A lawyer for the white Oklahoma reserve sheriff’s deputy charged with manslaughter in the fatal shooting of an unarmed black man told TPM on Monday that he was unaware of an previous internal investigation into the deputy’s training records.
Tulsa County Sheriff Stanley Glanz was asked earlier Monday during a news conference whether his agency would take a hard look at allegations that supervisors falsified reserve deputy Robert Bates’ training records. Those allegations were reported by The Tulsa World newspaper, citing multiple anonymous sources.
“I think we did at the time the accusations were made,” Glanz said in response to the question from a reporter, adding that it was “six or seven years ago.”
But Corbin Brewster, one of Bates’ defense attorneys, told TPM in an email that he was “unaware of any accusations raised 6-7 years ago.”
In the news conference, Glanz also made reference to an investigation that he said was carried out a couple years ago by former Undersheriff Brian Edwards. Glanz told an inquiring reporter that the investigation involved Bates’ records.
“We have spoken with Mr. Edwards,” Brewster wrote in the email to TPM. “He assured us that the anonymously sourced accusations by the Tulsa World—that Mr. Bates’s training records were falsified and supervisors were transferred as a result—were untrue. If there was any investigation conducted in order to reach that conclusion, I do not know.”
