Oklahoma
Oklahoma anti-camping law at odds with local initiatives aimed at homelessness
When Lisa P. lost her motel job in October 2023, she and her partner, John P., also lost their home. A room at the inn was included with Lisa’s employment. With nowhere to go and no safety net of family or friends to fall back on, the couple, both in their early 40s, took to the streets of Oklahoma City, homeless and sleeping in a tent.
On June 13, the two took shelter from the sun under W Oklahoma City Blvd.
They usually camp on state property, like in the shade of overpasses, and officers don’t usually bother them, they said. They are quiet and keep to themselves, along with their 8-month-old pit bull, Faith, who kept a keen eye on the raucous group of younger people occupying the other side of the underpass, across the street.
Soon, Senate Bill 1854 will require officers to take action with people such as Lisa and John.
Effective Nov. 1, Oklahoma will join several other states including Kentucky, Florida, Missouri, Georgia and Texas, in enacting a statewide anti-camping law that will limit where the estimated 3,800 Oklahomans experiencing homelessness are allowed to sleep when unsheltered.
Those bans were adapted from model legislation provided by The Cicero Institute, an Austin, Texas-based think tank that works to persuade legislators nationwide to strengthen unauthorized camping laws and require government-sanctioned homeless encampments.
Oklahoma’s new law is a watered-down version of stricter anti-camping bans like those approved this year in Kentucky and Florida that fall almost perfectly in line with the Institute’s Reducing Street Homelessness Act.
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Statewide, many social service groups oppose the new law and the Cicero model bill behind it, calling them inhumane and a further hindrance to fixing the real problems behind homelessness.
Driving people into hiding rather than providing them with life-or-death assistance is an injustice of human rights, they contend. Service providers want the state to direct action and attention to supporting their city-wide efforts rather than passing legislation that adds to the plight of Oklahoma’s homeless.
“One of our main concerns, outside of the dehumanizing impact that some of these bills have, is they’re punitive, and they’re criminalizing people who are already incredibly vulnerable,” said Meghan Mueller, CEO of The Homeless Alliance in Oklahoma City.
Oklahoma’s law criminalizes camping on unauthorized state land or rights-of-way such as under bridges or alongside public roads and highways.
Offenders can be fined up to $50, charged with a misdemeanor and sentenced up to 15 days in jail if they refuse to relocate themselves and their belongings to authorized areas or accept a ride from law enforcement officers to a nearby shelter or service provider.
“There are not nearly enough shelters in the state, nor is there enough program funding to assist the thousands of Oklahomans who do not have a safe place to call home,” Mark Davis, the chief programs officer of Mental Health Association Oklahoma told Oklahoma Watch via email.
“We have a dire lack of affordable housing in this state already, and criminal charges often disqualify individuals from options that are available,” he said.
Not all legislators agree with the new camping ban. Sen. Julia Kirt, D-Oklahoma City, voted against it, speaking out in the bill’s debate on the Oklahoma State Senate floor.
“The law could derail the real progress we are making to build trust and connect people with the resources they need to rebuild a thriving life,” Kirt told Oklahoma Watch.
Oklahoma City homelessness: 2024 Point in Time count shows 28% increase, yet progress made
Avoiding worse outcomes
“We’re not trying to ensnare people in the criminal justice system,” said Devon Kurtz, the public safety policy director at The Cicero Institute. “The intention is not to have this be enforced in such a way that all of these individuals are going before judges and getting fines.”
Kurtz said encouraging police interaction with people before they create encampments of multiple tents could curtail worse legal outcomes.
He gave a hypothetical example of a spot in a park where a couple of unhoused people set up camp. Then a few more join, and two weeks later another six people join. Suddenly, the area has become a small compound and law enforcement is bound to get involved, Kurtz said.
“Someone brings some sort of propane tank and open burner, (which could explode) and someone else is doing drugs, and it just gets unwieldy,” Kurtz said. “Police are able to charge them with felonies, trespassing or public endangerment; they’re going to find parts of the criminal code that will apply to resolve the situation.”
Kurtz said cities avoid situations like this by charging the minimum misdemeanor possible rather than finding other types of criminal charges.
