[This article is part of CovertAction Magazine (CAM)’s series on abuses within the U.S. criminal justice system. It also spotlights the plight of whistleblowers. CAM managing editor Jeremy Kuzmarov lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma and has covered criminal justice issues in the state for the last decade as a freelancer.—Editors]
Oklahoma’s Bible-quoting Governor Kevin Stitt seems to think there’s nothing wrong with what is going on, and uses every bit of his duly constituted governmental power to see that abuses continue
The son of a pastor, Oklahoma’s Republican Governor Kevin Stitt quotes from biblical verses in his speeches and presents himself to the public as a pious Christian.
But his behavior as Governor has been anything but Christian.
He has helped to cover up for human horrors in state run institutions that would have been shameful even in the Middle Ages.
These horrors include:
- Waterboarding disabled people
- Confining inmates to cages with no access to a bathroom
- Leaving a prisoner in his cell for three days without food
- Snatching children from their mothers and placing them in the care of known pedophiles.
One lone fighter is doing battle against a corrupt system.
Justin J. Humphrey is a Republican state representative from Lane and chairman of the criminal justice and corrections committee who has worked diligently throughout Stitt’s tenure to expose corruption in government agencies and to try and prompt high-level investigations by the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation (OSBI) that could put an end to major human rights abuses being carried out.
Unfortunately, Humphrey has been given the cold shoulder by Stitt, branded the “#1 trouble maker,” at the State Capitol, and been stonewalled at every turn, ensuring that the horrific abuses continue.
In an interview on September 27, Humphrey told me that he feels like he is not just fighting for the reform of state agencies, but that he is “fighting the Capitol…Government officials are supposed to protect the welfare and safety of the state’s population and ensure that state agencies are run professionally, but instead they are covering up abuses, failing to launch investigations or carrying out sham investigations, and trying to silence me.”
Humphrey’s silencing is especially disturbing in light of the fact that he is trying to “protect children from being molested and people from being tortured,” as he puts it.
Humphrey was first elected to the State House in 2016 after a twenty-year career in the Department of Corrections (DOC). He says he has received credible reports from whistleblowers and is thorough in trying to corroborate allegations made by victimized parties that come to him.
Humphrey believes that criminals should be held accountable for their crimes, but that prisoners are human beings who have certain rights and that efforts should be made to rehabilitate them in prison and help them reintegrate back into society, which is not what is occurring right now.
Humphrey said that he has received information indicating prisoners are being placed in cages and in a two-by-two and three-by-three foot feces-laden shower cell at the correctional facility in Hinton for as long as nine days with no means to relieve themselves, causing at least one inmate to attempt suicide.[1]
In Cleveland County, correctional officers mocked a thirty-eight-year old mother undergoing a mental health crisis who had been left to wallow in her own excrement in a cell lacking a bed and was severely dehydrated after being deprived water, leaving her to die.[2]
Prison guards, according to Humphrey, are routinely getting away with beating, extorting, shooting pepper balls at, and raping inmates.[3] A prison riot in Lawton ended with two inmates dead.
Humphrey said that in the case where rapes are reported and confessions are elicited, correctional officers are being allowed to resign instead of facing any criminal charges, which is illegal under the 2003 Prison Rape Elimination Act.
In many cases of wrongdoing by law enforcement officials, prosecution is difficult because records are being destroyed—with impunity. Prison officials who report sexual misconduct face unwelcome reassignments, dismissal and other forms of retaliation and have had their lives turned into a “living hell.”
Whitney Louis, a psychologist with 17 years experience working in prisons, lost her job when she applied for whistleblower status after reporting being assaulted by a lieutenant at the Eddie Warrior Correctional Center in Taft and reporting on 8 rapes by correctional guards of female inmates at the facility there along with the fact that the prison warden arrived at work drunk.[4]
Rather than trying to uphold the rule of law, Oklahoma’s Attorney General Gentner Drummond is using his authority to provide cover for the DOC. He defended it in an inmate lawsuit over the shower cells that calls out prison officials for engaging in “cruel and unusual punishment.”
Drummond further expressed satisfication that the DOC had properly investigated the prison rape allegations put forward by Louis, though when Drummond received a letter from Humphrey detailing the allegations and requesting an investigation, Humphrey was rebuffed, and the names of the victims that Louis provided the office of the Inspector General were never contacted.
A key problem with Oklahoma’s prisons is that there is not enough staff to properly police the inmates, Humphrey said. He noted that recently there were multiple stabbings at the Great Plains Correctional facillity in Hinton, a murder at McAlester prison, and man found with slashed wrists at the Allen Gamble correctional center in Holdenville, which is notoriously violent.
Humphrey said that he gets so many calls about wrongdoing that he can’t keep up with all the cases. In some prisons, the showers are so old they don’t properly work. The DOC brags about lowering the rate of escapes because of a play on words by which inmates who escape are said to have merely gone “out of bounds.”
In November 2022, Myron Martin, 40, died while in solitary confinement at the prison in Springtown. He was found brutally beaten and had been pepper sprayed. Prison authorities claim that Martin died of a methamphetamine overdose. Yet it is unclear how somebody in solitary confinement could get methamphetamines.
