Broken Trust: How the Oklahoma County jail leadership failed those it sought to protect (2024)

From nearly the day it opened in 1991, the Oklahoma County jail was plagued by problems.

The newly constructed 13-story tower in downtown Oklahoma City, with its distinctive red-brick and tan stripes, looked like a Las Vegas casino from afar. But structural problems surfaced almost immediately. Escapes were rampant, drugs were easily accessible and inmate deaths were frequent. Conditions grew so bad the U.S. Department of Justice, after cataloguing an extensive list of civil rights violations, characterized the facility as a largely unsupervised tower of chaos and violence.

That was all supposed to change in 2020 when, fueled by a groundswell of public anger, Oklahoma County commissioners installed a board of trustees to take control of the jail away from the sheriff's office.

The Oklahoma County Criminal Justice Authority, or "the trust" as it would come to be known, consisted of seven at-large appointees selected by the county commissioners, plus one seat reserved for the acting Oklahoma County sheriff and one for a county commissioner.

The nine-member board promised reforms. There would be public transparency, improved safety and a more humane environment for the more than 1,600 detainees that are often held in the facility. With the trust in control, it was going to be a new day for public safety in the city and county.

Instead, the jail became one of the deadliest in the United States.

More: Commissioner: New jail to be 'night and day' improvement from current jail's problems

A year-long investigation by The Oklahoman shows the trust failed to take meaningful action to stem the tide of inmate deaths as the jail became deadlier than many of America’s largest, and most well-known facilities like the Los Angeles County jail and the Rikers Island jail complex in New York. 

The investigation included a review of thousands of internal jail documents obtained by The Oklahoman, as well as dozens of interviews with inmates and family, former jail employees, public officials, prosecutors, defense attorneys and incarceration experts from across the country.

Taken together, the documents and interviews paint a grim picture of how poor infrastructure, short staffing, guard misconduct, unsupervised inmates, lax mental health treatment, relatively poor medical care and a thriving drug economy led to a combined total of 43 inmate deaths — including homicides, suicides and fatal drug overdoses — since the trust took over facility management nearly three years ago.

The Oklahoman's findings amplify and provide deeper context to the conclusions of a 14-month multicounty grand jury investigation. The grand jury issued a 15-page report in March saying that most of the deaths were preventable and calling for the trust to be dissolved.

Few members of the trust were willing to speak with The Oklahoman regarding conditions at the jail under their leadership. The silence underscores one of the central frustration's the public has had with the board, a sentiment shared by at least one elected official who originally voted to create the trust.

“They don’t say anything,” County Commissioner Carrie Blumert told The Oklahoman. “From a legal standpoint, I can see why the jail trust is being quiet. But from a humanitarian standpoint, you want to see them publicly say ‘this is not OK, we’re trying to fix it, we’re so sorry this happened.’”

Oklahoma County: Home of one of the deadliest jails in America

The Oklahoman's analysis found that inmates die in the Oklahoma County jail, which currently holds an average of nearly 1,600 inmates a day, at a rate four and five times greater than inmates at some of the nation’s largest, and most troubled jail systems.

The number of deaths remained relatively steady from 2018 through 2020, when it had a rate of 4.09 deaths per 1,000 inmates. That rate soared in 2021, its first full year under trust leadership, to 10.13, and remained at 9.12 in 2022.The COVID-19 pandemic accounted for some of that surge, but no other jail in the more than dozen large jails The Oklahoman examined experienced as significant a rise.

Houston’s Harris County jail, for example, with more than 8,600 inmates, never had a rate higher than 2.73 during that time.

Los Angeles County jail, known for housing more than 14,500 inmates and for having its own set of scandals that led to federal oversight in 2015, saw its highest death rate in 2021 at 3.43.

Oklahoma County officials have blamed many of the problems at the jail on its tower design, making it difficult to manage the inmate population in a safe and efficient manner. But Clark County Detention Center in Las Vegas is also a tower jail, and its rate of 3.72 deaths per 1,000 inmates in 2021 fell far short of the mark set by Oklahoma County.

Jails in other metro areas within the region or with similar populations, including Denver, St. Louis, Tulsa, San Antonio and Indianapolis, all had lower rates during that time, based on the latest available data and public records obtained by The Oklahoman.

Rikers Island in New York never saw a rate exceed 2.86 since 2020.

Jails slowed their reporting practices of deaths during the COVID-19 outbreak, and a lack of centralized data of local jails kept at the federal level makes it nearly impossible to compare every jail across America in the past few years.

