On the afternoon of July 2, 2024, Officer David Ramsey of the Duncan Police Department observed a man on a bicycle making a right turn at a stop sign without stopping. Ramsey activated his emergency lights to initiate a stop; the man continued on the bike briefly, stopping behind a parked vehi cle for a moment before stepping back out into view, according to Ramsey’s probable cause affidavit — the story of the arrest. Ramsey wasn’t alone. A field training officer identified only as Webb was riding along with him. Webb knew the bicyclist as Charles Moore, or “Moe,” the affidavit said. Webb had an unspecified history with Moore. Moore presented identification and consented to a search of his person; when that search and a search for outstanding warrants uncovered nothing, Ramsey told Moore he was free to go. As Ramsey pulled away, Webb told him to stop, the affidavit said. Webb claimed to have observed a green plastic bag on the ground near the parked vehicle where Moore had paused for a moment. Another officer was sent off in pursuit of Moore; the baggy was found to contain a small amount of meth. Moore was arrested for possession of a controlled dangerous substance and for failing to stop his bicycle at a stop sign, a violation under Duncan city ordinances, Chapter 11, Section 15-1103. “Any person operating a bicycle shall obey the instructions of official traffic control signals, signs and other control devices applicable to vehicles unless otherwise directed by a police officer,” the statute reads. That’s a problem. In 2021, the state Legislature passed a law that made Oklahoma the third state to adopt the Idaho stop law, allowing bicyclists to treat stop signs as yield signs. Since then, five additional states have passed a provision shown to reduce fatal accidents. In other words, Moore shouldn’t have been the subject of a traffic stop in the first place. The story of Moore’s problematic arrest, along with two other instances of Duncan police arresting citizens on drug charges following a stop based on a superseded city ordinance, was brought to the attention of Oklahoma Watch by Heather Chandler, a lifelong Duncan resident who was inspired to seek out police wrongdoing after her own contentious interactions with law enforcement. Bicycle stops based on superseded ordinances raise broader questions about whether police departments and individual officers are willfully ignorant of changes to state law to preserve niggling violations that can be used as a pretext to discover more serious crimes. Oklahoma Watch found eight additional cases of troubling bicycle stops in Duncan. It Was Easier to Plead Guilty Chandler didn’t like to talk about it: the abusive 18-year marriage that she was grateful to have escaped alive. “That’s a whole different story,” Chandler said. “Just trying to get out of that, to not think about the past, I learned how to play pool. I just started shooting.” Now an avid and aspiring competitive pool player, Chandler credits the game with saving her life. Pocket billiards bore directly on Chandler’s later evolution into a police-record researcher because it was after a night of pool at Ray’s Place in Duncan that she was pulled over and arrested for drunk driving. She wasn’t drunk, Chandler said. She was practicing eight-ball. Body camera footage of the arrest shows that Chandler was arrested by a new officer, who was following directions from a supervisor. The officer was clumsy in administering a field sobriety test; several times the supervisor intervened to provide instruction or conduct the test himself. Chandler told the officers that her feet had been injured recently, making walking during the test difficult. The affidavit of the arrest made no mention of Chandler’s injury. It also made no mention of the supervisor, nor of a passenger in Chandler’s car, an acquaintance she was giving a lift home, Chandler said. The body camera footage reveals that the man was left alone in the car with Chandler’s belongings, including her purse, for most of an hour-long stop. Subsequently, Chandler was arrested not for being drunk, but for refusing a DUI test and for a small amount of a controlled substance found in her purse. She pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors. “It was just easier to plead guilty,” Chandler said. “I thought, I’ll just get it out of the way because it won’t ever happen again.” But it did — and this time it was spookier. On May 6, 2025, Chandler was once again on her way home from Ray’s after a night of practice. She noticed a police vehicle following her. The cruiser was soon joined by two others, Chandler said, one in front and one beside her, boxing her in. “That’s not routine patrol,” Chandler said. “That’s harassment. It’s one in the morning. No one else sees, there’s no supervision. They were acting like pirates.” The other two vehicles veered off, and Chandler nervously turned down a side street. The police car behind her didn’t follow her immediately, but after another turn or two the vehicle was there again and initiated a stop. The affidavit in this case, submitted