(Editor’s note: The following article includes reference to racial slurs.)
With nearly half of its seven members taking part in their first meeting, the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation Commission voted Wednesday to clarify its policies about how to handle any future allegation of wrongdoing by an OSBI director.
“It has been determined that any complaint regarding criminal activity against the director will be sent to the Attorney General’s office for investigation,” OSBI Commission Chairman Vic Regalado said in making a motion that passed unanimously. “Anything from policy infractions will be handled by the commission either by performance review and/or discussions about enhancing or changing the policy that was allegedly overlooked or broken.”
Coming after a three-hour executive session, the vote marked the commission’s final action in response to complaints filed by a former special agent and his wife who said OSBI director Aungela Spurlock targeted him for termination and supported a suggested fraudulent scheme by which a doctor could recommend medical leave that would let the agent accrue further retirement benefits before leaving the agency.
That agent’s departure near the end of 2023 upended at least two investigations he was working on and spurred separate complaints against OSBI by a woman in Texas and a woman in southwest Oklahoma who accused the agency of no longer caring about their concerns.
On Wednesday, the OSBI Commission voted unanimously to reject the Texas woman’s request to address commissioners about the cold-case inquiry into her mother’s 1988 murder.
“It has been determined that we will not be entertaining any discussions regarding a death investigation,” Regalado, who is the sheriff of Tulsa County, said in making his second motion of the day. “So we will be turning down that request to address the commission.”
The OSBI Commission also conducted a review of Spurlock’s employment during its lengthy executive session Wednesday, taking no formal action regarding the director in response to the litany of issues facing the agency and continued rumors about employee unrest.
“It was discussed regarding the survey that was taken at the OSBI. I believe 191 people responded to various questions, such as morale, happiness in the workplace. I would just like to note that looking at that it appears at least the majority of those responding responded in the affirmative that morale was good, that they were proud to work for OSBI. I think that survey is available should anybody want to look at it closer,” Regalado said near the end of Wednesday’s meeting. “I think it is certainly worth noting. Is it a cure-all? Does it mean everybody is happy? It absolutely doesn’t. But when you have 191 respondents that took the time to till out the survey, I think it’s a good indicator that things are going in the right direction, and I think it’s certainly worth noting.”
While an overview of the 2024 Oklahoma state employee engagement survey is available online, NonDoc made a June 27 Open Records Act request for the anonymous answers to open-ended questions on the survey by employees of OSBI and the Department of Public Safety.
The Office of Management and Enterprise Services provided the DPS records on Aug. 16, but despite an OSBI attorney saying Wednesday that their records would be provided soon, they were not released prior to the publication of this article.
Three new members join OSBI Commission
Wednesday’s meeting marked the first for Commissioners Jeff Van Hoose, Russ Landon and Jerry Cason, who were not present in February when the other commissioners heard complaints against Spurlook from former OSBI special agent Joe Kimmons and his wife over disciplinary actions that led to his retirement late last year.
Landon, police chief of The Village, attended the May 15 meeting of the commission, which meets quarterly, before his nomination was confirmed by the State Senate. That day, the commissioners’ executive session was cut short — lasting only about 10 minutes — after a deputy attorney general counsel to Attorney General Gentner Drummond advised them that two of three items listed on their agenda for executive session discussion were too vague to comply with Oklahoma’s Open Meetings Act.
Those three items were back on Wednesday’s agenda, but each was given additional citations of state statutes. Brent Elmore, a senior assistant general to Drummond, attended the meeting but made no comments during the open part of the meeting.
After Wednesday’s meeting, Regalado said Spurlock is doing “outstanding” work for OSBI, the state’s top law enforcement agency that has historically faced structural criticism owing to its statutory status as a “requester” agency, meaning another law enforcement agency or public official must request OSBI’s engagement on any investigation.
“I think Director Spurlock is doing an outstanding job as well as the people, the rank and file here, continue to do hard work and serve the citizens of Oklahoma,” Regalado said. “We’re certainly proud to be a small part of that.”
Regalado confirmed Spurlock’s annual review was conducted during Wednesday’s session.
