We’re calling BS:
The shooting of Eric Harris is *nothing* like an operating room mistake. (UPDATED)
Earlier this week, Tulsa Sheriff Stanley Glanz defended his friend, 72-year-old Bob Bates, who had pulled a gun and killed a suspect named Eric Harris while participating in a drug raid. Rather than being a professional deputy, Bates is a “reserve” deputy, as well as a long-time financial supporter of Chief Glanz and his department. Bates has now been charged with manslaughter.
Despite the enormous public outcry against the shooting, Sheriff Glanz defended Bates. “He made an error,” he said. “How many errors are made in an operating room every week?”
We thought we’d explore that rhetorical question by putting the shooting incident into the fictional context of, well, an actual operating room.
All of the quotes used in this story are real quotes by Glanz, former police officers and others connected to the story, as reported in interviews by The Daily Beast and Tulsa World. Any changes to the quotes for the purpose of artistic license — names, job titles, etc — appear in brackets.
BOB SMITH WAS THE MOST POPULAR GUY in the surgical ward — even though he wasn’t a surgeon and had no business being there. A salesman by trade, he’d built his career in Big Pharma convincing hospitals to purchase his company’s array of anesthetics.
As is often the case with pharmaceutical reps, Smith generously doled out freebies in order to impress doctors and secure sales contracts with hospitals. He was more than happy to shower the chief of surgery and his staff with gifts and travel junkets to get them to keep purchasing his company’s pharmaceutical products, including the popular anesthetic, Dopimal™.
This week, though, a routine surgery ended in tragedy when a patient died on the table, due to direct interference by Mr. Smith.
Despite not being a surgeon, Smith was invited by the chief of surgery to participate in an operation, working directly with the anesthesiologist. In the middle of the procedure, the patient began to stir prematurely from the anesthetics.
“[Dopimal™!]” Smith yelled. Before the anesthesiologist could react with the proper dosage, Smith injected the patient with an enormous ampule of the anesthetic — many times more than what experts consider a safe dose.
Smith realized immediately that he had made a grave error in judgment.
“Oh, I shot him [with too much Dopimal™]!” he cried. “I’m sorry.”
It was too late for the patient. Within hours, he was dead from the overdose. Smith has since been charged with manslaughter.
ALMOST IMMEDIATELY following the botched procedure, former members of the surgical team put the blame squarely on the team’s chief, charging that he was too cozy with the pharmaceutical rep.
“Bob [Smith] came on board because he had all this money,” one former surgeon said. He added that the chief of surgery and his senior team would “go on these cruises in the Bahamas and in Mexico all the time.”
“[Smith] foots the bill,” he continued. “The [surgical chief] just gave him free rein because he was treating him right. He bought his way into this position.”
“You have to know Bob [Smith],” Smith’s attorney said in defense of him. “I know that he vacations in the Bahamas, I know that other members in the [surgical ward] have gone with him. But it would be like if we were college friends and we all said, ‘Let’s go there.’”
In a brief interview, the chief of surgery defended his practices at the hospital, including the “deputizing” of donors as “reserve” surgical team members.
“We go over (different) policies and procedures from the [ward] once a month,” the chief said. “So, in one year, we have looked at all of the policies and procedures.”
Their policies were recently reviewed by a national accreditation agency. “They looked at all of our policies and found them to be in order,” the chief continued, asking a nurse to dab the sweat off his forehead. “And they looked specifically at the reserve program and found it to be in order.”
He then switched the conversation back to defending his friend and benefactor, pharmaceutical rep Smith.
“He made an error,” the chief said. “How many errors are made in an operating room every week?”
He declined to respond to a reporter’s question pointing out that operating-room errors rarely, if ever, happen due to a high-rolling pharmaceutical rep playing doctor on a live patient.
“We have a lot of people giving of themselves to the community,” the surgical chief added as more sweat poured from his brow.
The interview ended with the chief pulling out his cellphone to show a picture of him and Smith fishing. Smith can be seen wearing a big smile as he holds up a large-mouth bass.
“Bob and I both love to fish,” the surgical chief said. “Is it wrong to have a friend?”
UPDATE, Thursday, April 16, via Tulsa World:
Supervisors at the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office were ordered to falsify a reserve deputy’s training records, giving him credit for field training he never took and firearms certifications he should not have received, sources told the Tulsa World.
At least three of reserve deputy Robert Bates’ supervisors were transferred after refusing to sign off on his state-required training, multiple sources speaking on condition of anonymity told the World.
Bates, 73, is accused of second-degree manslaughter in the shooting death of Eric Harris during an undercover operation on April 2.
The sources’ claims are corroborated by records, including a statement by Bates after the shooting, that he was certified as an advanced reserve deputy in 2007.
Meanwhile, Tulsa World is also reporting that the county sheriff’s office will conduct an internal review of the deputy reserve program.
