Residents, councilors offended at Lynn's remarks

Dec. 19—Editor's note: This story has been updated to accurately reflect how Councilmember Lynn answered a question from the Transcript about NPD use of force reports.

Three members of the Norman City Council called out one of their own after he made comments at a Tuesday meeting they said were "disturbing and racist" and "vile" and that one councilor said appalled him.

In response to a Center for Policing Equity report that Norman police use force against Black people at 3.4 times the rate against white people, Ward 3 Councilor Kelly Lynn at a Tuesday study session called the report "total garbage" and insisted the report needed to be adjusted to account for what he claimed were a disproportionate number of crimes committed by Black people.

Lynn cited national FBI statistics from 2019 — not NPD crime or use-or-force data — to argue his point.

Lynn's comments drew a rebuke during the meeting from Ward 1 Councilor Brandi Studley, who said she found Lynn's comments to be "extremely disturbing and racist" and apologized to Black Norman residents who heard him.

When asked if he had examined NPD's use-of-force reports before making his statement, Lynn did not provide a direct answer.

Lynn also said he has received "overwhelming support" and encouragement following his comments Tuesday night from conservatives, but Ward 5 Councilor Rarchar Tortorello, who, like Lynn, is a self-identified conservative who also was endorsed by a movement to support police funding, Unite Norman, said he was appalled by Lynn's comments.

"I just want people to know that conservatives don't think like that. That's not our train of thought," Tortorello said. "We know that there are many factors that affect why police interact with people of color more often than people of non-color."

Tortorello also said many of the factors that contribute to those crime statistics were not included in either the FBI's analysis or the CPE report.

Tortorello, who is now a spokesperson for Unite Norman, also said: "I have a daughter who is Black. I don't want her questioning her ethnicity as being prone to committing crimes. That would be horrible for anybody's kids to hear this. When I heard the comments, I'm thinking of my daughter and if she's hearing the comments. She's met him several times."

"I know he was quoting stats, but I think it's the way it came across that got people upset," he said of Lynn's remarks.

Mayor Breea Clark didn't say anything at the meeting, but afterward wrote via social media, "The council member's comments were wildly inappropriate and offensive, but I don't have the power to censure council members, and although vile, what was said is protected speech under the First Amendment."

Lynn insisted in text messages with Transcript reporters Friday that because FBI statistics from 2019 report higher rates of violent crime among Black people than among white people, those figures should have been considered in the Center for Police Equity's report.

Lynn has not provided local data showing that that trend holds true for Norman, though CPE's data on use of force is Norman-specific.

"It boils down to [CPE] using per capita rates of use of force by race, but not using per capita crime rate by race," Lynn said. "The FBI crime statistics show a disproportionate crime rate per capita by Black Americans, in every category listed. That needs to be taken into account when paralleling statistics on uses of force, even contacts (with police)."

Allyson Shortle, a University of Oklahoma professor who specializes in political behavior, called Lynn's remarks an "ecological fallacy error," which happens when a person draws conclusions about a person or group of people based on overbroad patterns and data.

When Lynn was asked if he believed there were underlying factors that contributed to the FBI statistics, such as police bias or lack of economic and educational opportunity in Black communities that contribute to poverty, addiction and mental illness, he did not directly answer the question.

"I'm saying when comparing apples, compare them to apples," was his immediate reply.

Ward 3 Norman resident Gregory Gilkey, who is Black, said he was offended by the remarks, and he also criticized Lynn's misuse of data.

Gilkey told The Transcript that FBI statistics cannot be used to get a picture of crimes by race in Norman.

The FBI report includes large cities grappling with gangs like Chicago and Baltimore, said Gilkey, who speculated the national numbers may be high in part due to those areas of the country.

"In general, conservatives have a tendency to focus on the violence that happens in bigger cities," he said. "So they project those sobering and very real statistics onto us, the Black communities. That was my thing with (Lynn). Those statistics are very real and they're terrible. They need to change, but that's not the situation in Norman."

Like the CPE report, Gilkey said there is a lack of context to FBI statistics as well, and he questioned what led to the use of force by local police.

"Was it someone who was being belligerent and needed to be contained? Or was it a gentleman on the side of the road and the guy (police officer) ran in there and told him to get out of the car and threw him on the ground?" he said.

NPD Chief Kevin Foster has hypothesized that use-of-force disparity could be due to Black people in Norman not trusting the police and thus not calling them until a situation has escalated, rather than being a reflection of more crimes committed by Blacks.

Foster pointed to the fact that more use-of-force reports on people of color stem from fights and disturbances than uses of force on white people.

Gilkey expressed concern that a perception that implies Black Normanites are more likely to be criminals could impact future police interaction. Even now, Gilkey said the possibility of being viewed as a suspicious person because he is Black is in the back of his mind.

"I work at a utility and I come home at odd hours of the night sometimes, especially when there's bad weather," he said. "That's always in the back of my head."

Mindy Wood covers City Hall news and notable court cases for The Transcript. Reach her at mwood@normantranscript.com or 405-416-4420.