TULSA, Okla. ā Thereās been undeniable progress in the relationship between the Tulsa police and the city's Black community in the past 100 years. Then again, itās hard to imagine it could have gotten worse.
Complaints about police bias and a lack of enough minority officers remain. But the police chief is now a Black man from north Tulsa, the area that includes what once was Americaās wealthiest Black business district.
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Back in 1921 ā decades before the civil rights movement ā even the thought of a Black police chief would have been inconceivable. That year, Greenwood ā the Black north Tulsa neighborhood that includes the area known as Black Wall Street ā was burned to the ground with assistance from the virtually all-white Tulsa Police Department. Sparked by accusations that a 19-year-old Black man had assaulted a 17-year-old white girl in an elevator, the Tulsa Race Massacre left as many as 300 Black people dead and thousands of Black residents displaced. Thirty-five square blocks were torched and damages spiraled into the millions.
Tulsaās police department deputized white mobs and provided them with arms. Numerous reports describe white men with badges setting fires and shooting Black people as part of the Greenwood invasion. According to an Associated Press article from the time, Black people who were driven from their homes by the hundreds shouted, āDonāt shoot!ā as they rushed through the flames.
After the massacre went largely ignored for decades, awareness has increased in recent years. Police Chief Chuck Jordan stood in Greenwood in 2013 and apologized for the departmentās role.
āI canāt apologize for the actions, inaction or derelictions of those individual officers and their chief,ā Jordan said. āBut as your chief today, I can apologize for our police department. I am sorry and distressed that the Tulsa Police Department did not protect its citizens during the tragic days in 1921.ā
The appointment of Wendell Franklin to succeed Jordan last year is seen by some as a measure of progress. But Black Tulsans say thatās not enough.
āI think itās something that the community needs to see,ā said Ina Sharon Mitchell, a 70-year-old woman who was raised in north Tulsa. āBut how far does that change really go when the doors are closed?ā
In a 2018 Gallup-Tulsa Citivoice Index poll designed to measure quality of life issues, only 18% of Black residents said they trust police āa lot,ā compared to 49% of white residents, and 46% of Black Tulsans said they trust the Police Department ānot at allā or ānot much,ā compared to 16% of whites.
According to Tulsa Equality Indicators, produced in a partnership between the city and the Community Service Council, Black juveniles were more than three times more likely to be arrested in 2020 than white youths. Black adults were more than 2.54 times more likely to be arrested than white adults and 2.65 times more likely to experience use of force.
In 2016, then-Tulsa police officer Betty Shelby shot and killed Terence Crutcher, an unarmed Black man. Shelby ā a white woman ā was acquitted of manslaughter. She was reassigned in the department before resigning. For Black Tulsans who grew up learning what happened in Greenwood, Crutcherās killing brought old pain back to the surface.
āI believe that my brotherās killing really unearthed a century of racial tension here in Tulsa, Oklahoma,ā said Tiffany Crutcher, Terence Crutcherās twin sister who is also organizing commemoration events for the anniversary of the massacre.
Crutcher said the relationship between Tulsa's police and the community is still strained.
āHere in Tulsa, explicitly and specifically, thereās not a really good relationship between law enforcement and the Black community, Black and brown communities,ā she said. āThe relationship isnāt good at all. Thereās no trust there.ā
Crutcher started the Terence Crutcher Foundation with a goal to bridge the fear and mistrust between Black communities and law enforcement. She is frustrated with the lack of progress in Tulsa and is especially disappointed in Franklin.
āThis is someone who doesnāt believe ā someone who looks like me ā that the Tulsa Police Department has a problem with racially biased policing,ā she said.
āHe says the problem doesnāt exist. So for me, I donāt care what color you are, but if you have a track record in building relationships with the community and doing whatās fair in community policing, then I can deal with you. Putting someone in that position that looks like us is just a shallow act of putting lipstick on a pig.ā
Franklin did not respond to several interview requests. During his tenure, he has said police need better training in dealing with the public. But he also testified before an Oklahoma legislative panel after 2020's nationwide protests over racial bias in policing that recruiting new officers is difficult because of growing anti-law enforcement public sentiment.
āQuite frankly, who would want to come do this job with everything placed upon us," he said.
Greg Robinson, the 31-year-old founding organizer of Demanding a JUSTulsa and Director of Family and Community Ownership at Met Cares Foundation, said thereās a lack of transparency from the Tulsa Police Department.
āI think the main problem is there is not a system of citizen oversight or accountability,ā he said. āI think thatās really where weāre falling down. Itās not that all police are bad because theyāre not. But everybody in our community isnāt a criminal, either. And sometimes, it feels like we get policed like that.ā
Mitchell said back in the 1950s and 1960s, there were more Black officers, and that fostered the feeling of a partnership. It's different now ā in 2019, according to the departmentās annual report, 8.4% of employees were Black, compared to 15.1% of the cityās overall population.
āWhen I was a child and raised up, most of the police officers looked like me,ā she said. āThey lived in the community, so the relationship of the Police Department and the community was one-on-one. They knew the children. They knew the schools they went to. Now, you donāt have that.ā
Robinson, who also is a board member for the Terence Crutcher Foundation, remains hopeful that change can occur. He believes it ideally would start with outreach from the police and local oversight and inclusion from the Black community. The fact that Franklin is from the neighborhood helps Robinson remain optimistic.
āI hope that through his tenure he can really begin to inject, gauge the community around the changes that we have been advocating for,ā Robinson said. āSo far, it hasnāt happened, but certainly, he is somebody who grew up out north. He should understand it. And I would hope that he would be courageous enough to really include us and involve us.ā
Crutcher has taken her fight beyond Oklahoma. She said some of her recommendations are included in the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act that is under consideration. She said she was in Washington this spring with the family of Floyd, who was killed by police last year in Minneapolis, and relatives of Botham Jean and Eric Garner, who also died at the hands of police, pushing for the bill.
She said her brother told her in their last conversation that he was going to make her proud, and that āGod is going to get the glory out of my life.ā
āI believe that the work that Iāve done ā this righteous fight ā the fact that weāre at the precipice of some type of change ā is living proof of Terenceās last statement to me,ā she said. āBut we have so much work to do.ā
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Find APās full coverage of the centennial of the Tulsa Race Massacre: https://apnews.com/hub/tulsa-race-massacre