Bottom Line
Dan Kirby; Enid News & Eagle; Oklahoma's Deadly Prisons
JUST LEAVE, KIRBY
Last month, The Oklahoman reported on allegations of sexual assault and possible misappropriation of public funds against State rep. Dan Kirby.
Kirby, a Republican representing District 75 in Tulsa and Broken Arrow, was accused of sexual harassment in a tort claim filed by his former executive assistant, Hollie Bishop, in January last year. In a settlement through the Oklahoma State House of Representatives Bishop was paid $44,500 of taxpayers’ money.
Soon after The Oklahoman’s report, Kirby announced he would resign his office. Then he changed his mind.
He reneged on his resignation last Thursday, two days before he was to leave office, with a fax.
The fax sent to House Speaker-elect Charles McCall and Governor Mary Fallin said his decision to resign would not follow state law, and he now plans to serve out the rest of his term.
In a statement to the Tulsa World, Kirby reiterated his decision to remain in office and claimed to have not known the allegations made against him had been settled until he read the story published in the Dec. 21 edition of The Oklahoman.
“I have never seen the settlement agreement nor do I have any knowledge of the terms contained in the settlement agreement,” the statement said. “I would like to make it clear that the allegations of sexual harassment are untrue and I had no role in settling the claims made against the Oklahoma House of Representatives.”
Bottom line: The allegations stink on multiple levels, and Kirby had a chance to save face when he quickly offered his resignation. But his “should I stay or go” waffling is an embarrassment, and further evidence that he should probably just go.
ENID PAPER SUFFERS AFTER CLINTON ENDORSEMENT
The Enid News & Eagle endorsed Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton for president last November and has suffered for it.
According to a recent New York Times report on the fallout, 162 of the Enid paper’s subscribers canceled their subscriptions following the endorsement editorial that ran on Oct. 8, 2016.
Many journalists and periodicals, including Okie papers like this one, applauded the Enid News for giving readers a fearless examination of the two major party candidates.
“This is an excellent example of the way American journalism ought to be—standing for something—and, man, it takes guts to do that,” said Terry M. Clark, University of Central Oklahoma journalism professor to the New York Times.
The Enid News’ parent company, Community Newspaper Holdings Inc., also supported the decision to endorse Clinton across its family of papers.
Readers weren’t having it.
Executive editor Rob Collins was inundated with angry, sometimes profane phone calls. One person stuck a “Crooked Hillary” sticker to the paper’s door.
The Times reported one of the Enid paper’s senior writers was accosted with balled fists and a threat to “beat the hell out of him” while standing in line at Western Sizzlin—after church.
The piece, titled “For U.S. President: Hillary Clinton is our choice for commander in chief,” listed many of Clinton’s well-known faults. It addressed her mismanagement of her private email server, what she’d said about the horrors at the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, and the perceived notion of rich donors paying for greater access to a future president through the Clinton Foundation.
“However,” the paper stated, “her flaws pale in comparison with the irresponsible conduct demonstrated by Trump during the campaign. For several critical reasons, we believe he is unfit to be president.”
And now he is president.
Which surprises few in a state that hasn’t swung Democrat in a national election since Lyndon B. Johnson won the White House and Gomer Jones coached the Sooners.
Bottom line: In two weeks time, Donald J. Trump will take the oath of office and usher in a presidential term built on fear and hate. We applaud the Enid News & Eagle’s courage to speak out against that.
OKLAHOMA’S DEADLY PRISONS
Oklahoma prisons have the second-highest murder rate in the country.
According to a study conducted by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, 13 inmates were killed per 100,000 in state and federal prisons in Oklahoma from 2001 to 2014. The national average is five killed per 100,000, and only Maine outranks Oklahoma with 14 inmates per 100,000.
Oklahoma’s rate of accidental death in prisons is 8 per 100,000— triple the national average—and second again in this statistic, this time to Alaska.
255 inmates, per state, die each year, according to the study. On average, 324 prisoners die each year in Oklahoma prisons.
That number ties Oklahoma with Mississippi for sixth in the country for yearly fatalities, while Louisiana leads the nation with an average of 477 a year.
Some of these deaths come from pre-existing medical conditions. Oklahoma prison spokesman Alex Gerszewski told the Associated Press that in 72 of the 109 state prison deaths in 2015, the deceased were over the age of 50.
“We know that we’ve truly become just a warehouse for inmates in Oklahoma,” Sean Wallace, policy director for the Oklahoma Public Employees Association, told the Associated Press. “We don’t really offer them any programs to rehabilitate them. We barely staff our facilities.”
Bottom line: “Our facilities are crumbling and falling apart,” Wallace said. “I doubt there’s one person in the Oklahoma Department of Corrections who is very surprised that we rank high in the number of inmates who died in our prisons.”
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