More: Housing groups launch new homelessness council after Stitt dissolved the official one
Concerns about state’s trajectory in fighting homelessness
The new state law collides with the Housing First model, which is the framework for Tulsa and Oklahoma City coalitions fighting homelessness at the grassroots level.
The Cicero Institute asserts that Housing First is a broken model. Kurtz called Housing First a failed experiment.
The National Low Income Housing Association stated that the Cicero punitive measures are ineffective, outdated, and dangerous.
The Cicero push against Housing First and toward government-sanctioned homeless encampments sparks deep concerns in Oklahomans working at local levels to reduce homelessness in a humane and permanent way.
They would rather see more money invested in shelters and housing initiatives. They are concerned with sanctioned encampments pushing people out of sight into areas with large numbers of residents and few rules and resources.
With shelters full, more than 500 people sleep unsheltered nightly in Tulsa. Oklahoma City is short about 433 shelter beds.
“So if you expect them all to have to stay in a sanctioned encampment, it’s either going to have to be a very large encampment or multiple smaller encampments,” Josh Sanders, the director of outreach at Tulsa Day Center, said.
He said the outcomes for people living unsheltered are better when they stay in small camps where they have more control over who they live with.
“When you force 100 people to live together, chances are you’re going to have a significant number of those people who don’t get along, and you’d have issues that arise out of those people,” Sanders said.
Law could disrupt housing effort
Key to Home in Oklahoma City and Pathway to Home in Tulsa are moving camp by camp, housing the residents and cleaning up the old encampments.
In both cities, the Continuums of Care have tacit agreements with law enforcement not to break up encampments where nonprofit coalitions are working to rehouse the residents.
Camping bans and sanctioned camps are steps toward destabilizing the progress that active, on-the-ground nonprofits are working toward, Sanders said.
SCOTUS could rule
The U.S. Supreme Court could soon decide that Cicero-inspired anti-camping legislation like Oklahoma’s equates to cruel and unusual punishment as defined under the Eighth Amendment.
The court heard a case out of Grant’s Pass, Oregon. At issue is whether enforcing camping bans on public property is constitutional when a jurisdiction has too few shelter beds available for its homeless population, as is the case in Oklahoma.
The Cicero Institute is one of dozens of groups that filed amicus curiae, or friend of the court briefs, in the case. The brief claims camping bans are a compassionate way to redirect unsheltered homeless individuals to existing shelters.
The Grant’s Pass decision will guide how aggressively states and localities can police their homeless while protecting the Constitutional rights of people living on the streets across America.
Oklahoma’s homeless waiting for help
If camping bans are enforced in Oklahoma, Lisa and John said they’ll do what they see many other Oklahomans living on the streets do; they’ll head to wooded areas of the cities and try to stay out of view.
They don’t agree with the law and said they’d take a $50 fine. Police know they can’t pay that.
“But I ain’t going to jail,” Lisa said.
The couple said they might support the idea of a government-sanctioned encampment if the shelters have locks or security.
They said that having a safe, legal space that assists with their basic human needs, such as insulation, food, bathrooms, and showers, would provide some relief from the intense stress of street homelessness.
The theft of his ID was a big setback for John, who said he was supposed to start a job but couldn’t without identification. Theft is one of the biggest threats people face on the streets.
They’ve tried to navigate the city’s Continuum of Care system, doing everything they know to do. But so far, their names haven’t come up on the Homeless Management Information System as eligible for housing.
“They’re finally starting to house people but it’s just so slow,” John said.
Lisa and John said the crackdown on camping is wrong. If shelters are full, why should law enforcement be pushing people off state land?
“All they’re going to do is take you to a homeless shelter that has no beds, or they’re going to take you to a food bank,” John said. “It’s pointless.”
Lisa agreed, saying camping bans hurt more people than they help.
While Lisa and John wait for their names to come up for rehousing, they said police are already actively dismantling encampments. They see a disconnect between the way local law enforcement handles homelessness and how nonprofits are trying to alleviate the problem.
“Police are over here trying to break up the camps, and the housing people are over here trying to house those camps at the same time,” John said.
Oklahoma Watch, at oklahomawatch.org, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that covers public-policy issues facing the state.
