Tulsa County District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler’s first term looks to be the focus of this year’s election for the office.
A debate this week hosted by the Tulsa Fraternal Order of Police touched on relationships with law enforcement and turnover in the DA’s office. Republican challenger Tammy Westcott said she had a trial with Kunzweiler.
"He has tons of trial experience as a prosecutor. That doesn’t make a good leader. Doesn’t make a good manager of a DA’s office," Westcott said.
The sole Democrat, Jenny Proehl-Day, said the DA’s office has alienated law enforcement by not taking their perspective into account, especially when charging officers.
"I studied law in an artificial classroom with books. You all are out on the streets, and you’re learning on the job," Proehl-Day said. "And the things that you are taking into consideration are not things that I’m taking into consideration, and vice versa."
The debate spent significant time going over Kunzweiler's handling of the Betty Shelby case. Former assistant DA Ben Fu said if prosecutors have use-of-force training, the resulting decision to charge or not is more credible.
"That separate prosecutor view as opposed to the officer investigating view are very important checks on one another, but if the prosecutor doesn’t have the requisite knowledge and experience and information to make that decision, the check fails," Fu said.
Kunzweiler arrived more than an hour after the debate started because he was in court for the murder trial of Michael Bever, the teenager accused of murdering five of his family members in their Broken Arrow home. Kunzweiler defended charging former Tulsa cop Shelby to one of her attorneys, Scott Wood, who the FOP invited to the debate.
"Betty Shelby’s case was just one of those cases where that’s not a decision that one person should be making," Kunzweiler said, adding the facts showed the case needed to go to a jury.
