GenXJamerican

by Dylan Goforth, The Frontier
September 17, 2025

This week on Listen Frontier, we’re looking at Operation SAFE, Governor Kevin Stitt’s effort to clear homeless encampments in Tulsa with the help of the Oklahoma Highway Patrol.

The Frontier sat down with Gov. Stitt, who told me the operation isn’t about solving homelessness, but about enforcing the law. He said Oklahomans are experiencing “compassion fatigue,” and that many of the people removed from encampments “didn’t want help.”

We also spoke with Steven Whitaker, CEO of Tulsa’s John 3:16 Mission, who offered a different view. Whitaker acknowledged the risks of being too compassionate, but stressed that the people living on Tulsa’s streets are our neighbors, and most of them are in desperate need of empathy, shelter, and support.

Their perspectives paint a complicated picture of homelessness in Tulsa, and the divide over how the state and city should respond.

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt says his administration’s Operation SAFE in Tulsa is less about solving homelessness and more about “enforcing the law,” even as local shelter leaders warn the sweeps are displacing vulnerable people.

The operation, launched in early September, has seen the Oklahoma Highway Patrol clearing homeless encampments on state property in Tulsa under bridges and overpasses across the city. Stitt has touted the effort as a success. Critics, including Tulsa’s new mayor and some service providers, argue Stitt’s operation lacks long-term solutions.

“This is not about solving homelessness,” Stitt said in an interview with The Frontier. “This is about enforcing the law and making sure you’re setting the culture to allow people to go get the help that they need and make sure that they’re not breaking the law, camping in areas that they shouldn’t. And I think that’s a big distinction.”

Stitt said business owners pushed him to act after frustration grew over encampments across Tulsa. 

Bill Knight, chairman of Tulsa’s Regional Chamber of Commerce and owner of a local car dealership group, has supported Stitt’s initiative.

”Tulsa’s business community supports leadership that prioritizes the safety of those who live and work within our city and region,” Knight said in a statement. “We appreciate the governor’s actions to enforce the laws and bolster Tulsa’s pursuit to enhance quality of life. This initiative complements the ongoing efforts by various Tulsa entities, reinforcing our collective commitment to addressing complex issues like homelessness and public safety.”

“The biggest issue facing Tulsa is homelessness. And so I started asking more questions. We started doing research. Why isn’t the city fixing these issues? So I instructed the Highway Patrol to just simply enforce the law,” Stitt said.

The governor argues that allowing people to remain on the streets perpetuates suffering. 

“We can never build enough houses, we can never have enough compassion, because it is going to continue to bring more and more and more people into Tulsa,” he said. “We want to help people, but if you don’t want help, we’re not going to let you continue to break the law and do drugs and harass people and live on the street.”

“They don’t want help”

Stitt dismissed concerns about shelter capacity, saying only one person encountered during the sweeps had requested help from law enforcement to reach a shelter. He said his plan was focused on creating an environment that would give Tulsa’s homeless population little choice but to get off the street.

“They don’t want help. They haven’t hit rock bottom yet,” Stitt said. “So if you create an environment that allows them to stay in your city and lay on the street, then they’re going to keep going there. But as soon as you say, no, no, we’re going to enforce the law here … that’s compassion.”

He said some may choose to leave Tulsa altogether.

“Or they’re going to go to Portland or Los Angeles, they’re going to move on,” he said. 

State officials reported collecting hundreds of thousands of pounds of debris during the sweeps, as well as stolen credit cards and large quantities of syringes. 

“Just in the last three or four days, (we’ve cleared) about 600,000 pounds of debris and trash,” Stitt said. “(Oklahoma Highway Patrol) reported to me that they found 100 stolen credit cards. They have a 50-gallon drum, almost 100% filled with needles.”

Politics in the background

The sweeps have also sparked speculation about political motivations. Tulsa’s new Democratic mayor, Monroe Nichols, recently struck an agreement to send traffic tickets and other municipal charges involving tribal citizens to the Muscogee Nation that Stitt strongly opposed. The governor’s crackdown followed soon after.

Stitt denied the connection, though he was critical of the settlement. 

“There’s no possible way that this is good for public safety for you to co-govern the city of Tulsa with another nation,” he said. “When we turn over the policing of our city to Russia, to France, to another sovereign nation, it just makes no sense whatsoever.”

While acknowledging disagreements with Nichols, Stitt said he liked Tulsa’s mayor and he was focused on public safety, not the mayor’s policies.

“This specific homelessness issue is not a retaliation,” Stitt said. 

Local shelters push back

Steven Whitaker, CEO of Tulsa’s John 3:16 Mission, agreed that encampments had become a public health issue but criticized Operation SAFE for moving people without linking them to services.

“There’s not been any transport offers occurring from OHP of the folks that they’re sweeping in encampments to service providers, so they’re just kind of being pushed along and made to move out, and that’s been the approach. And so that’s not ideal,” Whitaker said.

He acknowledged that some people had sought help at his shelter since the sweeps began, but “not a tremendous amount.”

“If it can be a catalyst for that, and we can make lemonade out of lemons, then that’s a good thing,” Whitaker said.

Whitaker described the sweeps as disruptive and said some people lost personal belongings that were some of their only remaining connections to families as troopers worked to clear camps. But he agreed with Stitt that some more heavily trafficked locations across the city were unsafe for the homeless population as well.

“You could argue (the cleanup is) a positive. Those areas weren’t clean, weren’t sanitary, and it wasn’t dignifying, it wasn’t humane,” Whitaker said. “And so we’re just trying to balance that out while remaining compassionate and redefining what compassion means.”

The mission, which recently invested $20 million into a west Tulsa recovery campus, offers year-long treatment and rehabilitation programs. Whitaker said permanent solutions require long-term commitment, not just enforcement.

For Whitaker, compassion requires patience and planning. 

“We believe that people are created for a purpose, and there’s an opportunity for them to be restored and go through recovery,” he said. “That’s not cheap. It’s not easy, but it is the best way to get people from the low spot that they’re in to a functional spot.”

This article first appeared on The Frontier and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.