Via Lawrence O’Donnell, this should surprise no one:
Supervisors at the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office were ordered to falsify a reserve deputy’s training records, giving him credit for field training he never took and firearms certifications he should not have received, sources told the Tulsa World.
At least three of reserve deputy Robert Bates’ supervisors were transferred after refusing to sign off on his state-required training, multiple sources speaking on condition of anonymity told the World.
Bates, 73, is accused of second-degree manslaughter in the shooting death of Eric Harris during an undercover operation on April 2.
The sources’ claims are corroborated by records, including a statement by Bates after the shooting, that he was certified as an advanced reserve deputy in 2007.***Additionally, Sheriff Stanley Glanz told a Tulsa radio station this week that Bates had been certified to use three weapons, including a revolver he fired at Harris. However, Glanz said the Sheriff’s Office has not been able to find the paperwork on those certifications.
The sheriff’s deputy that certified Bates has moved on to work for the Secret Service, Glanz said during the radio interview.“We can’t find the records that she supposedly turned in,” Glanz said. “So we are going to talk to her to find out if for sure he’s been qualified with those (weapons).”
Undersheriff Tim Albin was unavailable for comment Wednesday but in an earlier interview, Albin said he was unaware of any concerns expressed by supervisors about Bates’ training.
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.
He rejected claims that Bates’ training records were falsified and that supervisors who refused to do so were transferred to less desirable assignments.
***Bates said in the statement that he had been involved in “at least 100 other” assignments, such as the undercover operation planned on April 2.
In that statement, Bates said he contacted a task force member on April 1 to ask if there was a “pending operation” he could assist with.
The task force member informed Bates of the plan to have an undercover officer buy a gun from Harris the following day.Officials said Harris could have faced up to life in prison for selling the firearm because he had prior felony convictions.
During a briefing hours before the shooting, Bates said he was informed that Harris was “a bad son of a b—-” who had gang affiliations.
Wanna be tough guy bribed a poice department to get in on the action. Heads should roll and the charges need to be upgraded.
Just Some Fuckhead
Sheriff is named for the tip of the penis? Did not see that coming.
east is east
Insanity. This needs to stop. It is getting to the point where local police forces need to be dissolved and replaced with federal policing until this nonsense is addressed.
Wag
” Heads should roll and the charges need to be upgraded.”
All true. But they won’t.
Tree With Water
“At least three of reserve deputy Robert Bates’ supervisors were transferred after refusing to sign off on his state-required training..”.
Which at least proves there are some smart, responsible people thereabouts. That in turn lends hope those people will be able to rebuild that department after the coming purge. And hope is in order, because at the moment the entire state of Oklahoma looks like that episode of the Twilight Zone in which the sun stopped shining.
RSA
Another interesting bit from the article:
Okay, yeah, now I can see how effective his training was.
FlyingToaster
Glibertarianism meets oligarchy.
I’m getting really sick of this neo-confederate bullshit. “State’s Rights” can kiss my shiny metal ass. Get rid of NoChildLeftBehind and set some minimum standards for policing. And get rid of the military weapons in the hands of police.
Note: some idiot left a backpack on the corner of Berkeley and St. James today — about 5 blocks from the Marathon Finish Line. Instead of shutting down the city, Boston PD closed the intersection, brought in the bomb squad, determined it was a backpack not a bomb, and cleared out. In 25 minutes. Occasionally, we can learn.
South is bumfuked
People in comments be all like
He bought five cars for the task force! -Ooops that’s in the story!
In the comments: “Guess the reports that high-ranking sheriff department officials have been treated to vacations on Bates’ very large boat in Florida are now becoming more relevant in this conversation….”
srv
Old people need to feel useful. He just wanted to do his part.
east is east
@srv: Good job. Crap on people who have gathered in the years. Very classy.
pseudonymous in nc
@RSA: Makes you wonder whether Sheriff Joe has a nice little earner going on there for Geritol Kopz and other pay-to-play law enforcement wannabes.
