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.

Plantations to Greenwood: Intolerance in The American Mainstream

Plantations tobacco shop in Oklahoma

The KKK marches to celebrate the election of a president-elect who named an overtly racist anti-Semite like Steve Bannon as a key White House policy advisor.

Republican fundraiser Betsy DeVos gets tapped as Secretary of Education, a billionaire with no experience in public school education with a dubious record of lobbying to shift Michigan taxpayer's dollars to poorly performing charter schools.

Lately it's kinda feeling like intolerance is going mainstream in this country.

Check out this photo my friend James sent me the other day,  he lives out in Oklahoma and he recently snapped this photo of a tobacco specialty shop in a mall near Oklahoma City called "Plantations."

Is intolerance going Main Street as well? Or is this a not-so-subtle pushback against what some see as "political correctness" in America?

James and I have been tight since we were classmates and became close friends at West Windsor-Plainsboro High School South back in the late 1980's.

Our initial bond over a shared passion for graphic novels and films eventually morphed into a professional creative partnership that endures to this day.

We both share a somewhat offbeat sense of humor marked by cynicism, as well as a similar political outlook, so when he texted me this photo the other day we both had a good laugh.

As two of the handful of ethnic minorities in our suburban New Jersey high school in the late 80's, James and I found a measure of comfort in one another's company based on our shared sense of cultural isolation in the (then) mostly-white community of West Windsor.

Slaves picking cotton on the Oak Valley Plantation
in Vacherie, Louisiana    [Getty Images]

So having (at times) been on the business-end of some not-so-nice acts of hostility, violence or ignorance related to our respective ethnicity growing up - we couldn't help but laugh at the idea of someone deciding to name their specialty tobacco store Plantations.

Now I really don't know much about this store in Oklahoma aside from the name.


It has a rather generic Facebook page which suggests that it has also branched into serving coffee as well (which was also grown on plantations), but undoubtedly the word plantation conjures different things to different people.

Journalist and writer Kelsey Minor offered an interesting perspective on plantations in an essay published on the Huffington Post back in 2015.

Given the context of the institution of slavery in this country, why would someone intentionally name a tobacco shop, or any other place of business, "Plantations?"

To provoke in order to tout an "anti-PC" perspective?

Scarlett O'Hara's slave "Big Sam" happily marching
off to labor for the Confederacy in Gone With the Wind 

Or simply to evoke some kind of sentimental memory of old tobacco plantations in the same way the 1939 film Gone With the Wind sought to romanticize the 19th century southern slave-plantation system in America?

Personally speaking I come from a cultural background where some of my ancestors harvested tobacco (and other crops) as part of the systematic indentured servitude of the horrific institution of slavery.



An institution based on the incalculable misery of enforced human bondage that was the backbone of the American agrarian economy in the 18th and 19th centuries.

My friend James' descendants were part of a vast culture that first introduced tobacco to European colonists back in the 16th century, in fact it was the explorer Columbus who became the first known European to "discover" tobacco when he recorded an entry in his diary after seeing a Native American in a canoe loaded with tobacco leaves on October 15, 1542.

James is an exceptionally talented professional illustrator and sculptor who makes his home with his wife within the boundaries of the 13 different counties that comprise the Chickasaw Nation.

The Chickasaw are one of the Five Civilized Tribes, Spanish explorer Hernando De Soto was the first European to make contact with them in 1540 during his exploration of the interior of the southeastern United States, when the tribe lived in areas of Mississippi, Tennessee and Alabama.

They lived in towns and had an organized system of tribal government by the time Europeans began expanding west in larger numbers in the 18th century.

The Chickasaw-owned WinStar World Casino  

Like other tribes such as the Cherokee and Seminole, the Chickasaw were forced to cede their traditional lands to the U.S. and were forcibly relocated Oklahoma in the 1830's; some 500 Chickasaw died along the  Trail of Tears.

Like some other tribes they also owned slaves, and brought them with them to Oklahoma.

