City Council hears from residents, police about policing recommendations

“We’re watching, and we’re not going anywhere.” -- Hannah Royce, resident

OKLAHOMA CITY (Free Press) — On Tuesday, the City Council of Oklahoma City held its regular meeting at City Hall, with a larger than usual audience.

The main highlight of the meeting was the presentation of the final report and recommendations of policing consultant group 21cp.

After a presentation on that report, a number of residents implored the Council to adopt and implement the recommendations as quickly as possible.

After citizen comment, Mark Nelson signed up to speak on the issue. Afterward, Ward 8 Councilman Mark Stonecipher beckoned Chief Wade Gourley to come talk about the many (42) changes he has made in the Department since he became Chief.

The discussion of the 21cp recommendations alone lasted a whopping two hours and 35 minutes.

Marty Peercy reports Local government

The Council also introduced an ordinance for redistricting the City’s 8 Wards, and approved an exciting project to restore the noble Oklahoma Opry on SW 25th Street, aka Calle Dos Cinco.

All members of Council were present, though Mayor David Holt had to step out for a brief time, handing the gavel over to Vice-Mayor Stonecipher. Ward 5 Councilman David Greenwell left the meeting at approximately 12:30, an hour before adjournment.

Policing recommendations

On Monday, Free Press published a brief preview of the recommendations of the 21cp consulting group. 

Tuesday’s meeting of the City Council had a representative of the consulting group present the final report and recommendations, all of which had already been fairly well reported and submitted to the Council through the process of the Mayor’s Law Enforcement Task Force.

Brian Maxey of 21cp Solutions delivered the presentation to Council.

The presentation led with 21cp’s statement that “Our takeaway is that creating accountable, equitable community safety services is not a political issue, it’s a practical challenge and getting it right is important to all of OKC.”

Maxey laid out a brief review of some highlighted recommendations for de-escalation, mental health response, violence interruption, and officer safety/wellness.

Among the recommendations were suggestions to adjust interview timing for officers involved in a critical incident, such as using their firearm against a resident. Currently, there is a 48-hour mandatory wait before a police officer is interviewed. Science shows that memories of incidents change, with no fault. Best practice would seem to be, according to 21cp, interviewing the officer by end of shift if physically possible.

A related change would be to disallow officers from watching videos of the incident before being interviewed. Currently, that is not the practice.

Other recommendations included minimizing the role of School Resource officers, added warning from officers before engaging in any physical intervention with a “suspect,” and for the City to re-examine ordinances for “quality of life” crimes, which are much more utilized in criminalizing homelessness than people with housing.

The full 85-page report is available on the City’s website.

Public Comment

Twelve members of the public signed up to address the Council and ask them to adopt the recommendations and to implement them as soon as possible.

One advocate, Nicole McAfee (feature photo), read the name of every person killed by police in Oklahoma City since 2018 in a somber recitation of losses in the community including 60-year-old Bennie Edwards, also known as Flower Man, and 15-year-old Stavian Rodriguez who was shot multiple times by multiple officers after disarming himself.

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McAfee went on to describe the early slave patrols and the bounties put on the escaped slaves. They went on to compare that with deaths by police in OKC in 2021, saying that the Council had effectively issued a $3.5 million dollar bounty on each of the people killed.

Other speakers described their own interactions with police. Well known local rapper and community activist Jabee Williams described a recent encounter with police who were parked in his driveway when he arrived home. The police officers were not very respectful of Williams in the situation.

21cp
Jess Eddy speaks on the 21cp recommendations as he criticizes OKCPD Chief Wade Gourley in the City Council meeting March 1, 2022. (BRETT DICKERSON/Okla City Free Press)

Jess Eddy, local activist, excoriated Mayor Holt, City Attorney Kenneth Jordan, and the FOP and Chief Wade Gourley for their failure to meet the moment and honor the life of Stavian Rodriguez and the grief of his mother and family.

Walker Milligan, a mental health therapist, pleaded with the Councilors to examine their core values, and act in accordance with those values.

Two members of the Law Enforcement Task Force were among the residents who spoke on Tuesday.

Reverend T. Sheri Dickerson implored the Council to adopt the recommendations after nearly two years of asking for reform.

Garland Pruitt said, “We’re not anti-police! We’re anti-injustice!”

One speaker, Hannah Royce, said, “History is watching. We are watching. We’re not going anywhere.”

21cp
Hannah Royce said, “We’re watching” in her comments about the final report of 21cp Solutions for police reform in OKC. (BRETT DICKERSON/Okla City Free Press)

Several speakers referred to their willingness to participate in the work of making public safety in Oklahoma City an equitable and restorative system.

A seeming consensus among the speakers was that these recommendations were “not perfect,” but were a good first step toward reforming what they see as a dangerous and problematic criminal system in the community.

Police response

Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) President Mark Nelson also addressed the Council. Nelson’s response to the recommendations was, succinctly, that the union would not “dig in their heels” about these recommendations, though obviously there were some that they didn’t like.