Humphrey traces the deterioration of Oklahoma’s prison conditions to Stitt’s appointment of Steven Harpe as head of Oklahoma’s Department of Corrections.
Harpe had no previous experience with corrections, and as director of the Office of Management and Enterprise Services (OMES), helped to cover up a scandal by which his office granted a contract to a restaurant vendor, Swedley Bar-B-Q, which misspent millions in state dollars.[5]
Humphrey says that once he became head of the Department of Corrections, Harpe, the former chief information officer of Gateway Mortgage Group, a company founded by Stitt, raised his salary by $90,000 when it was already $185,000. It is not clear if Governor Stitt ever approved the raise, making it potentially illegal.
Humphrey’s efforts to get an investigation into all of this so far have been in vain—much like with abuses occurring at Oklahoma’s Department of Health Services (DHS).
This past year, the Tulsa juvenile corrections facility became the target of a federal investigation, which corroborated allegations that juvenile offenders placed at the DHS facility were sexually molested by guards; two guards have been subsequently charged with sex crimes.
Thirty people at the center accused staffers of beating juvenile detainees, bribing them to fight each other after creating a “fight club,” and giving out pills containing methamphetamines.
A community group, Appleseed, wrote a report ignored by Stitt’s administration confirming that state agencies—DHS, Oklahoma Juvenile Affairs (OJA) and the Oklahoma Commission on Children and Youth—were aware that children at the Tulsa Juvenile Correction Center were being physically and sexually abused but failed to take appropriate action to stop the abuse.
The House Committee on Criminal Justice and Corrections that Humphrey chairs heard from three additional witnesses who provided first hand knowledge of criminal conduct within the state’s child welfare services and DHS that was never followed up.
At the Robert M. Greer mental health facility in Enid, run by DHS, Humphrey says that he was shown pictures indicating that people with disabilities were being waterboarded, a form of torture used on terrorist suspects and in overseas wars where water is poured down a person’s throat to simulate drowning.
Humphrey told me that what is going on there “looks like 1930s stuff” that is “unheard of.”
The photos Humphrey saw showed patients—some children—with huge bruises on their stomachs from being beaten by caretakers who bribed patients to carry out beatings.
The caretakers kicked patients in the face, had sex with them, and choked them until they were left unconscious, according to a Fox News report.[6] One of the victims was “said to have the mentality of a four-year old.”
RoseAnn Duplan, a policy specialist with the Oklahoma Disability Law Center told The Oklahoman that the horrific abuse that was allowed to run rampant in the Greer facility was a “direct result of the agencies charged with oversight not following the policies that were put in place to protect the residents.”
In August, the Garfield County District Attorney dropped charges against seven of eight former staffers who were facing felony charges, claiming they “could not locate a necessary witness.” This exemplifies how nobody has been held accountable for the horrors that went on—not the least the owners of the private company that ran the facility for over 20 years, Liberty of Oklahoma Corporation, or DHS officials.[7]
Humphrey is currently seeking more information from the Enid police about the murder of a patient at Greer in May—after abuse at the facility had already been reported.
Humphrey is also in contact with numerous mothers whose kids have been taken away from them in custody disputes on spurious grounds, and who were put in homes where the kids were or are being molested and/or abused.
One of the cases involves a couple who were falsely accused of a crime and exonerated in court but are still being deprived of custody of their grandson, and another involves a man who gained an admission on video of his kids being abused, which DHS refused to acknowledge.
Still another involves a Mexican national, Rosario Chico, who is being charged with a felony crime for taking her kids to a battered woman’s shelter across state lines while trying to flee from an abusive husband. Tulsa District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler received campaign donations from the Guardian ad Litem in the case who granted the abusive husband’s mother custody of Chico’s kids (her attorney worked in the DA’s office).[8]
In December 2023, Humphrey drafted a letter directed at Stitt, Gentner Drummond, and the FBI seeking a meeting to discuss the questionable prosecution of Ms. Chico.
The letter highlighted Humphrey’s concerns about improper judicial and prosecutorial conduct in the case, an overzealous Guardian ad Litem who is under investigation for forging signatures, and a conspiracy to try and get the DHS to change its finding that Chico’s children had been abused.
Predictably, Humphrey’s letter went ignored, the meeting never took place, and Chico is still facing criminal charges while being denied custody of her children.[9]
In late August, in an attempt to save some political face, Stitt fired DHS Director Deborah Shropshire, though her replacement, Jeffrey Cartmel, inspires little confidence as he helped cover up the sexual abuse that was occurring at the Tulsa Detention Center when he was Director of the Office of Juvenile Affairs (OJA).
One thing that Humphrey is concerned about is the increase in Oklahoma’s prison population by around five thousand in the last five years.
Humphrey attributes the increase in part to the breakdown of a District Attorney supervision system, which helped lower recidivism rates.
Ironically, a bill was passed in the state legislature in 2013 establishing a higher supervision fee—after which District Attorney offices stopped supervising parolees.
