Green Party Presidential Nominee Howie Hawkins is suing Oklahoma election officials over what he claims are unreasonable deadlines and filing fees in the state that have blocked him and other alternative candidates from securing their names on the November ballot.

Hawkins filed the lawsuit against the Oklahoma State Election Board on July 15 in federal court in Oklahoma City.

In an interview with The Frontier, Hawkins said he’s suing on behalf of all independent and third-party candidates to gain easier access to the ballot in Oklahoma.

Hawkins is an environmental activist from New York and cofounder of the Green Party of the United States.

“There are a number of independent and alternative party candidates who are serious,” he said. “They are offering platforms that differ from the Democrats and Republicans. And the voters of Oklahoma should have all the options on the ballot. It’s only fair to them.”

Oklahoma law requires presidential candidates who are independent or from an unrecognized political party to collect signatures from 2 percent of registered voters, or pay an an alternative $35,000 filing fee.

Hawkins said he believes the fee is excessive and designed to keep him and other alternative candidates off the ballot.

Three independent presidential candidates have opted to pay the filing fee in order to appear on the November ballot in Oklahoma, including rapper Kayne West, former child actor and Bitcoin investor Brock Pierce, and classical pianist Jade Simmons.

The state currently only recognizes candidates from the Democratic, Republican and Libertarian parties. Oklahoma also does not give voters the option to write-in the names of alternative candidates.

In 2016, Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein and the progressive candidate Rocky De La Fuente unsuccessfully sued for access to the Oklahoma ballot on similar grounds.

Okahoma eased signature requirements for candidates from unrecognized political parties from 5 percent of voters in the last gubernatorial election to 3 percent and also added the alternative option of paying a $35,000 fee.

In contrast, the filing fee for candidates running for U.S. Senate in Oklahoma is just $2,000, Hawkins’ lawsuit points out.

The coronavirus pandemic has also strained Green Party’s ability to gather signatures in order to get Hawkins’ name on the ballot in several states. In Oklahoma, Hawkins would have had to gather 35,592 signatures and file a statement of candidacy by July 15 in order to meet the current requirements.

Hawkins is now on the ballot in 24 states and is running as a write-in candidate in Indiana.

“This has been very hard on them,” said James Linger, the Tulsa attorney who is representing Hawkins in the lawsuit. “There’s just a limit in what you can do.”

Other petition efforts in the state have also been halted by the virus. An initiative petition effort aimed at getting a question on the November ballot to reform the state’s political redistricting process was withdrawn earlier this month. Organizers blamed delays caused by litigation and the coronavirus that made it difficult to meet the deadline to get the measure on the ballot. 

The Oklahoma State Election Board declined to comment on the pending litigation. Attorney General Mike Hunter’s office said it was reviewing the lawsuit.

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City of Tulsa Director of Communications Michelle Brooks told The Frontier on Tuesday the “City did not have a contract with the campaign and will not bill the campaign. No special permits were issued either.”

While Trump’s campaign has been accused multiple times in the past of not paying its bills by cities who’ve hosted rallies for the President, it doesn’t appear that will be an issue for Tulsa. BOK Center officials said they were paid $460,000 up front by the campaign, and the city did not bill Trump’s campaign despite providing at least some level of security for the event. Some cities have reported invoicing the campaign for policing costs and never being repaid.

“TPD Officers and BAPD (Broken Arrow Police Department), OKCPD (Oklahoma City Police Department), OHP (Oklahoma Highway Patrol) and OKNG, were funded through their respective agencies and not the campaign to assist in the visit by the President and Vice President,” Brooks said.

An entire section of Tulsa’s downtown surrounding the BOK Center, the site of the President’s campaign event, was blocked off by city and federal officials and thousands of people filled what was called the “rally zone.”

There was a mixture of law enforcement groups active, including the United States Secret Service, the Oklahoma National Guard, the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office, the Tulsa Police Department, and some groups wearing ballistic vests with the word TROOPER emblazoned on them.

But it was Tulsa police who drew the headlines when officers first arrested a local woman on live TV within the rally zone. The woman, Sheila Buck, a local Catholic school teacher, had worn an “I Can’t Breathe” shirt into the rally zone, and was arrested when she did not leave the area after being asked to by Tulsa police.

Criticized by some for arresting what amounted to a peaceful protestor, Tulsa police said that Buck was arrested at the discretion of the Trump campaign.

In a media release from Saturday, Tulsa police said they “were requested by Trump Campaign Staff to remove an individual from the secure area of the rally.”

“Tulsa Police spoke to the arrestee, Ms. Buck, for several minutes trying to convince her to leave on her own accord,” the release states. “After several minutes requesting her to leave she continued to refuse to cooperate and was escorted out of the area and transported to booking for obstruction.

“For clarification, the arrestee had passed through the metal detector area to the most secure area of the event accessible only to ticket holders. Whether she had a ticket or not for the event is not a contributing factor for the Tulsa Police in making the arrest. Officers at the location, particularly in the ‘Sterile’ area, will remove individuals only at the direction of Campaign Staff.”

For their work, Tulsa police found themselves targeted by the campaign in the wake of the rally and blamed for the low attendance figures.

Brad Parscale, the campaign manager for Trump’s 2020 re-election bid, told the New York Times that Tulsa police “had overreacted” and barred thousands from entering the BOK Center. Tulsa police responded this week, saying that one gate of entry into the rally zone was temporarily blocked for 30 minutes as protestors and Trump supporters faced off. Two other gates remained open during this time and were mostly unused due to the small number of people attempting to enter the rally zone.

“This singular and brief incident was the only time ‘local law enforcement in Tulsa’ closed a gate, thereby restricting anyone from entering the event,” police said in a statement.

There was much consternation leading up to Saturday’s rally — city officials said they expected 120,000 attendees, and a curfew was briefly ordered, then rescinded the day before the rally. There were fears in the city of wide-scale protests and even violence, with some stores, such as QuikTrip, boarding up businesses as far away as four miles from downtown.

In the end, none of those fears materialized. A Tulsa Fire Department spokesman told the media that only about 6,200 ticketed attendees entered the BOK Center for the rally, less than one-third of the arena’s capacity. The number did not include media and campaign staff that also were inside the building.

And, accordingly, the expected overflow crowd outside was non-existent, leading Trump and Vice President Mike Pence to abruptly cancel a planned outdoor speaking engagement.

There were protests outside the rally zone, but they mostly stayed non-violent. And a showdown between protestors and Trump supporters following the rally fizzled out. By 11 p.m. the only noise downtown was from a raucous Juneteenth celebration on Tulsa’s historic Black Wall Street in the Greenwood District.

The post Despite local police making arrests at behest of Trump campaign, city of Tulsa ‘will not bill the campaign’ appeared first on The Frontier.

Protesters gather in downtown Tulsa on Saturday, June 20, 2020. Clifton Adcock/THE FRONTIER

Rally-goers and demonstrators filled downtown Tulsa’s streets on Saturday as President Donald Trump held his first campaign rally since the novel coronavirus has gripped the country.

Trump’s campaign had more than 1 million requested tickets to the president’s rally in the BOK Center, which has a capacity of about 19,000 people. But when Trump took the stage, the arena’s lower bowl was filled but the majority of seats in the upper level were empty.

However, thousands of people still showed up early Saturday morning from all over the country to see the president speak.

Randal Thom said he drove all the way from Minnesota to Tulsa to see the rally.

“Us Trump people, his base, have been itching to get back out to show him we support his decision and especially support the fact we want the entire country opened up,” Thom said.

Thom said he is a member of “Trump’s Front Row Joes,” a group of supporters who travel around the country to attend Trump rallies, and Saturday’s rally is the 64th rally he has attended. And though Thom said he knows COVID-19 can be deadly — a 24-year-old member of his group died earlier this year from the disease, he said it was worth the risk to see the president.

A protestor speaks through a bullhorn Saturday, June 20, 2020 in downtown Tulsa. Clifton Adcock/THE FRONTIER

On Twitter, Trump’s 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale accused “radical protestors, fueled by a week of apocalyptic media coverage,” of interfering with supporters at the rally.

Radical protestors, fueled by a week of apocalyptic media coverage, interfered with @realDonaldTrump supporters at the rally.

They even blocked access to the metal detectors, preventing people from entering.

Thanks to the 1,000s who made it anyway!https://t.co/eM2nohMEy6

— Brad Parscale (@parscale) June 20, 2020

Protestors and Trump supporters engaged in verbal, and sometimes heated confrontations, but demonstrations were largely nonviolent.

“There are multiple groups of demonstrators with varying viewpoints in the area adjacent to the rally,” the Tulsa Police Department wrote in a Facebook post. “Overwhelmingly these encounters have been peaceful with everyone attempting to share their views.”

Trump, at the beginning of his rally, blamed a smaller-than-anticipated crowd in Tulsa’s BOK Center on “bad people” outside the arena who scared away rally-goers as well as media who told potential attendees “don’t go.”