Today the Chickasaw are a federally recognized independent nation of some 49,000 people.

James and his wife make their home in Ada, Oklahoma where the Chickasaw government is centered and oversees not just the land and people, but also a vast network of economic interests with a nearly $14 billion footprint that includes 18 different casinos and hotels and a wide array of businesses that includes radio stations, truck stops, gas stations, entertainment venues and of course, smoke shops.

So the Chickasaw know tobacco too, they were growing it for hundreds of years before the 1830's when they lived in the Mississippi valley and Tennessee; where their ancestors had lived for thousands of years.

So in a way that "Plantations" sign on the outside of that tobacco shop near Oklahoma, City is symbolic of some deep, unhealed wounds in this country.

Part of the 35 square blocks of Tulsa, OK destroyed
during the Tulsa Race Riots in 1921

For example James told me that outside of Ada there's a limestone quarry located on the site of what used to be a small town of freed slaves.

He said it was essentially destroyed and wiped off the map by enraged mobs of whites in the early 20th century in the same way that hundreds of African-Americans were killed in the Tulsa, Oklahoma neighborhood known as Greenwood in 1921.

To this day he said it's hard to get people in Ada to even talk about it.


The Tulsa Race Riots, as they are commonly known, were never taught as part of the American history I learned in school.

One of the worst incidents of racial unrest in U.S. history, they took place over the course of May 31 - June 1, 1921 when mobs of enraged whites, including Tulsa police, tore through the thriving black community and murdered hundreds of African-American men, women and children and burned 35 square blocks of some 600 black-owned businesses including 21 churches, 21 grocery stores, 2 movie theaters, a bank, a library, a post office, hotels, barbershops, and scores of private homes to the ground.

This massacre was documented in the 2008 book "Black Wall Street" by Jay Jay Wilson and Ron Wallace.

The area known as the Oklahoma Territory wasn't made a state until 1907, the approximately 15,000 African-American residents who lived in the Tulsa section known as Greenwood in 1921 were part of the thousands of blacks who migrated west to Oklahoma to escape the entrenched racism of the south during the late 1800's.

Dr. A.C. Jackson

Some had fled slavery as runaways, while some had come as slaves of the Chickasaw or other tribes during the Trail of Tears in the 1830's; some were feed blacks simply looking to make a new start.

Some came from other parts of the country, including Chicago, New York, Boston and Philadelphia seeking business opportunities in the thriving mid-west community that was once known as the 'Black Wall Street'.

Some residents were nationally recognized figures, like physician Dr. A.C. Jackson (pictured left).

According to the 2007 book 'Black Wall Street: From Riot To Renaissance In Tulsa's Historic Greenwood District', the Mayo brothers regarded hi as the most prominent black surgeon in the country at the time.

He was shot and killed trying to leave his home during the riots.



The Greenwood section of Tulsa was a prosperous independent black community attacked and destroyed by a cooperative effort by the KKK, local law enforcement, municipal and business leaders and private citizens - so there's a legacy of racial hatred and bigotry that still looms over Oklahoma.

And not just against African-Americans either.

For example, one of the events the Chickasaw produces, the annual Artesian Arts Festival, takes place in Sulphur, Oklahoma about 30 minutes from Ada.

James told me that he was walking around the festival with family and friends not far from the Chickasaw-owned Artesian Hotel when he saw a one of those chalkboard signs outside of a small local bar with the words "Two-For-One Pow-Wow Shots!" written in chalk.

He said the group all stopped and laughed about the absurdity of such a term being misused in such a demeaning and subtly racist way that made it a derogatory reference to Native American culture written on a sign during an event sponsored by the Chickasaw Nation that attracts scores of visitors.
   
One of the group went inside to speak with the bar's white manager about it, and he actually came outside and erased it from the board, which was cool but as James told me - didn't he realize that using the term "Pow-Wow" to sell shots during a Native American arts festival might be considered offensive?

Maybe the person who decided to name a tobacco shop Plantations didn't consider that either.