OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — A sheriff in southeast Oklahoma who used to be amongst a number of county officers stuck on tape discussing killing newshounds and lynching Black other people gained’t face felony fees or be got rid of from workplace, the state’s best prosecutor mentioned Friday.
In a letter to Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt, Lawyer Normal Gentner Drummond mentioned his workplace and the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation had finished their investigation and located no felony grounds to brush aside McCurtain County Sheriff Kevin Clardy.
“There are numerous examples of incidents from around the nation the place public officers make inflammatory feedback that spark serious condemnation,” Drummond wrote. “Oftentimes the offending reliable resigns in shame. From time to time the outrage fades and the subject is forgotten.
He added: “Regardless, there’s no provision of legislation in Oklahoma to throw elected officers out of workplace simply for pronouncing one thing offensive.”
Drummond mentioned McCurtain County electorate will make the general choice on whether or not Clardy stays in workplace and advised Stitt attraction to electorate there and most likely establish somebody to run in opposition to Clardy.
Clardy and a number of other different county officers sparked outrage after an area newspaper’s audio recording captured them complaining about two of the paper’s newshounds and figuring out hit males and the place two holes are dug. Stitt briefly referred to as for the resignation of Clardy, sheriff’s Capt. Alicia Manning, District 2 Commissioner Mark Jennings and Prison Administrator Larry Hendrix. Jennings used to be the one one to renounce.
A message left Friday with the McCurtain County Sheriff’s Administrative center in search of remark wasn’t instantly returned.
Bruce Willingham, the longtime writer of the McCurtain Gazette-Information, mentioned the recording used to be made March 6 when he left a voice-activated recorder within the room after a county commissioner’s assembly as a result of he suspected the crowd used to be proceeding to behavior county industry after the assembly had resulted in violation of the state’s Open Assembly Act. Chris Willingham, a reporter on the paper, is Bruce Willingham’s son.
Bruce Willingham mentioned he believes the native officers had been disappointed about “tales we’ve run that forged the sheriff’s workplace in an destructive gentle,” together with the dying of Bobby Barrick, a Damaged Bow, Oklahoma, guy who died at a health center in March 2022 after McCurtain County deputies shot him with a stun gun.
With a inhabitants of about 31,000 and bordering each Arkansas and Texas, the county has an extended historical past of lawlessness courting again to days ahead of statehood, however in recent times it has grow to be a tourism hotbed, drawing hundreds of tourists from the Dallas-Fortress Value area.
Apply Sean Murphy on Twitter: @apseanmurphy
