Glanz and Company

The worst keeps getting worse

The story of the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office and its most infamous hire, Bob Bates, has now jumped the tracks, the shark, and up and down on one’s ability to keep up. It is a daily, relentless embarrassment—a soup of shameless insensitivity, mendacity and clichéd obfuscation embodied by apologists and braggarts. 

But more on Terry Simonson in a moment.

Let’s review. First, there was the shooting of Eric Harris by Bates, a 73-year-old reserve deputy/insurance agent who thought he had pulled out his Taser (Don’t you hate when that happens?) followed by the tidiness with which the sheriff’s office cleaned up the crime scene. Followed by Sheriff Stanley Glanz—longing for the halcyon days of vacationing with Bates—holding the worst press conference since Allen Iverson reminded us about the importance of practice. Followed by Bates retaining as lead counsel Clark Brewster, a man who single-handedly keeps lawyer jokes alive (who not only provided legal services to the Sheriff’s office but whose wife and daughter were hired by Glanz to be property assessors [political patronage positions]—to the tune of about half a million dollars since 2009). Followed by the spectacle of Bates asking for and being granted permission by Judge Deborrah Ludi-Leitch to head down to the Caribbean for a family vacation (which he later cancelled). Followed by Deputy Sheriff Tim Al-bin calling reporters “wild dogs” for asking about Bates’ training, saying, “That’s six years ago. A lot has changed in six years,” and, “For God’s sakes, Bruce Jenner is a woman now. So, OK, a lot has changed in six years.” Followed by Albin’s dismissal, followed by revelations and charges the sheriff’s office was run like Bada Bing from The Sopranos, followed by—ah, hell, I need a drink. 

Check that. I need Dilaudid. This is the cast of “The Grifters.”

Even the Tulsa district attorney has finally had it and asked the OSBI to take a look.

Which brings us back to this prince of a public servant: 

According to emails from city hall, Simonson asked Fire chief Allen LaCroix to advance his 30-year-old son in the hiring process for the fire department.

That’s Terry Simonson, who is now—believe it or not—the intergovernmental affairs and contract administrator for the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office. Back when he called LaCroix to help with Junior’s career path, he was Mayor Bartlett’s chief of staff. Simonson was forced to resign for being such a clod but then landed at Urban Tulsa Weekly, where he honed and directed his considerable douchebaggery to the fight against bad black men.

It’s hard for the community to be concerned about the number of homicides when it’s gang members killing gang members. When you think about it, who’s really complaining about that? Those deaths are certainly a loss to the families of the fallen gang member, but is it actually a loss to the community?

Yes, it’s a loss to the community, especially if some 8-year-old girl is buying a Snickers bar when the bullets start flying and gang members starting dying in your Orwellian fantasy of how to get rid of the Others. 

So, this is the man Glanz hires to get out the department’s spin? This is the man Glanz decides should be within an area code of a story about race and death, privilege and greed?

Apparently so.

Simonson wrote this in The Tulsa World :

Because of a breakdown in the accountability and trust that the sheriff placed in his staff, and because he followed the law by appointing appraisers as every sheriff is required to do, there are some who believe early retirement is the only option. The reasoning is either that when the going gets tough it’s time to bail out or on the flip side that he should leave now to save his well-earned legacy.

His well-earned—what? Glanz turned the office into a trough, a punch line, and Simonson is worried about the sheriff’s legacy? While we’re on the subject, where in the name of a collective spine are the Tulsa County commissioners on this, and why haven’t they called for Glanz’s resignation? At least Dewey Bartlett had the political sense to throw the Sheriff’s Department under the bus by comparing it with TPD. 

(How does Simonson keep getting work, anyway? Doesn’t anyone in all the HR departments for whom he’s worked know how to do a Google search?)

Glanz should be fired for promoting a system where rich benefactors get to play cops and robbers with their own guns and for hiring unscrupulous undersheriffs. But according to Simonson, the same sheriff who surrounds himself with guys like this—

But in court records and internal reports, others painted a far different picture: one where supervisors in the Tulsa Jail labeled black employees “N” in personnel records, Huckeby and others allegedly had “rampant sex” with co-workers and black inmates were assaulted for sport.

—is being unfairly targeted by the community.

This is not some interdepartmental “breakdown in … accountability and trust,” it’s an overflowing sewer, and Simonson’s chutzpah in painting Glanz as some put-upon hero is as arrogant as it is predictable as it is insulting.

As was said in the movie Seabiscuit, “You don’t throw away a whole life, just because of a few mistakes.” He has been standing up to protect us for a quarter of a century. It’s time for us to stand up for him in his final year. It’s the right thing to do.

Simonson’s prose is enough to make you take the gas pipe.

And Eric Harris is still dead. Damn those small mistakes. 

For more from Barry Friedman, check out his recent thoughts on religious intolerance or the crusade against religious intolerance.