Police Shoot & Kill Unarmed Terence Crutcher While His Hands Are Up.

Video shows US police shoot and kill unarmed black man

Footage released by Oklahoma police shows Terence Crutcher shot and killed by white officer while his hands are up.

A US police department in Oklahoma has released video of an encounter in which an unarmed black man was shot dead by a white officer while his hands were up.

Video recorded by a police helicopter and a patrol car's dashboard camera were released by the Tulsa police department on Monday show 40-year-old Terence Crutcher being shocked with a stun gun and then shot dead.

In the encounter, which happened at about 7:40pm on Friday, Betty Shelby, a Tulsa police officer since 2011, shoots once and kills Crutcher while responding to a stalled vehicle report, according to the police department.
A man in the police helicopter circling above the scene can be heard saying during the incident: "Time for a Taser," and "That looks like a bad dude, too. Probably on something."


When a second police car arrived as back-up, Crutcher had his hands up as he walked away from Shelby, who was following him with her gun pointed at his back. She was soon joined by three more officers, according to the dashboard video of the second squad car.
Crutcher was shot less than 30 seconds after the second car arrived, US media reported.

Before the release of the incident's video and audio recordings, Police Chief Chuck Jordan announced that Crutcher had no weapon on him or in his four-wheel drive vehicle.

The initial moments of Crutcher's encounter with police are not shown in the footage.

Dashboard cam off

Shelby did not activate her patrol car's dashboard cam, said Tulsa police spokeswoman Jeanne MacKenzie. Only the second patrol car's dashboard cam was on.

Local and federal investigations are under way to determine whether criminal charges are warranted in the shooting or if Crutcher's civil rights were violated.

It is not clear from the footage what led Shelby to draw her gun or what orders officers might have given Crutcher.


Initial police briefings indicated that Crutcher was not obeying officers' commands, but MacKenzie said on Monday that she did not know what Crutcher was doing that prompted police to shoot.
After the shooting, Crutcher could be seen lying on the side of the road, a pool of blood around his body, for nearly two minutes before anyone checked on him.

When asked why police did not provide immediate assistance once Crutcher was down, MacKenzie said, "I do not know that we have protocol on how to render aid to people."

Crutcher's twin sister, Tiffany Crutcher, called for charges on Monday.

"The big bad dude was my twin brother. That big bad dude was a father," she said.

"That big bad dude was a son. That big bad dude was enrolled at Tulsa Community College, just wanting to make us proud. That big bad dude loved God. That big bad dude was at church singing with all of his flaws, every week. That big bad dude, that's who he was."

Terence Crutcher was shot and killed by police in Tulsa., Okla., on Friday, in a case that has prompted a Justice Department investigation.
Tulsa Police

The video is disturbing and prompts many questions — and that's how the police see it. The family of Terence Crutcher, who was shot dead by police Friday, says the footage should lead to criminal charges against the officer who killed an unarmed man.

The Justice Department has begun a parallel investigation into possible civil rights charges related to Crutcher's death, U.S. Attorney Danny Williams Sr. said Monday. He promised "to seek justice on behalf of this family, and for the public."

Crutcher, who was black, died next to his SUV that had stopped in the middle of a two-lane road in Tulsa, Okla. Seconds before he was shot, police dashcam and helicopter footage shows, he had walked to his car with his hands held over his head as Officer Betty Shelby walked behind him, her gun raised.


We'll post the helicopter video and link to more footage here, with the warning that some of the video is graphic and may be difficult to watch.
In the recording from the Tulsa police helicopter, an officer is heard saying of Crutcher as he walks in front of Shelby, "Looks like that's a bad dude, maybe on something."

Officers had been called to the scene by passers-by who had reported a vehicle abandoned in the road. "He took off running," a woman told a 911 operator, saying that the man said his vehicle might blow up. She added, "I think he's smoking something."

