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What to know
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Brian Bonner was missing again. His mother spent months calling police departments across central Oklahoma — anywhere her 38-year-old son might have wandered.
Bonner was kind and gentle when he had his medication for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Carla Bonner said her son almost never missed church. But when a delayed appointment in the summer of 2024 left him without his prescription, he became restless and erratic.
“I woke up one morning and he was just gone,” she said. “That was part of his illness.”
Unlike previous times he had left their home in Oklahoma City, Brian drifted more than a hundred miles northeast to Tulsa, where police arrested him several times for trying to spend the night in convenience stores. Each arrest landed him in the Tulsa Municipal Jail, a 70-bed lockup that holds people charged only with low-level misdemeanors.
Bonner was arrested again in February 2025 for public intoxication. As he was booked back into jail, detention officers scheduled him for a telehealth visit. But he would never make it to the appointment.
Around noon on his third day in custody, surveillance cameras recorded Bonner lying alone in his cell, wheezing and gasping for air, according to an incident report. Staff found him unresponsive more than three hours later. Emergency responders declared him dead at the scene.
An autopsy later found that a throat infection had swelled his airway shut and cut off his breathing. The condition, acute laryngo-epiglottitis, can be treated with antibiotics.
Bonner’s death is one of at least seven in the city lockup since the beginning of 2023.
The city, which outsources the jail’s operations to the multinational security firm Allied Universal, has not released any information about the six most recent deaths to the public.
The windowless, underground lockup has no on-site medical staff, yet regularly books in people who are seriously mentally ill. The jail has also accepted people who are dangerously intoxicated or in need of medical attention, in violation of Allied Universal’s contract with the city, an investigation by The Frontier has found. The deaths occurred after jail staff repeatedly warned that the facility’s intake practices, inadequate medical care, and overcrowding and understaffing were putting detainees in danger, according to a review of hundreds of pages of records and interviews with eight current and former employees.
“It’s hard to explain the extent of some of what you saw, unless you were there,” said Timothy Robertson, a former supervisor. “There were times I took people’s boots off and had toes come off with them. You had people coming off hard drugs, chest pains, suicidal ideation.”
Mayor Monroe Nichols said he had not been presented with evidence of violations of state law or internal policies at the jail. But in response to The Frontier’s findings, he said he has directed his Public Safety Commissioner, Laurel Roberts, to “conduct an additional review of all of the available information.”
Allied Universal has not responded to repeated interview requests, phone calls and detailed written questions since last August.
National data from a 2021 Justice Department study suggests a jail of this size would be expected to see only about one death every 10 to 15 years, though the study may have slightly undercounted deaths. The Frontier’s survey of news reports found no comparable number of deaths in a jail of this size in the U.S.
Carla Bonner outside her home in Oklahoma City. NICK OXFORD FOR THE FRONTIER
Three former employees said the jail administrator removed them from their positions at the lockup after they raised concerns with Allied Universal’s human resources office and the Tulsa Police Department. Another said he was forced to resign and reached a settlement with Allied Universal after filing a federal workplace retaliation complaint.
“I told them, ‘If this keeps happening, people are going to die. Someone’s going to get hurt. The whole bottom is going to fall out,’” said Ivy Morgan, a former detention officer.
Besides Bonner, another man arrested for public intoxication died in September after only an hour in jail while being held in a full-body restraining device; the results of an autopsy are still pending. Three detainees died from methamphetamine overdoses. None were found in the jail’s sobering area, even though state law requires jails to segregate intoxicated detainees. Two young men diagnosed with mental illnesses hanged themselves — one with a phone cord, the other with his jumpsuit. Records show neither had been put on suicide watch, even though one had told jail staff that he’d recently attempted suicide and the other man’s family said jail staff told them his court date was moved because he was behaving erratically.
Nichols said the Tulsa Police Department investigated every death and concluded there was no criminal wrongdoing. The police department, which the city also tasks with overseeing the facility, declined to answer detailed questions due to ongoing litigation.
