The McCurtain County sheriff and two other staffers were suspended Tuesday by the Oklahoma Sheriffs’ Association after they were secretly recorded talking about killing reporters and lynching Black residents after a public meeting.
The vote by the organization to suspend Sheriff Kevin Clardy, sheriff’s investigator Alicia Manning, and Jail Administrator Larry Hendrix from the group was unanimous, the OSA said in a posting on its Facebook page. This suspension does not remove them from their jobs with the sheriff’s department.
While not a regulatory agency, the broadside from the OSA came a day after Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt called for the trio’s resignation and for a county commissioner named Mark Jennings to step down as well.
All four were identified by the McCurtain County Gazette-News as the officials who were recorded on March 6 making threatening and racist statements after a meeting of the McCurtain County Commission.
So far none have spoken publicly about the scandal engulfing the county. But on Monday the McCurtain County Sheriff’s Office claimed that the recording was “illegally obtained,” appeared to have been altered, and may have violated a state law prohibiting secret recordings by third parties.
Christin Jones, of the Kilpatrick Townsend law firm, which represents the newspaper, insisted the recording had not been tampered with and that reporter Bruce Willingham, whose family has owned the newspaper for 40 years, did not break the law in making it.
“It is an accurate recording and does not violate the Oklahoma Security of Communications Act,” Jones said via email. “The full audio is planned to be released on Thursday.”
The entire recording has already been turned over to the FBI and the Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office, the law firm said earlier.
Dozens of picketers descended Monday on the headquarters of the McCurtain County Commissioners in the town of Idabel to demand the ouster of Clardy and the others following publication of the newspaper article.
On Tuesday, the McCurtain Memorial Hospital in Idabel was evacuated after it received a bomb threat a little after 2 p.m. ET. It was not immediately clear if it was related to the protests against the county commissioners.
“The bomb threat was real and the evacuation is real,” an Idabel police dispatcher told NBC News. “But we don’t know yet if the bomb is real and we have a bomb squad there right now.”
The hospital released a statement confirming the threat and saying “a demand was made or else, the bomb would be detonated.” It did not elaborate further about the threat.
Earlier, hundreds of Clardy critics went on the sheriff’s official Facebook page and blasted the department for suggesting that Willingham had done something wrong.
“Absolute scum of the Earth,” Christian Sage Walker wrote. “You got caught on tape talking about lynching black people and hanging journalists and now you want sympathy.”
Another poster to the Facebook page, Jay Stiles, mocked the sheriff’s response.
“When you’re caught making fun of an arson victim, lamenting that you can’t lynch people and talking about hiring hitmen to take out a journalist … and this is your response … ,” Stiles wrote. “Classy move McCurtain County Sheriff’s Office.”
Aside from the Facebook posting by the sheriff’s office, none of the embattled McCurtain County officials have commented on the scandal sweeping through Idabel and have not responded to emails and calls seeking comment. Willingham has not responded to requests for comment.
The drama began after Willingham, acting on a tip that the commissioners were illegally engaging in county business after the public meetings were over, left a recording device in the commissioners’ chamber, the newspaper reported.
Earlier that day, Willingham’s son, Christopher Lee Willingham, who is also a reporter at the newspaper, had filed a lawsuit against Clardy, Manning and the commissioners in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Oklahoma seeking unspecified damages. He claimed they were punishing him for his hard-hitting reporting by spreading “slander” about him.
When Willingham retrieved the device, he discovered that the conversation began with a grisly conversation about a fire victim being compared to “barbecue” before the group turned to talking about his son and hiring hitmen from the Louisiana mafia to take him out.
Perhaps the most explosive portion of the recording came when the talk turned to who might run against Clardy in the upcoming election and Jennings recalled how a former sheriff “would take a damned Black guy and whoop their ass and throw them in the cell,” the newspaper reported
“Yeah,” Clardy replied, according to the newspaper. “It’s not like that no more.”
“I know,” said Jennings. “Take them down to Mud Creek and hang them up with a damned rope. But you can’t do that anymore. They’ve got more rights than we’ve got.”