According to Humphrey, Kevin Stitt refuses to listen to his pleas for an investigation about this and is protecting what amounts to the perpetuation of a fraud—along with other major abuses around the state.
The ultimate victims, according to Humphrey, are not just the kids who have been harmed and inmates who have been tortured, but the people living in Oklahoma today.
It is they who have to live among damaged people who were abandoned by a phony Christian, Governor Stitt, and other elected representatives who have failed to perform their legal and moral duties.
At one point some corrections staff were reprimanded for giving blankets and cups of water to inmates locked in the shower cells. The inmates had been placed there because they complained about unsanitary and dangerous conditions in eight man cells. According to a lawsuit, management at the Department of Corrections sought to intimidate honest correctional officials who refused to participate in sadistic measures. Former Oklahoma Corrections Department officer Kenneth Buck stated “if you wanted to stay in good graces with management, you kept your mouth shut and went with the flow.” ↑
The woman, Shannon Hanchett, had been owner of a popular bakery in the college town of Norman, Oklahoma. She had been arrested for the minor offense of misusing the 911 phone line that seems to have bene precipitated by her mental health breakdown. ↑
Humphrey stated with regards to prison abuses: “I’ve got inmates coming out and saying it, I’ve got former employees coming out and saying it, (and) I have employees who say they’re scared to come forward saying it, so it’s multiple, multiple people. It’s not one.” ↑
Louis’ allegations are documented in emails to the Office of Inspector General, which investigates crimes within the Department of Corrections. The emails included names of victims to be contacted. Besides the rapes, guards at the prison were watching women shower and filming them naked. Humphrey gave a copy of the whistleblower rape allegation book to the state attorney general’s office but received not answer. ↑
COVID-19 money was also determined to be missing during Harpe’s tenure as director of OMES, according to Humphrey. Harpe brought a corporate ethos to the DOC and was focused on bringing technological upgrades to the DOC and establishing a new correctional officer training facility and getting more job training programs in prisons. He claims to be looking to improve the prison experience for inmates, in part by hiring a chief of offender advocacy official regularly meets with inmates to find ways to improve their safety and health. When a local Fox News affiliate reached out to Harpe to get his assessment of the shower cell lawsuit, Harpe claimed that no human rights violations had taken place. Harpe told The Oklahoman that people were “drumming up stuff to beat up on corrections … to get attention.” For his part, Kevin Stitt said that he was pleased with Harpe’s work so far, calling him an “asset” at the Corrections Department. Stitt told The Oklahoman that “H[arpe] is making the department more streamlined, and his efforts have contributed to our goal of making Oklahoma a top 10 state by achieving the second lowest recidivism rate in the nation.” ↑
At least eight former Greer Center staff have been criminally charged with caretaker abuse. DHS Director Deborah Shropshire who has since been fired gave a statement to the media stating that “the details emerging about the allegations are truly horrific to hear and absolutely unacceptable.” ↑
Liberty Healthcare is currently facing civil lawsuits from the families of victims. DHS at one point carried out their own investigation which determined that there was no imminent safety risk to patients at Greer, which was clearly not the case. A whistleblower who had tried to report on the abuses at the Robert M. Greer Center was retaliated against. A flyer was distributed with her photo and phone numbers suggesting she was available for sexual encounters. ↑
Kunzweiler’s office has engaged in other dubious prosecutions, including of a computer programmer falesly accused of rape by the Assistant District Attorney, Ashley Nix, who was given an award after she was found to have falsely accused the programmer of rape. ↑
Three years ago, Humphrey requested an investigation into DHS after receiving dossiers on dozens of cases where children were taken from their mothers unjustly and in some cases was placing them in homes where they were vulnerable to abuse. Governor Stitt did set up a task force to investigate DHS, however, it was staffed with DHS employees and loyalists and did nothing to stop the abuses. ↑
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About the Author
Jeremy Kuzmarov holds a Ph.D. in American history from Brandeis University and has taught at numerous colleges across the United States. He is regularly sought out as an expert on U.S. history and politics for radio and TV programs and co-hosts a radio show on New York Public Radio and on Progressive Radio News Network called “Left on Left.” He is Managing Editor of CovertAction Magazine and is the author of five books on U.S. foreign policy, including Obama’s Unending Wars (Clarity Press, 2019), The Russians Are Coming, Again, with John Marciano (Monthly Review Press, 2018), and Warmonger. How Clinton’s Malign Foreign Policy Launched the U.S. Trajectory From Bush II to Biden (Clarity Press, 2023). Besides these books, Kuzmarov has published hundreds of articles and contributed to numerous edited volumes, including one in the prestigious Oxford History of Counterinsurgency . He can be reached at jkuzmarov2@gmail.com and found on substack here.
Stay in touch! I want to donate part of my book income next month to OvertAction on a regular basis.
Your recent Rense article was a life-changer, especially since my 2 present Amazon books (Fake Quake & Bordergate : The Migrant Wedge) touch similar bases. Currently, I’m editing “It has to be Biden’s Bordergate,” the sequel, out by Thanksgiving! Best, T.J. O’Connor 505 666 7777