Pressure is mounting for officials in an Oklahoma county to resign after a local police officer was accused of pointing a rifle at a civilian and calling the man the N-word.
Haworth police officer Jerry “Neal” Pollard was arrested and charged with a felony and has been suspended from the force. Witnesses confirmed that he accosted the steel-supply worker with the firearm in April and yelled, “Run, n—-r, run,” according to KTUL.
The confrontation is the latest in the documented racist acts in McCurtain County in southeastern Oklahoma.
The county sheriff and several other county officials were also caught on a recording fantasizing about being able to hang Black people again as a form of criminal and capital punishment.
McCurtain County Sheriff Kevin Clardy and his chief investigator, Alicia Manning, McCurtain County Commissioner Mark Jennings, and Jail Administrator Larry Hendrix were all captured on the recording. Jennings has since resigned because of the controversy.
“They should all resign,” said civil rights advocate Rev. Jesse Jackson to The Oklahoman newspaper last month. “We cannot condone that type of behavior. These institutions have to uphold morals and standards in a meaningful way, to keep the trust of the people. You should not and cannot have trust in people who make those types of statements. That isn’t right.”
Just five days after Jennings resigned, witnesses say on April 24 Pollard pulled a rifle on Bobby Young, an employee at Alford Metals, a steel distributor store in the same county. The Oklahoma State Board of Investigations is now investigating.
According to a probable cause affidavit, Young had just completed loading supplies for a different customer when Pollard sped up to the business. Standing near the passenger side of the vehicle, he overheard Pollard quip, “You got a case.”
Pollard then jumped out of his truck with his rifle and approached the steel-supply worker.
Another worker who witnessed the incident said they saw Pollard, who reportedly was off duty, according to McCurtain Gazette-News, aggressively approach the business in his truck. After speeding to the front, he got out of the vehicle and retrieved his rifle and used the racial slur. A surveillance video reportedly verifies this account.
After Young didn’t run, Pollard placed the rifle back in the truck, but the employee insisted that the man leave because he felt unsafe and informed that the police were being called.
“They already here,” Pollard reportedly replied.
After the comment, Pollard completed an order of supplies and walked away from the business. He was arrested on May 18 and charged with feloniously pointing a firearm. The Haworth police officer was released on a $15,000 bond the next day. He now faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted.
Haworth’s chief of police Ediberto Flores issued a statement on social media saying, following the charges, the officer has been “placed on suspension from the Haworth Police Department.”
“I was not contacted again because the OSBI took over the case,” Flores wrote. “A warrant was issued and Mr. Pollard turned himself in. I don’t have any other information about this case other than the OSBI is investigating.”
Haworth is in McCurtain County and just 10 minutes away from Idabel, where the controversial recording was captured at the County Commissioner’s office.
“Take them down to Mud Creek and hang them up with a damn rope. But you can’t do that anymore. They got more rights than we got,” one voice on the recording, said to be the McCurtain County Commissioner, joked.