As the rally gets started (Trump still at least 90 min away) the upper bowl of the arena is mostly empty. If that changes I will post a new pic. One million people may have requested a ticket but there are plenty of seats available. pic.twitter.com/HyPKNg79Tx

— Ben Felder (@benfelder_okc) June 20, 2020

Reporters on the scene said protestors didn’t block rally goers from entering the arena. At one point, police temporarily closed down the east entrance to the rally area when Black Lives Matter protesters arrived, but within a few minutes they began letting groups of rally-goers back into the secure area after pushing the crowd back a few yards.

Sporadic clashes between individuals occurred in some areas around the rally site, but in most cases, police intervention was not required to separate combatants.

One man was arrested after charging at Black Lives Matter protesters on the other side of a line of National Guard members. Police arrested another man after he pepper sprayed a group of protesters.

A few armed local amateur militia members were patrolling the area around the protesters, but for the most part did not clash with protesters.

On Saturday morning the Tulsa Police Department, at the request of the Trump campaign, arrested a woman for obstruction for protesting inside the “secure area” of the rally, according to a statement from the department.

TPD said officers asked Sheila Buck to leave the event, but she was arrested after she refused. The agency said the area was considered a “private event” and the Trump campaign, as the organizer, could have people removed at their discretion.

It’s unclear exactly how many people were arrested at the event. Alexandria Scott, a city council member from Norman, appeared in the Tulsa Jail log as being arrested for obstructing police officers at 5:45 p.m., about 90 minutes before Trump took the stage. No information has been released on Scott’s arrest. Her bond was set at $500.As the Trump rally ended around 8:30 p.m. and night fell, the National Guard and some emergency responders began to pull out onto Boulder Avenue to leave. The convoy came to a halt and protesters began to walk into the street, chanting slogans.

Protestors and Trump supporters. pic.twitter.com/obVXDKLvIo

— Kassie McClung (@KassieMcClung) June 21, 2020

Soon, a line of protesters formed on Boulder Avenue and was met with a line of police, who ordered them off the streets. When the protesters didn’t comply, some officers fired off pepper ball rounds, causing the crowd to temporarily scatter before it composed itself and reformed the line. After a few minutes, the line of police began to back away from the line of protesters, who began to advance. One of the protesters with a bullhorn began to plead with the other protesters to head toward the Greenwood district.

Then, with the two sides facing each other, the main body of protesters stopped, turned and went north, as police continued to back away south on Boulder. The two sides peacefully walked away from each other, with the protesters heading to the Greenwood district, where a celebration-like atmosphere took hold.

The post Heated confrontations at Trump rally, but interactions remain largely nonviolent appeared first on The Frontier.

Attendees awaiting President Donald Trump in the hours leading up to his speech at the BOK Center in Tulsa on June 20, 2020, chant “Make America Great Again.” DYLAN GOFORTH/The Frontier

The Frontier staff is reporting on President Donald Trump’s rally in Tulsa on Saturday and will have updates throughout the day. 

Protestors outside the rally zone near the BOK Center in Tulsa ahead of President Donald Trump’s speech on Saturday, June 20, 2020. KASSIE McCLUNG/The Frontier

3:55 p.m.

Shortly before 4 p.m. a group of protestors and event attendees near the east entrance to the rally zone were pushed back by police after people began throwing things over the barricades. Police temporarily closed the entrance, but began letting people in again after a few minutes and after pushing the crowd back several yards.

Though there were heated words between some of the rally-goers and protestors, both sides remained peaceful.

Protestors LE out https://t.co/Cq0fVaF4By

— Kassie McClung (@KassieMcClung) June 20, 2020

Eric Trump gives a brief interview in the BOK Center in the hours ahead of President Donald Trump’s speech on Saturday, June 20, 2020. DYLAN GOFORTH/The Frontier

3:45 p.m.

Inside the arena, where attendees are slowly trickling in while awaiting a speech that could be three or more hours away, the biggest cheers so far have been for a brief visit from Eric Trump.

Eric Trump walked onto the arena floor for a short interview with a television network on the broadcast media platform, then walked away to cheers and chants of “four more years.”

The crowd, which is first come, first serve, has filled about two-thirds of the BOK Center’s lower bowl, with noticeable gaps in areas without a sight line to the podium. The BOK Center holds 19,199 people. 

Gov. Kevin Stitt speaks to the media on Saturday, June 20, 2020, outside of the BOK Center while awaiting the arrival of President Donald Trump. DYLAN GOFORTH/The Frontier

1:30 p.m.

Stitt will be meeting with the VP in Greenwood shortly. I asked what he wanted to talk about. pic.twitter.com/bFdxU5iL6G

— Ben Felder (@benfelder_okc) June 20, 2020

Hours before the start of President Donald Trump’s rally in Tulsa, Gov. Kevin Stitt said he remained confident the nation’s first major indoor event since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic would not lead to a new outbreak.

COVID-19 cases in Oklahoma have spiked over the last week but Stitt said it hadn’t led to a significant increase in deaths or hospitalizations.  

“My question back to those folks that want people to bunker in place is when is the right time to open back up?” Stitt told reporters outside the BOK Center, where Trump’s rally will be held.

Stitt was scheduled to welcome Vice President Mike Pence Saturday afternoon and take him on a tour of the Greenwood District, the site of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. 

Six staffers who worked on the Tulsa rally tested positive for the coronavirus before the event, the Trump campaign said Saturday. 

In a statement to CNN, the Donald Trump campaign's communications director Tim Murtaugh confirms that six staffers working on tonight’s Tulsa, OK rally have tested positive for coronavirus and are now following quarantine procedures. NBC was first to report. pic.twitter.com/7JUHzCYMO9

— DJ Judd (@DJJudd) June 20, 2020

11 a.m.

Trump supporter Randal Thom waives a flag in downtown Tulsa on Saturday, June 20, 2020. Clifton Adcock/THE FRONTIER

A sea of red hats, Trump flags and banners, as well as an occasional Confederate battle flag swayed in downtown Tulsa on Saturday morning. Above, in the windows of a hotel were signs supporting the Black Lives Matter movement.

Thousands awaited entry into President Donald Trump’s planned rally this evening.

Vendors in mobile booths and some toting their wares in red wagons packed the sidewalks. One woman began praying through a bullhorn, asking God for protection and guidance, as armed National Guard troops stood sentinel yards away.

Dressed in red, white and blue Randal Thom waved large Trump flag. He drove from Minnesota to attend the rally.

Thom said he wasn’t concerned about contracting the coronavirus and called social distancing – a “silly-ass word”

Tulsa will be the 64th event  Thom has attended as a member of  “Trump’s Front Row Joes,” a group that  travels around the country to attend Trump rallies.

“Us Trump people, his base, have been itching to get back out to show him we support his decision and especially support the fact we want the entire country opened up,” Thom said. “What this will be showing the country and the world we can have a normal rally, a normal get-together and we don’t have to be afraid of that virus — the China virus. It’s time for us not to go to a new normal, but to go to a real normal.”

10 a.m. 

At least 1,000 people are already in downtown Tulsa hours before the doors open for the rally. Few people gathered at blocked entry points waiting for the gates to open are wearing masks. There are police barricades and other 8-foot tall fences surrounding the BOK Center. As many as 100,000 people are expected downtown for the rally this evening. 

Oklahoma Army National Guard troops patrol the streets of Tulsa on Saturday, June 20, 2020. Kassie McClung/THE FRONTIER

Oklahoma Army National Guard troops are patrolling the streets. 

On Friday, Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum rescinded a planned curfew covering a portion of downtown that includes the BOK Center, the site of  Trump’s rally this weekend.

 Tulsa Police Department said Friday that a secure zone has been established by the United States Secret Service to give law enforcement “the ability to keep the area clear of individuals that are only present to break the law and disrupt the rights of people assembling peacefully,” according to a news release. 

The post Trump in Tulsa: Stories from the ground as Trump comes to town appeared first on The Frontier.

A vendor sells Trump merchandise and stun guns on Thursday near the intersection of East 3rd Street and South Boston Avenue in downtown Tulsa. CLIFTON ADCOCK/The Frontier

Less than a day after enacting a curfew covering a portion of downtown that includes the BOK Center, the site of President Donald Trump’s planned rally this weekend, Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum surprisingly rescinded the curfew on Friday afternoon. 

The sudden end of the curfew was unexpected, as Bynum had said on Thursday night that he was enacting it because of information that “out of state” groups that had “engaged in extremely violent and destructive behavior” were headed to Tulsa.

On Friday afternoon, Trump tweeted that he had just spoken to Bynum, “who informed me there will be no curfew tonight or tomorrow for our many supporters attending the #MAGA Rally.”

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1274056758319874052

Michelle Brooks, the city of Tulsa’s director of communications, told The Frontier that the curfew had been rescinded, and Bynum said in a statement that he had enacted the curfew at the request of the Tulsa Police and the U.S. Secret Service, but then rescinded it after the Secret Service told him it was no longer necessary.

