The police chief and three officers that make up the entire four-person police department of the town of Geary, Oklahoma, and two of the town’s city council members have resigned with little explanation.
Former Police Chief Alicia Ford did not address the specific reasons for the Thursday resignations, but wrote in a social media post that the decision was difficult.
“It is with great sadness that I and the rest of the Geary police officers will no longer be serving this community,” Ford wrote, “but it was the right decision for me and the other officers.”
Ford, without elaboration, encouraged residents of the town of nearly 1,000 about 50 miles (80 kilometers) northwest of Oklahoma City to become acquainted with the city council “and to be as involved as possible in the city, especially attending the city council meetings.”
The message from the police is “fuck you if I don’t get my way” as the authoritarian budget is finally becoming unsustainable and requires cuts. They quit in protest, thinking the spike in crime from their absence will stoke public outcry to reinstate the original budget. When this won’t work as they imagined, as a town of just 1000 is actually rather uneventful, they will perpetrate the crimes they believe they are needed for, like theft and vandalism.
Either way, quitting a public safety job en masse in protest is telling the community that they can go fuck themselves. They even told others who to pout to because the police tantrum isn’t working. Lazy, callous authoritarians.
My camp is in a town of 900 souls, and most of them are in the outlying land, not the city center. What cops?! We don’t have one. And they’re hardly needed, we take care of ourselves.
Is that even an incorporated city? Sounds like it relies on county sheriffs, which is typical for places like that.
Good question! Unincorporated.
I could see this becoming normal as the often corrupt, violent and authoritarian police unions are attempted to be held to account or reshaped; curious what state law and/or their CBA will say about this…Reagan and Republicans would want to break this wild, liberal union cash grab…right guys? Just like Biden broke the rail strike?
So, I looked up Geary’s last published budget (2024-2025 projected), which happens to include the last couple budgets for comparison (you can read it here).
For the police department, they’ve gone from a “capital outlay” budget of 47k in 2022-2023 to a proposed budget of 18k in 2024-2025 - I guess the town is sick of paying for new toys? More notably, “personal services” (which I take to be payroll for the police department) was 662k in 2022-2023, and was proposed to be 399k in 2024-2025. If the department remained the same size throughout, the average police officer went from about $165k each to about $100k each. Which may be a steep drop in money, but still gets you pretty fucking far in a place where the median home value is 64k, the median wage is 46k, and almost a quarter of the people live in official poverty.
One nice thing I’ll note is that the 2023-2024 budget had a decrease of 85k in ‘fines and forfeitures’, saving an average of $100 in penalties for the 853 residents.
I live close by and drive through Geary often for work. It’s a very small, very poor town. Not much there at all. Like not even a McDonald’s. Their grocery stores are a dollar general and dollar tree. Again very poor farming community. If anyone on the force was making 165k per year then yeah that’s absolutely fucking absurd for a town that size. It’s also a speed trap town. And let me tell ya, those Tahoes they are driving are new and nice
Good riddance to bad garbage
More of this please
From a separate article:
The city moved quickly to secure an interim police chief, JJ, who, although reportedly working initially as a consultant, was placed into the role amid a cloud of controversy. This information came to light in an interview with KOCO 5, where a resident, Tatum Wigington, noted, “The same person who is the acting interim chief was hired by the city council to do an audit on the police department and now he is the interim chief. That seems a little suspicious.”
JJ Stitt — who described himself as a 27-year law enforcement veteran, as a county deputy, a member of a task force investigating internet crimes against children and a distant cousin of Gov. Kevin Stitt
Nepotism, internet crimes, police audits… What a story! I wish someone in this town would chime in, but in a town of 1000 people it seems unlikely
Yeah I don’t know why but investigating internet crimes against children seems really sus.
“the call is coming from inside the house”
Nice
