TULSA, Okla — Tulsa’s Police Chief is speaking out after sending a tweet directed to the people of Tulsa, after a violent weekend in our city.
More than 160 shots were fired over the weekend at two different crime scenes.
“These individuals don’t care where they're at and where they are and where they are shooting. This is a gang war that is going on,” says Chief Wendell Franklin.
He is getting real about the gun violence in our city, and he wants you to sit up and pay attention.
“These two rival gangs come across each other at an intersection, and the potential exists that they are going to shoot it out there. If you are caught in the crossfire, you might be that unintended victim,” says Franklin.
He expressed his frustrations in his tweet by saying, “Surely protesters are organizing against such violence! Without much fanfare and limelight, Tulsa Police has been working the problem.”
“If this were occurring somewhere else in the city, say at 21st and Utica, I bet this would be the headline, right,” he says.
Chief Franklin says a lot of these shootings are occurring in areas that are already prone to violence.
“I want people to understand that Tulsa, this is your city, this is our city and even though something may be occurring in one part of the city, it’s not too farfetched to say that at some point, you could be a victim of this violent crime,” he says.
To put a dent in the crime spike, Franklin says they are combining the resources of multiple units.
“What we are doing now, is we have lumped our crime gun unit, our strategic enforcement unit, the 3 street crime units from the 3 uniform divisions and our homicide detective that works whatever homicide that may have occurred,” he says.
Another thing that Chief Franklin says we need to look at is how we prosecute these types of cases.
He says they can bring a case against someone who has a firearm that shouldn’t have one, but that it is still considered a non-violent offense.
Then that case gets kicked out, and that person is back out on the street again.
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