“Last night, I enacted a curfew at the request of Tulsa Police Chief Wendell Franklin, following consultation with the United States Secret Service based on intelligence they had received,” Mayor G.T. Bynum said. “Today, we were told the curfew is no longer necessary so I am rescinding it.”

In a news release Friday evening, the Tulsa Police Department said that “in lieu of the Executive Order, a secure zone has been established by the United States Secret Service” in cooperation with Tulsa police and other law enforcement agencies. 

“This limited-access secure zone gives all law enforcement the ability to keep the area clear of individuals that are only present to break the law and disrupt the rights of people assembling peacefully,” the release said. 

The decision to rescind the curfew came as a surprise to Tulsa District 4 City Councilor Kara Joy McKee, whose district includes Tulsa’s downtown, where the rally is scheduled to take place. McKee, who said she was in the Greenwood District handing out face masks during the Juneteenth celebrations, told The Frontier she’d heard nothing about any change to the curfew implemented in her district. 

The City of Tulsa is bracing for potentially more than 100,000 visitors to downtown during and after the rally, and the curfew appeared to possibly be aimed at keeping those attending the rally and those protesting the rally from facing off outside the BOK Center. 

Trump supporters began gathering outside of the BOK Center earlier this week, days ahead of the rally. On Friday thousands of people were celebrating Juneteenth, a holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the country, as well. 

Saturday’s rally is set to begin at 7 p.m., but attendees will be allowed entrance to the arena hours ahead of time. The Trump campaign has said that more than 1 million tickets to the event have been requested, and though the BOK can only hold just more than 19,000 people, at least two overflow sites are planned and Trump told reporters on Friday he would likely conduct an additional speech outside the BOK Center following the end of his rally.

The post In surprise, Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum rescinds downtown curfew around Trump rally appeared first on The Frontier.

A Black Lives Matter banner is unfurled on the Tulsa Theater in the downtown Arts District. DYLAN GOFORTH/The Frontier

When President Donald Trump announced on June 10 that he was going to have his first post-coronavirus campaign rally in Tulsa, it stunned a city still grappling with one of the darkest racist histories in the country.

Trump said his rally was planned for June 19 — Juneteenth, a celebration of the emancipation of black slaves. In Tulsa, where hundreds of black citizens were murdered 99 years ago in a massacre that targeted a prosperous black community in what’s now the downtown Greenwood District, the announcement was met with shock and anger.

But it was also met with excitement. Though Tulsa has a reputation as being perhaps the more liberal of Oklahoma’s two biggest cities, it overwhelmingly went for Trump in the 2016 presidential election, as did every other county in Oklahoma..

The Trump administration said it picked Tulsa because Oklahoma had done so well in handling the coronavirus outbreak that’s halted the country and world since it first began spreading in late 2019. It’s true that Oklahoma’s numbers, figures that are complex enough to be almost impossible to compare with other states, are lower than some other parts of the United States. But the number of positive cases have also been on a steady incline since early June, when Gov. Kevin Stitt allowed the state to fully re-open.

And it was Stitt’s siren call that possibly lured Trump here in the first place. Stitt and Lt. Gov. Matt Pinnell had offered Oklahoma up as a possible site for the national GOP convention later this year after North Carolina and its Democrat Governor, Roy Cooper, withdrew from holding the event. 

Oklahoma didn’t get the convention, it instead went to Florida, but it got Trump’s rally instead.

Donald Trump appears at a rally in Tulsa in January 2016. Dylan Goforth/THE FRONTIER

Nevertheless, many of the city’s Trump critics didn’t buy the president’s explanation. Had he chosen Tulsa because of its re-opening plan? Or had Trump, known for his desire to create headlines with his every move, chosen the city, and the Juneteenth date in particular, because of Tulsa’s immoral racial history and the lingering cloud that covers the city because of the Race Massacre, which this year saw its 99th anniversary?

Regardless, Trump is coming to Tulsa, though the date of his rally was moved to June 20, and Trump aides said the President had not been aware of the significance of the date. 

And while the Tulsa Race Massacre will, and in the case of national attention on Trump’s visit, already has, serve as a backdrop to the rally, there are many more racial incidents that curl like inky fingers around the city’s recent history as well.

If the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre is the first thing someone thinks about when the words “Tulsa” and “race” are mentioned, it wasn’t always that way. For one, many Oklahomans grew up without ever knowing about the massacre, only finding out about the event, where armed white Tulsans shot, burned and bombed the prosperous Black Wall Street area of the city, later as the city first began attempts to reconcile its current image with its racist past.

But Tulsa’s dark history extends even further back through time. W. Tate Brady, one of the founders of the city, was also a member of Tulsa’s early Ku Klux Klan chapter.

This Land Press, a now-defunct alternative newspaper, wrote about Brady’s connection with the KKK in 2012, and the response to the article exposed the deep-seated racism that exists in Tulsa even today. 

Brady, in many ways, was synonymous with the city. In 1898 Brady signed the city’s charter, and before long he was a fabulously wealthy oilman. He died of suicide in 1925, mostly penniless after struggles with alcohol and other vices.

Brady was a complicated figure. There are stories of him treating black Tulsans with respect, offering to train them to open their own businesses and often hiring black Tulsans at his businesses. But there are also stories of Brady serving as a watchman during the Race Massacre. Hundreds of black men were killed during the massacre while white guards — Brady among them— patrolled the streets. 

Black men were rounded up and imprisoned in a makeshift internment camp at what is now known as the Brady Theater, just blocks away from the site of the massacre. 

Just north of Brady’s namesake venue sits Cain’s Ballroom, a world-renowned concert venue known for its intimate setting and the number of historical acts that have played there. Outside of the building are dozens of Hollywood Star-styled symbols on the ground, honoring musicians who’ve held concerts there. Outside the front door sits a star with the name W. Tate Brady emblazoned on it. The ballroom once served as a garage for his numerous automobiles.

The part of downtown that held the Brady Theater and Cain’s Ballroom was called the Brady District. It sat adjacent to the Greenwood District, home to the massacre.

A star outside of Cain’s Ballroom in Tulsa commemorating its connection to Tate Brady, who previously used the building (later converted into a renowned music hall) as a garage for his vehicles. DYLAN GOFORTH/The Frontier

The district’s main thoroughfare was called Brady Street.

After the This Land Press article, then-City Councilor Blake Ewing attempted to rename the street, but was met with much pushback. Some Tulsans questioned why there was a movement to rename a street that honored a man who helped build Tulsa from the ground up? Never mind the skeletons in his closet. 

Business owners in the area complained they would have to pay money to change their signage and the addresses where bills and invoices were sent to. 

How much would it cost to change the street signs? 

In the end, the weakest of compromises was reached. The street would be renamed, from Brady Street to M.B. Brady Street. It was no longer named after Tate Brady, nor after any Tulsan. The street’s new namesake was a Civil War photographer who, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, had never set foot in Oklahoma, much less Tulsa. 

Still, some change has come to the district. The area rebranded itself as the Tulsa Arts District, and the Brady Theater has changed its name to the Tulsa Theater. In 2018, as he was preparing to leave office, Ewing again proposed a change to the freshly renamed M.B. Brady Street. It is now called Reconciliation Way, a nod to the racial under and overtones of the area, as well as the nearby John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park.

In the 1960s, construction started on the Interstate 244 bridge just north of Tulsa’s downtown. By this point the downtown Black Wall Street had been built, bombed out of existence, and then rebuilt by black Tulsans determined to not let their racist neighbors force them out of their prosperous creation.

Instead, it was Urban Renewal that continued what the massacre started, and by the time the bridge was finished, downtown had been effectively cut off from the northern part of the city. Today, “north Tulsa” is synonymous with “black Tulsa,” and some Tulsans and nearby suburbanites mention that part of the city in whispers.

Policing in the area is different, more aggressive, as anyone who has been on police ride alongs in the city’s different districts can attest. When Live PD, a popular television show that airs “live” broadcasts of policing interactions came to Tulsa, its cameras often found their way to north Tulsa. The show’s contract with Tulsa was not renewed in 2017 after then-Police Chief Chuck Jordan said he didn’t believe it showed Tulsa in a positive light. And Mayor G.T. Bynum said at the time he didn’t approve of the show, saying “I’m not a fan of a TV show that is trying to feed off the difficulties our police officers face.”

Before long, however, the show was back. This time Bynum credited the show with being a positive vehicle “because I think it is important for the people to see what our officers actually deal with out in the field.”

Bynum, a Republican who was elected in 2016, had campaigned on a platform that included pledging to work to change the life-expectancy of those north of Tulsa’s I-244 bridge, which is 10 years less than Tulsans who live south of the bridge.

Live PD made a star of Sean, “Sticks,” Larkin, a Tulsa police Sergeant with the department’s Gang Unit. Larkin appeared on a controversial episode during the show’s initial run in Tulsa, and was filmed grilling a black Tulsan about his gang affiliation. The man continually argued with Larkin that he was not a member of a gang, and critics at the time complained that the episode showed a clear-cut case of racial profiling.

