Since Jake Rowland announced his candidacy to run for State Representative of District 30, his campaign has largely been a grassroots, in the most literal sense of the word: he’s the owner of Outdoor Pro Landscaping and Tree Service since 2002, and his—pardon the pun—roots in landscaping go back even further, to 1997 while he was at Oklahoma State University.
But what’s been surfacing lately is not the work-ethic of a seasoned landscaper, but an incident from a decade ago that is arousing suspicion about his qualifications to represent District 30 at the house.
In 2008, Jake (also referred to as Barry in those days) Rowland was a Trooper with the Oklahoma Highway Patrol who got called to an incident in Henryetta that would eventually lead to him handing in his badge.
According to reports and a video from The Daily Oklahoman (we’ve included video below), Rowland was questioning a woman named Dana Walls outside a bar who was suspected of being in a fight earlier, which she denies.
“Why is there blood on your knuckles, and blood on your face?” he asks. She replies, “I have no idea.”
“Let me give you a clue; you’ve been in a fight,” Rowland says.
He then tells her to sit down and she seems to ignore him. “Sit down,” he says again. Still nothing. Finally, Rowland pushes her on the shoulder in the direction of the sidewalk to sit when she immediately turns and shoves him. You see the two of them disappear behind a vehicle as another officer steps in to help restrain Walls.
Rowland told Sapulpa Times on Monday that it was at this point that she was placed under arrest for assault and battery on a police officer.
When we first published our “Know Your Candidate” profile on Jake Rowland, the only comment on the story was from a man named David Roberts, who brought up the incident in 2008 and made a few claims on it that questioned Rowland’s ability to represent the District in an honorable way.
“If he couldn’t be trusted to enforce the law, can he be trusted to make it?” Roberts says in the comment.
The comments have since been closed to new replies, as per Sapulpa Times’ 14-day commenting policy.
Rowland contacted Sapulpa Times with the desire to clarify some of the allegations and correct some of the specifics that have been deemed incorrect.
Articles by The Tulsa World and The Daily Oklahoman report that Walls was under arrest for public intoxication, which is not untrue, but it’s a charge that Rowland says came later. “She was under arrest for assault and battery,” he says. “The public intoxication charge came after the fact.”
The video footage we’ve included backs up Rowland’s claim. The woman begins an altercation where she assaults Rowland, and after being handcuffed and placed on the ground, Rowland continues questioning her. Initially, she offers little more than a string of expletives, before Rowland tries something simple: “Is your name Dana?” He asks. Her response is silence, then as he walks by, she spits on him; her second felony charge since the situation began.
Rowland’s response was to kick Walls as she sat handcuffed on the ground. In his comment, Roberts stated that Rowland kicked Walls in the chest. Reports from The Daily Oklahoman and The Tulsa World agree, with the Oklahoman stating that fellow troopers witnessed Rowland kicking Walls in “the upper torso.”
Rowland says that’s not true, telling Sapulpa Times “I struck her with the top of my foot on her arm, not her chest.” The video doesn’t clarify the issue one way or another.
Roberts also accused Rowland of “dragging out his case for criminal assault, before eventually taking a plea bargain.” Rowland admits that he took the plea deal “on the advice of his attorney,” because he was told that the prosecutors were going to be seeking a grand jury indictment on a civil rights violation. He denies that he had anything to do with the case taking as long as it did, however, saying that he was simply on administrative leave, as per protocol. Still, Rowland himself isn’t sure why the investigation took as long as it did. “This turned out to be an 18-month investigation, when it seems like it was a pretty simple situation,” he said.
That plea deal meant Rowland would submit to a misdemeanor assault charge, resign the Oklahoma Highway Patrol, and lose his CLEET license. As a result, he was handed a one year deferred sentence and had to pay $800 in court costs.
Later, Walls did allegedly sue Rowland in civil court, which Rowland says was settled out of court before it went very far. In his comment however, Roberts states that Rowland tried to sue the state to recover the money he agreed to pay her to settle her lawsuit. “That lawsuit dragged on for several years, and was eventually dismissed,” Roberts said.
Rowland says that is not the case “I never sued the state, whatsoever,” he says. “I resigned and went on from there,” he said.