“First and foremost, any loss of life in our city is a tragedy. Families have been impacted, and my heart is with them,” Nichols said. “As we look at the path ahead, we must continue to hold ourselves to the highest standards, and my office is committed to ensuring a continued review of our policies and procedures with our operator to strengthen accountability.”
A business decision
Tulsa’s city jail sits hidden inside a parking garage beneath the city’s downtown civic center. Each year, thousands of people pass through the lockup, booked on municipal charges such as unpaid traffic tickets, trespassing, public intoxication, and shoplifting. Former jail staff said detainees are fed microwavable chicken pot pies three times a day and the fluorescent lights never dim and sometimes flicker in the cramped facility.
The city pays Allied Universal, one of the world’s largest private security firms, nearly $3 million a year to staff the jail and manage its daily operations, plus another $230,000 a year for telehealth services for detainees.
The city used to contract with Tulsa County to house municipal arrestees at the David L. Moss Criminal Justice Center. The county jail has medical staff on site and a dedicated pod for people with mental illness. But, in 2017, when the county sought to nearly double what it charged — from roughly $809,000 to $1.47 million annually — the city decided to build its own jail instead. Then-Mayor G.T. Bynum called the move a “business decision.”
Classified as a lockup facility under state law, the jail can hold detainees for up to 10 days before they must be transferred elsewhere. City officials said its “streamlined booking processes” would save officers time.
But Tulsa ultimately spent more than it expected. The city agreed to pay G4S Secure Solutions $1.6 million annually to operate the jail.
Then-Deputy Mayor Amy Brown said in 2018 that spending more was worth it for a “safer” and “more efficient” facility. “You really don’t want a jail or a lockup facility that saves a ton of money because then you are going to pay for it in increased liability,” she said at the time.
The city initially relied solely on emergency responders for medical care.
Viewed under state law as temporary holding facilities, lockups are only required to do a health screening for detainees during intake, keep a first-aid kit on site and provide access to emergency medical care. Detention officers, not medical personnel, perform medical screenings at the jail.
The lack of on-site medical care caused issues soon after the jail opened. In January 2020, a 46-year-old paraplegic woman died in the jail’s custody. Her family later sued, alleging that jail staff denied her medical care despite her repeated pleas for help over four days.
G4S asked the judge to dismiss the case, arguing that state regulations didn’t require lockups to provide medical care on-site. The family’s attorneys responded in court that the company still had a duty to ensure inmates received proper care. All parties agreed to dismiss the lawsuit without prejudice in 2025, meaning it could later be refiled.
Allied Universal acquired G4S in April 2021.
Tulsa agreed to pay Allied Universal more to provide telehealth services for detainees in 2023, going above and beyond what state law requires for medical care. Today, if a condition surfaces on an inmate’s medical questionnaire, a telehealth provider determines whether they need to be evaluated further at a hospital, the city said. Even with the added safeguards, deaths have continued at the facility.
Repeated warnings
Seven former jail employees told The Frontier that conditions at the jail worsened after Allied Universal took over and installed former Tulsa police officer Weston Hardin, who was 33 years old at the time, as the new jail administrator.
Hardin did not respond to interview requests or written questions.
In January 2022, one detention supervisor resigned, citing “unsafe” staffing levels.
Two months later, Morgan, then a 25-year-old detention officer, sent a detailed complaint to then-Police Chief Wendell Franklin and Deputy Chief Dennis Larsen, who is now the police chief. Morgan wrote of a “complete lack of management” at the jail, listed several incidents where she believed staff had ignored inmates who needed medical attention, and described how the jail routinely admitted inmates well past its maximum-rated capacity. She also included observation logs showing detainees sometimes went unchecked for hours, even though state law requires hourly welfare checks. Morgan said she had repeatedly complained to Allied Universal before taking the matter to the police department.
