OHP to patrol interstates 24/7 after reallocating resources; TPD shares concerns about funding

The Oklahoma Highway Patrol's Commissioner addressed the recent announcement about pulling all troopers out of the Tulsa and Oklahoma City metros.

Starting November 1st, OHP plans to move troopers to other areas of the state where there is less law enforcement coverage.

OHP says this move will allow them to have troopers patrolling every interstate from outside the metro areas to the state line, 24/7.

Tulsa Police says they already work 14,000 to 15,000 collisions a year on city streets and highways and now they will have to pull officers away from those duties to work interstates too.

>>> VIDEO: Oklahoma Highway Patrol shares plan to reallocate resources away from the Tulsa area

What is OHP's plan?

Oklahoma Highway Patrol Commissioner Tim Tipton says this wasn't an easy decision, but says moving troopers to areas in need is the best way to keep all of Oklahoma safe.

"With the current numbers that we have, this is the right thing to do," said Tipton.

OHP's plan is to move troopers from working the Tulsa and Oklahoma City areas and reassign them to other areas where there is less of a law enforcement presence. The Commissioner says most of the smaller police departments and sheriff's offices don't have a lot of manpower or training to handle high-level calls like deadly crashes.

OHP is creating an interstate troop division where a trooper will work every 30 miles from outside the two cities to the state lines. For example, OHP will have troopers working from Highway 9 south of Norman to Texas at all times. Tipton says right now, there are hours every night when there isn't a trooper on duty along the interstates, so if something happens, a trooper has to get called in and drive to the emergency.

"It's critical for us to provide a public safety footprint that gives those citizens and traveling motorists through our state the ability to know there's going to be a response in a timely manner to their incident going on on the interstate system," said Tipton.

OHP will still work all the turnpikes in the state.

How will this change impact Tulsa Police?

This change means Tulsa Police will have to work an extra 42 miles of interstate within the city limits of Tulsa.

"For us, it's a reallocation of resources also and unfortunately, we just don't have those resources," said Major Jillian Phippen with Tulsa Police.

Phippen says the department is already 137 officers short, and they already work 15,000 crashes a year as is, so this extra workload will take its toll on everyone.

"It's going to be a burden on our officers and potentially to the citizens, and our response time and how long we will have to spend on the interstate working these collisions," said Phippen.

Tulsa Police say they are also concerned about working commercial vehicle crashes. They say they do have traffic homicide investigators but say they don't have the equipment or training to work crashes involving commercial vehicles like an 18-wheeler.

OHP says troopers will still assist with those investigations.

Tulsa Police say this is additional work they're being asked to do, without additional funding.