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Largely, that rate has been driven by the Oklahoma Highway Patrol, a fact spotlighted in more than 80 stories since 2016 by Corey Jones, a member of the Tulsa World newsroom and Lee Enterprises’ Public Service Journalism team.

In this new four-part series, Jones built a database to identify pursuit deaths among all agencies in Oklahoma in a seven-year span — not just the Highway Patrol — and reveal how many people killed were innocent motorists or unfortunate enough to be passengers next to fleeing drivers.

The Department of Public Safety, which oversees OHP, has often refused to answer questions about the issue for eight years. DPS Commissioner Tim Tipton hasn’t offered a response to questions, while his three preceding commissioners in varying degrees have spoken to the Tulsa World about OHP’s fatal pursuits. Gov. Kevin Stitt appointed Tipton to his position three years ago in September 2021.

The Tulsa World’s spotlight originally focused solely on OHP in 2016 after three of its chases killed four people in five months, including a retired Tulsa Public Schools teacher and grandmother . The agency refused to release even a redacted version of its pursuit policy and provided scant records in each case.

The agency’s pushback escalated in 2018. in which a trooper would testify about the pursuit policy in the felony murder case of Lt. Heath Meyer. Meyer died in 2017 after being struck by one of in Moore while chasing D’angelo Burgess for traffic infractions.

In 2021 and 2022, the Tulsa World and Lee — in series that won first place for investigative journalism in the Great Plains Journalism Awards against news organizations in seven states — examined OHP. reckless trooper actions and false or misleading statements, shoddy record-keeping, failure to address “alarming� concerns expressed by commanders, and unwillingness to formally review several fatal chases despite red flags.

in October 2020 after the agency repeatedly over a year changed its reasons for denying requests for force records in a string of OHP deadly pursuits and shootings. The case was dropped four months later after DPS agreed to hand over the records, paving the way for the 2021 and 2022 investigative series.

Throughout these stories by Jones, leading contemporary policing experts characterize the vast majority of these chases as unnecessary or not worth the risk.

To share news tips about this topic, contact Corey Jones at corey.jones@lee.net.