Tulsa police fatally shot 11 people in 12 months after almost two years with no deadly force. What changed?

A fifth fatal encounter this year occurred in March when an officer intentionally ran over a shooting suspect. The woman was on the department’s wanted list for a string of gun-related crimes and had exchanged gunshots with police before being fatally struck by a cruiser.

A nonfatal police shooting in April involved a man reportedly fleeing an officer on foot and then turning around with a gun in his hand, prompting shots from an officer. The person — recognized by the officer as a suspect in a shooting — was critically wounded.

Tulsa police fatally shot seven people in 2016, zero in 2015, five in 2014, one in 2013 and four in 2012, according to a Tulsa World database.

The first fatal police shooting in 2016 didn’t occur until June 15, so there have been 11 fatal shootings involving Tulsa police officers in about 12 months. The most recent was Saturday.

Prior to mid-June 2016, Tulsa police hadn’t fatally shot anyone since Oct. 8, 2014 — a stretch of about 20 months.

Chief Chuck Jordan told the Tulsa World on Wednesday that the Police Department isn’t doing anything different. He noted the zero fatal police shootings in 2015, saying officers are policing the same way and reacting to what people are doing — threats to officers and citizens.

“We are victims of the violence in our society, as well, just like everybody is,” Jordan said. “We’ve talked about the rising homicide rates; we’ve talked about the increase in aggravated assaults — those types of things.

“We see it, too.”

He said that “the bottom line is: When somebody pulls a gun or knife or threatens another citizen with a gun or knife, we don’t have a whole lot of options at that point.”

Tulsa has recorded 44 homicides to date in 2017 and is on pace to break the city’s record of 82 homicides last year, according to the Tulsa World’s homicide database. At the midpoint of 2016, Tulsa had tallied 34 homicides. There were 58 homicides in 2015 and 54 in 2014.

Aggravated assaults have increased in the past three years, with 1,938 in 2014, 2,357 in 2015 and 2,745 in 2016, according to Police Department crime statistics. Aggravated assaults are on a similar pace through April of this year as compared with 2016. The 2,745 in 2016 are the most since at least 2011.

Jordan said some of the fatal police shootings were drug- or substance-related, some involved mental illness and others were simply related to crime.

He said each use of force — especially deadly force — is meticulously reviewed for training, equipment and policy implications. None of the past 11 fatal shootings has resulted in policy changes, he said.

The three fatal police shootings this June have yet to be reviewed by prosecutors for clearance or charges. The first fatal police shooting of 2017, which occurred in February, and the intentional run-over with a cruiser in March, resulted in no charges.

Prosecutors cleared six of the seven fatal Tulsa police shootings in 2016.

District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler charged Betty Shelby, a white police officer, with first-degree manslaughter in the September death of Terence Crutcher, an unarmed black man, in north Tulsa. Shelby was acquitted by a jury in May.

Her acquittal sparked unrest and demonstrations near the Tulsa County Courthouse that night.

The June 9 fatal shooting of mentally ill Joshua Barre — involving Tulsa police and Tulsa County sheriff’s deputies — sparked a much larger and more intense protest that ended after several hours without major problems.

That law enforcement shooting was the first in north Tulsa since Crutcher’s killing.

“I think we’ve seen anecdotal incidents where we have seen a lot more confrontational conversations,” Jordan said of the aftermath of Shelby’s acquittal. “I think that’s dialogue that we need to have. The really productive conversations are the hard ones.”

Now that the criminal case has concluded, Shelby’s use of deadly force on Crutcher is being evaluated internally through Police Department protocols.

Jordan said Shelby’s case appropriately worked its way through the criminal justice system, which followed the Police Department’s objective investigation of the shooting.

”No matter how a trial ends up, there’s going to be somebody on one side or the other that doesn’t like the verdict,” Jordan said. “The bottom line is that’s not for me to say; that’s for the jurors to say.”

Scrutiny engulfed the Crutcher killing because police video showed him slowly walking toward his SUV with his arms raised as Shelby followed behind with her gun trained on him.

She fired a single shot at him at the same time a backup officer deployed a Taser. She contended that she saw Crutcher’s left hand drop down toward a half-open window as if he were reaching for a gun.

Prosecutors allege that Shelby needlessly escalated the encounter with Crutcher, who was unarmed and had no weapons in his vehicle, and overreacted to his not following her earlier commands to stop and keep his hands away from his pockets.

In addition to the three fatal police shootings in June, Sgt. Shane Tuell said Internal Affairs records indicate that the nonfatal April police shooting near 61st Street and Peoria Avenue also is pending a prosecutorial review.

The only 2016 lethal-force case apparently still without resolution involves an officer who shot at an armed robbery suspect in July, Tuell said.

The officers involved in the July and April incidents have returned to duty. Jordan said he put them back to work because the department already is understaffed and there are no aspects of the shootings that would warrant their remaining on paid leave.

“Some of it is strictly an administrative load,” Jordan said of how long it can take the District Attorney’s Office to review such cases.

Sally Van Schenck, Tulsa County District Attorney’s Office spokeswoman, said prosecutors have received preliminary reports on almost all of the Police Department’s officer-involved shootings.

However, she said, Kunzweiler is “completely committed” to the Shannon Kepler trial, so more information on the topic won’t be available until after its conclusion.

Kepler, a former Tulsa police officer, is on trial this week for the third time after two hung juries on a first-degree murder charge in connection with fatally shooting his daughter’s boyfriend in August 2014.

Fatal police shootings by year

Source: Tulsa World database