The Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office agreed to pay $6 million to the family of Eric Harris, an unarmed black man killed by a white volunteer deputy in 2015, capping a case that helped fuel nationwide protests and rattled law enforcement in Oklahoma.
The civil settlement, filed in Tulsa federal court Friday, follows a 2016 second-degree manslaughter conviction against the former reserve deputy, Robert Bates. Then a 73-year-old insurance executive and sheriff’s office donor, Mr. Bates claimed he mistook his revolver for a stun gun when he shot Mr. Harris during an undercover sting operation nearly three years ago. He was released from prison last fall after serving a year and a half of a four-year sentence and is asking a court to rehear its denial of an appeal of his conviction.
Tulsa County Sheriff Vic Regalado said Friday it was in the best interest of everyone involved to resolve the claims. “I believe this decision will allow the process of healing to continue for the Harris family, the citizens of Tulsa County and the hard-working men and women of the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office,” he said.
The $6 million settlement is in line with other high-profile police-misconduct cases, including the $5.9 million paid by New York City in 2015 to the family of Eric Garner, whose death after being put in a police chokehold sparked widespread protests, and a $6.4 million settlement reached that same year between the City of Baltimore and the family of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old who died from a spinal injury incurred while in police custody.
U.S. cities have shelled out hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years to resolve police-misconduct cases. A Wall Street Journal investigation in 2015 found the 10 cities with the largest police departments paid $248.7 million the prior year in settlements and court judgments in such cases, up 48% from 2010.
Six months after the shooting, longtime Tulsa County Sheriff Stanley Glanz stepped down in the face of misdemeanor charges brought against him, including one for allegedly hiding a 2009 report that questioned Mr. Bates’s qualifications and conduct as a reserve officer. Other high-level members of the sheriff’s department also left around that time. Mr. Glanz entered into a plea deal in 2016 and received one year of probation.
“There is this hope the community kind of woke up, and law enforcement agencies know they can be held liable,” Dan Smolen, a Tulsa civil rights attorney representing Mr. Harris’s family, said of the settlement and the fallout for the sheriff’s office.
Body-camera video of the events that ended in Mr. Harris’s death showed him running and being tackled by officers after a sting operation in which he allegedly agreed to sell drugs and a gun to an undercover agent. The footage then shows a shot being fired as deputies tried to subdue Mr. Harris, and Mr. Bates saying, “I shot him. I’m sorry.” Another officer in the footage dismissed complaints from Mr. Harris that he was losing his breath.
Since 2005, there have been 84 nonfederal law enforcement officers charged with murder or manslaughter for fatal on-duty shootings, according to Philip Stinson, an associate professor in the criminal justice program at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. Of those, 32 have been convicted on charges related to the shootings.
Such charges spiked in 2015, when 18 officers were arrested, followed by 13 in 2016, Mr. Stinson’s data show. That number fell to five last year and no officer charges for fatal shootings had been brought as of late February.
Write to Sara Randazzo at sara.randazzo@wsj.com