Mike E
@pseudonymous in nc: Yep, sorta like fantasy baseball camp.
scav
If being a cop is so dangerous dangerous, why is it apparently an acceptible hobby-substitute for bingo for bored olds? Good to know Tulsa doesn’t coddle the aging. Also, that battey failure timing seems to be stellar — Bates clearly know how to fine-tune his tech purchases for the force. Just more evidence of what an asset he is to them. And it’s clearly a tribute to the forces committment to maintaining cardio-pulmonary health in their elderly reserves that apparently so few of them are doing their bit by shuffling the papers maintaining evidence of certification, let alone crime-related chains of documentation.
dogwood
All this crap is the result of the inability of government to raise taxes at any level. I live in a small community of around 50,000 that is about 85% white and overwhelmingly working class. The fines for traffic violations and license and registration lapses have more than quadrupled in the past decade. The minority and poor population isn’t large enough for police to make their quotas, so everybody gets it here.
scav
Seriously though, that photo of Bates turning himself in somehow looks like Cheney to me, and that just brings flashbacks of the old tame quail and friend hunts of yore. Post tramatic somethings.
Violet
Oh good. Inspires so much confidence.
Alison
@east is east: Yes, because THAT’S the thing to worry about here. Not that this old fucker murdered someone, but that someone noted that he is, in fact, an old fucker.
Yeah okay.
Mike in NC
Who watches the Watchmen? Apparently nobody, as I read that every state uses thousands of these untrained reserve cops in some capacity, even if it’s only for parking lot duty.
Amir Khalid
I’m keen to know who else is going to be prosecuted, and for what, over all this. The alleged falsification of public records re Reserve Deputy Bates’ training certainly looks like a crime.
Belafon
@Mike in NC: Most of the people you’re talking about aren’t allowed to have guns while doing those jobs.
This guy paid to carry a gun.
Hal
A couple of days ago someone posted a little meme on Facebook that said: “Police treating you poorly? Have you thought about not breaking the law?” It was a caption accompanied by that photo of Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka. This is one of the fundamental problems with this issue of police brutality. Too many white people, who are not affected by this type of police mistreatment and abuse on the same level, react this way by default. Until that changes I just don’t think this issue will be addressed in a meaningful way.
FlyingToaster
@Belafon:
This.
Here, most of our “Reserve” or “Auxiliary” are actually state Police Academy recruits. Like an internship before they start classes. There’s no gun. They do traffic control, parking, and ride-alongs on patrol.
There’s always one in spring stationed near the (public) school en route to my daughter’s school; he or she parks their police car and sits on the trunk with a yellow vest and radar gun so that people don’t fly through the crossing guards, kids, and school busses at 50mph.
The difference from here to Oklahoma and similar situations is that in the “can’t raise taxes for love or money” jurisdictions, the local cop shops seem to be relying on their rich retirees for equipment; and giving them guns and uniforms in exchange.
South is bumfuked
Kid Rock too?
Kid Rock named on Oakley Police reserve application, attorney says
Maybe he’s been working the Waffle House bar rush and strip club security gigs on the side?
philpm
As the Ferguson Police Department still needs, the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office needs to be nuked and rebuilt from the ground up. What a load of crap. Everyone involved with allowing this guy to carry a gun should be in jail permanently.
JordanRules
@South is bumfuked: He’s such a poser POS.
RaflW
Two thoughts, if the above is accurate:
1. Good on those three who refused to falsify.
2. The Secret Service is a mess. Still.
seaboogie
@srv: I guess that since big game hunting to prove the size of your cojones with a trophy of a big scary animal from Africa is on the decline due to the protection of endangered species, a fella’s gotta resort to hunting some of them big strapping black domestic bucks who wander into civilized areas these days.
Makes me want to doff my sensible shoes and plant a stiletto heel into the shriveled little crouch of his ‘manhood’.
Villago Delenda Est
Someone already covered the heads need to roll aspect, and how of course they will not.
Still, the inherent wrongness of all this, starting with idiots who squeal about taxes to pay for it all, just makes me more cynical that anything can be accomplished in this country without resorting to extreme measures.
MattF
So, the guy was old, untrained, uncertified, armed with a taser and a revolver, on a team dealing with a physically dangerous suspect. What could possibly go wrong? So much crap here, we must be in the sewer.
South is bumfuked
@JordanRules:Kid Rock has been arrested at least a few times for alleged altercations. I can’t remember if he’s ever plead guilty or been convicted.
