On Friday, the Oklahoma sheriff’s department released a video from April 2nd that shows an unarmed black man named Eric Harris fleeing police as they exit their cars to chase him.
After officers bring Harris to the ground, an officer calls out the word “Taser” twice, before firing a single shot. The shot fired by Reserve Deputy Robert Bates was fatal.
Harris was pronounced dead an hour later.
The shooting appears to be an accident, because Bates said “Taser” before shooting Harris. When he realizes he’s shot the suspect, the officer drops the gun and says “Oh! I shot him. I’m sorry.”
At Friday’s press conference Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson claimed that Bates was a “victim” of something called “slips and capture” — a police term for when someone believes they are doing one thing but end up doing something else due to a high stress situation.
They maintain that Bates believed he was holding his Taser and not his firearm when he fired the round that killed Harris.
What many viewers of this video may find appalling is as Harris lies face down on the ground crying out “Oh s*** man, he shot me, he shot me! Oh, he shot me!” one officer puts his knee on Harris’s head in an apparent effort to subdue him. Harris is then told to “shut the f*** up” shortly thereafter. When the bleeding man pleads to the officers “I’m losing my breath,” the officer callously responds, “f*** your breath.”
Tulsa County Sheriff’s Capt. Billy McKelvey claimed that the officers who surrounded Harris arrived after Bates fired his gun and were not aware that he had been shot. To make matters worse, Bates, the reserve deputy who shot Harris, is a 73-year-old insurance executive and a wealthy donor to the sheriff’s department.
Bates has not been a full-time officer since 1965.
Despite the video, Tulsa County Sheriffs Office’s investigation concluded that Bates did not commit a crime and no policy violations occurred.