Photo: According to a Tulsa Police Facebook Post in August, Officer Betty Shelby was surprised with flowers from the victims of a burglary that the officer had assisted.
In a shocking statement by Tulsa County District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler, he told jurors in his opening statements that the case against Tulsa Police Officer Betty Shelby is about race. “Skin color is an issue in the case,” Kunzweiler told the jury.
Honestly, as Bullethead read the reports of what Kunzweiler said in the courtroom, I figured he was going to be able to do what no one else has yet done. Actually make a case that Officer Betty Shelby acted because Terrence Crutcher was black.
A week into the trial, Kunzweiler ended his case and not only could he not prove that Shelby, a grandmother, with no complaints or discipline on her in a decade of law enforcement experience, was not a racist, Kunzweiler literally made the case that she acted reasonably.
Maybe this is why the DA said what he did. The only way he will get his best outcome, a hung jury, is to convince a juror, no matter what the evidence says, that embedded racism is why all of this happened.
Calling witnesses at the scene, Kunzweiler was able to let the jury hear that not just Shelby would have used deadly force, but in a similar situation, they would have also.
Tulsa Police Officer Tyler Turnbough testified that Crutcher’s behavior made him extremely uncomfortable and uneasy. Another state witness, Tulsa Police Officer Jason Roy arrived to the scene as the shooting occurred. Asked what he would have done if he had been in Shelby’s shoes, knowing what he knows now, would he have fired his weapon? He answered “yes.”
But, not all was lost on Kunzweiler. He called Tulsa Police Helicopter Pilot Michael Richert to the stand who happened to be a few thousand feet in the air above the situation. Richert said he was not threatened.
Boom!
That must be the evidence that Steve Kunzweiler-Mosby was looking for and it certainly was what the national press waited on. National headlines from the first day of the trial was “Other officers felt no threat.”
Congratulations Fake Media.
You plugged your ears for all of the officers that witnessed this encounter a few feet away from Terrence Crutcher and used what a helicopter pilot said. The same helicopter pilot that said he was a “bad dude” because as he testified, “in his 12 years on the force, he’s never seen someone walk away from an armed officer, and for that reason, he knew the situation was bad.”
Kunzweiler-Mosby has failed so miserably, several local activists are questioning on social media whether he is intentionally helping Betty Shelby.
Well, take it from ole Bullethead. Kunzweiler-Mosby isn’t trying to help Shelby and the only reason he had to mention skin color is there is literally nothing else to talk about.
When he tries, the case tanks.
As we go into week two of the trial, it is going to get more entertaining and sad for the District Attorney.
I would have respected him more if instead of race baiting in his opening statements, he would have told this truth.
This trial is not about skin color. This trial is about PCP and a man that has struggled with that drug addiction for most of his adult life. He’s assaulted cops, trafficked drugs and was arrested numerous times for various offenses. Law enforcement has had to fight him, point weapons at him and on a night in September 2016, the tragedy that is drug addiction to the most powerful drug on the planet ended his life.
The choice was simple on that day for Terrence Crutcher and it was his decisions that created this tragedy. If Crutcher did not take PCP and disobey commands no one with any sense believes we would be talking about this right now.
No one wins here. If Betty Shelby is acquitted, she wins nothing and if she is convicted, Crutcher’s family wins nothing.
The only winners here are the racist activists that will use a man’s tragic life of drug addiction and violent crimes to spread a false narrative of police racism.