'This is not Oregon': Tulsa sergeant uses slur to threaten protesters, says 'we will smoke your a--'

On Oct. 18, Tulsa Police personnel held a training session at one of their Citizen’s Police Academy functions. The Citizen's Police Academy is a program that has been implemented by a variety of law enforcement departments across the country, and is almost exactly what it sounds like. Citizens who pass a modest background check can take free classes that will expose them to information about “police operations, patrol, investigation, services, control, community services, special operations, road safety, criminal law and procedure, and communication.” It is one of the myriad community outreach programs law enforcement agencies organize in the hopes of garnering support from their communities and ostensibly creating safer communities.

But on Oct. 18, at Tulsa’s Citizen’s Police Academy training session where Sgt. M. Griffin and Lt. Andy McKenzie of the Tulsa Police Department were presenting, audio has emerged of allegedly one of those two men making some very strange assertions. Reporter Dylan Goforth first released the video and audio of the event that he had been given by an anonymous participant, who said they had felt uncomfortable with some of what was being said, which is why they began recording it in the first place.

In the recording, you can hear a man that NewsChannel 8 has confirmed is Sgt. Mike Griffin, talking about how fun it was to beat up citizens during the Black Lives Matter protests going on in Tulsa in June of 2020. Sgt. Griffin characterized the problems for police and our government as being caused by “liberal” white people. In fact, according to Sgt. Griffin, “Nothing is more dangerous to America than a liberal white person.”

To be honest, that was the least offensive and frightening thing he said.

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