Oklahoma officer who mistook gun for Taser charged in killing of black man
Sheriff’s office found fatal shooting of Eric Harris by deputy Bob Bates was ‘a mistake’ but family says: ‘This is simply evil’
A 73-year-old insurance salesman and reserve sheriff’s deputy has been charged with second-degree manslaughter after he appeared to accidentally fire his gun instead of his Taser and shot dead an unarmed man, Eric Harris.
Harris, 44, died on 2 April after a sting operation designed to catch him selling a gun went wrong. He fled on foot but was caught and wrestled to the ground.
In video released by the Tulsa County sheriff’s office, the deputy, Bob Bates, yells “Taser”, then a shot is heard and he says: “I shot him, I’m sorry.”
A gun is visible on the ground next to Harris, who cries out in pain: “Oh God, he shot me, I didn’t do shit.”
On Monday the district attorney, Steve Kunzweiler, told the Guardian the sheriff’s office had provided him with the findings of its investigation on Friday afternoon.
In filing the charges on Monday, he said: “Oklahoma law defines culpable negligence as ‘the omission to do something which a reasonably careful person would do, or the lack of the usual ordinary care and caution in the performance of an act usually and ordinarily exercised by a person under similar circumstances and conditions.”
Harris’ brother, Andre Harris, told reporters at a news conference on Monday that officers from the sheriff’s department tried to discourage him from hiring an attorney.
He said he did not believe the shooting was “a racial thing. I don’t think this has anything to do with race. It might have a hint there somewhere. … This is simply evil.”
“When you’re the law, I guess you feel like you can do things and get away with it and not get exposed. Well, we’ve come to expose it. We’ve come to pull a mask off the evil.”
Bates, a wealthy insurance executive in the Oklahoma city, was named the department’s reserve deputy of the year in 2011. He worked for the Tulsa police department for a year in the mid-1960s and is one of 130 volunteer reserves in the sheriff’s department, according to Tulsa World, which said he had donated equipment as well as $2,500 to the re-election campaign for sheriff Stanley Glanz in 2012.
Glanz, 72, told Tulsa World he had not given his friend and fishing companion special treatment and that the sheriff’s office once had an 81-year-old deputy. Bates simply “made an error”, Glanz said. “How many errors are made in an operating room every week?”
On Sunday, the Harris family issued a statement which said they “do not believe it is reasonable for a 73-year-old insurance executive to be involved in a dangerous undercover sting operation” and added: “We do not believe it is reasonable – or responsible – for [the sheriff’s office] to accept gifts from a wealthy citizen who wants to be [a] ‘pay to play’ cop.”
Volunteer police officers are commonplace throughout the US, even in major cities, as cash-strapped departments supplement work by full-time employees. Whether such officers are deployed in desk jobs or armed and involved in potentially dangerous situations depends on the policy of the department and the reserve’s level of experience and training.
The Los Angeles County sheriff’s department pays around 850 reserves $1 per year. New York’s auxiliary police officers number about 4,500. While many departments cite physical fitness as a requirement for reserves, they are often not subject to mandatory retirement ages, which are 55 to 60 for many full-time police officers.
The fatal shooting of another unarmed black man by a white police officer follows the death of Walter Scott, who was killed in South Carolina last week after running away from a routine traffic stop. Scott’s death was filmed by a bystander.
In the video of events in Tulsa, which came from a police body camera, officers continue to try to subdue Harris, one shouting: “Shut the fuck up ... You ran, motherfucker, do you hear me, you fucking ran.”
When the 44-year-old says “I’m losing my breath,” an officer replies: “Fuck your breath.”
Harris died in hospital.
In their statement, Harris’s family said: “Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of all this is the inhumane and malicious treatment of Eric after he was shot ... No human being deserves to be treated with such contempt. These deputies treated Eric as less than human. They treated Eric as if his life had no value.”
More than 200 reserve officers have died in the line of duty, according to a list compiled by the Reserve Police Officers’ Association.
In 2005 a Houston-area constable who was armed was killed by police in a “friendly fire” incident. Last December a reserve deputy constable was arrested after a road rage incident in Houston that saw a woman shot in the head.
Oakley, Michigan, hit legal and insurance trouble after accusations that its police department was being funded by donors who paid more than $1,000 each to become reserve cops, resulting in a village of 300 people having more than 100 officers.
Bates was classified as an “advanced reserve”, assigned to the violent crime force. He was supposed to be in a support role for the sting operation but was thrust to the fore when Harris fled.
At a press conference last Friday, the Tulsa sheriff’s office said its own investigation had concluded that Bates had made a mistake and had not committed a crime. It brought in a Tulsa police sergeant, Jim Clark, as a private consultant.
Clark told reporters that Bates was “a true victim of ‘slips and capture’”, a term used to describe a mistake when someone thinks he or she is taking one course of action but is following another.
It was an argument used by former Oakland police officer Johannes Mehserle to explain why he shot dead Oscar Grant at a Bart station in 2009 when, Mehserle said, he had planned to use his Taser.
Mehserle was convicted of involuntary manslaughter. The incident inspired the 2013 film Fruitvale Station.