By the time the city initially cut ties with Live PD, Larkin had become a fan favorite, and started flying back-and-forth from Tulsa to the show’s television studio in New York, where he served as commentator. When LivePD returned to Tulsa, Larkin had become a full-fledged television star, complete with more than 500,000 combined followers on Twitter and Instagram, a famous girlfriend, and fan-fiction written about him on the internet.

But after George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis Police last month and protests broke out across the country and in Tulsa, things quickly changed. Tulsans rallied and protested on I-244, the very bridge that had segregated north Tulsa from the rest of the city. One of their demands was that Tulsa end its relationship with Live PD.

At first, Bynum declined, saying on a local conservative radio show that “you know how I feel” about efforts to send Live PD packing. But later that same day Bynum met with local activists and announced he would indeed end Live PD’s existence in the city. 

Since then the entire show has been canceled, as has COPS, a similar show that was created more than three decades ago. Larkin, on June 2, posted a black square, a sign of solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement on his Instagram page along with the hashtag #theshowmustbepaused. 

But he also teased a return of Live PD, retweeting on June 9 a tweet by show host Dan Abrams who promised the show would “come back.”

Tulsa, like many medium-to-large cities, struggles with the relationship between its police force and its black citizens. 

But years before calls for police reform began, it also struggled with the relationship between its black and white officers. 

In 1994, a former Tulsa Police Department officer named Roy Johnson filed a lawsuit against the city of Tulsa alleging that the police department had racist hiring, firing and promotion policies. 

About four years after Johnson filed his lawsuit, it was given class-action status, allowing other officers to join in. In 2003 federal courts accepted a settlement, over the objections of the city’s police union.It wasn’t until 2010 that it was finalized — and even then the fraternal order of police declined to sign the document. 

Part of the consent decree agreed upon in 2010 was that all Tulsa police vehicles would have cameras installed on the dashboard. But that process wasn’t a smooth one and it was years before the cameras were successfully installed. At first the city bought a number of cameras and in-car laptops to run the cameras. But the laptops and cameras didn’t work together well, and in 2012 the city started over and purchased new laptops. 

Installation itself was a mess, with city workers going around the clock to install miles of wiring in each squad car to connect the laptops to the cameras.

Then the cameras themselves were discontinued, and Tulsa police had to purchase new, hi-definition cameras. The picture of course would be clearer, but the file size for each car’s video would grow enormously. The system was designed so that an officer could pull his or her squad car into division headquarters at the end of a shift and the video would be wirelessly pulled from the vehicle and put into on-site storage. But now the videos were in high definition, and took longer to upload. This resulted in an online traffic jam of sorts, as the system was unable to finish one upload before the next vehicle would pull in. Late arrivers back to headquarters would be stuck behind a line of squad cars, all awaiting their turn to upload the day’s recordings.

It wasn’t until 2015 that the department began to get the kinks worked out, and of course, by then, most of the country had abandoned the limited viewing range of dashboard cameras for cheaper, more reliable body-worn cameras. But Tulsa police were under a court-ordered consent decree and had to finish dash camera installation before they could start the process of moving over to body cameras.

On April 6, 2012, a white Chevrolet pickup pulled up outside of Deon Tucker’s house. Tucker and his friend David Hall were on the porch and heard the driver of the pickup ask for directions. Then the driver and passenger opened fire, shooting Hall and Tucker. The pickup then sped away.

Both men survived and later learned they were among five people shot during a racist shooting spree that left three others — William Allen, 31, Dannaer Fields, 49, and Bobby Clark, 54 — dead. 

All the victims were black and lived on the city’s north side. Police later learned from victim accounts that the shooters had been white (or at least white passing, one of the shooters is identified in court records as being Native American) and officers quickly realized there was an obvious racial element to what were quickly deemed the “Good Friday Shootings.”

Eventually both Jacob England and Alvin Watts were arrested for the crimes and it was perhaps little surprise that the shootings were racially motivated. England had posted on social media that he was angry that his father had been killed by a black man, and used a racial slur. He said he missed both his father and fiancee, who had died early that year. Watts replied “I kno I miss them 2.”

Watts and England both eventually pleaded guilty and received life without parole sentences. And even though the 1921 Race Massacre had yet to truly reach the nation’s consciousness, it served as a backdrop for a city that has yet to heal from its racist past. Then-mayor Dewey Bartlett often referenced what was then referred to as the “Race Riot” when he talked about the Good Friday shootings, and said the national media often referenced the massacre when they called to speak to him about the killings.

“I knew the Race Riot was the standard by which we were going to be judged,” Bartlett told the Tulsa World in 2017. 

“I was not going to deny it, … the whole community knows it is a tremendous blemish on our history, but we have to show that we are not that way any more.”

On Oct. 21, 2011, Elliott Williams’ relatives took the military veteran to a hotel in Owasso. A breakup with his wife had left Williams despondent and unable to sleep. While at the hotel, Williams reportedly caused a disturbance in the lobby.

Owasso police arrived, but couldn’t calm him down. They eventually pepper sprayed  Williams and took him to the city jail. While there his condition worsened, and his mental state deteriorated. Before he was transferred to the Tulsa County Jail, Williams, who relatives said had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, was saying he wanted to die, hiding under benches, stripping himself naked and barking like a dog.

After more than five days on the concrete floor of his Tulsa County jail cell, Williams died naked, cold and alone, unable to move.

Elliott Williams soon before he died. Photo Courtesy NewsOn6

Hungry and thirsty, jail video showed Williams, who had broken his neck at some point during his incarceration, screaming for help. Instead jailers mocked him, told him he was faking, and put food and drink just out of his reach. Though Williams begged for something to drink, he couldn’t pick up the styrofoam cups of water they placed near him.

One day turned to two, three and four days. On the fifth day, none of the jail’s staff bothered to enter Williams’ cell.

According to court records, the jail’s medical staff began to wonder if Williams might actually be paralyzed from a broken neck, as he claimed. But those in charge did nothing to find out whether his claims were true.

Instead, they watched him slowly dying on a video camera in a jail cell a federal judge eventually referred to as “a burial crypt.”

An autopsy later found that Williams had died of “complications of vertebrospinal injuries due to blunt force trauma, starvation, and dehydration.” His family sued, and was awarded $10 million by a federal jury. 

Williams’ death came before national attention turned toward law enforcement violence and indifference. When Williams died, his story was buried deep inside the local paper. His death only gained widespread exposure following high-profile police shootings across the country, and in Tulsa, that exposed the divide between law enforcement and black citizens.

In 2014, a mixed-race Tulsa teenager named Jeremey Lake was gunned down in the street not far from downtown just outside his aunt’s house. Lake, whose mother was sick, lived with his aunt and had recently started dating a white girl whose father just happened to be a longtime Tulsa police officer. 

Lake was killed in the middle of the night, after most Tulsans had gone to sleep. Many were surprised to awake the next morning to find that married officers Shannon and Gina Kepler had been arrested in connection to Lake’s killing.  Gina Kepler, who was initially held as an accessory, had her case later dismissed.

Lisa Kepler, the couple’s daughter, told reporters that her father was upset with her for running away and dating someone he disapproved of. She said Shannon Kepler pulled up in a black vehicle, briefly argued with her, then shot Lake in the chest before speeding away. 

Kepler told investigators that Lake had pulled a weapon on him, though Lisa Kepler said Lake had only offered to shake her father’s hand, and either way no weapon was ever found on or around Lake’s body. Kepler was charged with murder, and investigators found that he had searched through a police database of information to find dirt on Lake. On one of the documents Kepler had printed out, he wrote down Lake’s address, then apparently drove there and shot the teenager.

Since Kepler was not on duty at the time of the shooting, it was not technically an officer-involved shooting, though it was framed locally and nationally as being a case of a white officer shooting and killing an unarmed black teenager and it happened just months after a white Ferguson, Missouri, police officer shot and killed Michael Brown, sparking protests and violence there.

Chuck Jordan, who was Tulsa’s police chief, described the shooting not as an officer-involved shooting, but instead often referred to it as a case of domestic family violence. Kepler went to trial four times — the first three ended in mistrial — before he was eventually convicted of manslaughter.

Less than a year later, Tulsa was again embroiled in a police shooting controversy. The Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office had an undercover task force that, in part, attempted to find and arrest illegal gun dealers. A man named Eric Harris became the target of the task force, despite the fact that he wasn’t a big gun-runner and only occasionally sold guns in order to make a quick buck or help feed a drug habit. 

On April 2, 2015, a white undercover deputy met with Harris, who was black, outside of a Dollar General store near a local elementary school. Harris had a single unloaded firearm in his backpack that he intended to sell, but video from inside the deputy’s pickup showed he quickly became wary of the situation. Before long, other undercover officers quickly pulled vehicles up alongside the pickup and Harris, faced with arrest, fled on foot up the street.

