FOX23 investigates allegations of corruption surrounding the Okmulgee County Jail

OKMULGEE, Okla. — FOX23 is investigating complaints about retaliation, racism and unfair firings surrounding the Okmulgee County Jail. The county leaders being accused of these things are firing back — claiming the four former employees who are complaining are part of an embezzlement investigation.

FOX23 Evening Anchor Shae Rozzi spent weeks digging into the serious allegations on both sides.

Video from inside the Okmulgee County Jail from December 2019 started the deep divide. A man just arrested for domestic assault is seen on video not following commands to sit on a bench. An Okmulgee Police officer uses his knee and elbow strikes to get him to comply.

Police body camera video shows a different angle and includes audio. That was just released to FOX23 and will be explained after we walk you through the fallout from the jail video.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Sam McCoy told FOX23 when he saw the jail video. He was the longtime Director of the Okmulgee County Criminal Justice Authority at the time of the incident. The agency runs the jail. “That’s just not something that we tolerated. I mean, we had been sued previously.”

FOX23′s Shae Rozzi watched the jail video with McCoy, his two attorneys Cordal Cephas and Lashandra Peoples-Johnson, and the three other now former employees.

Mccoy says when he was shown the video in January 2020, he reported it to District Attorney Carol Iski and it ultimately led to him and the other top members of his leadership team being fired.

“I showed her the video and she basically said, ‘well what do you want me to do about it?’ at that moment I was really taken aback,” McCoy said. “I didn’t expect to hear that, so I was a little shocked and I said, ‘well I would hope that you would investigate this and you know do the right thing.’”

He says Okmulgee Police Chief Joe Prentice and Okmulgee County Sheriff Eddy Rice then told him to mind his own business and keep his mouth shut.

Chief Prentice denies he said that.

We tried to talk to the sheriff who’s a trustee of the jail. He referred us to the attorney handling the case on the county’s behalf. But he hasn’t returned our calls.

“About a week after that, the chief of police at the time and the sheriff came to one of the regularly scheduled county commissioner meetings,” McCoy said. “I was excluded from the executive session and I’ve been led to believe that that’s when they began the process of determining what my fate would be. One of the county commissioners actually confirmed that to me.”

McCoy says a couple of months later he was given a letter by the district attorney demanding to see the financial records from the previous three years.

“So, I took 11 boxes of financial records to the district attorney’s office,” McCoy said. “About a month later after that I was terminated.”

FOX23′s Shae Rozzi asked McCoy, “Was there any reason why you should’ve been fired?”

“Legitimately? No,” McCoy said.

“Do you feel you were fired unfairly?” Rozzi asked. “Do you feel like there was this smear campaign against you?”

“I’m certain of it. I’m absolutely certain of it,” McCoy said.

“It’s also my understanding you loaned the county personal money to make payroll?” Rozzi asked.

“I did, on more than one occasion,” McCoy responded. “The previous 15 to 16 occasions I loaned the county money, I did get my money back. The last time, it was $90,000 and they refused to pay me. Their response was they were not aware, but the chairman of the board of commissioners was well aware of it.”

In McCooy’s lawsuit filed against the Okmulgee County Jail Trust Authority, the Okmulgee County Criminal Justice Authority and the Okmulgee County Board of County Commissioners, McCoy claims there’s a smear campaign against him calling him an embezzler.

“Have you ever embezzled money from the county, the Jail Trust, the Jail Trust Authority?” Rozzi asked.

“No, absolutely not. No,” McCoy replied.

Cordal Cephas is the lead attorney representing McCoy says, “The pretext he was given was that he was not managing money at the jail. The reason he was fired was that he reported a white police officer beating a black man in the jail. When he made the report, all hell broke loose in his life.”

And Cephas says in the lives of the three other former employees he and his co-counsel are representing. Within six months of reporting the jail incident, D.A. Carol Iski hired Shannon Clark to take over the Okmulgee County Criminal Justice Authority.

On July 23, 2020, Sam McCoy says Clark fired him after 19 years on the job and in the same meeting fired Ronald Spears. Spears was a 14 year employee and the Facilities Manager at the Okmulgee County Jail.

FOX23′s Shae Rozzi asked Spears, “Why do you think you were fired with Mr. Mccoy, at the same time as him?”

“Because Mr. Mccoy and I have a history,” Spears said. “We’ve worked off and on together several years.”

