Pig Who Murdered Terence Crutcher Walks Free
Enough Is Enough!
May 18, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Last night another murdering pig walked free, video evidence be damned. This time it was the cop who murdered Terence Crutcher, a 40-year-old unarmed Black man, last September in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Righteous protests broke out in Tulsa right away—and more are needed.
On September 16, Terence was driving in north Tulsa Oklahoma when his car stalled. He got out, apparently to get help. Then the police came.
Videos show what happened next. Terence is slowly walking to his car with his hands up, away from the police. A cop in a helicopter above can be heard saying, “He’s got his hands up there for her now” and “this guy’s still walking and following commands.” In other words, Terence is clearly not threatening anyone. Terence reaches his car, puts his raised hands on the side of his SUV. By then four cops are about 10 feet away, guns drawn. Terence barely moved, if at all, yet within seconds one cop tased him, and then another—Betty Jo Shelby—shot him dead.
Terence Crutcher didn’t do a goddamn thing to justify being shot down. He was murdered. But the system only charged the murdering pig, Shelby, with manslaughter. She claimed she feared for her life, that she was afraid Terence was moving like he was reaching for a gun inside his car.
But there was no gun and no evidence of threatening moves. (According to the New York Times, “Prosecutors also argued that Officer Shelby fired several seconds before the gesture the defense cited as the basis for her fear.”)
The truth behind the murder was blurted out by another pig in the helicopter above seconds before Terence was murdered. He didn’t know anything about Terence other than he was Black, but he said, “That looks like a bad dude.” Bad dude!? In other words, to the police every Black person is a suspected criminal and a danger, and someone the police “had a license to murder,” as Carl Dix put it at the time.
Why Do Police Keep Murdering Unarmed Black People…And Getting Away With It?
Why do police keep murdering unarmed Black people, and getting away with it – year after year, decade after decade? Because this whole system was founded and is based on the extreme exploitation and violent subjugation of Black people – from outright slavery, to Jim Crow, to the “New Jim Crow” today.
The U.S. legal system has always been set up and shaped to justify the violent subjugation that has kept Black people exploited and oppressed. Today police murder is justified by defining the legal standard for using deadly force as whether or not the cop “reasonably believed that such force was necessary,” according to the Department of Justice itself. This is giving pigs a get out of jail free card: it means the cops can claim they “believed” their lives were in danger or any other excuse to justify murder, no matter how obviously sick and absurd the video evidence shows their justifications to be, as in Terence Crutcher’s case.
Some 400 unarmed people – disproportionately Black and Brown – are killed by police every year. Yet in the last decade, when roughly 4,000 unarmed people were killed by police, only 9 killer cops were convicted of manslaughter.
This will never change until the system that police murder is rooted in is itself uprooted – by a revolution which aims to abolish and totally uproot white supremacy and the oppression of Black people as part of emancipating all humanity.
Trump/Pence Fascist Regime—Doubling-Down on Police Murder
Now the system has doubled-down by putting a fascist, Donald Trump, in power who says the murdering police are the victims. The pigs have supposedly “been subject to unfair demonization and vilification,” because thousands upon thousands have condemned and protested their wanton murder of unarmed people.
Trump and his regime have made clear they oppose any criticism of these murdering pigs – or any legal or political restraints on them. Watch the video of Terence Crutcher being shot down and think about the monstrous, genocidal implications of Trump’s green-light to terrorizing, murdering cops.
This must not be allowed to go down.
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