After the meeting, Landon called it an “honor” to be appointed to the OSBI Commission and “to just provide some governance of the agency.”
“The OSBI being the premier investigative law enforcement agency in the state, No. 1, it’s an honor for me to be here and just interact with other commissioners and the OSBI,” he said.
OSBI has faced a slate of concerns
While Gov. Kevin Stitt’s appointment of Landon, Van Hoose and Cason — who fills the seat of legislator-elect Tim Turner — might be an honor, the new commissioners have their hands full already.
In February, the OSBI Commission asked the Attorney General’s Office to investigate complaints filed against Spurlock by Kimmons, a former agent, and his wife.
In a two-page April 12 letter to Regalado, Drummond said he instructed his staff “to investigate for any evidence of criminal acts or omissions” related to how Spurlock handled the discipline process undertaken for Kimmons’ use of inappropriate language.
Kimmons and his wife each filed complaints with the OSBI Commission alleging inappropriate and coercive actions by Spurlock — including December email and phone conversations with OSBI attorneys about whether Kimmons could obtain a doctor’s note to qualify for additional leave — but Drummond wrote that an investigation by his staff “did not reveal any criminal acts or omissions or any misconduct by Director Spurlock.”
The situation is even more complex because it includes allegations that former OSBI general counsel Richard Smothermon violated Oklahoma’s Rules of Professional Conduct for attorneys late last year by simultaneously working for the state agency and the OSBI Agents Association during negotiations over whether to terminate Kimmons.
Smothermon was not named and the conflict of interest concern was not addressed in Drummond’s two-page letter, which appears to have constituted the entire investigatory report and which was not provided to every member of the OSBI Commission.
“I did not (get to review the AG’s report),” Landon said after Wednesday’s meeting. “I’m sorry, I really can’t speak on that because every bit of it was literally before today which was my first meeting. (…) I really can’t comment on what occurred in executive session.”
Marsee, the district attorney for five counties in western Oklahoma, declined to say whether the investigation into Kimmons’ allegations against Spurlock yielded any documentation beyond Drummond’s two-page letter.
“We received that letter and reviewed (it),” Marsee said. “I really don’t want to confirm or deny anything in particular that was said in executive session.”
The controversy surrounding Kimmons — who used the phrase “my n—a” in what he thought was a private phone conversation with a friend and coworker — drew attention to another employment decision made at OSBI.
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As Spurlock sought to remove Kimmons from the agency late last year, she was also supporting the hiring of former Pushmataha County Judge Jana Wallace as OSBI’s new general counsel. But Wallace resigned May 2 for her own crass diction hours after asking whether NonDoc had obtained an April 2022 email in which she had written the racial slur “wet back” while asking a question of a Department of Public Safety attorney about a divorce case.
Combined with litigation over an OSBI agent’s turnpike wreck that left an auto mechanic hospitalized and a resigned OSBI sex crimes investigator’s prosecution for sexual abuse of a minor, the resignation of Wallace and the final report from Drummond’s office regarding Spurlock underscore the array of internal issues facing the agency, which hopes to build a new building north of its existing OKC headquarters, a second-floor portion of which has been decommissioned owing to a mold problem that was undergoing remediation even Wednesday as the commission met one floor above.
Spurlock also has been criticized by Kira Allen-Lowe for not allowing her to speak to the commissioners during their May 15 meeting about how the OSBI was handling its probe into her mother’s slaying 36 years ago. She had sent an email two months before the meeting to seek permission to speak.
Allen-Lowe, from the Dallas area, drove to OKC to meet with Spurlock in April but said she was unsatisfied with their conversation and chose to attend the May meeting to speak with commissioners only to find she was not on the agenda and received no chance to meet with the governing body, whose rules state that a “complainant has the right to present the complaint before the OSBI Commission if he/she feels the need.”
Allen-Lowe was 7 years old when her mother was killed June 4, 1988, in Comanche, a small town south of Duncan. She and her younger sister had spent the night at their grandmother’s house while their mother worked at a bar in Comanche. They returned home the next morning to find their mother had been stabbed to death.