But Oklahoma County’s current rates would make it an outlier compared to historical rates. In a study published in 2020, Reuters released jail death data across the country from 2008 to 2019. During that time, among the 50 largest jails in the country, no detention center had a rate higher than 6.6 in a single year.

Most years, the highest rate among those 50 jails, including Oklahoma County, didn’t surpass 4 deaths per 1,000 inmates.

Other findings by The Oklahoman, many of which contributed directly or indirectly to the death toll, include:

∙ The drug economy inside the jail continued to flourish, with a particular rise in fentanyl and other controlled dangerous substances.

∙ The conditions at the jail were horrific, with many problems stemming from week-long lockdowns, bed bug infestations and a low amount of rehabilitation or educational programs.

∙ Inmates with mental health concerns were sometimes placed throughout the jail without pattern or strategic grouping to ensure their care.

∙ Rival gang members were sometimes housed in the same pods, leading to violence.

∙ Staffing was a continuous problem, with chronically low numbers of detention officers and numerous guards charged with crimes committed while at work and a lack of quality training that sometimes led to deaths of inmates.

∙ Inspections by the state Health Department found guards frequently missed checks for male and female inmates on suicide watch ranging from 30 minutes to nine hours, despite a requirement such inmates be checked on every 15 minutes. At least nine inmates died of suicide. After one inmate hung himself to death, a guard was fired and accused of falsifying log books to cover up his failure to do welfare checks.

A jail with a history of problems as old as the facility itself

Problems in the Oklahoma County jail can be traced back decades, beginning with its construction.

A penny sales tax funded the construction of the 13-story Oklahoma County jail, which opened in 1991 to high praise from a grand jury that wrote “every citizen of Oklahoma County can be proud” of the facility.  

Escape attempts soon followed, with six inmates making it out and another 150 trying within the first three years.  

Two years after the jail opened, commissioners sued the jail's builder, Manhattan Construction Co., and its architects, HTB Inc. and RGDC, accusing them of poor workmanship. The suit was settled out of court. 

By 2008, the jail had fallen into such disrepute that the U.S. Justice Department released a report chronicling more than 60 civil rights violations, and began regularly monitoring conditions at the jail. 

The sheriff’s office's management of the jail also was marred by high-profile incidents involving deputies proving an embarrassment.

Among them, two former Oklahoma County jailers were charged in 2019 after an investigation determined they forced handcuffed inmates to stand for long periods chained to a wall in the attorney visitation booth listening to "Baby Shark" in a loop as discipline.

Both later pleaded no contest to amisdemeanor cruelty charge.

Trust takes over, but problems grow

As public concerns mounted, the commissioners voted in 2019 to create the trust and remove the sheriff’s office from the jail’s daily operations.

The nine trustees approved by the commissioners included former state Sen. Ben Brown, former Lt. Gov. Todd Lamb, then County Commissioner Kevin Calvey, then Oklahoma County Sheriff P.D. Taylor, a public defender and other community members.

Of the original members, who served voluntarily, only Taylor had experience managing a corrections facility.

Whatever their good intentions, the trust quickly became a revolving door. In the nearly three years since it was voted into existence, 18 people have served —one for as few as three months.

And the promised transparency failed to materialize, with very few trust members willing to speak about conditions at the jail.

Of the 18 current or former trust members, only three agreed to speak with The Oklahoman for this story —Derrick Scobey, Jim Couch and current Oklahoma County Sheriff Tommie Johnson III.

One of the other commissioners who voted to create the trust, Calvey, who has left office, refused interviews with The Oklahoman. County commissioner Brian Maughan, who also voted to create the trust, said the trust should not be dissolved.

“We don’t want to go backwards,” he said. “I don’t care if it was my own mother that was in charge of the jail, that’s too much responsibility, in my opinion, vested in one person.”

The nine-member trust provides checks and balances, and more transparency, he said.

He believes a new jail facility will fix many of the problems.

“In short order, we’re going to be able to break ground on a new facility and things will be night and day different whenever we’re in the new facility, and I'm just asking for their patience between now and then as we’re all hanging tight, trying to get there,” Maughan said.

Blumert said she voted in favor to create the Trust in part to remove the embattled sheriff’s office from overseeing the facility.  

She admitted the jail trust has not been a panacea.  

