TULSA, Okla. (AP) — Embattled Tulsa County Sheriff Stanley Glanz said Monday that he doesn't plan to resign but he also doesn't plan to seek re-election next year.
The 72-year-old Republican told the Tulsa World (http://bit.ly/1AAjtY3 ) that he won't step down because of last month's shooting of an unarmed man by a volunteer deputy, Robert Bates, who is Glanz's close friend. Bates is charged with second-degree manslaughter in the killing of Eric Harris.
After the shooting, an internal memo released from 2009 indicated that officers were worried that Bates hadn't completed the required training and that administrators were silencing criticism of the volunteer.
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Glanz, who has declined repeated interview requests from The Associated Press, announced last week that his second-in-command, Undersheriff Tim Albin, had resigned. Albin was named in the 2009 report as having pressured other officers to keep quiet about Bates' lack of training.
"I'd known Tim for quite a while and had a lot of trust in him," Glanz told the Tulsa World. "Maybe I had too much trust."
Glanz told the newspaper he has taken steps to ensure that employees report directly to him, instead of going through the undersheriff.
Critics who have called for Glanz's resignation say they're not satisfied with the actions he has taken and are demanding an independent, outside investigation of the agency.
"It doesn't satisfy us at all," said Marq Lewis, an organizer of We The People, Oklahoma, a grass-roots group formed last year in the wake of several incidents of police violence in Oklahoma. "It's been known for the last year that he (Glanz) wasn't going to run again."
Bates, an insurance industry executive and longtime friend of Glanz's, donated tens of thousands of dollars' worth of vehicles and high-tech equipment to the sheriff's office. He also donated $2,500 to Glanz's 2012 re-election campaign and served as the campaign chairman.
A longtime officer with the Tulsa Police Department, Glanz was first elected sheriff in 1988. He was unopposed in 2004, 2008 and 2012.
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