Tensions over changes to transportation between the Oklahoma County Detention Center and courthouse reached a peak during a special meeting of the jail’s governing trust on Friday.
Early in April, Sheriff Tommie Johnson III announced he would no longer task any of his own deputies with driving inmates and detainees the half-mile route from the jail to their court hearings, effective May 11. However, from May 11 through June 30, Johnson’s plan included keeping some deputies on the assignment to train and work alongside the jail’s own detention officers.
Along the way, other members of the jail trust have expressed some concerns about the trust’s ability to fully assume the transportation duties.
Oklahoma County’s district attorney, chief public defender, and presiding judge all made rare appearances at the trust meeting on Friday to share some of their own thoughts.
“I want you to consider this decision on whether or not the detention center should take over transport of detainees from the jail to the courthouse, because there is no plan,” District Attorney Vicki Behenna told the trust. “There are no employees at the detention center right now that can fulfill this obligation.”
Behenna also cited concerns that the already understaffed jail would face a worsening staffing situation if it has to pull some of its existing detention officers to provide transportation.
“In my opinion, and the opinion of other lawyers in my office, the indenture requires the Sheriff’s department to do transport,” she added, referencing the indenture which created and assigned control of jail operations to the trust in 2020.
Sheriff Tommie Johnson III cited his own budget concerns as a reason to discontinue the transportation service. His office believes it needs roughly 17 to 19 more deputies inside the courthouse for court security, and it could begin by reassigning
Presiding District Court Judge Sheila Stinson shared her own remarks with the trust, stating that this week alone, three judges had faced death threats. Johnson said his ambition is to have a deputy in every courtroom.
Ultimately, Behenna suggested the trust should not accept the end of the contract and that the sheriff has a duty to continue providing the service, regardless of if the sheriff is paid for the service.
In response, Sheriff Johnson accused the district attorney of being misleading.
“Considering the gross amount of misrepresentation in this section, and relative ease to obtain the correct information, I must assume — I must assume — that this was intentionally misstated to persuade this body to make an ill-informed decision to further the DA’s agenda,” he said.
The district attorney and sheriff eventually got into a back-and-forth.
“Sheriff Johnson, I don’t understand why you have such a visceral reaction to me,” Behenna stated. “If the DA has an agenda, my agenda is public safety.”
Tensions settled some later in the meeting, with trust members still pressed to find an alternative solution.
Trustee Derrick Scobey proposed a solution for the trust and sheriff to work together to find a private partner to operate the transportation service, rather than tasking their own in-house staff to perform the duties.
Sheriff Johnson eventually agreed that his office could help identify a private partner, but that the timeline for gradually taking his deputies out of the task would remain.
Jail administrator Tim Kimrey acknowledged that three of his detention officers would be available starting Monday to work alongside three of Johnson’s deputies to train and learn about the transportation duties while both parties work to find a private partner.
Kimrey said his office had already begun some research on private jail transportation partners, including The GEO Group, TransCor, and LaSalle Corrections.
The trust postponed officially accepting the end of the sheriff’s contract until its next meeting.
Oklahoma
Chad Weiberg Says Oklahoma State Doesn’t Intend on Using RedBird Credit Line from Big 12 Deal
For the time being, Oklahoma State will not opt in to the credit line through the Big 12’s recent deal with RedBird.
In case you missed it last week, the Big 12 approved a five-year agreement with RedBird Capital Partners, becoming the first conference to have a league-wide, private capital deal.
The deal provides the Big 12 with a $12.5 million capital infusion while the league’s institutions have the opportunity to opt into a $30 million credit line that would have to be paid back with a “double-digit” interest rate, according to ESPN.
It doesn’t sound like many (if any) schools will take RedBird up on that deal, and that includes Oklahoma State. OSU athletic director Chad Weiberg spoke with Dave Hunziker in a podcast that released Friday, where Weiberg cleared things up from the OSU side of things.
