D.A. WILL DRAKE

Any is time now for our community connection right here on K one, the one New Trust and we have a district attorney, Will Drake in here.

Do you promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth. There you go, Here we go. We got that out of the way. How you been been pretty.

Busy at the Core House this last couple of months? We got jury trials coming up, so getting prepped for that. We just got through a jury trials that feels like, and we're just just plugging along.

First question that a lot of people want to know is that what does a district attorney do? What's your area and what are your functions?

So what people think that we do and know that we do is prosecute people in charge of crimes. We do that, you know, traffic tickets all the way from murder cases, everything in between for Washington and for no Water County is our district. But I have a lot

We assist in investigations.

We give legal advice to law enforcement officers, especially the sheriff's office.

Just a lot of little things.

I mean when I first became district attorney, I didn't realize I signed all the school bonds. So if any school in our district wants a school bond, I have to sign off on it. And that was really interesting because you get, you know, million.

Dollar school bonds.

One word. Oh yeah.

So I'm looking at this like a fine tooth comb. And I called my predecessor, Mischi Buchanan, and it's like, do.

I sign these?

He's like, well, five attorneys have signed that before you've even seen that.

Just signed the thing and get it back to you know.

So I couldn't believe I had no idea that we signed school bonds.

You know, there's lots of things we do.

Wow, we that's incredible. Uh.

There are a lot of things that go on here in Oklahoma because we're kind of a unique state in where we have a credible nations as well as the state of Oklahoma, the County of Washington, the city of Bartlesville or the city of No water, till lot or whatever. But we have different types of citizenship, and sometimes when crimes are committed, things have to be treated a different way depending on tribal citizenship or whether or not you're not tribal.

It is.

I mean, if you're a member of an Indian, a federally recognized Indian tribe, which is five hundred and thirty eight of them, now I believe, and you have any degree of Indian blood. So let's got this two pronged test. Then you if you're charge anything from like a seat belt ticket to murder, you go to either the US Attorney's office in Tulsa or you go to the Cherokee Nation and Tahic law. So I know years ago and its first started in July.

Of twenty twenty.

It was quite a fight between Oklahoma and the FEDS and a nation.

Lots of confusion, lots of confusion.

Boy, it was I mean, no one saw this coming, at least if you put true sermon.

And no one saw this coming, and so it was a law. It was years of figuring this out.

I mean, we talk about the fight we all had in twenty and twenty twenty one. Now it's more about the details, what exactly does it mean? Individual small details, but yeah, it's we So we prosecute everyone who's not a member of the Cherokee Nation or any Indian tribe who has a degree of Indian blood. So we send about probably about ten percent of our cases now go to Tahlequah or the Attorney's office.

Now with this in mind, imagine we have to have all different kinds of agreements with the tribal entities in order to make things work under the circumstances we have presented to us.

We do, I mean, our office does advise the Sheriff's office or some of those cross deputation agreements such normally it's your police officers who have those.

So like the Sheriff's office has them.

So they can deal with tribal citizens of you know, the Barsol police department, They're all have that crossization. It's a it's important because otherwise there's a jurisdictional.

Issue or not you can deal with them or not.

I'm gonna bring up something here.

I'm gonna present a knights and just as it is, there's talk about a certain tool for law enforcement and it's called a flock camera.

Just what is a flock camera.

So it's becoming very controversial here in Bartlesville. But it's a flock camera. Flock is an acronym for something, and that's the that's the brand name of the camera.

But a flock camera will.

Sit on different basically the telephone poles around Bartlesville, around major intersections, and it reads car tags, it identifies vehicles, things of that nature, and it's and it saves that video, I believe, for thirty days. And the purpose of the it's not really to watch people and keep an eye on regular citizens. The purpose of it is to help solve crimes. Like, for instance, if there's a stolen car driving down Frank Phillips right now, there's a.

Flock camera outside.

It could hit that tag, run that tag through a database, and we could notify Bartlesville very quickly. Hey, there's a stolen car heading westbound on Frank Phillips.

Same way with somewhat abducting a child.

