Tulsa Police Release Video Of Oklahoma Reserve Officer Shooting Unarmed Suspect!

The Tulsa Police release the video of unarmed suspect Eric Harris purchasing an unregistered firearm. He would run and eventually get caught. But in the apprehension an elderly reserve officer would "accidentally" fire his service weapon instead of his Taser. Harris was shot and killed. The Department of Justice is investigating this situation. 

In Tulsa, OK there's a controversy. A suspect who was unarmed was shot by a reserve cop who thought he had drawn the Taser. The suspect would later die of his injuries. The Oklahoma State Patrol Enforcement Agency is looking into the death of Eric C. Harris.

This shooting follows a few high profile shootings such as the Walter Scott and Michael Brown shooting.

We here at Journal de la Reyna send our condolences to the family of Eric Harris.

Harris was under investigation for purchasing firearms. While in a police pursuit, Harris would exit the vehicle. The arresting officer would tackle him down.

But in a few seconds, the reserve officer drew the firearm. He would shoot Harris in the back. The officers who restrained him were cursing at him after Harris screamed he was shot by the reserve officer.

Reserve officer Robert Bates inadvertently shot Harris when he was confronting him. Tulsa Police are defending the 73-year old reserve deputy.

This was recorded on body cameras and yet it still didn't make a lick of difference. 

Cops told Eric Harris despite being unarmed and shot in the back, he fucking ran! I guess it's perfectly legal to shoot a fleeing suspect if he's not even armed!

CNN reports that the reserve deputy who shot the suspect with his firearm rather than his stun gun, and another deputy who can be heard cursing at the suspect after he was shot, were not in their normal states of mind because of the elevated stress of apprehending the suspect, according to a Tulsa, Oklahoma, investigator.

As deputies tried to handcuff Harris, Bates arrived with a pepper spray gun in hand. He warned his fellow deputies he was going to use a Taser on the suspect, but instead, he fired a single gunshot — and immediately apologized, Clark said, citing a recently released video.

Clark attributed Bates’ actions to a phenomenon known as “slip and capture.” An example is when someone who drives a car with a manual transmission gets behind the wheel of a car with an automatic transmission. The driver will press her or his left foot down when stopping abruptly, even though there’s no clutch pedal, he said.

Tulsa Police Sgt. Jim Clark was emphatic that Bates had done nothing criminally wrong and went so far as to say the reserve deputy was a victim.

“Reserve Deputy Bates did not commit a crime. Reserve Deputy Bates was a victim, a true victim of slip and capture,” he said. “There’s no other determination I could come to.”

‘He shot him!’

Reserve officer Robert Bates is on leave.

When they set up the undercover sting, police wanted evidence on camera. But when they recorded the operation targeting Harris earlier this month, cameras continued to roll as the suspect ran, and as he was fatally shot.

The Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office released the video on Friday. The shooting was an apparent accident, it has said.

In the last minutes of the video, Harris lies on the pavement with police on top of him.

An officer calls for a Taser, but in place of an electric clicking sound, a gunshot rings out.

A voice can be heard saying, “Oh! I shot him! I’m sorry!” Another officer screams out, “He shot him! He shot him!”

Harris, who is bleeding, calls out, too. He’s losing his breath, he says. An officer yells back at him.

“You fucking ran! Shut the fuck up!” he yells. “Fuck your breath,” he said.

Clark defended the officer’s language, saying the deputy experienced auditory exclusion, never heard the gunshot and thought the suspect was out of breath from running. The language has no bearing on whether the shooting was justified, Clark said.

“One deputy thought he was going to have to shoot this person at the arrest site. It’s very upsetting when you think you are going to have to take someone’s life and this deputy, one of the involved deputies, was upset,” he said. “Secondly, this is total stress. They are going after a dangerous suspect that they have no idea whether or not this person is armed.”

Clark added, “They did not know that he was shot at this time. They had audio exclusion. They was at a point where they couldn’t hear. They didn’t even hear the gunshot go off. The officers did not know that Mr. Harris had been shot.”

An officer can be seen in the video taking his foot off an object lying on the pavement not far from Harris.

Tulsa Police are doing damage control after an elderly cop shot an unarmed man.

Shortly after the suspect is shot, the officers begin tugging Harris’ hands behind his back as the video ends.

Harris later died at a local hospital. Police said at the time of the shooting that Harris admitted to medics at the scene that he may have been under the influence of phencyclidine, a street drug commonly known as PCP.

The video is edited to block out the officers’ faces. Harris is clearly visible.

Police have said that Harris had reached for his waistband, and officers feared he might endanger them. When Harris was on the ground, he “refused to pull his left arm from underneath his body where his hand was near his waistband,” they said after the shooting.

The officer’s body camera video did not reveal that area of Harris’ body.

Bates, a former Tulsa police officer, was placed on administrative leave after the shooting, the sheriff’s office has said.

Asked whether Bates’ age may have been a factor in the shooting, Clark said, “It’s happened to 21-year-old law enforcement officers. It’s happened to 30-year-old law enforcement officers. Age is not really a factor in consideration for the dynamics behind slip and capture events.

BlackLivesMatter. What image will the racist right use?

Despite the details released over the weekend, Harris’ brother says he still want answers.

“I want to know if he was shot in the back accidentally or on purpose. These are all the things that not only I want, but the public wants,” Andre Harris told CNN affiliate KTUL.

Bates’ attorney, Scott Wood, told CNN on Friday he would contact the network later. He had not issued a statement or called back as of Sunday.

With that said, what do you think?

Should Bates be charged with murder?

The Tulsa police are giving him a "pass" because he made a mistake. Looks like the U.S. Justice Department and FBI are investigating this.