“Three years ago, I don’t think I anticipated the amount of issues that we’ve had,” she said. “And maybe we were all a little naive to think changes could be made very quickly in a system as complicated as our jail.” 

Former Oklahoma Department of Corrections Director Joe Allbaugh served briefly between 2021 and 2022, bringing some experience managing corrections facility to the board, but there currently are no members that can say the same, something noted in the multicounty grand jury report.

“It is notable that no member of the (trust) has training or experience in the administration of a correctional facility,” the report said. “The (grand jury) believes that some person or persons with experience in county jail administration should be a member of the (trust).”

While most trust members lacked experience in jail administration, the original members hired a veteran of the industry, one with 36 years of experience with the Oklahoma Corrections Department.

Greg Williams was selected by the trust in late 2019 to be the first jail administrator for Oklahoma County. His career with the Corrections Department included time working at facilities across the state as a probation and parole supervisor, a deputy warden, an assistant director of operations support, the administrator of private prisons and jails, a regional director and finally the Corrections Department's deputy chief of operations.

In an interview with The Oklahoman before starting the job, Williams shared his hopes for the troubled jail, with a focus on protecting public safety and improving the lives of inmates.

“So when working with inmates, the best way to protect the public is to make citizens out of inmates," Williams said in 2019. "The true side of success and purpose of all of this, in my opinion, is to take a person that is struggling and dysfunctional and make them functional.”

Yet the jail immediately grew more deadly upon the trust takeover and under Williams' leadership.  

Within six months, two detention officers were fired and accused of assault on an inmate. Another detention officer was charged in connection to facilitating a gang assault on an inmate. One inmate was beaten to death with his own walking boot.  

Several detention officers and contracted staff have been fired and accused of bringing contraband into the jail.  

In 2021, an inmate with methamphetamine in his system took one detention officer hostage using a shank. In the ensuing events, the detention officer was stabbed and pepper sprayed by inmates. Police eventually stormed in and killed the hostage taker.

Throughout the trust's tenure, the jail has repeatedly been cited by the Oklahoma State Department of Health for having repeat deficiencies in the facility. Bed bugs, dirty conditions and severe understaffing have been ongoing issues cited in health department reports.

Williams blamed some of the early struggles on the state of the facility left by Taylor.

Management didn't have personnel files and were not given a list of who worked at the jail when the trust took control, Williams told The Oklahoman in 2022. There were no trash cans, a lack of furniture and no vehicles that operated. Clothes and bedding hadn't been purchased in months.  

Williams said the jail had to buy new uniforms for guards. The facility also needed a new offender management system. 

"The halls were flooded with sewage. And the water pumps were broken. And we had one elevator that was working at the time,” Williams said. “I mean, how do I paint this picture? I mean, you're getting a feel for kind of what we're talking about?" 

In 2022, activists and one trust member, Scobey, began to call for Williams’ removal, but with no support from additional members, Williams remained.

Blumert, one of the Oklahoma County commissioners tasked with appointing trust members and approving jail budgets, doesn’t blame the former administrator for the jail’s woes.  

“The issues have been going on for decades, and it’s very hard to make quick changes in a system that complicated, that involves the courts, the law enforcement, attorneys, the commissioners, the jail trust,” Blumert said. “It’s all of these different pieces trying to make it better, and we still have a long way to go.” 

The public discourse over Williams’ leadership became a moot point in December when Williams resigned after nearly 2 1/2 years as administrator, and following 15 deaths up to that point in 2022. 

His final year was marred by low grades from the Oklahoma Health Department during inspections for repeated violations, including a failure to check inmates on suicide watch every 15 minutes.

Jail guards stir trouble, face criminal charges

Workers, both the number and quality, have been among the most pressing issues afflicting the jail. While the trust promised better oversight of the detention center when it took over, records obtained by The Oklahoman reveal many guards at the facility have been accused of committing crimes while on the clock.  

From July 2020 through last October 2022, the jail presented to the Oklahoma County district attorney's office at least 28 criminal cases involving investigations of workers at the jail, according to data obtained by The Oklahoman. Of those, the district attorney filed 20 charges. Four cases have been dismissed.

Formal charges range from rape in the second degree —the accused being a contract worker —to assault and battery, neglect of duty and trafficking drugs in the jail.  The jail's investigations led to the termination or resignation of at least 24 staffers employed directly by the jail. One jail employee was suspended. The employment status of five contract workers was not provided by the jail.

