Several officials of McCurtain County, including Sheriff Kevin Clardy, County Commissioners Mark Jennings and Robert Beck, and Jail Administrator Larry Hendrix, were caught on tape discussing things like killing and burying local reporters and beating and lynching Black men. Now they are facing growing calls for their resignations from the mayor up to the governor and US Representatives. There have also been hundreds of people protesting the comments made and calling for the removal of these peoples.
It started when a local reporter left a voice-activated recording device because he suspected that county commissioners were illegally meeting and conducting county business. What he got was so much more:
“I’m gonna tell you something,” Jennings said. “If it was back in the day, when … Alan Marshton would take a damn Black guy and whoop their ass and throw him in the cell? I’d run for f— sheriff.”
Clardy then tells Jennings, “It’s not like that no more.”
“I know,” Jennings responds. “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.”
The group then went on to talk about hiring hit men to take out local journalists and where they would bury the bodies.
Not only are the citizens of McCurtain County protesting and officials are calling for their resignations, but the FBI is investigating. There is no way that this kind of behavior can be tolerated anywhere.
The entire transcript of the tape can be found here, if you have the stomach for that sort of thing.
