I saw the quote from the Ohio police chief who was appalled at this mess. My dad was a cop and I know he would have been. I'm still so shocked at this horrible killing here, in my hometown, I don't know that I can properly compose a complete post, but I'll throw some thoughts out that I had after reading the thread. For those of you trying to figure statistical analysis, remember a large part of Tulsa's racial makeup is Native Americans. I haven't looked at the official census numbers, but just from living here, I'd say there's almost as many Natives as Blacks. Hispanics run a close third.
The area where this happened is in North Tulsa and this is primarily a Black area. Not a "bad" area of town or place white people aren't welcome, it's just always been primarily where Black folks settled. Lots of good things going on there.
Tulsa does not have a lot of racial tension. Well, I don't know how this killing is going to affect the climate here, but in general there's not a lot of racial tension here. If I had to guess, it would be more with the growing Hispanic population.
We are having protests occurring tonight and they have been peaceful. The Crutcher family has asked for only peaceful protests and so far their wishes have been respected.
I love my city and I want to us to be able to respect our police force, but this one police officer had no business firing a gun Friday night. There was not one thing he did to give her to OK to blow him away. I don't care if he had a kilo of cocaine in his car. Actually, you know what? A big time drug dealer would for sure have been taken in alive. Their lives are valuable. Cops can get info from them. This guy? Not so much. Drove a crappy car. He's big and Black. The officer has allllll kinds of backup, she's got a loaded gun, she's got several cops around her with loaded guns, she's got her husband up in the helicopter above her, I'm sure with a loaded weapon. Her backup tazes Terence and what does she do? She blows him away.
He wasn't reaching into his vehicle. I've seen ALLL the videos, I've seen alll the presentations from alll the attorneys. The windows were up. His hands were up. He hits the ground with his hands up, on the street, still with his hands up. And not one damn person comes to his aid. Nobody. They were more concerned about traffic control and blocking off 36th.
Of course she did not go out that night looking for Black men to kill. That would be idiotic. But she did it, didn't she? And none of the reasons she gave for doing so are reasonable enough to take a life. Sorry, they just aren't. And if you believe "oh, we need to wait for the facts", or "we need to wait for her side", then you need to seriously examine why you are giving this officer the benefit of the doubt in this case.