Chat With The Chief: Text-To-911 System, Tulsa Pet Ordinance And More

The last year ended and 2024 began with some bold murders. That's just one topic we discussed with Tulsa's Police Chief Wendell Franklin.

What are the main causes for recent crime in Tulsa?

"In most of these cases, guns are the reason for these homicides occurring. And we are really taking a bold initiative and trying to get people to secure their firearms. That's part of the problem. But we're gonna take even more drastic stances against going after those individuals that we know have a propensity for violence and carry guns. We're gonna go after those individuals," Franklin said.

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Are there updates about the New Year shooting?

"The suspect is still on the loose. We're still working that case, and I'm hoping that we will bring that case to a closure soon," Franklin said.

Related Story: New Year Begins With Deadly Shooting Involving Tulsa Teens

How will the Text-to-911 system work for Tulsa?

"So you know, (it's a) long time coming. Technology takes forever to make it into the government sector. But we now have the capability to receive text from a person on a cellphone dialing 911. So you can text 911 and you will get a response from one of the operators. This has proved useful already. As we are going to talk about rolling it out today. It's actually been in place for the last couple of months. And it proved very useful and instrumental in alerting us to an incident taking place on one of the campuses at Tulsa Public Schools last year, where we thought there may have been an active shooter. And we did find a child with a gun," Franklin said.

How is the new Tulsa pet ordinance being enforced?

"Well, we have an animal welfare unit The City of Tulsa operates during the daytime hours. So those are going to be the primary responders to an incident like that. However, if after hours, we receive a call and most of the time, we're going to be alerted to it. It's not going to be something that we find unless we're already in the neighborhood and on another call and see, you know, an animal suffering out in the cold. So most of the time we're relying upon our citizens to be watchful and to see those type of things and to call those into either a non-emergency number or into 311 so we can get animal warfare out there," Franklin said.

What's the timeline on the new Tulsa police station?

"So I think we were probably premature in kicking off this whole thing and in getting the media in there to see it. But the reality is, it's not like buying a house. So there's lots of paperwork and lots of due diligence that has to be done. And so we're in those phases now with the actual owner of the property. And we hope to secure that facility in the first quarter of this year. And obviously we're gonna be doing some space planning and some build out in some areas, and then ultimately, moving people into those areas," Franklin said.