by Duncan police officer Darius McReynolds, indicates that McReynolds stopped Chandler, in part, because he had run her plates and knew where she lived, and she was not taking a direct route home. History repeated. Once again, Chander wasn’t drunk; she was playing pool, she said, and once again, she was arrested not for being drunk but for DUI refusal. This time, she lost her driver’s license. A couple of months later, Chandler was pulled over again — on her bicycle. It was the same officer, McReynolds. The stop took place a block from Chandler’s home as she was leaving to shoot pool. Since her second DUI arrest, Chandler had gotten fired up to defend herself and had spent a couple of months submitting requests for documents and body camera footage. That night on her bike, McReynolds appeared to have been waiting for her, Chandler said. She insisted that it wasn’t a coincidence. “Three stops in three months isn’t a coincidence,” Chandler said, specifying yet another bike stop. “That’s not protection, that’s a system trying to silence someone who started reading the statutes.” This time, she was recording it. The video shows McReynolds explaining that he stopped Chandler because he thought her bike did not have a light on the front. It did. Chandler disputed McReynolds’ next claim that she used her feet to come to a stop at an intersection. Last, McReynolds told her she needed a bell on her bicycle. The stop came to an abrupt halt when McReynolds noticed Chandler’s phone, recording the exchange. “You have a good night,” McReynolds said. “You too,” Chandler said. A Fatal Maneuver It was Chandler’s own bike stop that got her looking for more. In addition to the case of Charles Moore, Chandler found two other examples of stops initiated because bicyclists failed to adhere to a superseded city ordinance. In July 2024, Tommie Williams was stopped for failing to stop his bicycle at a stop sign; he was subsequently arrested for drug possession. In February 2025, Michael Twigg was similarly stopped and subsequently arrested on an outstanding warrant and for obstructing a police officer. Every case listed in this story occurred after Oklahoma passed its version of the Idaho stop law, which was enacted in May 2021. City of Duncan ordinances indicate that a variation of the ordinance requiring bicycles to obey all traffic signals dates back to at least 1941. In responding to a records request, the clerk’s office cited a section of Title 47 of state law to explain the local city ordinance. That was a fatal maneuver, said Oklahoma City attorney Jason Waddell, a former professional cyclist who helped to write and pass Oklahoma’s version of the Idaho stop law. Waddell acknowledged that there were times when a city ordinance can override state law. “State law does not always supersede city ordinance,” Waddell said. A legal analysis from the 1899 Institute, however, suggesting that mayors may have acted unlawfully during the COVID-19 pandemic, explained that a city ordinance may prevail only when the matter at hand is of strictly municipal concern. “Even regarding matters of ‘chiefly local interest,’ a state law will override city authority if ‘the state has a sovereign interest in the municipal matter,’” the analysis reads. “On matters of purely municipal concern, cities may act independently of the state.” That sealed the deal, Waddell said, because Duncan traffic ordinances copied state law. “The state law has been expressly adopted into the Duncan city ordinances,” Waddell said. “You can’t have it both ways.” Under state law, bicycles may treat stop signs as yield signs. At traffic lights, bicycles may make right- or left-hand turns onto one-way streets without stopping if conditions allow. Since 2021, Oklahoma City, Lawton and Moore have passed city ordinances to comply with the Idaho stop law. Many other cities have not modified their ordinances at all: Owasso, Sallisaw, Bristow, Sperry, Kiowa, Elk City, Tulsa, Norman, Stillwater, Edmond, Pawhuska, Weatherford, Coalgate, Choctaw, Claremore, Bartlesville and Pryor. Articulable Fear Michael Olson, who serves as the policy counsel for Oklahomans for Criminal Justice Reform, said that, strictly speaking, pretextual law enforcement stops are stops initiated on arbitrary grounds with a predetermined goal of discovering criminal activity in the absence of observed criminal activity. That said, even minor violations of the law can be used to execute a stop with a similar goal. “It happens all the time,” Olson said. “Not signaling. Any kind of minor offense can be used to initiate a lawful stop.” From there, the issue turns to what’s known as a Terry stop, or a stop-and-frisk. After making a lawful stop, officers must have a reasonable, articulable fear — that is, more than a hunch but less than probable cause — to initiate a search of someone they have stopped on lawful grounds. In other words, to search you, an officer needs to be concerned or fearful, and they need to be able to say why. In the 11 cases examined by Oklahoma Watch, two individuals consented to searches. In the remainder, there