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Muskogee
Daily Phoenix investigates Watts Hagan said, "The money has not profited the town one iota -- it just supports the police. We don't even have swings on the swing set at the park." She said the town is going into the red. The story also details fear of the Watts Police by the local residents. Mayor Hagan said, "People are scared to death of this police force -- from school kids up and down the spectrum." The Mayor said she gets many calls from citizens afraid to speak out publicly. One elderly woman called to tell her: "I keep telling 'em we need to stand up -- they can't arrest us all." One could suggest, however, that with only 303 residents, the Police Commissioner, Chief of Police, and four officers could in time arrest them all. Of course, that is more similar to how the Serbs run things in Yugoslavia -- arrest the targets, drive them out, or kill them. Commissioner Fain said his officers instill a sense of peace, not fear, by enforcing the law. Fain said town trustees gave him authority more like that of a town manager than a police commissioner. He is responsible for supervising the deputy city clerk and manages most of the town's business. Fain's poor records
"The day the Phoenix first sought records, year-end accounting reports were locked in Fain's office. Employees said they couldn't release any records in Fain's office. Fain met with the Phoenix on a second visit to the police station. But some records still weren't available. Fain produced only a summary of the number of tickets written from mid August to mid September, but the documents to back up those compilations and earlier speeding citations were not yet in order and filed, he said." Reporter Hales compares Watts with 303 people and six police officers to the town of Warner, 20 miles south of Muskogee with a population of 1,479 and a police force of four officers. Law breaking quota
Ticket writing quotas are against the law in Oklahoma. A former Watts police officer called Tulsa Today and said that if they did not write five tickets per day or more in Watts that officers understood that they would be fired by Commissioner Fain. Rep. Larry Adair,
D-Stilwell helps Watts post signs
Fixing tickets
Now stop here just a moment. Tulsa Today respectfully suggests that if Fain would not fix some tickets then he is, in his own words, admitting that he will fix some. Again, we ask are all men equal under the law or have we become soviets. The commissioner
He was hired August 4, 1997 on a four-year contract. Fan is one of five people charged with promoting and conspiring to join an illegal pyramid scheme in a multi-county grand jury indictment unsealed last week. Tulsa Today will post with our next edition details of that
indictment and specifics contained in the affidavit filed by Kelly Beach,
Special Agent for the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation. Beach
does report that Gary Fain was a leader of the "Friends Helping Friends"
scheme, organized and attended such meetings while dressed in the uniform of
the Oklahoma Highway Patrol. Related Stories
on speed traps State Law (This page quotes state laws) Public Comments on Speed Traps Interview with Commissioner Bob Ricks With a formal complaint, Ricks says he will investigate speed traps in Oklahoma. However, the Oklahoma Legislature has not given the department the best tools to work with to fix the problem. Commissioner Ricks credits Tulsa
Today for bringing Watts, Oklahoma to his attention and providing
legal guidelines he will ask the Legislature to enact next session. [MORE] The strange story of Mr. Roy Banks If David Arnett was not informed, I think
he would like to know that Roy Banks is an Oklahoma Highway Patrol
dispatcher. He is stationed out of Troop C (Muskogee) and used to
be friends with Trooper Freeman prior to this incident." [MORE] |
