By Larry Stovall
The traffic stop detailed above netted around five time amount of methamphetamine required for trafficking charges in Oklahoma, but the seizure and arrest of the suspect was just the start of a remarkable week for area law enforcement when it came to narcotics cases.
In addition to the incident detailed in this issue, the McCurtain County Sheriff’s Office and Broken Bow police served a warrant on a home in Broken Bow on the evening of Jan 2., while the MCSO and Oklahoma Highway Patrol served another at a home in the Lukfata area.
MCSO officials stated that while the Broken Bow search netted no narcotics, the Lukfata search ended with officers seizing around 28 grams of the illicit substance.
And then, on Friday (Jan 3), an investigation into a shooting in Wright City led officers to discovering a huge amount of the drug when they found over two pounds of the substance. That measure equals 907 grams or over 45 times the amount required for a felony drug trafficking charge in Oklahoma.
Arrests were made after all these incidents.
It’s not a coincidence that the new McCurtain County Sheriff, Bruce Shirey, was officially sworn into his position on Thursday (Jan. 2).
Shirey was elected last year with both he and candidate Jason Ricketts advancing from the initial Republican primary ahead of then-Sheriff Kevin Clardy, who, unusually for an incumbent, netted only 18 percent of the vote from his own party.
Shirey won the subsequent run-off and then defeated Democratic candidate Steve McKee in November’s general election.
Shirey, who told the McCurtain Gazette last week that drugs have become “wide open” in McCurtain County, has said that his office will now be aggressively pursue and arrest traffickers dealing in narcotics, a large change from Clardy’s administration which seemed, at times, to willfully ignore these issues.
Shirey has also reversed an MCSO policy that had had significant impact in Broken Bow; under Clardy’s command, deputies had been told not to assist or back-up Broken Bow police officers, apparently in retaliation for the BBPD hiring on John Jones as its narcotics investigator.
Jones had previously worked as an investigator for MCSO before he resigned in late 2021 after being demoted from investigator to patrolman, despite a long record of impressive investigative results, including one of the county’s largest drug busts.
Jones later alleged gross partiality on the part of Clardy as well as numerous other issues at the MCSO, many of which had been or would be detailed in the Gazette. He rapidly found employment working as a DA’s investigator in Arkansas and later began assisting the BBPD as a reserve officer.
BBPD Chief Richard Wiggins noted that Jones had been “a blessing” since he had come to work for the department and made positive statements about the new state of law enforcement in the county.
“I think that we’re definitely on the right track, on the upswing,” Wiggins said. “I feel like we’re going back to an era like we had when Johnny Tadlock was sheriff…cooperation between all the agencies.”