Shelby, who is white, was one of four police officers who were standing at the rear bumper of Crutcher's car as he stood next to his vehicle around 7:45 p.m. Friday. She's also the officer who shot him once, in the upper body — and who then radioed, "Shots fired." Police say another officer used his Taser on Crutcher at nearly the same time he was shot.

"I want to assure our community, and I want to assure all of you and people across the nation who are going to be looking at this, we will achieve justice, period," Tulsa Police Chief Chuck Jordan said Monday, as his department released the videos. He called the footage "very disturbing; it's very difficult to watch."

Officer Shelby's attorney, Scott Wood, told the Tulsa World that Shelby believed Crutcher was reaching for something inside his car, and that he hadn't been following her commands.

"I'm going to tell you right here and now: There was no gun on the suspect or in the suspect's vehicle," Jordan said of Crutcher. The police chief said he contacted the U.S. Attorney's Office about the case immediately after the shooting, and he added, "We will achieve justice in this case."


Jordan said that the first time he watched the police-cam footage was when he viewed it with Crutcher's family — something he said he did on Sunday, to give the slain man's relatives a chance to see the video before anyone else.
"After watching the video and seeing what actually happened," said Tiffany Crutcher, Terence's twin sister, "we're truly devastated. The entire family is devastated."

Tiffany Crutcher then went on to tell the media gathered in Tulsa, "You all want to know who that big 'bad dude' was. That big 'bad dude' was my twin brother. That big 'bad dude' was a father. That big 'bad dude' was a son. That big 'bad dude' was enrolled at Tulsa Community College, just wanting to make us proud.

"That big 'bad dude' loved God; that big 'bad dude' was at church singing, with all his flaws, every week. That's who he was."


Tiffany Crutcher said her brother's future was taken away because of negligence and incompetence — "and because he was a big 'bad dude.'"
Demanding charges for the officers involved, Tiffany Crutcher said of her brother, "His life mattered."

Referring to other incidents of police killings of unarmed black men, she added, "This is bigger than us right here. We're going to stop it right here."

The time code in the video taken from the dashcam of Officer Tyler Turnbough shows that Crutcher was shot around 1:50 into the recording. Over the radio, an officer can be heard referring to him as a "suspect" — although the situation was initially called in as a traffic incident, possibly involving a broken-down vehicle.

After Shelby shot Crutcher, two officers walked to the opposite side of the vehicle to ensure the scene was safe; a female officer is then seen running away from the immediate area. Moments later, three officers, seemingly including Shelby, backed slowly away from Crutcher's body. They then crouched down behind a police cruiser.

Crutcher was left alone on the asphalt until around the 3:45 mark in the video, when an officer checks his pockets; it isn't until around 4:30 that anyone crouches down to render any aid.

The police department says Betty Jo Shelby, 42, joined the force in December of 2011. Tulsa World reports that she had previously worked at the Tulsa County Sheriff's Office.


"Please, maintain the peace," Jordan said at his news conference. He added, "Protests are not a problem. ... I grew up in the '60s; it's a very valid way for people to air their grievances."

Structural racism in the US won't diminish with time

We must identify and dismantle the institutions that mark Blackness as criminal and disposable.

Alton Sterling, a 37-year-old black man, was shot and killed by Baton Rouge police on July 5. Less than 24 hours later, Philando Castile, a black Minnesota man five years his junior, was shot dead by police outside of Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The police homicides were the 558th and 559th extrajudicial police killings of 2016, and in the direct aftermath of July 4, stark and sudden reminders that the disproportionate targeting of black men and women by police - an age-old American tradition - unravelled on the streets just like fireworks exploded in the night sky. 

Both killings were captured on video. Castile was shot four times in his stomach, shortly after he reached for his identification, in line with police orders. His fiancee, Diamond Reynolds, videotaped his execution with their four-year old daughter watching from the back seat. Americans, from their telephones and computers, watched shortly after.

After an encounter with two Baton Rouge policemen, Sterling was killed outside of the Triple S Mart. The two policemen arrested Sterling, and while pinning him to the ground, at least one of them shot him and took his life.