“First of all, I give commissioner (Brett) Yormark a lot of credit for providing opportunities to the schools to look at,” Weiberg said. “He is an innovator. He pushes the envelope. He’s not afraid of trying new things to better the conference and all the member institutions. So, I think there’s a little bit of a misconception on this. This isn’t a private equity deal. There’s no ownership stake or control in the conference they’re taking. It’s more of a private investment opportunity. RedBird is a huge global entity. They’ve got a lot of partnerships. The conference office will get out of it some money to be able to invest in some other business entities, take an investment in those to try to grow revenues from a different revenue stream. I think that’s something that’s worth exploring in this time that we’re in. And then the schools have the option to opt into a line of credit through that, and that’s up to each institution. It doesn’t effect the deal with the conference itself.
“As of right now, that is something that Oklahoma State will not do at this point. Should we need something like that, we believe we have other avenues or levers we could pull first before that. But again, I applaud the commissioner for making those options available to us.”
Weiberg and Hunziker also got into some other financial matters, like the report last week that the Big Ten distributed a record $1.37 billion to its 18 members in the 2024-25 fiscal year — a jump of about $500 million. The SEC announced in February that it had distributed more than $1 billion to its 16 members for the fiscal year.
So, dividing that up, that’s about $76 million on average for each Big Ten school and about $62.5 million for each SEC school.
The Big 12 hasn’t announced its allocations yet, but Weiberg said he expects the average Big 12 distribution to come in “north of $35 million.”
“That’s a wide discrepancy,” Weiberg said. “It’s a wider discrepancy than we’ve ever seen in the history of college athletics.”
To try to level that playing field as much as possible, Weiberg said OSU has asked all of its programs to cut expenses by 10%, OSU has increased ticket prices and the Boys From Oklahoma concerts have also helped with that.
It’s an uphill battle, but Weiberg noted that OSU has had to compete with the likes of Texas, one of the highest-funded athletic departments in the country, for years.
“There’s a bigger discrepancy now between what some conferences are getting and what others are than there ever has been before,” Weiberg said. “So, that presents unique challenges in terms of just the level playing field. At the end of the day, when you’re in a competition, part of what makes the competition interesting is when you’re trying to compete on a level playing field. Now, I say that acknowledging that there’s never an exactly level playing field — I don’t care if its the NFL or Major League Baseball or whatever, there’s not that. But I think to keep it interesting, there needs to be some version of a level playing field, and that’s getting very tilted in this environment.
“We’ve competed before. We’ve never been the highest-resourced institution in our conference or in the country or anything like that, and we’ve competed at a very high level in all of our sports, from football through all the other sports. Obviously the 55 national championships are a great indicator of that.”
Oklahoma
NBA Playoffs: Los Angeles Lakers fall 2-0 down to Oklahoma City Thunder as Detroit Pistons double advantage over Cleveland Cavaliers
Chet Holmgren and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander each scored 22 points as the Oklahoma City Thunder beat the Los Angeles Lakers 125-107 on Thursday night to take a 2-0 lead in the Western Conference semi-final series.
Ajay Mitchell had 20 points and Jaren McCain added 18 for the defending champions, who improved to 6-0 in the playoffs. The Lakers will host Game 3 on Saturday.
The Lakers again were without scoring champion Luka Doncic, who is out indefinitely with a strained left hamstring. They also were missing forward Jarred Vanderbilt, the reserve forward who dislocated the pinkie finger on his right hand during the second quarter of Game 1.
The Lakers also had three players finish with five fouls, limiting their ability to be aggressive late in the game.
Lakers guard Austin Reaves, who struggled with his shot in Game 1, scored 31 points on 10-for-16 shooting in Game 2. LeBron James, coming off a 27-point effort in Game 1, followed that up with 23.
With the Lakers up 63-61 early in the third quarter, Gilgeous-Alexander got tied up with Reaves and was called for his fourth foul. Upon review, it was upgraded to a flagrant 1 for Gilgeous-Alexander’s follow through. Oklahoma City’s Alex Caruso was called for a technical foul as the situation was being sorted out.
Gilgeous-Alexander left the game with the Lakers up 65-61, but the Thunder rallied and took control without him. On a fast break, Holmgren found a trailing Jaylin Williams, who hit a three-pointer and was fouled. His free throw put the Thunder up 85-74.
