The governor’s office confirmed Mark Jennings’s resignation as commissioner of McCurtain County.
A county commissioner in Oklahoma reportedly resigned after being recorded calling for the death penalty for Black people and making death threats against two local journalists. The state’s top official has said as much.
McCurtain County Commissioner Mark Jennings resigned this past Wednesday, effective immediately, and said he will issue a statement “in the near future regarding the recent events in our county,” as reported by The Associated Press.
After being ordered to do so by the Republican governor of Oklahoma, the Oklahoma State Bureau of Inquiry has confirmed it has initiated its own inquiry.
According to an audio tape broadcast by the McCurtain Gazette-News during the county commission meeting on March 6, Jennings, Sheriff Kevin Clardy, and Capt. Alicia Manning were all critical of reporters Bruce and Chris Willingham. If you ever need two deep holes, I know where they are dug,” Sheriff Jennings stated. “I have an excavator,” he said.
While discussing his team, Jennings remarked, “They don’t have a lot of talkers.” Quite a few of the killers in Louisiana are folks I know personally.
The recording purportedly shows Jennings complaining about not having the power to execute Black people and saying, “They got more rights than we got.”
According to News9, the Oklahoma Sheriff’s Association had a special meeting and decided to suspend the three officers who could be heard on the recordings.
McCurtain County Sheriff’s Office, however, posted on Facebook on Monday that “[m]any of these recordings, like the one published by media outlets on Friday, have yet to be duly authenticated or validated.”
The sheriff’s office said in a statement, “Our early information shows that the media released audio clip has, in fact, been distorted.” No one seems to know why this choice was made now. That is currently being looked upon.
In addition, “the audio does not match the ‘transcription’ of that audio and is not precisely consistent with what has been put into print,” as the lawsuit puts it.
Stitt publicly announced his plan to seek resignations from everyone mentioned on the audio on Sunday, including Clardy, Manning, Jennings, and Jail Administrator Larry Hendrix.
Stitt said he was “appalled and disheartened” by the comments made by McCurtain County officials in a statement. Many have spoken out against this, stating things like “such bigoted language has no place in Oklahoma, much less among those who are supposed to represent the community in their respective office.”
According to KWTV-DT, the disclosures have prompted an FBI investigation in McCurtain County.
Concerned that the county commissioners were continuing to conduct county business after the meeting had ended, in violation of the state’s Open Meeting Act, McCurtain Gazette-News publisher Bruce Willingham allegedly left a voice-activated recorder inside the room on March 6 and recorded what transpired. The newspaper employs Bruce Willingham’s son, Chris, who is a reporter.
Specifically, Bruce Willingham says, “I made sure I wasn’t doing anything illegal by consulting with our attorneys on two separate occasions.”
More than a hundred people demonstrated against the sheriff and other county authorities on Monday in front of the McCurtain County Courthouse in Idabel.