Mundane nature of their actions

Castile was pulled over for allegedly having a broken tail light and  Sterling was selling C's to the Baton Rouge convenience store, activities that for most of America should not result in arrest, let alone death.

However, Castile and Sterling were black men, and the threat posed by their bodies alone superceded, and altogether extinguished, the mundane nature of their actions for the arresting policemen.

This racial construction of blackness is what triggers the disproportionate arrest, incarceration, and extrajudicial execution of black men and women.

Black bodies are systematically linked to criminality, and perceived as threatening even when unarmed, following police orders, or being manhandled by two officers. 

This "weaponization of blackness" is a cornerstone of the structural racism that pervades police departments in Baton Rouge and Falcon Heights, and law enforcement agencies between and beyond them.

It is the very lifeline of the growing mistrust for police in black communities, and the crux of the marching orders driving the Black Lives Matter movement forward.

While much of America views the execution of Sterling and Castile as the aberrant acts of deviant cops, black America understands them as foreseeable consequences of coordinated policing structures and strategies.

Racial profiling, stop-and-frisk, and "broken windows" law enforcement are all carefully coordinated policing strategies, which causally link blackness to a higher propensity of criminality. Cadets are trained accordingly, and subsequently, expected to enforce the law in line with this baseline.

The system is not broken

Indeed, the system is not broken. But designed to police, punish and prosecute black men and women as it does.  Particularly in poor and working class geographies, where patrol cars and plainclothes police are more pervasive, and as starkly illustrated in Baton Rouge on Tuesday night, more inclined to exact more intimate and deadly violence. 

The fruit of US law enforcement may be strange, but it is calculable. The natural progeny of embedded structures that leave black women dead in jail cells, black men bleeding to death in cars, and the bodies of black teenagers uncovered and uncollected on hot, sticky city streets for hours.

Structural racism does not diminish with time but rather adjusts to prevailing political norms and sensibilities.

Beyond Black America, however, structural racism is merely a phrase. An abstract phenomenon that is regurgitated by pundits and is ubiquitous on social media, yet seldom understood because it has not been experienced with the same frequency and ferocity.

Indeed, understanding the depths of systemic racism is born most out of experiencing it, and more specifically, enduring the recurring violence and dehumanisation that comes with it.

For (non-black) Muslim Americans, the protracting national security state and state-sponsored Islamophobia - which links religiosity to propensity for terrorism, or  "radicalisation", enables city law enforcement personnel to spy on on Muslim subjects, and seed informants in places of worship. Indeed, another institutional manifestation of structural racism whereby an entire policing model is based almost entirely on stereotyped threat - instead of statistical evidence. 

Latin Americans sit at the intersection of violent criminal policing and immigration enforcement.  Converging mechanisms of state policing that associate Latino identity with an enhanced propensity of criminality, on one hand, and undocumented status on the other.

Genuine solidarity

For non-black communities of colour, genuine solidarity with the Movement for Black Lives exists somewhere between sympathy and education. Namely, a literacy associated with understanding how anti-terror and immigration policing are not only kindred forms of structural racism, but more importantly, ones rooted in the very structures that have bonded, bloodied and broken blacks in America for centuries and, as evidenced in Baton Rouge and Falcon Heights, are still taking place, without hitch, and according to plan.

For non-black allies, sustainable solidarity may begin with marching, protesting or posting "Black Lives Matter" on social media platforms. But it ends with identifying, then seeking to dismantle, the institutions that mark blackness as criminal and disposable, which have been extended to brand brown bodies as suspicious, terrorists, or illegal.

Solidarity isn't merely an act of altruism or coalition building in the United States today. But for Americans of colour, faced with the possibility of a Donald Trump presidency, a necessary step of self-preservation. 

Khaled A Beydoun is an Associate Law Professor with the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law.  He is Affiliated Faculty at UC-Berkeley, and a native of Detroit.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.