Eye On Safety: Greg Mashburn takes over as OSBI Director

As the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation welcomes new leadership, longtime prosecutor Greg Mashburn is stepping in as director, bringing nearly three decades of legal and law enforcement experience to the agency.

OSBI commission names Greg Mashburn as new director

With OSBI facing staffing challenges and a backlog of cases, Mashburn said he focused on rebuilding trust, improving efficiency, and prioritizing cold case investigations.

He sat down with Lisa Monahan in this edition of Eye On Safety to discuss his vision for the agency.

What’s your top priority to refocus the OSBI?

Greg Mashburn: “The first thing I'm going to need to do is get into the agency and start meeting people, get across the state, talk to our agents out in the field, talk to the people in the lab. I mean, it’s a really big agency. There’s a lot of people to talk to. And then also start talking to our law enforcement partners out there and see what they need from us to be able to do better and move forward.”

How will you address morale and turnover concerns?

Greg Mashburn: “I can’t speak to the past, but what I can say is I want to be a director that the agency and the people in the agency can trust, and that’s going to be earned over the course of the next few months. And so I’ll get in there, have those conversations, let them know that they can trust me and that we’re going to build an agency together that the whole state can be proud of.”

How do you plan to manage caseloads?

Greg Mashburn: “Well, that’s going to be a challenge. And those agents and the people in the lab, they do such great work. And so when we look at that, we’ll have to do an inventory of what active cases there are, how many are assigned to each agent, what they need as far as help—if we need to reassign people, if we need to add people. So we’ll have to take a good inventory and see how we can do better if there need to be changes.”

Will cold cases get a fresh look?

Greg Mashburn: "Anytime there’s a case that hasn’t been closed because we haven’t solved it, that’s going to be still on the front burner, and that’s going to be one of our high priorities. And so we’ll take a look at the cold case unit, and we’ll reach out to those families and see what we can do to move the cases forward, and we’ll continue to work them because justice needs to be done."

How will your experience with victim advocacy shape your role at OSBI?

Greg Mashburn: "I think one of the reasons I’ve been a career prosecutor is because I wanted to help victims and carry their families through the criminal justice process. And I will continue that. Just because my title’s changed doesn’t mean that the mission for those families won’t change."

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Mashburn will begin his new role on March 3.