Nelson pointed out that the next round of contract negotiations are just around the corner, suggesting that some of these will be pivotal points in that process.

Chief Gourley was urged to the podium by Ward 8 Councilman Mark Stonecipher to explain the 42 changes made since he became Chief in July 2019. Those changes largely involve language aimed at changing the culture of the department.

Council comments

After public comment, the Council members were able to offer comments and thoughts on the issues presented.

Ward 2 Councilman James Cooper spoke at length about the importance of public education as a preventative tool for young people becoming police statistics.

Ward 6 Councilperson JoBeth Hamon* brought up the recent tweets that were widely shared where an Oklahoma City resident said they heard police officers talking to presumed “squatters” in the residence next to his home. During that time officers allegedly said unacceptable things including, “I will kill you right now without hesitation. I won’t lose a bit of sleep.”

Supposedly the response from supervisors was that sometimes it’s necessary to speak roughly with “transients.”

Hammon said that this scenario demonstrates that, yes, in spite of the comments from the FOP and Chief Gourley, “We are at odds.”

Ward 1 Councilman Bradley Carter took a very different approach. He expressed dismay that no community members had shown up to say anything positive about the police.

Oklahoma City Council
The City Council for Oklahoma City meeting March 1, 2022. (BRETT DICKERSON/Okla City Free Press)

Carter also criticized 21cp’s study as not being data-driven. Carter said, “Feelings will lie to you, data never will.”

Carter then made what some would call a straw man argument that the citizens of Oklahoma City are more deadly than the police.

By referencing statistics from 2021, Carter pointed out that in 11 instances of police discharging their firearms, “only” 6 residents were killed.

Carter compared that to the 90 resident-to-resident homicides in 2021.

For the reader, that is not a very encouraging ratio.

One data scientist, Nick Brooke, shared some “back of the envelope” math on this topic via Twitter during the meeting.

In 2021, the Oklahoma City metro area’s population was 998,000. Ninety homicides in that year means 9.02 homicides per 100,000 residents.

OKCPD has fewer than 1,200 members (many of whom are not street officers). Six killings translates to 500 deaths per 100,000.

That is a killing rate of 55 times the resident to resident homicide rate.

This data is, of course, not exact, because 1,200 is the “ideal” level of staffing for OKCPD, and the City’s population is not the same as “metro area” population. Oklahoma City’s population was closer to 681,000 people.

But it gives a snapshot of the lack of data involved in Carter’s complaint of a lack of analysis from 21cp.

Nikki Nice
Ward 7 OKC City Councilor Nikki Nice (center) speaks to the 21cp report about policing on March 1, 2022. Ward 6 Councilor JoBeth Hamon is on the left and Ward 8 Councilor Mark Stonecipher is on the right. (BRETT DICKERSON/Okla City Free Press)

Ward 7 Councilwoman Nikki Nice explained that her position requires her to look at these issues in multiple ways.

Nice said that, as a member of the Task Force, she saw that many of the diverse group of people on the committee don’t see police very often. Nice said that she sees police all the time in her neighborhood.

She also said that there was, in the recent past, a predatory OKCPD officer who attacked women who looked like her in her neighborhood, she may have been referring to Officer Daniel Holtzclaw. At the same time, she said she knows officers who are Black who have to navigate these interactions with some difficulty.

In the end, the Council voted to “receive” the recommendations. That means that the Council and City staff and the Police Department will be in a long-lasting dialogue about what the recommendations will be that are implemented, and what that implementation might include.

Redistricting

In somewhat less fraught business, Assistant City Manager Kenton Tsoodle gave a presentation to the Council about the final plans for redistricting of the 8 Wards.

Redistricting is required by law every ten years after new census information is available. The redrawing of lines is meant to make the population in each Ward as close to equal as possible.

Tsoodle said that the new average population per ward would be 85,132.

The Wards each have new boundaries, and the proposed map can be seen on the City’s website.

The ordinance was simply “introduced” at Tuesday’s meeting. That means that the public will be able to offer comment in a public hearing on the ordinance on March 15 at the Council meeting, and also on March 29th for the final meeting about the ordinance. At that meeting the Council will vote on whether to accept the redistricting map drawn by City staff.

Oklahoma Opry

One final note, the Council voted in favor of a zoning case regarding the venerable Oklahoma Opry building at 404 SW 25th street.

Developers were approved to begin a renovation project that will begin with the front part of the building where the entrance and concessions used to be.

The developers plan to make a cocktail and coffee bar in the space, and eventually to renovate and reopen the theater proper.

This will eventually make two theaters anchoring the historic “Calle Dos Cinco” with the beautifully renovated Yale Theater just a few blocks to the East.

The City Council will meet again on March 15 at 8:30 a.m.


*Disclosure: Reporter Marty Peercy is the husband of Oklahoma City Council member JoBeth Hamon.


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Columnist covering local government in Oklahoma City and Oklahoma County from May 2019 through June 2023.