was no effort on the part of officers to articulate a reasonable fear of harm to their person. In the case of Tommie Williams, Williams expressly denied officers permission to search his person; he was searched anyway, in the absence of any expression of reasonable fear, by an individual referred to in the affidavit as Master Officer Webb, presumably the same Webb who was along with Ramsey in the arrest of Charles Moore. Webb is something of a mystery. Signatures on probable cause affidavits retrieved from the Oklahoma Supreme Court Network for “Bailey Webb” match documents signed by “Jonathan Webb” and “Jonthan Webb.” The Duncan police department explained that Webb uses his middle name. Regardless, Webb figured heavily in the affidavits examined by Oklahoma Watch. In six cases, he is the affiant, or reporting officer. In several others, he is listed as being on site, assisting with the arrest. What You Think the Law Says A separate issue, Olson said, was that the United States Supreme Court held that on some occasions an arrest stemming from an earnest mistake — such as a lack of awareness of a recent change to state law — might still be upheld as a lawful arrest. The cases examined by Oklahoma Watch date from September 2021, a few months after state law changed, to early 2025. Olson said there was no definitive time lag for defining when awareness of new legislation is expected. But he believed the Duncan cases were clear: the officers should have been aware of the altered law. Furthermore, any additional infractions discovered at stops initiated under a superseded ordinance should be thrown out in accordance with what is known as the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine, which stemmed from another Supreme Court decision, Olson said. Even so, Olson was less inclined to blame individual officers for failures to understand recently changed laws than the departments that train them. “It’s less on the individual officers to know what’s happening at the Capitol, and it’s more on the departments to make sure their officers are aware,” Olson said. Waddell agreed. “We need to educate officers,” he said. “What you think the law says is not what it actually is.” Waddell noted that he was representing a client in Oklahoma County who had been charged for the same violation Chandler uncovered, failure to stop a bicycle at a stop sign. It was more than just another case for him. “I have a standing offer to any cyclist,” Waddell said. “If they get a ticket for it, I will represent them for free, under certain circumstances.” In April 2025, the Duncan City Council unanimously passed Item 7, which sought to identify city ordinances that need to be modified to comply with state law. The measure was presented by Duncan City Manager Chris Deal, who advised council members that local municipalities are required to review their ordinances for compliance with state law every 10 years. There was no stipulation for arrests made under city ordinances that had been superseded by state laws since the last time Duncan combed through its books. More than Bike Stops Heather Chandler is fighting her second DUI arrest. A trial is scheduled for April 20. She’s fighting back in other ways, too. It may be fair to say that her new role as a freelance police watchdog is bringing as much meaning to her life as racks of eight ball. She has found more than just bicycle stop sign cases. Oklahoma Watch reviewed an affidavit Chandler uncovered of a wellness check on a mentally ill man that descended into an assault charge when police might have called 988, the mental health emergency line, Chandler said. The man is now in prison. Another affidavit described a daughter calling 911 to report that her parents were drunk and that her father was beating her mother. Police found the mother in her car two blocks away, having fled the home. On body camera footage, the woman said she had to leave home to save her life; she was arrested for DUI. Duncan Police Chief Brian Attaway did not return calls seeking comment before publication. Chandler insisted that she was not anti-cop, but anti-misconduct. She vowed to recruit others to join her in the effort to perform the copious work that was necessary to expose police wrongdoing in the only town she’d ever called home. “They survey us, and we’re going to survey them,” Chandler said. “It starts in small hometowns. You have to go to your city council meetings and see what’s going on. From there, do freedom of information requests, get the affidavits and call them out. Because if they know that someone is going to be watching, they’re going to straighten up.” This story is the first in a series called “Unaccountable: Rural Justice in Oklahoma,” investigating problematic law enforcement practices in the state’s 60 non-metropolitan counties. It’s a follow-up to our Justice in No Man’s Land series. J.C. Hallman covers a variety of topics for Oklahoma Watch. Contact him at [email protected]. The post Duncan Bicycle Stops Pit City Ordinances Against State Law appeared first on Oklahoma Watch. ...read more read less