The Vian, Oklahoma officer that resigned last week after she felt she was being targeted by city officials after arresting the son of a long-time city council member is now set to return to streets as the newest member of the Webbers Falls Police Department.
Lindsey Green, who resigned at Vian last Monday after the incident and says the city attorney and mayor of Vian countermanded her arrest of Joshua Smith for driving on a suspended license.
“I got a call from Webbers Falls on Thursday and the chief over there said they have a part time job for me,” said Green. “I also got a full-time job to work security at the Cherokee Casino in West Siloam Springs and will be going over there next week to finish up the background stuff and paper work with their HR department.”
Green also expressed frustration at recent news reports involving the city council member in question, E.O. Smith, who is running for a Tribal Council position in the upcoming June 3 election.
Green told a local television station that “I never made a phone call, received a phone call. Didn’t know any of this was going on until I come home and it was a done deal”, E.O. (Junior) Smith, who was reportedly on the campaign trail when the incident occurred, said. ” His girlfriend called me and wanted to know if we could help bail him out and I told them know, I just wasn’t going to get involved with it…he done it himself.”
The elder Smith said his opponents for the Tribal Council seat are using his sons arrest and release and against him, saying the way the news reports on the situation went down went down might influence voters to think he was “crooked”.
Green, who has never said Junior Smith directly influenced the actions of the mayor and the city attorney, said the council member is not telling the whole truth and what he knew and when he knew it.’
“I personally called him right after the arrest and the city clerk called him too,” said Green, who said she used her department issued phone to contact Smith. “If it comes down to it, we can just look at the phone records of that cell phone to see who is remembering that happened correctly.”
Green said it’s all water under the bridge at this point and she has moved on. But she said the same sense of duty and integrity that compelled her to resign from Vian in the first place is what compels her to speak out and clear the record.
“I told people right after all this happened that I called Mr. Smith to inform him of the arrest,” said Green. “For whatever reason, he’s telling something different.”
“But like I said before…I took an oath to uphold the law. Immediately after the arrest I was told that I was going to be the focus of an executive session of the city council and I would be fired. So, I resigned rather than have a termination on my record.”
Smith’s televised claims that he “didn’t know any of this was going on” are also refuted by an interview he gave to a Sallisaw radio station prior to the television interview.
The transcript from that stations “blogspot:”
“I did not,” influence anyone to release Joshua Smith,” Junior Smith said. “It was a done deal and he was already at home before I knew about it. I was in Webbers Falls campaigning.”
Junior Smith said Green did call him later the same day. He said he let her do the talking because he was with other people at the time.
“She said she thought she had been set up,” Smith said. “I let her talk. After that it all blew up. It went crazy. I’m the one catching all the bashing here, and I haven’t done anything wrong.”
Smith said, “It’s a messed-up deal. She’s telling different stories on different channels. There’s something wrong.”
Vian police chief Ted Johnson also resigned last week and closed out his tenure with the Sequoyah County town on Friday, saying he supported his officers 100% and that he had been the one that signed off on the original arrest report.
After being tipped by a fellow officer last week that Josh Smith, who had been cited for the same thing in November before Green joined the police department, was driving on a suspended license Green instigated a traffic stop after the driver failed to use his turn signal properly and crossed the center line.
When Green asked for his license during the stop, he replied he “didn’t have it with him” and was placed under arrest for driving on a suspended license.
The body cam footage from the stop shows Joshua Smith saying the only reason he was driving because he had to “get her to school” and asked Green to wrote him a ticket instead of arresting him “because it’s all a about the money anyway”.
When Green replied that he had already been ticketed once for the same offense, Smith countered “I’ve been living in this town all my life…35 years. My dad owned a store down there on main Street for thirty years…. He’s on the city council.”
“When he informed me that his dad was a council member,” Green confirmed on Wednesday. “I replied that the laws for everybody and it doesn’t matter to me who your dad is.”
Green said the focus of the talk from the city attorney and the mayor after the arrest was that she didn’t have probable cause for the stop and that she would be “lucky” if the city didn’t get sued by the Smith’s.”
There was also talk from the city officials about an investigation to determine if Green and Johnson committed any “wrongdoing” in the stop and arrest of Smith.
Green wouldn’t comment of she is considering legal action against the city.
“I don’t know anything about that stuff, but I welcome any investigation that want to conduct to try and justify what happened.” said Green. “To me, my integrity has been questioned. I’m pretty sure any investigation would answer those questions.”