Volunteer deputy’s past raises questions

Associated Press

TULSA, Okla.

After he sold his insurance company for about $6 million, Robert Bates sought to return to a profession he tried for a year in his early 20s: law enforcement.

Bates — the 73-year-old Tulsa County volunteer deputy accused of shooting an unarmed suspect to death while the man was being held down by others — began a law-enforcement career back in 1964, when he attended the Tulsa police academy. He served in the city police department only briefly, until the end of 1965, according to the agency.

That’s where Bates’ path becomes clouded. It’s not clear why he left the police force, but 35 years later, he reconnected with law enforcement, becoming a generous donor to the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office, a campaign manager for the sheriff and a reserve deputy.

Those close ties have raised questions about whether Bates was essentially paying for the privilege of working alongside real officers and whether he had received proper training and certification to perform law-enforcement duties, including carrying weapons.

Bates, who has been charged with second- degree manslaughter, went on national television Friday to counter criticisms of his qualifications.

Speaking publicly for the first time since the April 2 shooting, Bates told NBC’s “Today” show that characterizations of him as a wealthy donor who paid to join the force are “unbelievably unfair.”

The Tulsa Police Department has not explained why Bates abandoned police work or responded to repeated requests from The Associated Press for documents related to his departure in 1965.

After Bates left the police department job, his path fades again for more than a decade.

In 1977, he started his own insurance company. By the time he sold it in 1999 to the North American Insurance Agency Inc., it was worth nearly $6 million, according to court records. That’s when Bates began moving back into the world of law enforcement.

He served as a civilian volunteer and rode along with officers in the marine patrol division of the Indian River County Sheriff’s Office in Florida from 2000 to 2001, but his role did not allow him to be involved in criminal enforcement, according to Sgt. Thom Raulen, a spokesman for the office.

Six years after his volunteer work in Florida, Bates became an advanced reserve deputy for the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office and began working with the violent-crimes and narcotics task force in 2008, according to paperwork he submitted after the shooting.

In the paperwork, Bates wrote in that he attended “numerous” schools and seminars related to drug investigations and apprehending drug-trafficking suspects. He stated that he attended a five-day homicide-investigation school in Dallas and received training from the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office in Arizona.

But a spokeswoman for the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office and Dallas County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Raul Reyna said their agencies have no record of Bates receiving any training there.