

(Editor’s note: The following article includes reference to racial slurs.)
Two weeks ahead of a special meeting with her agency’s governing board to discuss “performance” concerns, Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation executive director Aungela Spurlock announced today she is retiring from the agency amid continued rumors about OSBI employee unrest.
Last February, complaints were aired against Spurlock to the OSBI Commission from a former OSBI special agent and his wife over disciplinary actions that led to his retirement in late 2023, and at least two citizens complained over the past year about how the OSBI handled investigations.
Spurlock, the first female head of the OSBI, was named the agency’s director in August 2022. In the two years that followed, several employees left OSBI to work at other state agencies — including the State Department of Education — and rumblings of morale issues and controversies percolated.
Spurlock’s retirement will take effect March 1, according to an email she sent to agency employees today. She did not specify her future plans.
“After 23 incredible years with the OSBI, it is with mixed emotions that I am writing to formally announce my retirement as director,” Spurlock wrote. “While I am excited to begin this next chapter, the decision to leave was not an easy one. I feel blessed to have had the privilege of working alongside each of you. You are some of the most talented and dedicated individuals I have ever met. You each have made my time here unforgettable.”
Spurlock said that, at the close of business Friday, deputy director Steven Carter will assume the role of acting director and will be making all operational decisions. She said she will remain in the office until Jan. 30. Her terminal leave will begin Jan. 31 and last until her official retirement March 1.
“I would encourage each of you to remain engaged, continue to foster collaborative partnerships, and to be good stewards of all you are entrusted,” Spurlock wroteees to employ. “Never stop asking the tough questions and always be guided by your integrity. This will ensure that the OSBI continues to deliver excellence for the next 100 years.”
Spurlock sent a similar letter to members of the OSBI Commission on Wednesday, saying it was “the right time for me to step away; for the OSBI, me and my family.”
“When I accepted the director’s role in 2022, I looked at it as an opportunity to continue the agency’s growth momentum and to help ensure that the agency and team I love continued to thrive as it approached its centennial,” she wrote to commissioners. “Since that time, the team and I have evaluated priorities, rebranded, been innovative and generally challenged the status quo in ways that without exception have made OSBI better.”
Special OSBI Commission meeting loomed

Spurlock was scheduled to meet with commissioners in a closed executive session of a special meeting set for Thursday, Jan. 30. Commissioner Jerry Cason, a retired Oklahoma Highway Patrol chief who was appointed to the commission by Gov. Kevin Stitt in August, requested the special meeting because he was concerned over recommendations Spurlock made to a legislative committee’s interim study. Spurlock suggested that lawmakers diversify the appointment authority for to the seven-member commission.
“I think we all have some issues we would like to discuss in an executive session with the director as it relates to performance,” Cason said during the OSBI Commission’s Nov 20 meeting. “And I think that that meeting needs to occur before the next quarterly meeting.”
OSBI commissioners are appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Senate. State statute says one must be a chief of police, one must be a sheriff, one must be a district attorney, and the other four are to be lay members. During a Senate interim study in September, Spurlock didn’t call for changing the makeup of the OSBI Commission, but she did recommend that each member be appointed by a different entity, such as from the Legislature, the attorney general’s office, the District Attorneys Council, the Oklahoma Association of the Chiefs of Police, the Oklahoma Sheriff’s Association and the governor.
Currently, commissioners serve staggered terms and can serve more than one term. Usually, the seven-year terms mean commissioners serve a few years together. But two commissioners resigned last year, and the term of another commissioner expired. As the member representing police chiefs, Joe Prentice left the commission after he retired as chief of police in Okmulgee. The Village Police Chief Russ Landon was appointed to replace Prentice. Cason was appointed to replace Tim Turner, who resigned after winning the House District 15 seat in November. Stitt appointed Jeff Van Hoose to replace former University of Central Oklahoma President Roger Webb, who served one full term after being appointed to the commission to fill an unexpired term in 2013.
Tension at OSBI has simmered for the two years since Spurlock succeeded former director Ricky Adams, a prior Oklahoma Highway Patrol chief who recruited several OHP troopers to join OSBI during his tenure.
At their Aug. 21 meeting, OSBI commissioners conducted an employment review of Spurlock during a lengthy executive session. When the commission returned to open session, Chairman Vic Regalado said high employee survey participation indicated that “things are going in the right direction.”