In February 2022, the Oklahoma County district attorney’s office charged a fired detention officer with a misdemeanor after an internal investigation concluded he mistreated two inmates by unjustifiably spraying them with pepper spray.  

In May 2022, a detention officer was arrested and later fired, accused of attempting to smuggle drugs and other contraband into the jail.  

In two separate June court filings, inmates allege detention officers allowed them to be stabbed by other inmates in their cells.  

In a current criminal case winding its way through Oklahoma County District Court, one former detention officer faces two charges of dealing drugs in the jail.

During an October 2020 investigation, one inmate told a jail investigator that he saw an officer “give another inmate three bundles at his cell door.”

The investigator reviewed jail video and wrote in an affidavit that footage from Sept. 25, 2020, showed the detention officer walking up to a cell, opening the door, “pull something out of his pocket,” then step away from the cell and close the door.

In court, the officer was formally charged with unlawful possession and intent to distribute methamphetamine, and unlawful possession and intent to distribute marijuana. The case remains open.

Staff numbers dangerously low

Other records obtained by The Oklahoman show the jail has been chronically understaffed throughout the trust's tenure —with the number of guards employed drastically below the optimal number for a detention facility of this size.

During the first week of August 2022, the average population at the jail was 1,666 inmates, according to data provided by a spokesman.  

Under ideal staffing conditions, the jail would employ about 400 guards with positions ranging from cadet to staff sergeant, former Administrator Williams said.

That same week in August 2022, staffing stood at 143.

Under the Oklahoma County sheriff's office, staffing was sometimes low, but reserve deputies could be called upon in case of emergency. Other times, staffing numbers exceeded state standards, including in 2005 when the jail employed 440 people and still sought to hire more to support additional programs.

Charity Howard worked in law enforcement and corrections for 18 years, including two stints at the Oklahoma County jail, one under former Sheriff John Whetsel, and recently again last year before leaving after contracting COVID-19. 

Howard said during weekend shifts it was common to have just five detention officers working all 13 floors of the jail. She sometimes had to do safety checks for multiple floors by herself.

“There is a lot of men at least in one pod,” she said. “So for one person to handle one floor, and have to go to the other floor and do these sight checks, as a female, that was a security risk for me because if I needed help, it wouldn't get there in time ... it's a safety risk.” 

Kiarra Braggs, a former clerk at the jail who took detainee paperwork to bondsmen for notarization, said she worked at the jail for about three months before quitting.   

“I didn’t feel like I was safe,” she said. “To drop off certain paperwork or to get certain type of paperwork, we had to walk through the area where it’s like the holding cell for people first getting there. They’re sitting on the bench and they go through and there’s a nurse there, taking their temperatures and checking them before they get booked in and stuff. And they didn’t have enough officers for us, to escort us to do that. It was always really hectic and understaffed.” 

Those fears were realized in September when one inmate was accused of raping another inmate while she was handcuffed to a wall awaiting her release.  

David Prater, district attorney at the time, said the alleged rape was “another example of the jail trust failing to protect” those for whom they are responsible.  

The grand jury findings criticized the jail's guards, saying the jail's "inadequate staffing, funding, surveillance, and training, coupled with poor law enforcement protocols, led to the significant loss of life within the jail."

The report also included a section dedicated to the discovery that members of organized gangs were able to secure jobs as guards within the jail, and in doing so aided in the distribution of drugs within the jail.

"It is troubling to the (multicounty grand jury) that, according to testimony of witnesses, administrative staff were warned and allegedly ignored concerns by some investigative staff that criminal street gang members were being hired as detention officers.," the report said.

Following the release of the grand jury's report, Brandi Garner, who stepped into the role of interim CEO after Williams' resignation in December, said work is being done to address the issue. She told members of the jail trust she ordered additional background checks on staff in addition to the standard checks that were being done.

"We already have taken action on information we have received thus far to investigate, interview, and in some cases, terminate employees (or, in the alternative) allow them to resign," Garner told jail trust members.

Garner since has been hired as the permanent CEO.

Trust makes some progress, but still gets blasted by grand jury

Under the trust, some progress at the jail has been made.

Many maintenance repairs were made to water, heat and air, plumbing and electrical systems. New locks were placed on many doors in cells.

The trust also brought in a new health care provider, Turn Key Health, in efforts to improve the quality of care.

There has been a slight reduction in total inmate population, as well as the number of inmates "triple-celled," a practice of placing three inmates in a cell meant for two.

