Donald Trump says he is “very troubled” by the killing of an unarmed black man by police in Oklahoma, adding that it looked like the man killed did everything he should have done when he was confronted by police.
Trump offered the comments on Wednesday during a visit to a historically black church in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, before an African-American congregation.
{mosads}”I watched the shooting, in part, in Tulsa, and that man was hands up,” Trump said. “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. The young officer — I don’t know what she was thinking. But I’m very, very troubled by that.”
The comments are remarkable for Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, who is aggressively courting black voters as he seeks to defeat Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Polls show Trump trailing Clinton badly among African-Americans, who helped elect President Obama to the White House twice.
Trump has won the endorsement of the National Fraternal Order of Police and has generally refrained from criticizing police in the wake of a series of shootings involving unarmed black men.
“He’s made a real commitment to America’s law enforcement, and we’re proud to make a commitment to him and his campaign by endorsing his candidacy today,” Fraternal Order of Police President Chuck Canterbury said in a statement last week.
“He is a proven leader, and that’s what we need for the next four years – a leader unafraid to make tough choices and see them through.”
Trump in his remarks on Wednesday, however, appeared to question how police handled the incident in Tulsa.
“These things are terrible. That was, in my opinion, a terrible, terrible situation,” Trump said.
“Did she get scared? Was she choking? What happened? People that do that — maybe they can’t be doing what they’re doing,” Trump said to the Cleveland Heights congregation, making reference to the female officer involved in the shooting.
Terence Crutcher, 40, was shot and killed Friday evening by Betty Shelby, a Tulsa police officer, after authorities received reports of an abandoned vehicle blocking a road.
Video shows Crutcher raising his hands and walking toward a car and leaning against it. He was then tasered by one officer and fatally shot by Shelby, who is now on paid administrative leave.
The Department of Justice has opened a civil rights investigation.
The nation has separately been roiled be a second police shooting of an African-American in Charlotte that set off violent demonstrations in that city.
Updated at 3:37 p.m.