Harris, 44, was eventually tackled and pinned down in the road. One of the last people to approach the scene was 72-year-old Robert Bates, a reserve deputy and friend of then-sheriff Stanley Glanz. Bates had actually supported Glanz financially during his many campaigns for sheriff and even served as Glanz’s re-election campaign chairman in 2012.

Andre, left, and Eric Harris. Courtesy.

Bates, the sheriff’s office later said, had donated vehicles and equipment to the department. One piece of equipment Bates had donated, ironically, was a small camera attached to a key fob that could be used to secretly record video. On the day deputies chased Harris, one of them was carrying that key fob. And it recorded Bates ambling toward the tackled Harris, pointing a gun at him, and shooting him just under the right arm. 

Bates, the video showed, quickly dropped the handgun and said “I shot him. I’m sorry.” Harris replied “you shot me, man,” and later — in a sentence eerily similar to one said by black men who are killed by law enforcement nationwide — “I’m losing my breath.”

“Fuck your breath,” a deputy replied. 

That deputy later said he didn’t know Harris had been shot.

Former Reserve Deputy Robert Bates. Courtesy

Harris died, and it was only days later that the sheriff’s office admitted that Bates had been the shooter. Records later showed Bates had been investigated years prior for copious amounts of misconduct as a reserve deputy, including making arrests he was not supposed to make and going on high-risk warrant services reserve deputies were not supposed to attend. 

Glanz, it turned out, had done more than turn a blind eye to Bates’ misdeeds — he actively covered them up, ordering the details of the internal investigation into Bates be kept from reporters and failing for years to discipline his friend for a number of other incidents.

Bates was later convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to four years in prison, though he served less than half that sentence. In 2016 Glanz stepped down as sheriff, a post he’d held for almost three decades, after he was convicted of two misdemeanors that emerged as a result of a grand jury investigation into the sheriff’s office.

Tulsa County settled with the Harris family for $6 million in 2018.

Less than two years after Harris was killed, a black Tulsan named Terence Crutcher stopped his sport utility vehicle in the street near 36th Street North and Lewis Avenue. Betty Shelby, a Tulsa police officer who was headed to an unrelated call, happened to drive past Crutcher’s vehicle.

She inspected the vehicle and then spoke with Crutcher, who she said was behaving oddly. Alone, and with no backup close, Shelby began to back toward her squad car while ordering Crutcher not to reach into his pockets or to enter his vehicle. 

Terence Crutcher is pictured with his father, the Rev. Joey Crutcher, in an undated family photo. Courtesy

A police helicopter, in which sat Shelby’s husband, Dave Shelby, and another officer, flew overhead. Footage from the helicopter shows Crutcher walking to his vehicle with his hands in the air as Betty Shelby and another officer approach. One officer in the helicopter called for a Taser to be used on Crutcher and said he looked “like a bad dude.”

“He might be on something,” he said. Crutcher’s autopsy showed he had PCP in his system at the time. 

Other officers arrived and Crutcher eventually approached his vehicle. Shelby then shot and killed Crutcher, saying she feared he was reaching into his vehicle for a weapon. Police found no weapon in his vehicle.

Shelby was charged with first-degree manslaughter just six days after the shooting, an unprecedented turnaround for a case involving a criminal charge of an on-duty police officer. Jordan, the police chief, promised that “justice” would be done, and Tulsa County District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler promised to give his full attention to the case, despite the well-known difficulties that come with prosecution of  police officers.

In turn, the local police union filed a bar complaint against Kunzweiler and later supported a different candidate who unsuccessfully attempted to unseat Kunzweiler as DA in 2018 

During Shelby’s trial, Kunzweiler and prosecutor Kevin Gray detailed lengths the police department went to help Shelby in the wake of the shooting, including giving her days to compose herself before giving her official statement, and even letting her watch video of the shooting before speaking with officers. 

Who, Kunzweiler asked, is allowed that much time and leeway before speaking to officers after they’ve killed an unarmed person? Only a cop, he said, urging the police department during the trial to handle investigations of their own officer-involved shootings differently. 

But jurors were unswayed. After half-a-day of deliberations they acquitted Shelby and she was quickly reinstated to the police department, though she was placed behind a desk rather than in a patrol vehicle.

Not long after, Shelby resigned, and she eventually became a deputy in Rogers County, whose sheriff was a former officer in Tulsa and who had at times criticized Tulsa’s police chief. 

She now trains other officers in surviving the aftermath of an officer-involved shooting.

Discord between the community and police officers is not always due to high-profile police killings or jail deaths, however. 

In 2016, in the days leading up to a community panel on race which he was scheduled to help lead, Tulsa police Maj. Travis Yates penned an article for his website, lawofficer.com, titled “This is war.” 

Yates, in the article, said he was upset over killings of police officers in Dallas in Baton Rouge, La.,that year, and compared how he felt at the time to his post-9/11 experience. 

Tulsa Police Deptartment Maj. Travis Yates. DYLAN GOFORTH/The Frontier

“We are at war! The men and women behind the badge know it. Good leaders know it and decent communities know it. For the safety of all of our men and women behind the badge, it is time our country knows it,” Yates wrote in the article. 

Yates eventually rewrote the story, and headline, and said later he did not consider himself or his department to be at war with Tulsa citizens. 

Less than a week after the article was published, Yates was transferred from his post as head of the department’s Gilcrease Division, which oversaw the largely black northern part of Tulsa. He was replaced by Wendell Franklin, who was Tulsa’s only black district commander. Franklin, who in 2003 said in response to the Black Officer’s Lawsuit in Tulsa that he’d seen no evidence of bias or racism in the police department, has since become Tulsa’s police chief.

Yates has not stayed out of the headlines. In the days after Tulsans — and much of the country — protested in the wake of George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis, Yates went on a local conservative radio and downplayed the idea that race might have played a role in Floyd’s killing. 

A week later, Yates took to the airwaves again, and said he’d seen research that said police officers were “shooting African Americans about 24% less than we probably ought to be based on the crimes being committed.”

In 2018, Yates wrote an open letter to Tulsa’s mayor and said any disproportionate policing in Tulsa’s black neighborhoods was a result of “fatherless homes” and allegations of racism in policing are “dangerous” and a “great scam,” according to Public Radio Tulsa. 

In response to his comments about officer-involved shooting demographics, the department distanced themselves from his statements and downplayed his current role at the department, saying that he was currently assigned to a desk in the TPD records division.

The post As Trump’s visit nears, a reminder that Tulsa’s racist history extends well beyond the 1921 Race Massacre appeared first on The Frontier.

“That was the answer we were looking for,” ASM Global Executive Vice President Doug Thornton told trustees of the Tulsa Public Facilities Authority on Thursday.

Trump is set on Saturday to hold the first large-scale public event in the country since the coronavirus pandemic took hold in March. The rally comes amid record daily increases in confirmed Oklahoma coronavirus cases, and as discord continues nationwide over police brutality and racism.

The Trump campaign has said almost 1 million tickets have been requested for the event, and city officials are bracing for the possibility of perhaps more than 100,000 people to be in the downtown area Saturday.

Oklahoma on Thursday reported 450 new cases of the coronavirus — a number that dwarfed the state’s previous high, which had also been recorded this week. The Oklahoma State Department of Health did not release the update until late in the afternoon Thursday, hours later than usual, due to an undisclosed technical difficulty. The numbers were released at about 4 p.m., not long after Gov. Kevin Stitt ended a roundtable discussion with Trump in Washington D.C. in which Trump praised Stitt for Oklahoma’s low overall total of coronavirus cases.

Neither the BOK Center, or ASM Global, which manages the facility, had offered much comment this week as critics called for Saturday’s rally to be halted amid public health concerns. But Thornton spoke to TPFA trustees for about an hour Thursday morning during a special meeting, giving the public a first glimpse of the anxiety the BOK Center’s managing company has about Trump’s campaign event.

G.T. Bynum contemplates a question during a TV interview at his watch party on election day in Tulsa, OK, June 28, 2016. MICHAEL WYKE/For The Frontier

Thornton said during the TPFA meeting Thursday that ASM Global reached out to Bynum’s office immediately after being approached by the Trump campaign on June 9. The campaign, Thornton said, told ASM Global they were seeking to host a “full-capacity” rally in Tulsa with no social distancing restrictions.

“The mayor’s office response was that we support the event to the greatest extent that the state and President will allow,” based on Oklahoma’s Open Up and Recover Safely Plan, Casey Sparks, BOK Center’s general manager, told the trustees. Oklahoma entered the final phase of Gov. Kevin Stitt’s reopening plan on June 1, allowing businesses to open with no restrictions on size of crowd or distancing requirements.

Trump announced his rally on June 10, at the time saying it would be held on June 19. That coincided with Juneteenth celebrations that mark the end of slavery in the country, celebrations that have particular meaning in a city in which hundreds of black residents were murdered in the 1921 Race Massacre.

Trump later announced he would move the date of the rally to June 20, and aides said Trump had not been aware of the conflict with Juneteenth. Trump later said that by originally setting his rally on the same date as the holiday, he had “made Juneteenth famous,” and that “nobody had ever heard of it” before his rally announcement.

