Driver’s PCP Delusions Posed No Threat in Tulsa
Reginald Poindexter
Maybe the lady cop should have just let the man cop deal with the situation. Even Donald Trump has called the video from the Tulsa incident “disturbing.” But looks can be deceiving.
Police found PCP in the vehicle used by Terence Crutcher the night he was fatally shot by an officer, a Tulsa Police Department official confirmed to the Tulsa World on Tuesday afternoon. The attorney for the Tulsa police officer who fatally shot Crutcher had said Monday that the officer, Betty Shelby, thought he was acting like he might be under the influence of that drug.
Homicide Sgt. Dave Walker, who confirmed that a vial of PCP was found, declined to say where in the vehicle investigators recovered it, nor did he say whether officers determined that Crutcher, 40, had used it Friday evening.
The Medical Examiner’s Office is expected to provide toxicology information as part of a larger autopsy report.
Police have said Shelby shot Crutcher once in the upper right part of his chest at 36th Street North near Lewis Avenue about 7:45 p.m. Friday. Tulsa Police Chief Chuck Jordan said during a Monday afternoon news conference that Crutcher was unarmed.
Well, if Crutcher was on PCP, it would explain why he left his car with the doors open and the engine on in the middle of the street and ran from it yelling that it was going to explode.
But still, it’s not as if someone on PCP presents a danger. Especially not while driving a car down the middle of the street. And it’s certainly not against the law. Not any law that a black man needs to obey.
Attorney Benjamin Crump, in apparent response to the new information, said during a Tuesday afternoon news conference that “if we started to condemn everybody to death who might have some drugs in their system, all our neighborhoods would be affected. And so we know that’s not correct.”
Benjamin Crump knows these things, having been involved in the Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown cases.
“Let us not be thrown a red herring and to say because something was found in the car that is justification to shoot him,” Crump said. Police released on Monday two 911 calls made Friday reporting that an SUV had been abandoned in the middle of 36th Street North, with one anonymous caller telling a dispatcher that a man she saw there might be “smoking something.”
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Attorney Scott Wood, who represents Shelby, told the World previously that his client believed that Crutcher was under the influence of PCP, based on things she learned during drug-recognition expert training. Helicopter camera footage also showed that an unidentified officer said Crutcher “looked like a bad dude” who “could be on something” shortly before he hit the ground.
But Attorney David Riggs, speaking on behalf of the family, said the officers at the scene did not interact with Crutcher appropriately. Family members have alleged that the comment was made out of racial bias.
“You have to ask yourself what is the proper way to handle a situation where someone is acting in a strange way and perhaps not entirely in control of his emotions, mentality, mental state at that time,” Riggs said. “We can’t begin treating everyone in our society, whichever level they might be from, as someone who is a threat to the rest of us because they have a serious condition known as drug addiction.”
Of course! PCP addicts should never be considered a threat to society. Normal people engage in cannibalism too, you know.
PCP or phencyclidine can cause slurred speech, loss of coordination and a sense of strength or invulnerability, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the National Institute on Drug Abuse. At high doses, it can cause hallucinations and paranoia.
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Crutcher had been arrested in the past. In 1995 in nearby Osage County, officers said they saw him fire a weapon out a vehicle window. Records show Crutcher was ordered to exit the vehicle for a pat-down search and began making a movement to his right ankle before an officer managed to get control of him. A .25-caliber pistol was found in his right sock, according to an affidavit.
Crutcher received suspended sentences after entering a no-contest plea to charges of carrying a weapon and resisting an officer, court records show.
Oklahoma prison officials confirmed Crutcher also served four years in prison from 2007 to 2011 on a Tulsa County drug-trafficking conviction.
Court records show officers used force against Crutcher on at least four separate occasions, including a 2012 arrest on public intoxication and obstruction complaints. In that case, an officer used a stun gun on Crutcher twice while he was face down on the ground because the officer said Crutcher didn’t comply with at least three orders to show his hands, a police affidavit states. Crutcher’s father showed up while he was being arrested and told the officers that his son had “an ongoing problem” with the drug PCP, the affidavit states.
Okay, but that was all in the past. Terence was turning his life around.
He was going to make his family proud. How?
Crutcher was due to start a music appreciation class at a local community college Friday, the day Tulsa police officer Betty Shelby fatally shot him outside his abandoned SUV.
If a music appreciation class at a community college is what you are counting on to straighten your life up, and you get fried on PCP on the first day, it really does not portend well for the future. Still, the video clearly shows Crutcher walking to his vehicle with his hands up. So doesn’t that mean he was gunned down in cold blood out of jealousy for his suntan?
Actually, the police had instructed him to get on his knees, not to raise his hands or walk to his car. He continuously ignored and disobeyed police orders.
Shelby’s attorney, Scott Wood, says that when she showed up and asked Crutcher whether the car was his, he did not respond. Crutcher put his hands in his pockets as he walked toward her, then removed them and put his hands up before walking toward the back of her patrol car and putting his hands back in his pockets, Wood said.
He said she planned to arrest Crutcher, who she thought was intoxicated, and called dispatch. Crutcher did not comply when Shelby took out her gun and told him to get on his knees, but instead walked toward his car, the attorney said.
Wood said Shelby fired her gun at the same time that Turnbough fired a Taser at Crutcher because she had “tunnel vision” and did not realize other officers had arrived on scene.
I get no joy out of speaking ill of the deceased. It is not my intention to say that he deserved to die. But he had certainly pushed his luck for decades, and police have so much black criminality to deal with and cannot be counted on to pitch perfect games every day.
However, it is my intention to say that a media and an “activist” and legal establishment that try to portray Crutcher and others like him as cherubic Rhodes Scholars who were a precious assets to society are responsible for the death, destruction, and mayhem that we see in Charlotte tonight and that we have seen in Baltimore and Ferguson and will no doubt be seeing more of.
