HERE WE GO AGAIN

I don’t want to “Monday morning quarterback” anyone, but based on the video I have to conclude this was a case of professional malpractice (terrible police work) and probably manslaughter. I’d have to have a lot of new information to think anything else. It’s not just a job. Some people have no business being cops. This one appears incompetent from top to bottom. It’s embarrassing. Notice that Officer Betty doesn’t even remember to turn on her car’s light bar to warn approaching motorists of the danger of two vehicles stopped on the road.

On her way to a domestic disturbance call, Officer Betty Shelby of the Tulsa, OK Police Department comes across an SUV stopped in the middle of a two lane highway and Terence Crutcher in the road on foot. In a flash Betty is out of her police vehicle and has drawn her pistol. I can’t see everything she saw and I can’t hear anything, but I can’t imagine a legitimate reason for Betty to draw her weapon. (At this early stage, she’s not claiming he had a weapon and no weapon was found, nor that he verbally threatened to kill her.) Perhaps Crutcher is acting erratically in some ways in addition to standing in the road with his car blocking both lanes. That’s reason for a cautious approach, but not to draw one’s pistol yet. Yes, the suspect could possibly have been a homicidal maniac but more likely explanations would include he was: high or drunk, having serious mental health issues, having a seizure, or having a diabetic incident. These possibilities and others like them would require the officer to have both hands empty if it became necessary to go “hands on” with the suspect and to possibly deescalate the situation. With her gun in her hand, Officer Betty has nearly shut the door on the option of going hands on, and she has escalated the suspect, herself, and the other arriving officers.

I’m assuming based on the officer’s lawyer’s comment, that Crutcher was refusing to obey Officer Betty’s commands (probably to stop walking away and to turn around). Crutcher does have his hands up while he was walking away from the officer. Should he have obeyed the officer immediately and completely? Yes. Would he still be alive now if he had? Most likely. Does that justify the poor police work and decision making that led to the shooting and death of the suspect? Absolutely not. I’ve found that the most useless phrase in the English language is: “Police! Stop!” I can’t think of even one instance in my career where I’ve used that phrase and the suspect actually stopped! Officers should expect to be ignored and disobeyed, and have a plan to deal with it that doesn’t include killing everyone who refuses to stop or obey.

Car stopped in the highway blocking both lanes. Male walking in the road, possibly the driver. Male refusing police commands and “acting erratically.” Male puts his hands in the air and starts walking back to the car’s driver’s door. Because of the potential for escape and for the suspect to access a weapon in the car, an experienced officer would not let the suspect get to the driver’s door, and reach in or get in. The officer was completely in her rights to put her hands on the suspect and physically prevent him from reaching the driver’s door, and then to pat him down for weapons. That’s what Officer Betty should have done, but didn’t. That was an “insufficient use of force” (which is common issue with police which is never talked about in public) which led directly to more bad decisions and the death of the suspect. I don’t know why Officer Betty didn’t go hands on with the suspect to keep him from reaching the driver’s door, but I can guess. 1) She had her gun in her hand and you need both hands for that kind of thing. 2) She was frightened of the much larger suspect. Why was she afraid besides the size difference? She’s a woman and therefore physically weaker. She didn’t have confidence in her hands on fighting skills. 3) She has little to no actual successful experience controlling or fighting with male suspects. 4) She’s afraid of black males in general. Officer Betty’s fear led her to at least two early mistakes that prevented her from going hands on: she had her gun in hand and didn’t reholster it, and she was waaay too far away from the suspect to get physical with him. She should’ve used force much sooner than she did, and it should have been to put hands on the suspect to stop him from reaching the driver’s door. Insufficient use of force, followed by excessive force. What a shame.

This doesn’t explain to me the timid actions of the other 3 officers who arrive before Officer Betty fires a single shot. Surely, three or four officers together would’ve had the courage to holster their pistols and go hands on with the suspect before he reached the driver’s door. However, they pile up right next to or even behind Officer Betty. The one reason I can see for the other officers not just running past Betty and grabbing Crutcher (my instinct watching the video) was the possibility of getting shot in the back by Officer Betty in an accidental friendly fire incident. She seems just like the kind of Officer to negligently shoot me in the back.

