Donald Trump has said he is "very troubled" over the shooting of the unarmed black pastor Terence Crutcher by white police officer Betty Shelby in Tulsa, Oklahoma last Friday.
Speaking to largely black clergy and others in Cleveland Heights, Ohio yesterday, Trump said that 40-year-old Crutcher, who was shown in police footage clearly to have his hands up, looked like a "really good man" who "did everything he was supposed to do".
The Republican presidential nominee was asked by Rev Darrell Scott, CEO of the National Diversity Coalition for Trump and pastor of the New Spirit Revival Center church in Cleveland Heights, to comment on the "recent shootings of unarmed black men by the police". Trump responded: "I must tell you I watched the shooting in particular in Tulsa and that man was hands up. That man went to the car, hands up, put his hands on the car, I mean to me it looked like he did everything he was supposed to do.
"And he looked like a really good man and maybe I'm a little clouded because I saw his family talking about him after the fact, so you get a little bit different image maybe. But to me he looked like somebody who was doing what they were asking him to do and this young officer I don't know what she was thinking." To applause, Trump added: "I don't know what she was thinking but I am very, very troubled by that."
Trump said that he was a "tremendous believer in the police", but also indicated that some officers, who he called "chokers", are unfit psychologically for the role, the Christian Post reported.
"Well as you know I'm a tremendous believer in the police and law enforcement because we need that for ourselves, we do," he said. "And I've really gotten the endorsement from so many different groups and they're great people. Now, great people, you always have problems. You have somebody in there that either makes a mistake that's bad or they choke... I'm very, very troubled by that and we have to be very careful so, these things are terrible. In my opinion that was a terrible situation and we've seen others and the police are aware of that too... Now did she get scared? Was she choking? What happened? But maybe people like that. People that choke, maybe people that do that, maybe they can't be doing what they are doing."
Hillary Clinton, Trump's Democratic rival, has said she found the footage of Crutcher being shot "unbearable".
Crutcher was first tasered and then fatally shot after police arrived at the scene of his broken down SUV vehicle at around 8pm on Friday. The victim was rushed to hospital but died from his injuries.
Police had claimed that Crutcher was reaching inside his car without his hands up. But footage released by Tulsa Police Department clearly shows the pastor with his hands in the air and his back to the officers.
In footage taken from a police helicopter, an officer can be heard saying: "He's got his hands up there for her now... This guy is still walking and following commands."
But Crutcher was then tasered and shot.
A criminal investigation into the shooting has been opened by the police department, and the federal Justice Department has opened a separate civil rights investigation.
Officer Shelby has given a statement to homicide detectives and been placed on paid administrative leave, according to a police spokesman.
Crutcher's twin sister Tiffany told a press conference of how an officer could be heard in the footage calling her brother a "bad dude".
She said: "I lost my brother, my twin brother who was doing nothing wrong. Absolutely nothing wrong and I truly believe in accountability...We just want answers, we want to know what happened, there's a lot of speculation, but there is one thing, one fact that I do know is that my brother was unarmed. I'm just devastated."
She said her brother had left a class at Tulsa Community College before his SUV stalled on East 36th Street North.
The Crutcher family's legal team, represented by attorney Melvin C Hall, said: "This man had not committed a crime. He was not approached because we suspected of having committed a crime. He was having some difficulty with his vehicle and that's it."
Describing the footage, attorney Damario Solomon-Simmons said: "We saw that Terence was not being belligerent. We did not see Terence reach into the car. We did not see Terence attacking the officers."
Tulsa police chief Chuck Jones sought to assure the community that justice would be served and there would be accountability over the incident.
Before releasing the video, he said: "I'm going to tell you right now, there was no gun on the suspect or in the suspect's vehicle. I want to assure our community and I want to assure all of you and people across the nation watching this: we will achieve justice."
He added that he found the video "very disturbing, very difficult to watch".