” Hullett described Rock as “very cooperative,” despite giving officers the slip earlier. Hullett said the artist left through a back door of another strip club when authorities showed up to arrest him.
When police caught up with him, Rock said he had dodged them because he wanted to sober up before being booked, Hullett said.”
Did he get badges for any of his klingons?
NotMax
Lesson is to commit crimes after 10 p.m., when the age 70+ “volunteers” are sound asleep, dreaming their blood-splattered dreams of being Clint Eastwood.
Oh-klahoma
Where the wind comes sweeping down the plain
Would-be cops wave guns
Like modern Huns
Mowing down whoever’s in their range
We know as a matter of course
A big check gets you put on the force
And when we say
Yeow! A-YIP-I-O-EE-AY
We’re only saying
“You’re getting shot in Oklahoma”
Who needs training? Fire away!
More seriously, what Wag said above.
Amir Khalid
@South is bumfuked:
Given his arrest record, I wouldn’t expect Kid Rock’s application to become a reserve police officer was successful.
scav
@South is bumfuked: Seriously, town of 300 with a reserve force of somewhere between 100 and 149 over and above any actual police? And all the names of reserve officers / donators of funding were were to utterly private and unknown to the public? Wow golly, is that a safe place to live that probably more than complies with the Brooksian ideals of deeply personal, intimate, trusting and fiercely privacy-respecting relationships with officers.
John M. Burt
If it could be shown (it can’t and won’t be, but if it could) that Bates bought his way in hoping that he might one day get a chance to kill someone and get away with it, then wouldn’t the charge be first-degree murder?
I’m sure he faces no significant risk of serious consequences that might trouble his few remaining years on this Earth, but isn’t he even a little bit worried about having to answer to a higher authority?
I know that if I were in his position, I would seriously consider making a full confession.
chris9059
@Violet:
Given recent evidence of Secret Service incompetence, I’m not suprised.
RobNYNY1957
@Just Some Fuckhead:
It means “splendor” in German.
“Glans,” the tip of a penis, is named after the Latin word for “acorn,” the idea being that the tip of an uncircumcised penis looks like an acorn with the cap intact.
JordanRules
@John M. Burt: I’m sure he thinks his higher authority is just fine with it and that he was in his proper place; ya know, the type of thinking that helped him do it in the first place.
Judge Crater
I get the feeling that the police and their groupies, and all the gun craving preppers and survivalists and concealed-carry fruitcakes, are fantasists living out their infantile dreams of wild-west shootouts and gun battles.
The crazy incident in Cleveland where half the force chased down an innocent, if drug and alcohol impaired, couple and turned the victims and their car into swiss cheese with volleys of gun fire is the new paradigm. Listen to Wayne LaPierre to get a feeling for the aching need of these gun worshipers to “defend” themselves. “Stand your ground” is just a variation of Don’t Tread on Me.
It’s the domestic expression of the fear and aggression that we as a nation have turned on the world after 9/11. When you’re scared and angry, shooting a guy with a broken tail light eight times in the back feels rational especially if you wear a badge.
We’re just a violent nation whose anger is fueled and expressed with guns.
Bystander
Just what professional cops want: A 73 year old with no training, receiving no pay or benefits, showing everyone just how easy it is. WalMart greeters will be the new Police Academy.
NotMax: Considering a moniker change to NotHammerstein? Very funny!
NonyNony
@Judge Crater:
I’ve long connected the folks in that group to LARPers – except LARPers are typically people who can separate fantasy from reality and keep their role playing to weekends and conventions. These guys have gotten so immersed in their role playing that they can’t get out.
It’s why I’m happy to see guys like that Tea Party guy that posted the video saying he was going to vote for Clinton because the Republicans want to take away his health insurance. It’s like someone has finally noticed that the game has been going on too long and that it’s starting to affect his personal life and maybe it’s time to do something else for a while.
NonyNony
@Bystander:
Dude was rich. The cops around him I’m sure knew the actual score – let him pretend to be a cop and he keeps passing the gravy boat to the department. It’s the fact that they let him have a gun that surprises me – I would have figured that the cops he was riding along with would have insisted that he be limited to a taser. But he was the man with the gravy, so he probably got whatever he wanted. (Plus I will admit – out West the idea of a 73 year old guy carrying a gun around is not all that unusual. Maybe the cops didn’t really think anything of it given that their grandpas probably concealed carry all around town anyway.)
