

In which an enraged mob of white citizens aided by local police intentionally set fire to the prosperous African-American section of Tulsa known as Greenwood and systematically beat, stab, lynched and shot at least 300 innocent black Americans over the course of May 31 - June 1, 1921.

Seen through that historical lens the acquittal of Betty Shelby is particularly troubling on a number of levels.

It suggests the deep-seated racial prejudices that sparked one of the worst incidents of racial violence in American history almost 96 years ago, still resonate in the minds of some - in Oklahoma and beyond.

Even some who are sworn to protect in serve.

Was Officer Betty Shelby conscious of her own internal racial bias back on September 16, 2016?

We may never know that answer, she herself may not even know or understand that.

But we do know that last week, a court of law in Oklahoma absolved her of any legal responsibility for taking a human life.

Based in large part on the internal fears that she herself testified prompted her to fire the fatal shot that took the life of Terrence Crutcher.

A son, brother, cousin and father - another name on the long list of The Counted.

A Bomber Gets Wounded, An Innocent Guy Is Shot & Killed

Rahami being taken into custody

Like millions of other people, I applaud officers Angel Padilla and Peter Hammer, the brave members of the Linden (NJ) Police Department who found Chelsea bombing suspect Ahmad Khan Rahami sleeping in the entranceway of a Linden bar, and managed to take him into custody yesterday after a shootout.

Given the circumstances it's remarkable that they captured him alive to be questioned.

By all accounts, both officers had every right to use deadly force on the 28-year-old Rahami, but they kept their composure and maintained their professionalism. 

As WABC reported Rahmi almost immediately opened fire on officer Padilla after he was awakened by the officer who recognized him as the bombing suspect.

Despite the fact that Rahami ran into the street firing shots, the officers managed to shoot and wound the suspect; ensuring the opportunity for members of law enforcement to interrogate the suspect for critical information on the bombings in Chelsea and Seaside Park.

That's a pretty significant contrast to the way that members of the Tulsa Police Department treated 40-year-old African-American motorist Terrence Crutcher last Friday night when they came upon his vehicle stalled in the middle of a road and shot him dead. 

Terrence Crutcher walks away with his hands raised

Credit should obviously go to the leadership of the Tulsa PD for releasing the video to the public as quickly as they did to demonstrate a willingness to conduct an open investigation into the shooting.

Unlike the Chicago PD who waited over a year to release the video of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald being shot multiple times as he was walking away from officers.

From what we know, the case of Terrence Crutcher is very different, it's still light out as you can clearly see from the video still above.

Now if you haven't already seen the video you should take a look at it for yourself, I've watched the dash cam footage from one of the Tulsa PD vehicles that approaches the scene after the first officer is already in contact with Crutcher. 

But I think people need to watch the overhead police helicopter footage and listen to one of the officers as he casually remarks that Crutcher "looks like a bad dude, he's probably on something".

It's clear that three different officers standing shoulder-to-shoulder are within about twenty feet of Crutcher as he's walking away from them slowly with his arms clearly in the air.

Officer Betty Shelby

He doesn't rush them, he makes no attempt to flee or any sudden movements that suggest he's reaching for a weapon; but one of the officers tasers Crutcher, and then another officers fires a shot from a hand gun.

According to an NBC News article, the lawyer representing officer Betty Shelby, the white Tulsa police officer who fired the shot that struck and killed Crutcher, Shelby claims Crutcher wasn't responding to police commands and then walked to the side of his vehicle - again, slowly with his hands up.

But as Crutcher family attorney Benjamin Crump observed,  images taken from the helicopter video footage clearly show the driver's side window was rolled up, so clearly Crutcher wasn't reaching inside the vehicle as was initially reported.

From what I read about officer Shelby, she doesn't seem like a bad cop.

I do think find it interesting that her Tulsa PD officer husband was inside the helicopter that took the clearest video of the scene; though the Tulsa PD claim he wasn't the officer heard on the radio saying that Crutcher "looks like a bad dude."

There's still so little known about what prompted that deadly shot, and obviously an investigation will reveal more information, but I do think it says a lot about how race, ethnicity and unconscious (or conscious) bias affects how some members of law enforcement in this country view African-Americans as "threats".

Like that officer in the helicopter, he's hundreds of feet in the air over the scene, yet he makes the determination that Crutcher (a church-going father who'd supposedly just come from a night class at Tulsa Community College) is a "bad dude".

What was he basing that on?

In the same year (2015) that Dylan Roof, the white gunman who walked into a South Carolina church and shot and killed nine African-Americans at a Bible study in cold blood (and who was beaten up in jail back in August), was taken into custody by police without incident - Walter Scott, the unarmed black motorist who was shot in the back by former officer Michael Slager after being stopped for a faulty brake light and trying to flee, was killed on the spot for a minor civil infraction.

The list of unarmed black Americans killed by police is disturbingly long, and Terrence Crutcher's death in Tulsa makes it longer.

Seems to me that if officers in Linden, NJ can take a suspected terrorist responsible for detonating explosive devices designed to kill large numbers of people into custody without killing him, four officers in Tulsa should be able to detain an unarmed man with his hands raised walking slowly around a stalled vehicle parked in the middle of a road.
  
But this is America, and for some police officers, perhaps perception is more important than logic.