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.
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