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https://www.tulsaworld.com/news/loc...cle_ef592b5c-4fb9-5ee1-9f4a-543cb21ac559.html
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'The situation is very ugly': Protest targets Betty Shelby's teaching law enforcement training class
Elected officials and faith leaders criticized the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office on Monday for allowing former Tulsa Police Officer Betty Shelby to teach a course on surviving critical incidents, saying it is a step backward for race relations in Tulsa.
“We’re saying that you need to get another teacher,” said state Rep. Regina Goodwin, D-Tulsa, backed by about three dozen protesters outside the Tulsa County Courthouse. Several of them held #BanBetty signs.
“You gotta get another teacher because Betty Shelby, you know, she had her ‘60 Minutes,’ and I remember what she said, ‘I would rather be tried by 12 than carried by six,’ and Terence Crutcher didn’t get an opportunity to get that statement. ... Folks are talking about there’s a scab on the wound. There’s no scab here because there’s been no healing.”
Shelby, now a Rogers County sheriff’s deputy, is scheduled to teach the class — titled “Surviving the Aftermath of a Critical Incident” — at the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office on Tuesday.
Shelby, when she was a member of the Tulsa Police Department, shot and killed Terence Crutcher in September 2016 on a north Tulsa street next to his SUV. She was subsequently charged with manslaughter and acquitted eight months later.
The course is intended to “describe some of the challenges” that follow critical incidents, such as officer-involved shootings. The training reportedly includes exposing participants to the legal, financial, physical and emotional aspects of critical incidents.
Goodwin questioned the survival aspect of the course during Monday’s protest.
“This class that Betty Shelby is being afforded the opportunity to teach, ... it is called ‘surviving the aftermath of a critical incident,’ ” Goodwin said. “And I think the words are real pretty, but the situation is very ugly.”
Goodwin remarked on Shelby’s acquittal, her hiring at the Rogers County Sheriff’s Office and receiving back pay from the city. Multiple speakers remarked that Crutcher did not survive their encounter.
“We feel that she created the incident,” Goodwin said. “Yet she gets to skip to the head of the class after she failed the test, and she gets to become the teacher.”
The course is accredited by the Council on Law Enforcement Education and Training for four credit hours and counts toward two hours of mental-health training, according to its synopsis. The seminar is free.
Shelby has instructed the class for other agencies. Goodwin said the course “has already been taught, word has it, at the Tulsa Police Department.”
Tulsa Police Sgt. Shane Tuell said Shelby has not taught the class for or at the department. Whether Tulsa police officers sought the course on their own was unknown Monday.
However, Tuell said a flier circulated at the Tulsa Police Academy advertised the course.
Most of those at the courthouse Monday protested not the training itself but specifically that Shelby was leading the instruction. Rodney Goss, pastor of Morning Star Baptist Church, described the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office as “tone deaf.”
The Rev. Chris Moore of Fellowship Congregational Church said that “if we’re really serious about healing wounds — if that is more than just a marketing campaign — then we best get serious about the business of true reconciliation. Truth and reconciliation, for you cannot have one without the other.”
Moore also said that “training for law enforcement is desperately needed, but if you do tone-deaf things like this, getting a former cop acquitted in a high-profile, controversial verdict to teach the course on surviving a critical incident, an incident which many in the community feel she created with her own actions, then no amount of training is possibly going to rebuild broken relationships between law enforcement and portions of our community.”
Rogers County Sheriff Scott Walton said he was supportive of Shelby’s instructional efforts. Walton, who has sat through the class, said it is intended to illustrate to law officers how an action, such as a shooting, can occur in “microseconds” and unravel for months.
“It’s not about opening wounds,” Walton said. “It’s about Betty Shelby teaching something that opens law enforcement’s eyes. If this was taught to the community, I think it would open (their) eyes to what law enforcement has to endure.”
Rogers and Tulsa counties sheriffs’ offices maintain that the class “does not pertain to the shooting itself, but instead the potential aftermath faced by law enforcement officers following a critical incident,” Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Casey Roebuck said in a statement.
“We want our personnel and those from other agencies that attend training at TCSO to be as prepared as possible for every aspect of a dealing with a critical incident,” Roebuck said.
Tulsa County Sheriff Vic Regalado declined to comment. CLEET representatives did not return a request for comm
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