Thornton reiterated throughout Thursday’s meeting that ASM Global felt pressured to make the rally happen, saying Stitt sent them a letter “acknowledging the event will take place under full capacity.” Thornton said they felt they had received little guidance from the state or city, other than an acknowledgement that since state guidelines did not prohibit the rally, they should hold it exactly as Trump’s campaign requested.

“What if (Bynum) would have said no?” asked one of the TPFA trustees.

“If he’d have said no, we would have said no, too,” Thornton replied.

“We wanted to make sure the city was comfortable and more importantly that the law enforcement officials were comfortable with (large crowds inside and outside the BOK Center) and the answer was yes,” Thornton said.

Bynum, during a news conference on Wednesday, told reporters that he hold told ASM Global “you need to operate this safely and whatever decision you make, we’ll have your back, but that it’s their decision under their contract with the city. They have sole authority for making the decisions on bookings in that facility.”

Doug Thornton, executive vice president of ASM Global, which manages the BOK Center. Courtesy

Thornton said ASM Global was told by city officials that “there were no concerns from a public safety standpoint.”

Bynum, in a press conference on Wednesday, said he would not block Trump’s rally, and that he had “anxiety” about “having a full house at the BOK Center.” But at the same time, he said he was “not a public health professional.”

“I’m not here to testify to the safety of anything,” Bynum said.

In an email, a Bynum spokeswoman told The Frontier that ASM “asked the Mayor if the City could support the event from a law enforcement standpoint. Mayor Bynum told ASM the City could handle law enforcement support outside the event space — not security for the event itself.”

But two public health officials — Oklahoma State Department of Health Commissioner Lance Frye and Tulsa Health Department Director Bruce Dart — both expressed hesitation during Thursday’s meeting about the rally taking place as planned.

Frye said he felt the rally was “a train rolling down the hill that we’re not going to be able to stop.”

“We’re probably going to have to just figure out how we’re going to try to decrease the spread of this during this event,” Frye said. “Keep the messaging out there that vulnerable populations should stay home, and watch it on TV. Don’t go, and try to get people to follow CDC guidelines on large public gatherings.

“Quite frankly, I don’t know if the population that’s attending this is the population that’s going to listen to us.”

Frye told trustees that “hopefully there won’t be any fatalities, but you don’t know.”

“I don’t think we’re going to stop this event, so we just have to focus on prevention,” Frye said.

One of the trustees asked Frye for an idea how many potential fatalities could be caused by a surge in coronavirus cases in Tulsa County as a result of the rally.

“Any reason to believe we’ll have no deaths from the spike?” the trustee asked.

“There certainly could be and may be, but it’s difficult to say for certain,” Frye said.

Frye’s comments appeared to be a departure from statements he made Wednesday during a press conference at the state Capitol. Frye, who was appointed by Stitt last month as the state’s new health commissioner, said on Wednesday it was “not my place to say whether I think a rally is a good idea or not.”

Dart called the rally a “big concern” during Thursday’s TPFA meeting and said large indoor gatherings make it “much easier for the virus to transmit.”

Donald Trump appears at a rally in Tulsa in January 2016. Dylan Goforth/THE FRONTIER

”People in enclosed spaces and in close contact are perfect conduits for virus transmission and that’s what a large indoor event is. It will probably happen,” Dart said, referring to a post-rally spike in positive coronavirus cases.

Thornton told trustees that ASM Global had grown increasingly worried about virus transmission and the safety of employees and attendees to Saturday’s rally, and they had requested the Trump campaign asking “to know what their plan is for social distancing.”

Meghan Blood, the director of marketing for the BOK Center, said on Thursday in an email that the Trump campaign had agreed to temperature-check attendees and provide each attendee with a mask and hand sanitizer upon entering the building.

But a full plan has not been released by the Trump campaign, and Thornton said during the meeting it’s unlikely for it to be possible for there to be social distancing if, as city, state and Trump officials have requested, the rally be held at full capacity.

Trump’s campaign told ASM Global it would have 60,000 masks available for attendees, and would provide 90,000 personal hand sanitizers to people entering the BOK Center.

“Regardless of all that, we are requesting they provide us with a more definitive plan on the health and safety of the patrons who are coming in,” Thornton said.

He said the BOK Center was providing 9,500 masks for staff members on Saturday, and had “677 gallons of disinfectant, 185 gallons of bathroom disinfectant,” and hundreds of hand sanitizer stations located throughout the arena.

Thornton also said they had offered employees the option to skip Saturday’s event if they didn’t feel safe or if they were in an age group more vulnerable to the coronavirus. “About 50 percent” of the employees decided to take Saturday off, Sparks said. She said ushers and ticket staff employees tend to be an older population, and that only two of about 150 of employees they considered to be in a vulnerable age group agreed to work Saturday.

Thornton said they had brought in additional employees from an outside company to help fill staffing levels.

However, many of the employees at the BOK Center are considered part-time employees, he said, and therefore do not have health insurance through work that would cover them if they were infected with the coronavirus during the rally.

Thornton said he “made it clear to the campaign” they needed a $460,000 payment for the rally up front, and have already been paid in full.

Frontier staff writers Clifton Adcock and Kassie McClung contributed to this story.

The post ‘We would have said no:’ BOK Center management said they would have turned down Trump had Tulsa Mayor told them to appeared first on The Frontier.

A game fowl raised at Moody Farm in Tahlequah, listed by Animal Wellness Action as one of the top shippers in the nation of game fowl to Guam. Courtesy/Facebook

Nearly 20 years after Oklahoma made cockfighting and the possession of chickens used for cockfighting a felony, the state is one of the largest exporters of game fowl used in illegal cockfights in the country, according to a national animal rights group.  

Avian shipping records obtained from the Guam Department of Agriculture by the group Animal Wellness Action showed that between 2017 and 2019, around 8,800 birds were illegally shipped from the U.S. mainland to Guam, a U.S. territory in the western Pacific Ocean, for cockfighting, said the group’s founder and president Wayne Pacelle.

Of the 71 people who exported those birds to Guam, the top five exporters were responsible for more than half of the birds sent, and three of the top five shippers were based in Oklahoma, Pacelle said.

“We basically found that over this two year period, there were 8,800 fighting birds shipped to Guam from the United States, and Oklahoma was by far the number one shipper to Guam,” Pacelle said.

Two of the three Oklahoma-based breeders listed in Animal Wellness Action’s top five shippers list told The Frontier that someone else was using their name to ship birds or the birds being shipped were for breeding or show purposes only.

Cockfighting became illegal in Guam and other U.S. territories in December, a year after President Donald Trump signed the 2018 Farm Bill into law, which contained a provision known as the Parity in Animal Cruelty Enforcement Act, which extended the federal bans on dogfighting and cockfighting to the U.S. territories.

Cockfighting was made illegal in Oklahoma in 2003, following passage of a ballot initiative a year earlier known as State Question 687. The measure not only outlawed cockfighting, but also made it a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison and fines of up to $25,000 to possess, own or train birds for the purpose of cockfighting.

Following passage of the measure by Oklahoma voters, its constitutionality was challenged by individuals and companies involved in cockfighting, but the law was upheld in 2004 by the Oklahoma Supreme Court. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case when those challenging the law attempted to appeal.

Pacelle, who was CEO of the Humane Society of the United States, was deeply involved with getting Oklahoma’s anti-cockfighting law passed, as well as the new law prohibiting cockfighting in U.S. territories.

“It’s been a personal crusade of mine to eradicate dogfighting and cockfighting in the United States,” Pacelle said.

In addition, federal law passed around the same time as Oklahoma’s anti-cockfighting law went into effect prohibits the shipping of fighting animals across state lines, as well as to U.S. territories and other countries.

Pacelle said the shipping records from the Guam Department of Agriculture show tell-tale signs of shipping birds for the purposes of cockfighting — the male to female ratio of birds shipped was around 100-to-1, prices for two or three birds ranged from $500 to $1,500 and Guam’s lack of major poultry laying and broiler operations.

“People aren’t going to pay $1,500 to get three birds for meat or for eggs,” Pacelle said. “The fact that it is basically the least agriculturally-oriented part of the United States, they import almost all of their animal products, showed that this is exactly why they were shipping the birds from Oklahoma.”

Pacelle said the group also background those they suspected of shipping fighting birds, using social media posts and Google Earth images to confirm their suspicions.

“We are basically making the argument, and we have the facts to support it, that there is a brisk trade in illegal fighting animals coming from Oklahoma,” Pacelle said.

To be able to sell their chickens, breeders have to first show that their roosters are good fighters, Pacelle said. And to do that, they have to fight them, he said.

“They don’t just breed them and ship them, that’s a felony. No breeder can sell the animal if they’re not fighting their birds, without showing they are robust game fowl,” Pacelle said. “Basically, you have cockfighters who make their money by being a good breeder and selling their birds to others. But the only way you can demonstrate you’re a good breeder is if your birds win fights.”