“It was a scorched earth policy,” attorney Cordal Cephas said. “If we can’t trust you to keep your mouth closed, we can’t trust them. And everyone was out the door with no reason.”

The same day Clark fired McCoy and Spears, he also fired Shimika Goudeau, a 19 year employee who was the second in command at the jail.

In an interview with FOX23, Goudeau wiped away tears saying she went into a state of depression over being fired with no reason given. She also says she was never interviewed to replace McCoy as she anticipated.

“Never,” she said.

Her attorney Cordal Cephas has filed a complaint on Goudeau’s behalf with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. “When Shimika’s name was brought up as being number 2 and getting an interview, it was said, ‘That n-word will never get this job,” Cephas said.

“They left her there essentially denying unemployment then denying her the opportunity to work in the field she’s worked in almost 20 years. It was egregious and solely motivated by the color of her skin and the fact that she was a woman,” Cephas said.

Five days after McCoy, Spears and Goudeau were fired, Christine King says she was also let go. King is McCoy’s ex-wife who worked as the Health Services Administrator for three years.

“July 28th, I was left a phone message that I can no longer work at OCCJA,” King said. “They also said that my email account is finished and that was it, basically I was fired. So, they weren’t going to accommodate the accommodations that I had.”

Those accommodations were working remotely. King says as a cancer survivor and being in a pandemic, she had a doctor’s note to do so.

“I had some damage on my left lung from chemo and radiation,” King said. “I was granted that accommodation to work from home, remotely, which I did. Actually, the week before I was fired, I had successfully completed a remote audit. When they left that message, they said they were not going to have someone work light duty or something to that effect.”

“Essentially she hasn’t missed a beat she’s just having to do her job remotely,” her attorney Cordal Cephas said. “The change in administration occurs and she receives a call, you can no longer work remotely.”

Cephas says the new leadership fired King and since they did not talk to her about taking any time off under the Family and Medical Leave Act, Americans with Disabilities Act or Families First Coronavirus Response Act, he filed a complaint on her behalf with EEOC -- the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. He also filed a wrongful termination lawsuit citing the FMLA violation.

FOX23 went to the most recent Okmulgee County Criminal Justice Authority meeting to get some answers. The new director, Shannon Clark, said he does not do any media interviews and did not want to talk.

Sheriff Eddy Rice didn’t either because of the lawsuits.

After placing three calls, three days in a row to District Attorney Carol Iski, she called FOX23′s Shae Rozzi back and talked to her for almost an hour.

She does not deny “someone” made a racial comment about who would be the next director, but she would not give a name.

She says the firings have nothing to do with race, that all four were fired because of an embezzlement investigation involving Sam McCoy.

Iski says the other three knew about it and that she’s turned that over to the FBI to investigate.

The D.A. claims McCoy was paying each of them excessive salaries, some a hundred thousand dollars or more.

She also says she liked Goudeau and was sad to see her caught up in this.

But she also called her a ghost employee, and King a ghost employee as well, meaning they were hardly ever physically at work.

All 4 former employees deny the D.A.’s claims. They say county leaders are mis-using money from a tax fund designated for the jail.

I asked Iski about the jail incident with the city police officer that started it all.

Iski says the officer’s body camera video tells a different story. She and Chief Prentice agreed the officer acted within policy.

The chief first told FOX23 he wasn’t sure he still had the body cam video. But after FOX23′s Shae Rozzi told him she talked to the D.A. and got their side, he found it and made a copy the same day.

Chief Prentice told Rozzi over the phone, “When you hear the officer say, ‘let go of my legs, let go,’ repeatedly and use elbow strikes.. It’s because the officer thought the suspect had his legs wrapped around him like a scissor hold.”

Chief Prentice says jail staff was holding down the man’s feet keeping the officer from moving at the same time. He calls it a misunderstanding and says the officer did not face any disciplinary action.

McCoy and the other former employees along with their attorneys stand by their claims and say this is also about standing up for the people of Okmulgee County.

“The problem that we have here as that Mr. Mccoy made that report,” Cephas said. “And as a consequence of making that report, his life was torn apart. That is something not only myself but the people of Okmulgee County should not tolerate.”

Both sides tell FOX23 the pandemic and the McGirt decision have delayed the investigative and judicial process.

FOX23 will update you as things move forward for either side.

If you have a story for us to look into, email us at fox23investigates@fox23.com.