The city’s contract with Allied Universal includes criteria that detention officers are to use to determine “if an inmate is medically fit to be accepted into the jail without further professional medical screening.” Among them: “Indications that an inmate has consumed any amount of” drugs or alcohol “that pose an immediate or future medical emergency or significantly impair their ability to function.” Other criteria include “very recent hospitalization,” chest pain, wounds that need stitches, contagious diseases, and injuries unlikely to improve without immediate medical care.
But Morgan and six other former employees said when they tried to follow these rules, jail administrators would overrule them. People with the very conditions listed in the policy — severe intoxication, open wounds, and contagious illnesses — were regularly booked into the jail, according to documents and current and former employees. Three detainees would later die from drug overdoses after less than two days in jail, and one of the men who died by suicide had been discharged from a mental hospital two days earlier, according to his mother.
“They just want to drop people off and forget about them,” Morgan said. She and other former detention officers said many detainees should have been taken to a hospital, a mental health center, or the city’s sobering center instead of jail.
Incident reports dated between 2020 and 2022 describe inmates “screaming erratically,” “cursing and threatening herself in a deep voice,” and “banging his head against the door.” Reports also describe inmates having seizures, trying to hang themselves with blankets and clothing, and “repeating the same sentences over and over.”
“It's like a mental health facility, but you don't have any way to actually help them. They shouldn't be there,” said Morgan.
Former detention officer Sonny Willimon quit in 2024 after six years at the jail when the conditions became too much to bear.
"I was running into situations where a cell would be covered in blood with somebody in there," Willimon said. "And I didn’t panic at it. I wasn’t repulsed by it. I didn’t react to it in the way that a normal person did."
In a 2022 email about a suicidal woman who was booked into jail, Karen Sloan, a municipal court employee, warned that the facility was admitting people unfit for custody.
“She has an open wound on her stomach which she continues to dig at to cause herself harm,” Sloan wrote to Allied Universal and city staff. “Why does TPD bring people like this to our jail when we DO NOT HAVE medical and mental facilities?”
Under Oklahoma law, police officers are required to take a person to a mental health facility or a hospital rather than jail when they reasonably believe the person requires treatment. But former staff say officers often have to wait for hours and fill out paperwork when they take arrestees to the hospital.
Tulsa Police did not respond to questions about its procedures for handling people experiencing a mental health crisis.
A 23-year-old who later died by suicide in the city jail was found “mumbling to himself” outside a QuikTrip two days after he was discharged from a mental hospital. Even though he had no prior arrests or other charges, Tulsa police jailed him for trespassing instead of taking him in for care.
Tulsa has a sobering center in midtown where police can take individuals who are intoxicated in public to sober up under supervision, but only if they agree to go. The facility also doesn’t accept people who need medical attention or who behave aggressively.
One of the detainees who would later die from methamphetamine intoxication was found “passed out” outside a business and struggled to stand up. An officer wrote that he arrested him for public intoxication rather than taking him to the sobering center because he feared the man “could become violent.” The officer who arrested Bonner — responding to a complaint about him smoking in the lobby of a restaurant —wrote that he “was not taken to the sobering center because he had been causing a disturbance.”
When staff tried to get medical help for detainees, Morgan and six employees said, they often met resistance. Morgan wrote in her complaint that Hardin told supervisors they needed to get his approval before calling ambulances for inmates.
“They are having a shit fit over the hospital/ EMSA bills,” one supervisor wrote in a text message in late 2021.
Text messages reviewed by The Frontier indicate Franklin and Larsen received and acknowledged Morgan’s complaint in March 2022 and an investigator visited the jail.
“TPD internal affairs came to check the employee numbers for the jail last night,” Hardin texted detention officers on March 13, 2022. “I need communication if we drop below 4 employees in the jail.”
The Tulsa Police Department did not respond to questions about Morgan’s complaint and whether it investigated her allegations.
After her shift on April 5, 2022, Morgan was gathering documents related to her complaint when, she said, Hardin approached her and took the papers from her hand. Morgan said he told her it was her last night at the jail and that Allied Universal’s human resources department would be in touch.