And perhaps most significantly, voters in June approved a $260 million bond package to fund a new jail facility, which supporters believe is the long-needed solution in Oklahoma County. 

But in spite of the progress, as deaths continue to be a problem, and following the release of findings from the multicounty grand jury investigation, the trust now finds itself under scrutiny, and questions of whether it might eventually be dissolved. 

In its report, the grand jury said improvements at the jail cannot be attributed to the trust, but rather the improvements were due simply to additional spending on the facility itself. The grand jury blasted both the trust and Williams. Blame was placed on leadership for the rise in inmate deaths, the hiring of guards with criminal gang affiliation, and an inability to curb rampant drug problems within the facility.

While not named directly, the report referred to Williams by title, saying he "did not take proactive or effective steps to curb the significant death rate in the jail."

The report concluded that the trust should dissolve, and that the jail itself must be replaced.

Under state law, all the trustees would need to vote in favor of dissolution, and the governor must give final approval. 

Even the county commissioners, who appoint the at-large trustees, have little control once members are in place.

“It’s hard now having a trust, because there’s very little the commissioners can do,” Blumert said. “I can’t go in and tell them how to run the building, I can’t tell them what policies to enact, I simply appoint the members and provide them their budget.”  

One question is whether the sheriff’s office can once again take over operations of the jail.  

It’s a question Johnson, the current Oklahoma County sheriff, said he hears often.  

“It’s not something I’d want to do, to be quite honest with you,” Johnson, who serves on the jail trust, told The Oklahoman. “But I always say this — it is my obligation, should there no longer be a trust, to run the Oklahoma County jail, and I will honor my obligations, and I will do the best damn job I possibly can.” 

Veteran corrections officials don’t blame Johnson.  

Donald L. Leach, a longtime jail and prison consultant with previous positions as a detention officer then deputy director for the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Division of Community Corrections in Kentucky, described jails as a political nightmare.  

“Jails will get people unelected,” he said. “They won't get sheriffs elected. They will run on putting more cops on the streets, but not in the jail.” 

The grand jury hit on this point in its report, citing it as a main reason to give control back to the sheriff.

"One primary reason to return to the Sheriff-administered jail structure is that, at a minimum, the Sheriff, an elected official, can be held accountable through the election process," grand jurors reported.

Johnson told The Oklahoman in a lengthy interview in October that efforts to improve the jail have not always led to the desired outcomes.

“That’s where it gets frustrating, because there’s a lot of time and conversations that are constantly going on about, what can we do?” Johnson said. “We’ve had study after study after study, voluntarily had people come in, fix this, fix that. You just honestly come up short sometimes. We’re trying our best.” 

New facility, same problems?

Jim Couch, former city manager for Oklahoma City and former chairman for the trust who resigned after Williams’ departure, believes physical improvements to the current jail in recent years can't be dismissed, but admits that the facility "has a long way to go."  

Couch has joined the chorus of those who think a new jail complex is the fix.  

“It may be two floors, who knows,” he said. “I think we understand the problems that we have, and we’re going to do all that we can to not repeat those same issues. … I’m confident that we will be able to come up with a jail that the citizens of Oklahoma County will be proud of.” 

While supporters of a new jail say a modern design will bring needed improvements to inmate and staff morale, experts like Leach caution that detention centers will always pose problems.   

Leach said low-rise jails, or ones without elevators, are more efficient than tower jails. However, low-rise jails take up a larger footprint, he said. And, no matter where a jail is planned to be located, those who live and work nearby will fight against it.     

"When they’re talking about building a new jail, square footage, ground availability and where it’s going to be located are critical factors, and none of that will be easy," he said. "There will be so many critical, political decisions."  

And, Leach said, operating costs will continue to present political troubles.  

"Nobody wants to pay for jails or prisons, period,” Leach said. “We want to put people in them, but we don't want to pay for them. That's the core of the issue. They want to pay as little as they can and that leads to problems. What are the operating costs and what does the community want to pay?"  

Contributing: Nolan Clay, The Oklahoman

Clarification: An earlier version of this story said that County Commissioner Brian Maughan had declined an interview request for this story when in fact he initially agreed to an interview. After The Oklahoman changed the interview date, The Oklahoman did not make robust enough effort to reschedule and follow-up with Commissioner Maughan. The Oklahoman regrets this lapse in follow through. His followup comments have been added to this story. You can also find a more extended version of our interview with him in this follow-up story.