Texas Attorney – A Tulsa Police Officer is Acquitted in the Fatal Shooting of Terence Crutcher
A Caucasian police officer in Tulsa, Oklahoma, allegedly shot and killed Terence Crutcher, an unarmed black man, on September 16, 2016. The officer was later charged with first-degree manslaughter. On May 17, 2017, a jury found that the officer was not guilty of the charge. The shooting victim’s father said that he thinks the police officer literally got away with murder.
The jury that found the female officer not guilty was comprised of three African-Americans, four men, and eight women. On the evening the jury made their decision, about 100 demonstrators were in the courthouse plaza outside protesting the decision. Some protestors later blocked a major road in downtown Tulsa.
Marq Lewis said that the jury’s decision was a blow to the black community. He is the organizer of We the People Oklahoma, a local civil rights group. He questioned when officer-related shootings are finally going to stop.
Crutcher was 40 years old when he died. The officer who allegedly fired the deadly shots said that she ordered Crutcher to stop walking away from her and he ignored her. She told jurors that she was afraid because he didn’t follow her directive to lie on the ground. In addition, she was concerned that he was under the influence of the powerful hallucinogenic drug PCP, which makes users combative, unpredictable, and erratic. She also said she fired her weapon because it appeared to her that he was reaching for a gun. It turned out, however, that he was unarmed.
Part of the galvanization of the Black Lives Matter movement occurred when Crutcher was killed.
–Guest Contributor
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