The number one shipper to Guam, according to the records obtained by Animal Wellness Action, was John and Brenda Bottoms of Heavner, who operated under the name Gunner Game Farm and shipped 1,719 birds to Guam over the course of three years.

The Bottoms told The Frontier that they ship game fowl for other breeders as a broker through Brenda Bottoms’ company Brenda’s Shipping, so not all of the birds that were shipped were theirs. The birds being shipped, the Bottoms told The Frontier, are not for fighting, but for show and breeding purposes only.

“I ship chickens for several people. There’s not many people who are legal to ship, but I am,” Brenda Bottoms said. “Everything I ship is for breeding purposes only. It says that on the certificate.”

John Bottoms estimated that his wife’s company has probably shipped between 3,000 and 4,000 male and female birds over the past few years.

“We ship roosters for people all over, but we’re not anywhere near the biggest game farm,” John Bottoms said.

John Bottoms said he has raised game fowl since 1980. And though he “100 percent disagreed with the law” banning cockfighting in the state, once it went into effect, he stopped fighting them.

John Bottoms. Courtesy/Facebook

“I still raise them just for breeding purposes only,” he said. “We quit fighting them and started shipping brood fowl only, for show purposes only,” John Bottoms said. “That’s what it (the shipping certificate) says.”

Since the ban on cockfighting in U.S. territories went into effect in December, their shipping business has fallen from around 1,000 birds shipped per year to around 150, John Bottoms said.

“Her shipping business is almost cancelled,” he said. “They really hurt Puerto Rico and Guam.”

Bottoms said, cockfighting is deeply ingrained in the heritage of many people in those territories, as well as in other countries like the Philippines.

“Over here they have football and basketball players,” he said. “Over there, they have people who have game fowl. It’s a different culture.”

Though the records obtained by Animal Wellness Action only cover shipments to Guam, the large volume of chickens coming from Oklahoma likely means that birds are being shipped to other places as well, including the Philippines, Thailand and Mexico, where cockfighting is still legal.

“It’s indicative. There’s no way their business is entirely predicated on Guam, which is a territory of 170,000 people out in the western Pacific Ocean,” Pacelle said. “This is a global industry, and frankly, they’re shipping birds to other states.”

Darrell Trammell of Moody Game Farm in Tahlequah. Courtesy/Facebook

The third largest shipper with 839 birds shipped during the three years, Bill McNatt of Cherokee Game Farm in Stigler, did not respond to a phone message by The Frontier. McNatt, who was an elementary school principal in Keota, was arrested in 2007 when authorities raided a cockfighting ring in southeastern Oklahoma.

However, the fifth largest shipper on the list, Darrell Trammell, owner of of Moody Farm in Tahlequah, said that he did not ship any birds. Rather, another individual had used his National Poultry Improvement Plan number to ship birds.

That person died of a heart attack during a trip to the Philippines in January 2018, he said. The shipping records provided to The Frontier by Animal Wellness Action show the last shipment in Trammell’s name was made to Guam in December 2017.

“I’ve never shipped a chicken to Guam, but there was a boy who was a friend of mine who was a shipper,” Trammell said. “He shipped some chickens once to Hawaii for me and he had to have my NPIP number and I think he just kept my NPIP number handy and used it to ship chickens to Guam.

“I’m not a shipper. I don’t ship to people at all. Probably ought to be, there’s good money in it, I think. But there’s a lot of legalities to it too. I just don’t want to do that.”

However, in a Nov. 7, 2018 post on Moody Farm’s Facebook page, customers from Mexico are advised on how to have brood fowl from Moody Farms shipped to them.

A Nov. 7, 2018 posting on Moody Farm’s Facebook page detailing shipping to of brood fowl from Moody Farm. Courtesy/Facebook

Trammell said he still owns chickens, but only for breeding and show purposes.

“I’ve got a few, but I just do it for breeding and if they want to take them to show them, I let kids take them and everything else. But shipping animals to Guam, that’s not my cup of tea,” Trammell said. “For me, it’s kind of a hobby deal, but some of these guys used to get really into it.”

Cockfights Magazine cover posted to Moody Game Farm’s Facebook Page. Courtesy/Facebook

“I don’t try to fight them. I just abide by the law. When the law says ‘you can’t raise them no more,’ I’ll get rid of all my pens and everything I have and quit,” Trammell said. “I’ll go to raising cows, I guess.”

Since the ban went into effect in Oklahoma, Trammell said he does not attend fights. And though the law prohibits owning chickens for fighting, authorities do allow game fowl to be owned in “brood trios” — a male and two females, he said.

“That’s what the law told us when they shut us down,” Trammell said. “They were going to shut us down originally — you couldn’t even own a feather on one. You couldn’t own a string, you couldn’t own a pen, you couldn’t own a water cup. We all got together and talked to the senators about it, and they were going to have to buy us out if they shut down the business. So, they said ‘you can raise them and sell them, but you can’t fight them.”

Pacelle said he hopes the U.S. Department of Agriculture, will step up its enforcement of the anti-animal fighting laws, and hopes to see the U.S. Department of Justice form an animal cruelty crimes unit.

“They’re very lax in enforcing the federal law, which is one of the big things we’re concentrating on,” Pacelle said.

The issue is also one of public and agricultural health, Pacelle said. The state of California and the federal government are spending tens of millions of dollars and have euthanized millions of chickens to try and contain an outbreak of Newcastle disease, which is highly contagious and deadly to chickens, thought to have been spread in part by cockfighters. The often-bloody sport of cockfighting could also increase the chances of a virus such as bird flu jumping from chickens to humans, he said.

“It’s not just an issue of animal cruelty. It’s also, and especially now after the COVID-19 crisis, I think people understand that dangerous mishandling and mistreatment of animals can promote zoonotic diseases,” Pacelle said. “The situation is multi-dimensional in terms of the problem. And it warrants aggressive federal action to stop cruelty, to stop disease spread in the agricultural industry, to stop the potential of a disease jumping to humans.”

Trammell took issue with the idea that anti-cockfighting laws are saving or causing chickens to be rescued.

“They’re always trying to do something. The sad part is, when they go in and raid chickens, they kill every one of them,” Trammell said. “You can’t do anything with them. You can’t rehabilitate these chickens. They’re bred to fight and that’s what they do.

“They start fighting from a day old. That’s in their genes.”

The post Oklahoma tops list of illegal shipping of fighting chickens, says animal welfare group appeared first on The Frontier.

Shonia Hall, director of school nutrition services for Oklahoma City Public Schools. BEN FELDER/The Frontier

The masked workers load styrofoam containers with pizza, carrots, applesauce and milk, working with assembly-line efficiency to push out meals to the line of cars stretched around the south Oklahoma City school building. 

Oklahoma City Public Schools, now in summer break, launched its summer feeding program last week at 23 schools across the district. Last year the district distributed 14,000 free meals during the entire summer. This year, the district surpassed 14,000 meals by the second day.

“We love to feed kids, this is what we do, there are just more kids now who need a meal,” said Shonia Hall, the district’s director of school nutrition services.

But demand for food has not only increased for the state’s largest school district. 

Applications for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as SNAP or food stamps, has more than doubled.

Many of the more than 300 neighborhood food pantries across Oklahoma are serving twice as many families. 

And the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma has brought in members of the National Guard to help load food into semis, delivering more than 6.2 million pounds in April, an increase of more than 30 percent from a normal month. 

“You cannot say there isn’t a need,” said Cathy Nestlen, director of strategic communications for the Regional Food Bank in Oklahoma City.

This is what it looks like when one of the hungriest states in the nation experiences an economic crisis of historic proportions, when more than 154,000 Oklahomans have filed unemployment claims and thousands of jobs seemed to vanish overnight at hotels, restaurants and in the oil fields. 

John, a father of two who recently lost his job as a mechanic, panhandles at an Oklahoma City intersection. BEN FELDER/The Frontier

“Demand (for food services) is way higher and much of it is from folks who have never accessed it before,” said Chris Bernard, executive director of Hunger Free Oklahoma, a Tulsa-based nonprofit.

Already the nation’s fifth-highest food insecure state where one in five children struggle with hunger, Oklahoma has seen an increased demand for food at schools, food banks and other social service organizations.

The coronavirus pandemic forced the closure of schools and businesses, but Oklahoma has also been hit by a slumping oil and gas sector, which plays an outsized role in the state’s economy. 

Some government leaders have optimistically predicted a quick economic recovery with malls and restaurants full again by summer. While that will rely on the state avoiding a second spike in COVID-19 cases, and Oklahomans feeling more comfortable leaving their homes, social service leaders say an economic rebound may not include the state’s neediest residents for a long time. 

The Frontier conducted interviews with more than two dozen people in social service organizations and all predicted the current food crisis will last well into next year. 

“I worry there is going to be a perception that now everything is open and no one is hurting anymore,” Bernard said. “A lot of these people are not going to get stimulus checks for a long time or maybe they got those checks but they had so much financial burden that they are now back to struggling to pay for food.”