The OSBI took over the investigation about 27 years ago, she said. Since 2014, five different OSBI agents have worked the case. Kimmons, the former special agent who filed complaints alleging Spurlock targeted him for termination, worked the case for two years. Allen-Lowe said Kimmons kept her up to date and was trying to obtain grand jury transcripts last fall when he resigned.
Allen-Lowe said she was not informed about his resignation for two months, and she was irritated to learn that no agent had been assigned the case until another two months after that.
After Wednesday’s meeting, Regalado was asked whether Allen-Lowe’s case was brought up in executive session during the item listed as “discussing any written complaints against the bureau or any of its employees and recommend any action necessary.”
“We are turning down a discussion in regard to a death investigation that was requested of the commission,” Regalado said.
Allen-Lowe did not return a telephone message Thursday prior to the publication of this article.
Commissioners hear complaint on investigation
Also, during Wednesday’s executive session, commissioners heard from Kelly Jenkins, of Cache, who said after the meeting she was disappointed with how the OSBI handled her complaints alleging sexual misconduct and embezzlement by a former coworker at Cache Public Schools.
After the meeting, Jenkins told NonDoc that commissioners said her case had been completed and turned over to Comanche County District Attorney Kyle Cabelka’s office.
Jenkins, who had worked 14 years at Cache Public Schools as an agricultural education instructor, said another teacher had conducted acts of sexual misconduct against herself, students and parents of students. She also accused him of embezzlement.
“I’m being told that all this evidence has been turned over to the district attorney, but the district attorney hasn’t done anything,” she said. “I’m thinking he either doesn’t have the evidence that I’ve provided or they’re saying that maybe the evidence isn’t enough to prosecute. But it’s kind of hard to believe that he can have this kind of evidence and not have anything to prosecute this individual.”
Jenkins said she had talked with Cabelka, who is over Comanche and Cotton counties, before meeting with the OSBI Commission.
“He called me and talked to me on the phone,” she said. “He said that he had received like a 700-page-plus report but there just wasn’t’ anything really in there that he felt that he could prosecute anyone over.”
Cabelka was in a trial Thursday and unavailable for comment, according to his office.
Jenkins said she first reported the sexual misconduct incidents in February 2022. She went through administrative procedures through the school, she said, and was told an internal investigation would be conducted.
When nothing became of that, she reported her allegations to the Comanche County Sheriff’s Office in Lawton, which referred it to the OSBI, she said. Jenkins said the case was assigned to Kimmons, who began his investigation in September.
“I was in contact with him at least weekly, sometimes every day,” Jenkins said. “He would either email me, text me or call me.”
The correspondence ended in early November, she said. After not hearing anything from Kimmons for more than a month, Jenkins called the OSBI and was told Kimmons had resigned and that the case was reassigned to another agent.
She said she rarely heard from that agent. Jenkins said she contacted the OSBI to meet with commissioners to discuss her case. She said she drove to OKC to meet with Spurlock three days before the May meeting, and she said Spurlock told her she would not be on the agenda to meet with commissioners in May. Jenkins subsequently made another request, and she was placed on Wednesday’s agenda.
Jenkins said she now has filed a complaint with the Oklahoma State Department of Education. She said she was told Wednesday that an OSDE investigation would get underway.
Jenkins said she was terminated from Cache Public Schools in July after she had been on medical leave for several months. Asked why, she said: “Good question. I don’t really know why.”
The teacher who is the subject of Jenkins’ allegations reportedly resigned in January, according to a report from KSWO.
In March, Jenkins filed a petition for a protective order against Cache Public Schools Superintendent Chad Hance. It was denied in April.
Hance did not return two voicemails left Thursday at his office prior to the publication of this article.
Asked after Wednesday’s meeting about Jenkins’ comments to commissioners, Regalado said, “I can’t comment on anything in executive session.”
Hunter McKee, OSBI’s public information officer, also was tight-lipped.
“The OSBI cannot comment on the details of investigations, including investigations that are complete,” he responded Thursday in an email. “Additionally, neither OSBI nor its commissioners are authorized to discuss any details from executive session.”
On Wednesday, the OSBI Commission also reelected Regalado as its chairman and insurance professional Bryan Smith as vice chairman.
