The Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics will continue work this year to support rural law enforcement agencies.
Director John Scully said the bureau is focusing less on the Tulsa and Oklahoma City metro areas because their law enforcement agencies have the resources for most drug investigations.
"Some of these smaller jurisdictions, like where I grew up, you can't be a patrol officer in uniform tonight making traffic stops and then tomorrow night be trying to buy drugs undercover," Scully said. "So, those kinds of agencies depend on us, and we love going out and providing assistance to them."
The interest in assisting rural agencies, however, presents its own challenges.
"It's very difficult to find agents that are willing to go to Guymon. We recently found one that's going through training right now," Scully said. "We hired two to go to Guymon, and one of them backed out in the middle of the background investigation because she just realized she didn't really want to move to Guymon."
The narcotics bureau is currently short three agents and six supervisors, and though its appropriated budget is half what it was in 2009, Scully is not asking lawmakers for more money.
"I'd love to be able to give a raise to all of my employees to try to bring us up with some other agencies, but I understand that times are tough," Scully said. "And we fully understand and get that, and that's why we take the actions that we need to, to try to make sure that we're not impacting service levels to our citizens all across the state."
