Terence Crutcher’s family says the Tulsa shooting video speaks for itself

The father of Terence Crutcher says when he watched video footage of his unarmed son’s fatal shooting by a Tulsa, Okla., police officer, he was overcome with emotion.

“I lost it,” Rev. Joey Crutcher told CNN on Wednesday morning. “It was the most devastating thing that has ever happened to me in my life.”

On Monday, the Tulsa Police Department released videos from a police helicopter and a police cruiser dashcam that show the 40-year-old Crutcher as he walked to his SUV with his hands over his head when he was shot and killed Friday evening. Police had been responding to a stalled vehicle in the middle of a road.

The officer who shot Crutcher, 42-year-old Betty Shelby, was placed on paid administrative leave as police investigate the case as a possible homicide. An attorney for Shelby, Scott Wood, told the Tulsa World newspaper that she had recently undergone drug-recognition training and believed Crutcher was acting erratically and under the influence of PCP.

Tulsa police say they found the drug inside Crutcher’s car.

“I think that the police are trying to figure out a way to justify blaming Terence Crutcher for his own death,” Benjamin Crump, an attorney for the Crutcher family, said on CNN. “We don’t know what they found in the car. We will take it at their word because they got all the ‘evidence’ in their custody.”

The U.S. Department of Justice has launched its own investigation to determine whether a civil rights violation occurred during Crutcher’s death.

“If [Terence] would have been a Caucasian, it would have been totally different,” his father said. “And if the circumstances were in reverse, Terence would have been charged immediately.”

Shelby, a five-year veteran of the force, said Crutcher “kept reaching toward his pockets” and did not comply with her commands to stop, Wood said.

“He has his hands up and is facing the car and looks at Shelby, and his left hand goes through the car window,” Wood said. “And that’s when she fired her shot.”

Another officer deployed a Taser at almost the same time Shelby shot Crutcher.

Damario Solomon-Simmons, a lawyer who is also representing the Crutcher family, said the video speaks for itself.

“We can see on the video that Terence did not have a weapon,” Solomon-Simmons said. “We can see on the video that Terence has his hands up in the air. We can see on the video that Terence was moving at a very slow and deliberate manner. We see very clearly on the video that Terence never made a sudden movement towards the officers or towards going inside of the vehicle. We can see on the video that when Terence was shot the officers were not in imminent harm.”

In the aerial footage, one of the officers in the helicopter can be heard saying Crutcher “looks like a bad dude.”

“I hear someone who was paid to protect and serve us prejudging my brother,” Tiffany Crutcher, Terence’s twin sister, said on CNN. “He didn’t know my brother at all. And I have so many friends who are officers of the law, and they stand with us. And they say that’s not representation of who our public servants are supposed to be. And it just validates what we’ve been angry about. What we’ve been confused about. What we’ve been hurt about.”

She continued: “It says that anyone who’s big in stature or may have brown skin, it just seems like they automatically criminalize or demonize or say, ‘Hey, you know, we’re going to get you.'”

“That big bad dude mattered,” Tiffany added. “He truly mattered.”

Later on MSNBC, Tiffany Crutcher compared her brother’s death to the arrest of Ahmad Khan Rahami, the 28-year-old accused of setting off bombs in New Jersey and New York City over the weekend.

“The New York bomber is alive,” she said. “But my brother is dead. He didn’t commit a crime.”

Slideshow: Terence Crutcher fatally shot by Tulsa, Okla., police officer >>>

Hillary Clinton called Crutcher’s death “intolerable.”

“How many times do we have to see this in our country?” the Democratic nominee said in an interview with radio host Steve Harvey on Tuesday. “In Tulsa? An unarmed man? With his hands in the air? I mean, this is just unbearable, and it needs to be intolerable.”

Clinton continued: “You know, maybe I can, by speaking directly to white people, say, ‘Look, this is not who we are.’”

Donald Trump also commented on the Crutcher’s death, saying while he’s a “tremendous believer in the police and law enforcement,” mistakes can happen.

“I must tell you, I watched the shooting in particular in Tulsa, and that man was hands up,” the Republican nominee said at a church event in Ohio Wednesday morning. “That man went to the car. Hands up. Put his hands on the car. To me it looked like he did everything you’re supposed to do. And he looked like a really good man.”