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Staff
at the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office were reportedly ordered to falsify the
training records and firearms certificates of a reserve deputy who mistook his
firearm for a Taser, leading to the shooting death of an unarmed black man
earlier this month.
Robert
Bates, 73, a wealthy insurance executive who worked as a volunteer reserve
deputy with the Tulsa County Police, was awarded “credit for field training he
never took and firearms certifications he should not have received,” sources
told the Tulsa World.
It
was also revealed that “at least three” of Bates’ supervisors were transferred
from the department after refusing to sign off on his state-required training,
sources speaking on condition of anonymity told the Tulsa World.
Tulsa
Country Sheriff Stanley Glanz told a Tulsa radio station that Bates had been
licensed to use three firearms, including a handgun he mistook for a stun gun
when he fatally shot Harris while detaining him. However, the Sheriff’s Office
said it has not been able to find Bates’ certification paperwork.
The
Sheriff’s Office has released a summary listing training courses Bates had been
given credit for, but have not released documents showing which supervisors
signed off on that training.
Undersheriff
Tim Albin rejected claims that Bates’ training records were falsified, and that
supervisors involved were transferred to less desirable assignments.
“The
training record speaks for itself. I have absolutely no knowledge of what you
are talking about,” Albin said. “There aren’t any secrets in law enforcement.
Zero! Those types of issues would have come up.”
To
further complicate the case, Tulsa County Sheriff’s Major Shannon Clark told
the Los Angeles Times that Bates had donated “a couple cars” as well as
contributing “thousands of dollars” to Sheriff Glanz's reelection campaign in
2012, adding: “He isn’t the only millionaire we’ve got” in the police reserve
program.
Clark
played down the financial contributions, saying it played no part in Bates
becoming a reserve deputy.
“People
thought he bought his way into the reserve program, and that’s not true.”
On
Tuesday, Bates turned himself in to authorities in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he is
accused of second-degree manslaughter in the shooting death of Harris.
In
2006, an FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin cited by AP reported the total number of
reserve officers nationwide was around 400,000.
The
employment of older reservists, such as Bates, is rather common practice,
according to reports by AP. Oklahoma has no age restrictions, for example, and
data available on Washington, DC, reservists in 2011 noted that 42 percent of
the city’s auxiliaries were 50 or older.
Full-time
police officers have a mixed opinion of their reservist colleagues.
“Anyone
who does another man’s job for free is a glory hound,” said one officer to
PoliceOne.com for an article on reservists. “If they wanted to ‘protect and
serve’ then take the test and take the job and don’t ‘play’ at another man’s
calling!”
Oklahoma
requires each reserve officer to go through at least 240 hours of training on
“legal basics, investigative procedures and use of firearms,” according to AP,
plus 320 hours of additional instruction, which amounts to half that required
of a full-time police officer.
Bates,
who served as an officer with the Tulsa Police Department from 1964 to 1965,
had successfully completed the required training, and has updated his reservist
certification every year, Clark told AP.
He
has accepted full responsibility for his actions, even speaking to media when
advised by his attorney not to.
To his credit, Bates
confirmed that he fired the fatal shot. “It was me,” he admitted to Tulsa World
last week. “My attorney has advised me not to comment. As much as I would like
to, I can’t.”
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