Absolutely, if there's an Amber alert, we have a tag number on a car. That's a quick way of finding a suspect vehicle in a child abduction. We were talking off air about other states have already solved crimes. Tulsa Tulsa's had these for years, and Tulsa has solved lots of child abductions and murder cases these flock cameras. I understand people have a lot of concerns about invasion or privacy, But anybody comes up to me, I always telling them,

Sure.

Now, something that hits just about anybody over the age of eighteen who's a legal voter, the opportunity to serve on a jury. I served on too, and I learned a lot. I didn't want to, but I learned a lot, and I came to appreciate that time spent.

What can you tell us about a jury?

I love the term opportunity, That's what it really is an opportunity. You know, if you want to be a juror in Oklahoma, you have to have a valid driver's license or any kind of ID. That's how we kind of pick it. So it's very important. It's of very important civic duty. If people have complaints, it's like I tell them, go vote. If you have complaints about the system, go vote. If you have complaints about the criminal justice system,

We'll get up here and help us make these decisions. I don't. It's I know, it's it's not a.

It's not a glamorous thing.

It's not fun.

We did we did a trial a few about two months ago, and the the the gentleman who was being tried, had some problems and he did threaten everybody on the jury. And I get it, but it's one of those things where he had some mental problems. It wasn't going to be it was a real issue. I get that, and I get it's it's like you have to disclosure all these things about you, but it's important civic duty to

It to come up there.

Now, the process is that you picked it random.

So how we get our jury panels is Oklahoma City. There's there's the the the office down there and they've used it's fifty percent voter roll and fifty percent oklama ID and they just rarely generate this list of Washington County people or no water Chunactery, no WAA County. They send it to the district court and the Court Cork's office sends out all these summons. So we usually get about seven hundred names every jury term. And the problem is about fifty percent show up. Now there's a lot

Who I don't have time for it.

You got a person who's a hundred years old going to do their civic duty. Yeah, yeah, what's your excuse? I mean, come on, people helps out here.

And the thing is, you want regular people because as the constitutions, it's a jury of your peers exactly.

And you know, Bartlsfiel's an older community as far as the population, and our jury panels reflect that. And I love that you get some people some real life experience. But you got a guy who's, you know, twenty years old, typically on trial for something, and the jury is made of folks and over the age of fifty, maybe in their seventies. And that's fine, like I said, like great life experience for those folks, but they're not really this

You get lost.

Something happens, dude, Yeah, you.

Know, I had that problem with my navigation system in my car.

It must be the just supposed to be googled. Going back to the Big Brother thing. Again, Google can't get in the courthouse. But it is interesting. But the one thing that you do learn is how a jury is proceeded once they've been selected for jury duty. And you also get the courtroom process. You get that front and set.

It is nothing like TV TV gives you We've got this solved in fifteen minutes.

Well I make that, make that happen joke every void iron and I don't. Everybody watching the Count's probably heard me say. It's like if we were on an episode of you know, watching this, if we were watching TV. The jury selection takes three or four hours sometime maybe maybe all day. And if you're in a Law and Order marathon, we're like five episodes in, we've already solid five murders and Law in Order and in Bartlesfield, and this is everywhere across Oklahoma.

If we're doing jury selection, it just takes a while.

But it's a very important process and I think people think I'm wasting their time asking random questions. But if they actually get seated on that jury usually understand the questions why they're being asked.

Sure, yeah, and just to answer them truthfully and nobody gets hurt.

I always advised you and bring a bottle of water and a cushion. Is set on because we don't have a lot of very It's not a comfortable place to set It's like going to a football game, but not near as entertaining.

No, no, no, not at all.

But you do learn a lot about how the wheels roll, and you know how it functions, and you realize that although nothing in this world is perfect, our system of justice is probably as good as it is any in the world, if not the best in the world.

It's it's not perfect, and it's not anybody it tells you it is. They're they're full of it, but it's the it's the best you can have to get into the truth. I mean, you put you put all the cards on the table, the jury makes the decision. The jury of you said of your peers, it's the best system in the world.

Yeah. Now you're on the prosecution side.

Every bit of evidence that you find has to be shared with the defense.

Correct, absolutely, we that's a that's a constitutional issue. We were I feel strongly about that. You know, I, I know a lot of attorneys and you have your clients and you're gonna fight for them zealously and all.

