White Tulsa Officer Who Killed Terence Crutcher Has A History Of Drugs, Domestic Violence

Betty Shelby, the Tulsa, Oklahoma, police officer who shot and killed Terence Crutcher, has a long, sordid history with drugs and domestic violence.

Shelby has come under heavy scrutiny since she killed Terence Crutcher, an unarmed black man the officer happened to encounter on the road while reporting to another call. The Tulsa officer was charged with manslaughter on Thursday, but Reuters reports that Shelby was released on $50,000 bond on Friday, less than 24 hours after she initially surrendered to police.

Now the media has discovered that Shelby has a history of domestic violence disputes and past drug use. According to CBS News, Shelby had a domestic dispute with her ex-boyfriend in 1993. Shelby told the Tulsa Police Department about the incident in an application, stating that her former boyfriend hit her vehicle with a shovel, so she returned the favor and did damage to his car. The pair eventually asked the judge to dismiss restraining orders filed by both Shelby and her ex-boyfriend against each other.

However, that’s not the only mark on Shelby’s record. The officer also had a years-long child custody battle with her ex-husband. Tensions became so strained between Shelby and her former husband that her children’s step-mother filed an order of protection against Shelby in 2002. Shelby argued that her ex-husband’s new wife only filed the order to discredit Shelby’s character in the custody hearing.

In the same document that revealed her previous domestic disputes to the Tulsa Police Department, Shelby also admitted that she had smoked marijuana socially when she was 18 years old. This is especially interesting because in the wider phenomena of white police officers killing black people, the victims are usually criminalized as using drugs or being “thugs.”

Drug use and domestic violence aren’t the only complaints Shelby has against her. According to documents released by the Tulsa Police Department, Shelby was named in an excessive force complaint in 2010. That year, a group of officers entered a home with their guns drawn when trying to issue a felony warrant. That excessive force complaint was later considered unfounded and before killing Crutcher, Shelby had no serious disciplinary action on her record.

The Tulsa Police Department released video of the incident, both from a helicopter view and from a police cruiser dashcam. During the helicopter video, one of the officers can be heard commenting that Crutcher, a 40-year-old father of four, looks like a “bad dude.”

The video shows Crutcher without a weapon standing next to his stalled vehicle while complying with police orders. Court prosecutors in Shelby’s manslaughter case filed paperwork that said the officer acted “unlawfully and unnecessarily” when she shot Crutcher in the chest.

Via The Guardian, the district attorney’s chief investigator on the case, Doug Campbell, stated that Shelby “reacted unreasonably by escalating the situation.” The investigator also added that Shelby became “emotionally involved to the point that she overreacted.”

Shelby also told investigators that when she encountered Crutcher, she feared for her life and believed that he would kill her, even though he was unarmed. An autopsy reports that Crutcher died from a fatal gunshot wound to the chest; however, the medical examiner is still waiting for a full toxicology report on the victim.

Shelby is currently on administrative leave from the Tulsa Police Department and could face up to four years in prison if convicted of manslaughter.

[Featured Image by Sue Ogrocki/AP Images]