Police Corruption — East Oklahoma Accountability reporting on law enforcement misconduct, excessive force, civil rights violations, and abuse of power by police agencies across eastern Oklahoma. EastOklahoma.com covers investigations into officers, departments, and oversight failures affecting communities throughout Green Country.
Claremore
Claremore, Oklahoma, is the kind of place where neighborly disputes are supposed to stay small. A dispute over a property line, some loud music, or kids cutting across lawns. The sort of thing that might end with a terse conversation or a call to the local police, who then mediate
Crimes
He ran for sheriff on a promise to restore law and order to Coal County. Less than a year into office, Jason Smith stood accused of being the county's most prominent lawbreaker — drunk on duty, violent toward his own wife, sexually harassing female deputies, and allegedly aided in
Police Corruption
Tahlequah's Assistant Police Chief built a career on community trust and law-and-order events. Now surveillance footage puts him at the scene of a Memorial Day vandalism that destroyed a children's summer attraction — and the Cherokee County Sheriff's Office isn't done
Tulsa
The Woman Who Wouldn't Stay Silent: Larita Barnes' 19-Year Battle Against Federal Corruption A federal appellate court just ruled she can sue the government. Here's the shocking story of how law enforcement framed an innocent woman — and why it took nearly two decades to
Police Corruption
A rare federal prosecution exposes the limits of police accountability in Oklahoma On a cold January evening in eastern Oklahoma, during what should have been a routine traffic stop, an Oklahoma Highway Patrol trooper made a decision that would end his decade-long law enforcement career and land him in
Government Corruption
How Oklahoma's Cash Bail System Imprisons the Innocent An Investigation into America's Highest Incarceration Rate On any given morning in Oklahoma, more than 9,000 people wake up behind bars who have never been convicted of a crime. They are legally innocent—presumed so by the
Tulsa
A comprehensive investigation into Governor Kevin Stitt's controversial midnight veto and the cascade of corruption allegations that defined his tenure On a late spring night in May 2025, as most Oklahomans slept, Governor Kevin Stitt made a decision that would crystallize his administration's troubled relationship with
Feature Story
PAWHUSKA, OKLAHOMA — In September 2024, local rancher Bud Beaston sent a registered letter detailing allegations of corruption in Osage County to Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, Governor Kevin Stitt, the U.S. Department of Justice, and thirty media outlets across the state. Only one reporter responded. The allegations involve a
Tulsa
An eight-year federal lawsuit alleges a statewide extortion scheme that jails the poor while generating profits for law enforcement By EastOklahoma.com Investigative Team Kendy Killman became a prisoner in her own home, though she'd never been convicted of a violent crime. The Cleveland County mother of
McAlester
On the night of November 2, 2022, a woman named K.H. was riding in a car on a rural road in Pittsburg County when a Savanna Police Department cruiser lit up behind her. She had no reason to believe the stop would be anything more than routine. Her boyfriend
McAlester
Deep in the piney timber country of Oklahoma's southeastern corner, where the land borders both Arkansas and Texas and the nearest big city is four hours away, McCurtain County has always operated by its own rules. With a population hovering around 31,000, it is one of the
Tulsa
How Oklahoma's prison chief handed a million-dollar AI contract to a private company, then walked straight through the door to work for them — leaving the state's most dangerous prison in chaos and no one held accountable. On April 3, 2025, Steven Harpe sat behind the