That, and that's great.

But for the as a prosecutor's a little bit different. You put all your cards on the table because you don't want you want to make.

Sure it's it's as fair as it possibly can be.

Now, not every piece of evidence that you have may come into trial as a piece of evidence because it could be just different legal reasons why it wouldn't come into evidence, because it may not be relevant, it may be overly prejudicial. Things like that, like a person's criminal history almost never comes into play in the actual trial. That surprises folks. But you don't base your decision on guilty. You're not guilty based on what they've done in the past.

That's not what we do.

People accuse us of that.

That's not what we do.

No one of the cases that I was involved in, I would never have known that the defendant had a rap sheet until the defendant took the stand against his attorney's wishes and started talking.

He wound up not getting convicted, by.

The way, really well.

He knew what he was doing. He turned his life around, and it's.

And that's fantastic when they do. I mean, but it did.

Lots of it happening are very very small.

It can be, you know.

I have seen a lot of success to where people do actually turn it around, and it's fantastic. I'll see him around town because you know, the officer here arrests somebody, they see him one time, they see it the DA.

They see me every month.

Until their trials are with their cases ever with and I usually see them more than once, you know. So I know a lot of the folks who are involved in the criminal justice system pretty well. I mean they I'm friendly to him, respectful to them, because you never know. You never know those same folks who are going to be key witnesses in the case or they're gonna be victims one day in the case.

And you don't want to you want to do your.

Job as professionally as possible and just be as respectful as you possibly can. But yeah, this is the only time you would find out their criminal history, really is they testify, you'll find out pretty quick.

Dog said, I.

Was just whoa Okay, everybody was paying attention, that's for sure. But now when you try cases, you say you go to no Wata to take care of their cases as well.

So that's a lot of miles that you're putting on.

Do you have offices in both counties or are you centered here and just traveling?

Well, we do. I go to know Wata once a week.

So we have I have assistant district attorneys and some of them work out here in Barblsville. One of them works and know What and we I travel in no Wata once a week to supervise that, to handle big trial stuff like that. But yeah, we have offices, one in each courthouse. The one in No Water is pretty small, about the size of the studio. It feels like, uh but because No Water does have they have less crime, less people, less crime.

But yeah, it's it's not a we have office cars that we drive.

It's not a it's twenty miles to No Water so I've been pretty lucky.

Yeah, it's not it's not a big deal.

Well, I've got colleagues like who have the Panhandle? So one DA has the whole Panhanu. It's one hundred and something miles from It's crazy. How so I'm pretty lucky having District eleven. How close my county seats in my corethouses are to each other.

Now, if anybody has questions about the District attorney's offices, You've got a little page that's on the county website, don't you.

We do, and it has my email address on that, And I mean, I'll talk to anybody.

That's kind of my thing.

I don't mind, because you never know what you're gonna learn. And I encourage if you yet questions shoot me an email because I'm believe or I'm in court quot a bit. So it's hard to enter the phone and we have to kind of prioritize the phone calls, but you know, if you have a question about the DA's office or a certain case, or because I hate it when somebody approaches me out in the community and says, why didn't you do this?

Why adn't you do that?

And I always say well, why didn't you bring it to my attention? Because I did, I don't, I mean, don't know anything about it. So bring it to my attention. If you got a problem, let me know. If we don't communicate, we won't know what's going on.

Take it to the DA, don't take it to Facebook, don't take it to the chatter.

Well, I do enjoy Facebook. It's ah, it's quite the fictional universe on Facebook.

It can be.

And I've been accused a lot of interesting things on Facebook, which is funny. The power people on Facebook think I have is quite amazing. But if they really want to get an answer, shoot me an email, you know, or or they can come to the office. And if it's we're not crazy busy, I'll talk to I'll talk to folks.

Yeah, you're very approachable.

Maybe a little too much sometimes, but yeah, I definitely, Uh. The staff knows that people got problems. We're there to solve those problems.

If we can't. Some problems, you know, just can't be solved.

That's true. We've been speaking with the district attorney, Will Drink and Will I want to thank you for being here, Thank you sir, all righty, thank you very much, folks, you've been watching