OKLAHOMA CITY – Harmon County taxpayers will pay higher property taxes for several more years before a $7 million civil judgment is paid in full, County Assessor Kendra Tillman confirmed recently.
A woman incarcerated in the Harmon County Jail for five weeks in 2012-13 filed a lawsuit in Oklahoma City’s federal district court, alleging she was sexually abused by a Hollis police officer while in custody.
In September 2016 a jury awarded the woman, Tiffany Ann Glover, $6.5 million in compensatory damages, plus interest until the debt is paid, against Harmon County and then-Sheriff Joe Johnson. U.S. District Judge Stephen P. Friot also awarded Glover $530,000 in attorney fees and costs, which totaled more than $20,600 and included $4,708 for witness fees, $9,106 for various transcripts, $4,149 for printing, and other expenses.
Harmon County was insured through the Association of County Commissioners of Oklahoma Self-Insured Group under a policy with a coverage limit of $2 million “per occurrence for law enforcement liability.” ACCO-SIG paid a portion of the settlement prior to the jury verdict, and paid the $1,695,411 balance after the verdict.
Harmon County sued ACCO-SIG in 2018. The county alleged that several weeks before the trial Glover offered to settle her claim for $750,000, but ACCO-SIG counteroffered to settle, first for $7,500 and then for $25,000. Subsequently Glover offered to settle her claim for $735,000, the county alleged; ACCO-SIG rejected that offer, too, and made no counteroffer.
However, on the second day of the trial ACCO-SIG tried to settle for $125,000 to $150,000, but Glover refused. By the third day of the trial, ACCO-SIG offered to settle for $225,000 but the woman again declined, court documents reflect.
The Board of Commissioners asserted that ACCO-SIG “failed to perform with ordinary skill and competence the services it contracted to provide.”
Oklahoma County District Judge Richard Ogden ruled for ACCO-SIG in February 2021, writing that the insurer “has no duty to pay contractual damages beyond the policy limits.” Harmon County appealed to the Oklahoma Court of Civil Appeals, which affirmed Ogden’s ruling on Feb. 16, 2022.
Balance of judgment
being paid with taxes
Assessor Tillman said Harmon County made arrangements to place the debt on the ad valorem tax rolls and pay the balance of the Glover judgment over a period of 10 years, “since most of our taxpayers are farmers.”
In addition, Harmon County voters in June 2018 approved a one-cent sales tax to help pay down the lawsuit judgment. After the debt is retired, proceeds from the levy will be earmarked for the Harmon County General Fund to help finance county operations and maintenance.
But that’s still a few years down the road.
The county has made four payments of $500,000 each so far, she said, “and we hope to have it paid off in eight years” instead of 10.
Hollis police officer
accused of sex crimes
In her lawsuit, Glover, who later moved to Missouri, said that for an unspecified amount of time she stayed in her grandmother’s house in Hollis.
Jayson Vest was hired by the City of Hollis in August 2012 as a police officer, and subsequently was promoted to assistant police chief. Glover maintained that Police Chief David Leathers and the City of Hollis “had been provided with information regarding the propensity of Vest to use his position and authority as a law enforcement officer to sexually harass and intimidate women.”
The city and the police chief “responded inappropriately to the allegations of police misconduct involving” Vest, Glover claimed.
In addition, Sheriff Johnson “was aware of a pattern of police misconduct and responded in appropriately and with deliberate indifference to the allegations of police misconduct involving” Vest, and “failed to take remedial action,” Glover alleged.
Vest responded to a domestic disturbance report in October 2012 in which Tiffany Glover was the victim. Subsequently Vest, although married at the time, “began frequenting” the house in Hollis where Glover was staying, and in the weeks that followed “began pressuring” Glover “in a sexually suggestive and harassing manner,” she alleged. Vest also asked Glover repeatedly to “go out” with him on a date. She refused.
“In retaliation for her refusal, and in the absence of probable cause,” Vest drove up behind Glover after she parked at her grandmother’s home on December 11, 2012. He ordered her to produce her driver’s license and insurance information, and arrested her for being in control of a motor vehicle while impaired and in possession of an illegal substance.
She was incarcerated in the Harmon County Jail. “Because she was fearful of what … Vest might do to her,” Glover alleged, she “sought the protection of Sheriff Johnson from the threatening and degrading behavior” of Vest.
However, she claimed she was “falsely and incorrectly told by Sheriff Johnson that there was nothing he could do to stop the harassment and illegal deprivation of Tiffany Glover’s constitutional rights.”
Although Glover was represented by an attorney, and despite her “repeated complaints and requests for protection,” Vest was allowed to remove Glover from her cell at the Harmon County Jail on Jan. 16, 2013, claiming “he needed to interrogate her.” Vest’s wife was the jailer on duty at the time.
Glover alleged Vest took her into Leathers’ office “where no one else was present,” shut and locked the door, forced her to sign a Miranda waiver form, then exposed himself to her, raped her and forced her to perform oral sex on him twice.
During the entire time, no one at the jail alerted either the police chief or the sheriff about “what was happening,” Glover alleged.
Glover initially sued Leathers, Vest and the City of Hollis, too, but they were dismissed from the lawsuit in June 2015 after an out-of-court settlement was reached.
Officer convicted,
sent out of state
Vest, 42, pleaded “no contest” in 2013 to charges of forcible sodomy and second-degree rape of a jail inmate, according to The Frontier news source, and was sentenced to 12 years in prison, The Oklahoman reported. For reasons that are unclear, Vest was transferred to Ellsworth Correctional Facility in Kansas and later to Oregon.
Records filed with the Oklahoma State Courts Network show that prior to his conviction, Vest served on the Fairview Police Department in 2007, the Elk City Police Department in 2007-08, the Hobart Police Department in 2009, the Okmulgee County Sheriff’s Department in 2011-12, and the Hollis Police Department in 2012-13.
Leslie Orr, former Hollis police chief who joined the Harmon County Sheriff’s Department in 2013, was appointed Sheriff in early 2018 after Joe Johnson retired. Orr ran unopposed for the remainder of that term, and was elected without opposition in 2020 to a full four-year term.