During today’s Oklahoma County Board of Commissioners meeting, The Rev. Derrick Scobey and former Pardon and Parole Board chairman Adam Luck were appointed to the Oklahoma County Criminal Justice Authority, also known as the jail trust.
Scobey is being appointed by District 1 Commissioner Carrie Blumert. He will replace Loretta Radford, who had joined the trust late last year but has been appointed as a special district judge in Tulsa County, according to Blumert.
“As many of you know, professor Loretta Radford has tendered her resignation to serve on the jail trust,” Blumert said. “We are very proud of her, but very sad to lose her and her service on the trust. But I am very happy to put forward pastor Derrick Scobey.”
Scobey spoke briefly after Blumert provided biographical information on the new District 1 appointee.
“I am not an agitator. I’m not an antagonist. However, I’m not a conformist,” Scobey said. “So I will not go along to get along.”
Scobey was arrested in November 2021 in front of the Oklahoma governor’s mansion during a protest regarding Julius Jones’ scheduled execution. The Oklahoma County District Attorney’s Office filed two misdemeanors against Scobey, asserting that he impeded traffic outside the governor’s mansion. He currently serves as the lead pastor of northeast Oklahoma City’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, which has been holding giveaways of food and household goods for the past 18 months.
Luck is being appointed by District 3 Commissioner Kevin Calvey, who also serves on the jail trust. Luck replaces Joe Allbaugh, who was appointed in May 2021. In June’s Republican primary, Allbaugh received more than 51 percent of the vote to win a county commissioner seat in Kay County.
“While it’s not a part of my personal experience having been [in the jail], I have spent a lot of time there. It’s something I’ve been interested in for a long time,” Luck told the BOCC. “I’m familiar with the challenges associated with the jail and wanted to be a part of making it better to the extent that I hope it can be better.”
Although Luck had been appointed to the Pardon and Parole Board by Stitt, his views on the death penalty differed from Stitt’s, and he ultimately resigned from the board in January while Oklahoma County District Attorney David Prater’s grand jury was investigating allegations of improper behavior by the board. (Prater released a report from the grand jury in May that said the Pardon and Parole Board had been subject to “improper political pressure” from Stitt.)
Luck is employed as the chief executive officer of City Care OKC, a nonprofit organization that “inspires those willing to look social injustice and extreme poverty in the face, and empowers them to do whatever it takes to create change,” according to its website.
So far this year, the Oklahoma County Jail has seen 14 deaths, matching last year’s total. The most recent detainee death was John Basco, a plaintiff in a lawsuit accusing county employees of torturing him and other inmates by repeatedly playing the song, “Baby Shark.”
Last week, longtime critics of the humanitarian situation at the jail called on municipalities such as Midwest City, Edmond and Oklahoma City to end their agreements with the Oklahoma County Jail. On the same day as that press conference, Prater’s office filed a rape charge against a man who attacked a female detainee who had been chained to a wall by jail staff. Neither the man nor the woman was supervised by jail staff at the time of the attack.
