A Comparison of a Case of Police Brutality in Charlotte and Tulsa

There are two cases of police brutality that has gone on today and both have not been resolved yet. There is a lot of controversy about police brutality in the United States. In these two cases presented, there will be similarities between them and how both police departments handled the situation. There has been two cases that have to do with police shootings. The Walter Scott case is about Officer Michael Slager who was responsible for the shooting of Walter Scott.

The shooting of Walter Scott happened on April 4th, 2015 in North Charleston, South Carolina. Officer Slager stopped car for a non-function and 3rd brake light.

It has been reported that both had gone into an altercation, which led officer Slager to shoot Scott eight times from the back. The controversy is that officer Slager claimed that Scott had taken his taser. There was an eyewitness, Feidon Santana, who was present at the shooting and claimed that Scott did not grab the police's taser.

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The video that Santana recorded shows officer slager dropped the taser besides Scott's body. On April 7th, Slager was arrested and charged with murder. Then April 8th, Slager was fired by the North Carolina Police Department (NCPD). On January 4th, Slager was released from jail and on a 500,000 dollar bond.

He was put under house arrest and pleaded not guilty in the case. If he is convicted he could face up to life in prison and there is no trial date that has been set as of August 2016.

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Another case of police brutality was the Terence Crutcher shooting. On September 16th 2016, officer Betty Shelby fired a gun at Terence Crutcher in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Both officers Betty and Tyler Turnbough were involved in an incident. This all led to Crutcher losing his life. . On september 16th, the police received a 911 call about an abandoned car in the middle of the street at around 7 pm. It was reported that Crutcher was not in his car and supposedly his car broke down.

The police also stated some things that Crutcher failed to do: kept reaching into his pocket, refused to show his hands, and was walking towards his car despite the fact he was told to stop. Officials also said that he leaned towards his car and reached into it. There were four police officers present at the time as well. Three out of the four officers had body cameras but didn't release videos yet. The only reason why officer Shelby didn't have a body camera was because she wasn't supposed to be at the scene. Officer Shelby stated that she and Crutcher got into a verbal disagreement and he was not complying to her commands. Shortly after that Officer shelby shot Crutcher while Turnbough tasered him.

Officers in the helicopter were conversing while this event took place and even one of them said, "That looks like a bad dude, too, maybe on something"(CNN). Shelby claimed that Crutcher was armed when afterwards it ended up Crutcher had no weapon. After Crutcher was shot, the police officers attended to him a couple minutes later and officer Shelby had a first aid kit in her police car. The aftermath is that Shelby got administrative leave without pay and was charged with first degree manslaughter. She was turned into the Tulsa County Jail but released on a $50,000.00 bail around 20 minutes later. (abcnews) There have been protests in Tulsa but they were reported "peaceful".

The protest in Charlotte were reported violent and have been going on for several days. The first two nights of the protest resulted in property damage. Even the interstate was temporarily shut down. Some protesters were injured and one even died. This all led to the governor of North Carolina to declare a state of emergency and curfew. Recently it was reported that curfew lifted and things became more peaceful over the weeknd. (npr) My opinion of the cases is that both were shootings of African American males and that both police officers involved were not sentenced to prison. The huge issue with these cases that bothers me the most is that both that was killed were unarmed. So the only solution that could honestly settle this is if police officers are trained better to avoid situations like these. If police officers are trained better, this could help avoid police officers shooting unarmed suspects. So if an officer is in a situation, using a gun would have to be the last definite option unless the suspect poses a possible, legitimate danger. There have been too many police shootings of African American males going on lately and it needs to stop.

Updated: Oct 28, 2022
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A Comparison of a Case of Police Brutality in Charlotte and Tulsa. (2022, Oct 28). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/a-comparison-of-a-case-of-police-brutality-in-charlotte-and-tulsa-essay

A Comparison of a Case of Police Brutality in Charlotte and Tulsa essay
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