But Regalado was absent from the Nov. 20 meeting, and Cason’s request for a special meeting included a reference to “performance” amid continued rumors about OSBI employee unrest. (Regalado was out of the office Thursday and unavailable to comment on Spurlock’s resignation, his communications director said.)
Although the agency’s overall employee satisfaction scores finished higher than those of the Department of Public Safety last year, OSBI employees voiced numerous concerns and frustrations in the open-ended portion of their most recent survey.
“For the past year-year and a half, there has been very little to no communication from the director and/or deputy director to its employees. This has not always been the case,” one employee wrote. “When the previous director (Ricky Adams) served as director, there was communication from the top to the bottom and an open-door policy to the director. This is absolutely not the case at the present time nor has it been the case since the present director entered the director position. The agency’s moral is probably at its lowest its (sic) been for that of the past 20 years.”
In recent weeks, documents obtained by NonDoc indicate that someone within the agency was pushing a letter-writing campaign to the OSBI Commission in support of Spurlock. Sen. David Bullard (R-Durant) said he was asked to write a letter defending Spurlock’s comments to the Senate committee. Separately, employees in OSBI’s Criminalistic Services Division were asked to sign a letter praising Spurlock’s leadership of the agency’s laboratory services.
Behind the scenes and at the Oklahoma State Capitol, tension between Spurlock and Department of Public Safety Commissioner Tim Tipton became a talking point over the past year, with Tipton’s connections to the three most recent OSBI commissioners raising some eyebrows. Jockeying over the concept of state law enforcement unification has lingered for years, and a bizarre series of events over the past year only fueled allegations that Spurlock played favorites while leading OSBI, an agency that lacks authority to initiate criminal inquiries on its own.
During the time Adams was in a leadership position at OSBI, several OHP troopers left that agency to work for Adams. Some were encouraged by Adams to join him. Among them was former OSBI Special Agent Joe Kimmons, who worked 21 years as an OHP trooper before transferring to OSBI in 2020. In 2013, he was cleared of wrongdoing in the non-fatal shooting of a teenager during a traffic stop related to road rage.
The manner in which Kimmons departed the agency in 2023 led to the OSBI Commission asking the Attorney General’s Office to look into the matter. Kimmons, who is white, had received his own disciplinary complaint in 2023 for using the phrases “my n—a” and “n—a please” during a phone call with another agent that was overheard by a third OSBI employee.
Conflict over how that complaint was handled led Kimmons’ wife, Jennifer, to file a complaint with the OSBI Commission alleging that Spurlock had abused her power.
Kimmons said that, contrary to OSBI’s discipline matrix, Spurlock and OSBI attorneys told him he would be terminated unless he obtained a fraudulent doctor’s note saying “he is currently unable to work” owing to any sort of medical condition. Records show Kimmons was told he could remain employed until reaching his desired retirement date of April 1, 2024, if he received such documentation from a physician and convinced his wife to withdraw her complaint against Spurlock. During negotiations between Kimmons and the OSBI in November and December 2023, attorney Richard Smothermon was representing both OSBI and the OSBI Agents Association, which raised conflict of interest questions.
The unusual situation troubled some OSBI agents and raised concerns about the state’s top law enforcement agency. On Jan. 9, 2024, the OSBI Commission called a special meeting with only an executive session for personnel discussions listed on the agenda. But the meeting was canceled minutes before its scheduled start time to the surprise of commissioners.
During the commission’s next meeting, Feb. 21, commissioners referred the matter to the Attorney General’s Office for investigation after meeting separately with Kimmons and his wife during an executive session that lasted nearly four hours.
In an April 12 letter to Regalado, who is Tulsa County’s sheriff, Attorney General Gentner 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. Although Kimmons and his wife had each filed complaints with the OSBI Commission alleging inappropriate and coercive actions by Spurlock, Drummond said the overall complaint was “unfounded.” Kimmons alleged that Drummond’s investigators failed to interview certain relevant parties.
In May, the agency’s new legal counsel, former Pushmataha District Judge Jana Wallace resigned after NonDoc obtained an email in which she used the racial slur “wet back” as a judge while asking a question of a Department of Public Safety attorney. Allegations that Spurlock knew of the Wallace email before hiring her inflamed employee tension about how Kimmons’ discipline was handled.
Read Aungela Spurlock’s letter to the OSBI Commission
(Update: This article was updated at 4:35 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 16, to include Aungela Spurlock’s letter to the OSBI Commission.)