brian young is live tonight. ryan i know you have been digging investigating into bates past what have you learned today? well we have been talking to a lot of law enforcement officials just about how even the taser and gun is set up. most law enforcement agencies across the country, the gun is on one side taser on the other side to make sure no one gets confused when they grab either one. 73-year-old robert bateses turned himself into the tulsa county jail before posting bail. the insurance ceo and volunteer deputy now faces second degree manslaughter charges for the death of eric harris in an undercover operation that went wrong fast. this voedio shows the moment harris makes a run for it after deputies say he tried to sell them a gun. stop right there! you could hear bates say he s going to use his taser. instead, he pulls a gun and fires a shot. that ultimately kills harris. shot him. i m sorry. you can hear harris screaming
station where he was, a third of a mile to the north, and proceed over to the apartment complex where a search warrant was going to be served. he served as a scribe. he takes down information about the evidence and so forth. and so it was harris who thrust himself onto bates, and that s how the two came together in the middle of north harvard on tulsa. you re saying it was the suspect, not him. let me ask you this the age question. a delicate one, but it s important, and it s fair i believe. in oklahoma officers can retire after 20 years on the force. once you have been on the force for 30 years, you benefits don t accrue anymore. that s it. as a result, most of them retire, leave the force in their 50s. even here in new york city, the biggest police force in the country, almost all the officers retire in their 50s. we were able to confirm today. this is the way it is in this country. bates was 73 years old. the victim s family says they don t believe it was reasonable for a 73-year-
in pain while the officers continue to restrain him. stop fighting. there are plenty of questions about how this 73-year-old bates could end up on an operation of this high risk. many wonder if bates close relationship with the sheriff led to this assignment. over the years, robert bates has donated several vehicles including a dodge charger, a crown victoria and a toyota avalon along with video equipment and $2500 donations to the sheriff s re-election campaign. they have taken the fact that this man has been good to the community and has been ben evlnt to the community and a great citizen for our town and made it something bad or sinister. that s the unfortunate thing. his lawyer talked about bates emotions about the shooting that has this sheriff s office defending his use of volunteer deputies. obviously, he is very upset about what happened. he feels badly.
the incident completely took him by surprise. he has all the requisite training. he is taser certified. and if you watched the video, you know he was quite shocked when his gun went off. bates was a police officer for a year back in the 1960s, and he received 300 hours of training since becoming a reserve developty in 2008. his attorney says bates assisted on more than 100 operations but always in a supporting role not the one making an actual arrest. as you can imagine, eric harris family attorney does not see bates involvement in the same way. if that gentleman out there, and it will be shown over the next i hope several weeks, that mr. bates lacked really any kind of training. and mr. bates had been a tulsa police department officer from 1964 to 1965 for one year. never passed his probationary period. and we know in the next hour or so there s planned protests
buy goes down he s over a third of a mile away from that location. so let me just ask you, though, because of the things we know about bates past and his training do raise some questions. as you point out, he had training. however, he has only briefly worked for the tulsy police department as an officer, back in 1964. one year back in the mid-1960s, and his success was an an insurance company executive. again in 2012 he was the man who chaired the re-election campaign for the tulsa sheriff. the chair of that campaign. when you look at that again, it does raise the questions, whether he really was qualified to be involved in this operation, which was a dangerous undercover sting operation which involved a weapon transfer. yeah. you know he was never intended to be involved in the weapon transfer or the takedown of eric harris after the purchase of the weapon. his job was to leave that gas