Volunteers at the Tulakes food pantry in northwest Oklahoma City load sacks with food for families in need. BEN FELDER/The Frontier

The Moore Food and Resource Center has served more than 2,700 families over the past six weeks with more than one third seeking food assistance for the first time. 

A food pantry in northwest Oklahoma City operating out of a strip mall took over the empty storefront next door because of the need to store more food. 

Even though school buildings were closed for the final two months of the academic year, many continued to offer breakfast and lunch with grab-and-go setups. 

Hall, the director of school nutrition services for Oklahoma City schools, said she was scrambling in March to buy pallets of peanut butter and jelly, collect enough coolers to keep drinks cold at school drive through meal sites and was in the market for hundreds of thousands of bags. 

“I was stressing a lot about finding bags,” Hall said.

In March, the U.S. Department of Agriculture issued waivers allowing districts to distribute meals outside of school buildings and to no longer only provide free meals at schools where more than 50 percent of students qualified for free or reduced price lunch. 

In Oklahoma City, where more than 90 percent of students qualify, Hall said demand for free meals decreased when federal stimulus checks were initially disbursed but has quickly increased again. 

At an Oklahoma City food pantry operated by Tulakes Community Church, Sam O’Bannon, the food bank’s manager, said he saw a similar situation. 

“Our initial first weeks (during the pandemic) our numbers actually dropped from our average,” O’Bannon said. “But our contact from the Regional Food Bank said don’t be deceived by that because those stimulus checks are going to run out pretty quick and that’s exactly what happened.”

The food pantry is now serving about 75 families a week and another 125 through deliveries. 

O’Bannon said many of the new families have never visited a food pantry before and prior to the economic collapse were financially stable. 

“We’ve seen a few middle class income families and there is a deep shame every time they come and that has been hard to see,” O’Bannon said. 

The Oklahoma Department of Human Services has also received applications from Oklahomans who have never sought food assistance before. 

In response to the increased demand Bernard’s organization, Hunger Free Oklahoma, launched a hotline this week to help Oklahomans fill out the online application. The hotline has employed 12 people but plans to triple in size in the coming weeks. 

“They are all folks who got laid off or furloughed, which is kind of cool because we get to employ people who might otherwise be calling the hotline,” Bernard said. 

Hunger Free Oklahoma is advocating for federal waivers that help streamline the work of state agencies to deliver assistance. The federal government recently approved a waiver that will allow Oklahomans to use SNAP for online grocery purchases. 

Hunger Free Oklahoma has also launched a program that uses closed restaurants to supply meals for those in need. 

However, Bernard said the current federal payroll assistance program that is helping some restaurants and other businesses remain open will dry up in a few weeks.

“I think we are going to see another round of layoffs that come later,” Bernard said. 

Seeking food assistance?

Apply for SNAP

Hotline for assistance: 1-877-760-0114

Find free meal sites

Volunteer to help

Correction: A previous version misreported the amount of food distributed by the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma in April. The correct amount is 6.2 million pounds.

The post An already hungry state sees its food crisis deepen appeared first on The Frontier.

Courtesy/City of Guthrie

A federal lawsuit filed Thursday accuses the city of Guthrie of violating its residents’ constitutional rights for its “shelter-in-place” ordinance and requirements that residents wear face masks when outside.

Filed in federal district court in the Western District of Oklahoma, the suit seeks both a temporary and permanent injunction against enforcement of the ordinance, which was passed by the Guthrie City Council on April 6 in an effort to help limit the spread of COVID-19. The ordinance expires at the end of the day May 5.

Guthrie’s shelter-in-place ordinance requires people to remain in their homes homes unless they are engaged in “essential activities,” which includes activities related to health and safety, obtaining necessary services or supplies, engaging in outdoor activities, going to work at an “essential business,” and a handful of other activities. The ordinance also requires that when people do go outside, they wear a cloth face mask.

The ordinance, with some exceptions, also prohibits gatherings of 10 or more people, including for “social/spiritual” gatherings, and according to the lawsuit, does not make exceptions for worship services that make efforts to mitigate the spread of the disease by requiring social distancing or staying in a vehicle during the service.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has swept across this country. In the interests of public safety, local governments are rushing to enact laws that they believe will protect people,” the lawsuit states. “While public safety is paramount, the Constitution must still be honored. A pandemic does not give local governments a blank check to write whatever laws they want. The Constitution secures fundamental rights regardless of the situation.”

The lawsuit, filed by Oklahoma City attorney Frank Urbanic on behalf of 10 people who live in Guthrie or conduct business in Guthrie, names the city, Mayor Steven Gentling, Police Chief Don Sweger, the City Council, and city prosecutors William Wheeler and Sheri Mueller as defendants.

Phone messages left for Wheeler, Mueller and Gentling by The Frontier on Thursday were not returned.

“There are numerous exceptions to the Ordinance that Defendants are not cracking down on, such as establishments like retail stores, where far more people come into closer contact with less oversight,” the lawsuit states. “It is more lawful for a group of ten people to be in a store purchasing food for their dogs than it is for them to be six feet apart at a religious gathering.”

The suit also cites U.S. Attorney General William Barr’s recent statement that said governments may not impose restrictions on religious activity that do not apply to non-religious activities.

“Requiring Plaintiffs to abstain from its religious gatherings, despite substantial modifications to satisfy the public health interests at stake, violates Plaintiff’s constitutional right to free exercise of religion.”

The ordinance also infringes on the residents’ First Amendment right to assembly, the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection and due process clauses, the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution, as well as state laws and constitutional protections, the lawsuit alleges.

The lawsuit also takes issue with the Guthrie ordinance’s requirement that anyone who makes a public outing must also wear a cloth face mask, saying it violates the U.S. Constitution’s Commerce Clause by requiring people to engage in commerce, and cites the 2012 U.S. Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care Act, Federation of Independent Businesses vs. Sebelius.

“The Ordinance applies to the richest and the poorest alike in Guthrie,” the suit states. “There is no guarantee that everyone within its city limits has a mask that meets the approval of the City of Guthrie. This section of the Ordinance forces Plaintiffs into commerce. Congress is prohibited from forcing individuals into engage in commerce. … A municipality should likewise be prohibited from forcing an individual to engage in commerce when all that person wants to do is leave his or her house.”

The suit also alleges a violation of the Commerce Clause by requiring some businesses to close, arguing that by requiring the businesses in Guthrie to close, the city was interfering with interstate commerce because of purchases by those businesses of goods and services from outside the state.

“Congress has not mandated the closure of any of the above businesses, therefore it is Congress’s intent that these businesses remain free to conduct business interstate,” the suit states. “The City of Guthrie’s prohibition on commerce is in opposition to Congress’s current regulation of interstate commerce and is an unlawful usurpation of Congress’s regulatory power under the Commerce Clause.”

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, social distancing — physical separation of six feet or more between people and limiting contact with others outside of one’s own home — is the best method to help limit the spread of the disease.

As of Thursday, there were 3,017 confirmed positive cases of COVID-19 in Oklahoma, which has resulted in 179 deaths and 622 hospitalizations, according to the Oklahoma Department of Health. Nine of Logan County’s 11 confirmed COVID-19 cases are in Guthrie, according to OSDH, though the county has had no documented deaths from the illness. Nationally, there were nearly 840,000 confirmed cases of the disease and more than 46,500 deaths, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

The lawsuit is the second such legal action to be filed in the state pushing back against restrictions put in place by municipalities in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak.

The first, filed against the city of Vinita earlier this month, was voluntarily dismissed last week after the city council amended its ordinance to remove penalties for violating the ordinance and provision that required people to remain in their homes.

On Wednesday, Gov. Kevin Stitt announced some businesses that had previously been closed could re-open starting Friday, and many others would be able to open on May 1 under a three-phase approach. There have also been public rallies in the last two weeks by groups wanting to see the state remove restrictions on businesses at the State Capitol, and at the city halls in Oklahoma City and Tulsa.

Stitt’s plan to begin lifting restrictions faced criticism from some who said the restrictions were being lifted too soon, such as Oklahoma State Medical Association President Dr. George Monks, State Senate Minority Leader Emily Virgin, D-Norman, and Norman Mayor Breea Clark, who said Stitt’s decision was akin to opening the Hunger Games for cities to fight over sales tax and would be “forced to put their economies ahead of the safety of their residents.”

Norman Mayor Breea Clark tweeted on Wednesday that she was concerned Stitt’s plan to begin lifting restrictions so early could force cities into a “Hunger Games” situation. Courtesy.

Some mayors, such as Broken Arrow’s Craig Thurmond, have already announced they plan to begin lifting their emergency proclamations by the end of Thursday, while others, such as Tulsa Mayor GT Bynum and Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt, said they will announce plans on how they will move forward on Friday.

The post Federal lawsuit asks judge to strike down Guthrie’s COVID-19 ‘shelter-in-place’ ordinance appeared first on The Frontier.