Virtual town hall: Tulsa Police Chief Wendell Franklin talks protests, George Floyd video and being a black man in America

As a black man, there are places Wendell Franklin just wouldn’t feel comfortable out of uniform.

“That’s something I don’t think most people, unless they are a person of color, can recognize or understand,” the Tulsa police chief said Tuesday, speaking candidly during a virtual town hall hosted by the Tulsa World.

In Tulsa or surrounding communities, he added, safety has never been a concern for him.

“But there are other parts of the country, rural areas, where I have been and where I would not feel as safe,” he said.

Franklin, the first African American to head the Tulsa Police Department on a permanent basis, was the only guest for the World’s latest Let’s Talk forum and talked about a range of subjects.

The event was hosted by Wayne Greene, editor of the Tulsa World’s editorial pages, and sponsored by the George Kaiser Family Foundation. The entire town hall is posted online.

Franklin, who was named chief in January, said he could not have imagined a more difficult introduction to the job.

“The last three months especially have been challenging,” he said. “It’s been rough. Right now, I’m operating on very limited sleep.”

It started in March with the COVID-19 pandemic, he said. Then, last week brought the emotional case of missing toddlers Miracle and Tony Crook, who were found dead.

Finally, this past weekend, like in other cities nationwide, protests broke out in reaction to the death of George Floyd in Minnesota.

The Tulsa protests looked at first like they were going to go smoothly. Police and protest organizers tried to work together, and the planning and communication were good, he said.

But late Sunday, after two days of peaceful demonstrations, things suddenly went south, as vandals began setting fires and breaking windows of businesses.

Franklin said he had hoped Tulsa could be a “model” of peaceful protest for the rest of the nation.

He’s disappointed it didn’t work out that way.

“Obviously, what happened afterwards was not peaceful, and I hate that it happened for our city,” he said. “Now we’re just another one of those cities that’s just trying to survive.”

The situation on Sunday “went awry,” he said, when a “splinter group” broke off from the main body of protesters.

“We had to deal with that and the aftermath as they marched all around town and started some disruption.”

The protest organizer “had an idea for a peaceful demonstration and how that was going to look,” Franklin said. “It’s just sad that those circumstances took place.”

Franklin said his officers will be ready as the protesting continues.

“We’ve taken steps to ensure they are well rested,” he said. “It is long hours, and it’s taxing on all of us. Just the mere fact that we’re having to do what we’re doing has a psychological effect on our officers. But we’re very cognizant of that.”

The officers, part of TPD’s special response team, are rotated in and out, and have counselors available, he said.

Franklin said that like the rest of the world, he was shocked by the video of Floyd’s death.

“The images are just incomprehensible,” he said. “It’s not something that any law enforcement officer, to my knowledge, can stand there and defend.”

He said he believes most of the protesters just want to peacefully “bring notice to some of the atrocities that have taken place all around the nation.”

Franklin opened up about some of his personal experiences as a black man in America.

He said he has felt uncomfortable at times in some smaller towns and rural areas.

“If I go into a store there and they don’t have what I need, I feel like I have to purchase something, because I don’t want to walk out empty-handed,” he said. “Because there’s that stigma that goes along with my race. Again, I don’t expect everyone to understand that.”

He said there was one time when his wife and children were stopped by police in a small town in Kansas.

They clearly had not been speeding, but the officer said they had and argued with his wife for a couple of minutes. In the end, she didn’t get ticketed. But it was unnerving.

“They got stopped for no reason whatsoever,” Franklin said.

“So, there have been things like that. It’s frightening in some of those areas.”

Does he worry about his own sons’ safety?

“My boys are now 25 and 22. I’m not really overly concerned,” the chief said.

“I know how I raised them, I know how respectful they are towards authority.”

Gallery: Another night of protests around Tulsa