Karen
@Wag:
He’ll probably get a gold star for his first kill. If the gatekeepers were forced to falsify things, it’s obvious that they wanted to have every “I” dotted and every “T” crossed and they were more concerned with who this guy could kill. Because that’s how they see it. Killing is good. Killing is macho. Killing is expected.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@dogwood: Yup.
For some reason the civic understanding that taxes aren’t money collected to sit in a bank account or to give out to lazy bureaucrats and undeserving moochers has been lost. There always needs to be pushback so that people are reminded that taxes pay in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. That stuff isn’t free.
In the ’70s there was lots of talk about “cost-benefit analysis” when it came to environmental regulations. These days, the “benefit” side of almost any government action has seemingly been completely left out of the discussion. What’s most aggravating (to me) is that we learned all this stuff years and decades ago.
Cheers,
Scott.
AMinNC
Are citizens in and around Tulsa writing letters to the editors of their local papers making the connection between “Pay-to-Play Dress Up Police Officer” and the lack of taxes to support real and adequate police forces and officer training?
It would be great to see local progressives consistently and publicly make the case that taxes, you know, make civilization possible. And every time stuff like this comes to light, it’s a concrete example of that. The Right has killed us with the narrative that taxes are always, always just the big bad gubmint taking your hard-earned dollars from you and wasting them. We need to push back and show that taxes let us have schools and parks and Medicare and safe meat to eat, and, yes, police. (Of course, many police departments are heinous in their own right, but that’s a whole other series of posts).
RAM
I can’t believe that sheriff’s department’s liability insurance company would put up with this bullshit. Back several years ago when I was still an editor, I assigned a reporter to do a ride-along with one of our local cops for a story, and he practically had to sign his life away. But then again, he wasn’t a rich donor, so there was that…
Nutella
@Amir Khalid:
Yes, falsifying police records is a crime in most jurisdictions. It is only enforced against people outside of the establishment, though.
A poor, black, or female person who falsely reports a crime or covers up a real crime will get charged for it in a second. A cop or a rich white man can falsify any and all police records and not even get a stern warning.
Samuel Knight
Falsifying records is a crime under Title 18 of the Federal Criminal Code. And doing so repeatedly clearly shows intent. And if they received Federal funds they have mis-use of Federal funds as well, The donation angle could probably also be argued to be bribery another criminal violation. etc.
If they want to throw the book at the sheriff and the volunteer they can easily indict the lot of them. The question is if they want to.
boatboy_srq
@Violet: I caught that too. Very comforting that tools who STFU and do what they’re told will get rewarded by joining the unit tasked with protecting the Blah President. I can just imagine that former deputy making the arrangements for Bates to meet said President: no Tasers at the event, natch. I in turn want to know what happened to the three deputies who did not sign off on Bates’ [lack of] training: IYAM they deserve a medal for that.
Paul in KY
@NotMax: Well done!
Paul in KY
@RAM: See, he went thru all that BS ‘training’. I assume you did not, thus all the forms.
Bill
There is so much wrong with this story, much of which has already been covered in the comments. Do we really allow rich old white guys to play cop with live ammo now?
This is going to be interesting:
Its just reeks of: “Hey we need to blame this on someone. Who’s can we name that won’t make the department look bad? How about that woman who left to joint the secret service?”
Calouste
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Churchill’s old quote “Americans Will Always Do the Right Thing — After Exhausting All the Alternatives” should be updated to:
Americans Will Always Do the Right Thing — After Exhausting All the Alternatives. And then they start all over again.
Quaker in a Basement
He coulda taken up golf. Gone fishing. Tutored school kids. Done a little gardening. Traveled.
Gex
He’s going down. And that department is going to pay big time. BIG TIME if they fraudulently certified him and put him on the streets.
And none of that is anywhere near enough to make up for what happened. Of course nothing would be.
Fuck their breaths.
Gex
@Quaker in a Basement: None of those offer the thrill of hunting black men. Whenever I something like this happens with a guy this age, I am reminded that when he started school, schools were still segregated.
Tehanu
I liked what Charlie Pierce said about this. The victim’s family is going to own Tulsa once the civil suit happens.