The Tulsa county sheriff’s office is conducting a review of its reserve officer program following the killing of an unarmed black man by 73-year-old reserve deputy Robert Bates, it announced on Thursday.
Bates shot and killed Eric Harris, 44, on 2 April during an undercover operation. He told investigators that he meant to use his Taser, not a gun.
“As with any critical incident, we are doing an internal review of our program and policy to determine if any changes need to take place,” Tulsa County sheriff’s major Shannon Clark told Tulsa World. The Guardian has contacted him for comment.
Police have denied reports that Bates may have earned his position with falsified documents. Tulsa World claimed that three supervisors refused to sign off on Bates’s state-required training certificates and were then reassigned.
“The training record speaks for itself. I have absolutely no knowledge of what you are talking about,” undersheriff Tim Albin told the paper. “There aren’t any secrets in law enforcement. Zero. Those types of issues would have come up.”
The Tulsa County sheriff’s office and high-ranking officials in the department have said they were unaware of concerns about Bates’s training.
But sheriff Stanley Glanz admits that the office has not found Bates’s gun certification records. Glanz told KFAQ radio that Bates had been trained by a female instructor who now works for the US secret service.
“And we’re trying to get a hold of her and talk to her about ... we can’t find the records that she supposedly turned in,” he said in the interview this week. “So we’re going to talk to her and find out if for sure he did qualify with those.”
The office has also released a list summarizing which training courses Bates took, but has not provided information on who certified those courses.
The attorney for Eric Harris’s family, Daniel Smolen, has claimed Bates, an insurance executive, paid his way in to the sheriff’s office.
Bates donated five automobiles and other equipment to the violent crimes task force, which he was working for when he shot Harris, according to Tulsa World, and also worked as a campaign manager on Glanz’s re-election campaign in 2012.
“It’s absolutely mind-boggling that you have a wealthy businessman who’s been essentially deputized to go play like he’s some outlaw, like he’s just cleaning up the streets,” Smolen told CNN.
The sheriff’s office said Harris had sold undercover officers methamphetamine and on 2 April they planned to try to illegally buy a weapon from him. When the officers went to make the arrest during the operation, Harris ran and was stopped by deputies.
Bates shot Harris while he was on the ground, and said: “Oh, I shot him! I’m sorry.”
Video footage shows Harris saying, “Oh my God, I’m losing my breath.” Another officer responds: “Fuck your breath.”
Bates was charged with manslaughter on Monday, turned himself in the next day and then posted the $25,000 bail needed to go free.