Officer Betty through her lawyer says she feared he was reaching for a weapon when he went into his pocket and when he reached into his car. I hear this explanation so many times from police who shoot a suspect when it’s not justified or when it’s a gray area that I wish we could just train every officer nationwide that “I thought he was reaching for a weapon” is completely insufficient grounds by itself for shooting a suspect. You can’t shoot until you see a deadly weapon, though if the suspect says he’s going to shoot you with this gun in the car and then reaches into the car you’d be on better legal grounds to shoot. I don’t know what policing is like in Tulsa, but nearly all the cops I know in Philadelphia assume everyone has a deadly weapon and they are going to try to kill me with it. That almost never turns out to be true but thinking it at all times keeps you on your toes and ready to respond appropriately in a split second. Anyone could be reaching for a weapon. You can’t shoot them until they get their hands on the weapon and it appears they are about to use it on you. It’s incumbent on the officer to use good tactics to keep the suspect at a disadvantage so the officer can beat him to the punch if he legitimately goes for a deadly weapon. You can’t just stand 12-15 feet away yelling at the suspect and then shoot him when he puts his hands where you can’t see them.

It’s politically correct to encourage women (and small-statured men) to become police officers. But if it wasn’t, police departments might go back to physical standards they used to have 50 years ago which required applicants to be able to handle suspects on the street with their bare hands. Some state police departments even used to require applicants to be male and at least 6′-0″ tall as two of their requirements. I know some female officers who can handle themselves on the street in a fight, but they are the rare exception. I know a male SWAT officer who is only 5’6”, 145 lbs. but he plays hockey, competes in mixed martial arts competitions and is ferocious in a fight. Most women and small-statured men are at a severe disadvantage in struggles with suspects when weapons are not appropriate. Women and small men are quicker to resort to their weapons, more likely to stand back and let other officers do the dirty work, or simply manage to show up last to every dangerous-sounding incident. If we had standards that required applicants and academy recruits to demonstrate serious hands on fighting skills, I think there would be fewer police shootings (justified or unjustified). Of course, departments would have even more trouble achieving minimum staffing levels and being appropriately diverse. So incidents like this are what we have to live with. Sigh.

I also wish the public was aware of how many police deadly force incidents turn out to be clearly justified, so that disturbing incidents like this would be understood as an anomaly. But since we don’t, I guess we’ll have an officer or officers somewhere soon injured or killed in retaliation for this. I hope whoever the officers are are some of those racist bad ones who use excessive force rather than one of the majority who is completely professional.

Good background on this incident:

The Taser discharge and Officer Betty’s single gunshot occur so close together it’s possible her finger was on the trigger and she twitched when the Taser went off. Cops who are issued Tasers are trained that it sounds a little like a gunshot and to keep their fingers off the triggers of their firearms to avoid just such an unconscious twitch response and a negligent discharge. They are trained, if possible, to yell “Taser! Taser! Taser!” before firing the device. Did I mention incompetence and that most people are not cut out to be cops? But maybe using the Taser in this instance wasn’t even the best choice for the Officers. Tasers have revolutionized police use of force. Studies have indicated that departments who issue them along with the requisite training see an 85% reduction in suspect injuries requiring medical treatment and an 80% reduction in officer injuries. That’s dramatic. Without a Taser, officers are faced with physically controlling a suspect using hands on skills to gain leverage (partially) and inflicting enough pain to gain “voluntary” compliance (mostly). That’s how suspects and officers get hurt hundreds of times every day across the country. Even the mere appearance of an officer with a Taser in his/her hand often has the ability to get violent suspects, even mentally ill ones, to calm down and comply with simple commands (because of the weapon’s reputation). This is especially true of suspects who have been Tasered before: no one wants “to ride the lightning” twice, even the psychotic ones. Unfortunately, the Taser works so well it is prone to over use and it seems to tell officers you don’t need to have fighting skills and physical fitness any more because you can just use your Taser. Training states that using a Taser is a higher level use of force than hands on and should only be used when hands on has not worked or would be inappropriate to even try. Furthermore, there are plenty of instances in which the Taser (for several potential reasons) fails to work and the officer has to go back down the force continuum to hands on or up the force continuum to the baton or the firearm. In my opinion, Tasers are a fantastic tool for police work that eliminates thousands of injuries and a not small number of deaths every year. However, like any good tool it can be misused and doesn’t always work as intended.