The Thunder outscored the Lakers 32-15 while Gilgeous-Alexander was out in the third quarter to take a 93-80 lead into the fourth. The Lakers cut Oklahoma City’s lead to five in the fourth quarter before the Thunder pulled away again.
Lakers coach Redick criticises referees
Lakers coach JJ Redick criticised the way James is officiated and Reaves complained about treatment from the referees after their defeat.
A number of Lakers players gathered around the referees at midcourt after the game and Reaves voiced his frustration to crew chief John Goble. He felt that while players were jockeying for position during a jump ball during the game, Goble crossed the line.
“At the end of the day, we’re grown men and I just didn’t feel like he needed to yell in my face like that,” Reaves said. “I told him that. I wasn’t disrespectful. I told him if I did that to him first, I would’ve gotten a tech. I feel like the only reason I didn’t get a tech was because he knew he was in the wrong. I felt disrespected.”
Lakers head coach JJ Redick was critical of the referees after Game 2
Reaves, Marcus Smart and Jaxson Hayes all finished with five fouls. The Thunder took 26 free throws to 21 for the Lakers.
Redick doesn’t think a team with the No 1 seed and the reigning MVP in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander needs extra help from the officials.
“They’re hard enough to play,” Redick said. “They’re hard to play, and you’ve got to be able to just call them. They foul. They do foul.”
James, still effective at attacking the rim at age 41, has attempted just five throws in two games in the series.
“LeBron has the worst whistle of any star player I’ve ever seen. The smaller guys, because they can be theatrical, they typically draw more fouls, and the bigger players that are built like LeBron, it’s hard for them,” Redick said. “They get clobbered, and he got clobbered again tonight a bunch.”
On several occasions, Lakers players were incredulous after calls – or no-calls – from the crew. While the Lakers talked to the officials during and after the game, the Thunder players stayed calm. Redick believes that might have helped them.
“I think some of the reason that they’re officiated the way they are is because they don’t show emotion,” Redick said. “And that’s a credit to them. I mean, they really take the emotion out of the game. They’re super tight-knit. They don’t complain to the officials, and maybe they’re the beneficiaries of that, I don’t know.”
Pistons continue winning streak to take 2-0 lead
Cade Cunningham had 25 points and 10 assists and Tobias Harris scored 21 points as the Detroit Pistons beat the Cleveland Cavaliers 107-97 on Thursday night to take a 2-0 lead in their second-round series.
Game 3 is on Saturday in Cleveland, where the Cavs were 4-0 in the first round against Toronto.
The top-seeded Pistons have won five straight games since Orlando put them on the brink of elimination in the first round.
Cade Cunningham led the Detroit Pistons to another victory
Donovan Mitchell scored 31 points and Jarrett Allen had 22 points and seven rebounds, bouncing back from a poor performance in Game 1 for the fourth-seeded Cavs.
James Harden, though, missed 10 of 13 shots and was limited to 10 points. Harden had four turnovers, including one with 33 seconds left when the Cavs trailed by just six.
Cleveland’s Max Strus scored just three points after he had 19 in the series opener. The Cavaliers went 0 for 11 from 3-point range in the fourth quarter, with Strus having four of the misses.
Detroit’s Duncan Robinson had 17 points, making 5-9 three-pointers, and Daniss Jenkins came off the bench to score 14 points, his third straight game in double figures.
Cleveland made the first shot and didn’t lead again until Evan Mobley’s dunk put the visitors ahead 81-79 early in the fourth quarter.
The Pistons led by 11 points in the first quarter and 14 in the second quarter, but they didn’t pull away until the final minutes.
The Cavs scored the first six points of the final quarter and Detroit responded with plays at both ends of the court.
Robinson had a tiebreaking three-pointer with 9:40 left and Cunningham made a three-pointer to put the Pistons ahead by nine points with 2:12 to go, sealing the victory.
The Pistons also won Game 1 by 10 points with both Cunningham and Mitchell scoring 23 points.
Cavs reserve guard Sam Merrill missed Game 2 with a hamstring injury after he was hurt in in the series opener. He averaged 12.8 points during the regular season and scored in double digits twice in the seven-game, first-round series against the Raptors.
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