The next day, Allied Universal removed Morgan from her job at the jail at Hardin’s request, emails show. Morgan continued working for Allied for a short time in a lower-paying position outside the jail. She says she was never given a reason why Hardin had her removed from her job at the jail and believes it was in retaliation for her complaint.
Beaten and ignored
At least three detainees have sued the city in separate lawsuits after they say they were assaulted by detention officers. Two alleged they were denied medical care for their injuries afterwards.
In January 2023, Tulsa resident Kejuana Morrison was booked into the jail for unpaid traffic tickets. Morrison said she was having trouble lifting her arm in response to an officer’s commands. She claimed in a lawsuit that the male officer pushed her headfirst into a wall, and knelt on her neck. The Frontier reviewed security footage of the incident, which showed her being shoved into a wall and wrestled to the ground.
“If I didn't fight to get from under his knee, I probably would have been another victim,” Morrison told The Frontier. “There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t close my eyes and see how he did me.”
She claimed in her lawsuit that staff ignored her pleas for medical help. It was only after a relative called 911 from outside the jail the next day that paramedics arrived to find her with a life-threateningly high blood pressure, the lawsuit claimed.
G4S and Allied Universal denied Morrison’s allegations and argued that its treatment of inmates was “appropriate, within the applicable standards of care, and caused no harm or injury.” according to court documents.
Morrison reached a $20,000 settlement with defendants in the case, documents show. She says she is still dealing with injuries to her left eye and arm.
In the dark
When someone dies at the Tulsa Municipal Jail, the Tulsa Police Department — which oversees the jail — is also the agency that investigates the death. In neighboring Texas, Kansas, and Colorado, state law requires that an outside law enforcement agency investigate jail deaths. No such requirement exists in Oklahoma.
The city, in its statement, said that after each death, "there are multiple layers of oversight" including TPD's investigation, the Oklahoma State Department of Health, and the state medical examiner. But the medical examiner does not investigate jail operations or what led up to a death—only the cause and manner of death. And state health department reviews of jail deaths are generally brief and cursory. The agency can file a complaint with the attorney general or local district attorney or assess penalties, but rarely does.
The Tulsa Police Department stopped issuing press releases for deaths at the jail in 2023. None of them have been previously reported in the media. The agency has denied The Frontier’s open records requests for surveillance video, incident reports, and other records related to the seven most recent fatalities, citing a law that exempts some law enforcement records from being disclosed. The Frontier is contesting the denials.
For the families of those who died, the silence has left them feeling abandoned and searching for answers.
Two days after Maryalice Spencer’s son was arrested last August for possessing marijuana without a license, jail staff called her to ask about his mental health. Spencer said they told her that her son Conor, 33, was acting so erratically that they had to move his court date.
Four days later, she noticed Conor was listed as "released" on a jail website.
When she called, she said jail staff told her there had been "an accident,” but refused to say what had happened. She said a doctor at the hospital told her that Conor had attempted suicide in jail and showed no brain activity.
Spencer said she later asked a Tulsa police officer investigating her son’s death what was being done to prevent the same from happening to other families. “He couldn't answer the question,” she said.
Last February, Carla Bonner didn’t know Brian had died in jail until a call came from the state medical examiner’s office. Desperate for answers, she said she tried calling the Tulsa Police Department several times, but never heard back.
She has hired an attorney and plans to file a lawsuit.
At her home in Oklahoma City, she flipped through photographs of her son — one showing him as a teenager, another as a small boy.
“He was a clown when he was young,” she said. “An ornery little one.”
Even after his mental illness set in about eight years ago and he struggled to keep a job, Brian Bonner still enjoyed drawing landscapes and shooting pool with his two brothers, she said.
She said she wants to see change at the jail.
“They all need medical treatment; they should be checked on,” she said. “That’s what I want, to give him a voice, because this shouldn’t have happened to him.”
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Garrett Yalch was hired in 2024, joining The Frontier’s Tulsa newsroom. He covers corporate and government accountability issues, with a focus on the Tulsa area. He can be reached at Garrett@readfrontier.com
