An attorney in Oklahoma was arrested on a battery warrant after he announced his run for Tulsa mayor on Wednesday, Aug. 16, 2023. (Arrest screenshots from Tulsa’s NBC affiliate KJRH; Mugshot from Tulsa County Jail)
A beleaguered pot attorney suing the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and facing a complaint in the state’s Supreme Court for misconduct was arrested just after he announced he was running for mayor.
Ronald Durbin was arrested in an incident captured on video Wednesday outside the Tulsa County courthouse. The video, shared by Durbin’s law firm, shows him being tackled by deputies and handcuffed.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” he screams while lying facedown on the ground. “What the f— are you doing?”
A woman yells, “He has a heart condition!” and Durbin screams for an ambulance.
In the video, he can be seen being wheeled on a stretcher, but officials did not say what injuries he might have had. He told a local station he suffered bruises in the incident. Authorities said they cleared him medically before booking him into the Tulsa County Jail. He was released an hour later on $1,000 bond, online jail booking records show. He’s set to be arraigned next Wednesday, online court records show.
In a statement emailed to Law&Crime, the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office defended the actions of its deputies, saying they acted appropriately and followed state law and department policies.
Durbin didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
In a video taken after he was released from jail, Durbin said the arrest was a setup, and he had tried to surrender earlier to face charges on the warrant but had been turned away, Tulsa CBS affiliate KOTV reported.
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“This was all setup, so they could do this and embarrass me and arrest me when I showed up for a hearing,” said Durbin, the station reported.
The warrant stemmed from an incident in the spring when he allegedly shoved a security guard blocking his way into City Hall after allegedly refusing to go through the security process, the news outlet reported.
Durbin has filed several lawsuits against the city and Mayor G.T. Bynum over the release of city records and violations of the open meetings act. The lawyer says that he has been “fighting against government corruption for some time,” the news station reported.
The city of Tulsa declined to comment, citing pending litigation.
The Oklahoma Bar Association filed a complaint in the state’s Supreme Court against Durbin on Friday, alleging professional misconduct, threats, and hostile and unprofessional behavior.
He “has become a bully w/in the Cannabis industry & expects people w/in the industry to do what he says when he says & do it how he says. Mr. Durbin claims to be ‘the expert of cannabis’ but in reality he has an over inflated ego that makes him think that everyone should or does worship him,” a grievance in 2019 from a cannabis industry group alleges, according to the complaint obtained by Law&Crime.
In his written response to the Bar Association on May 4, 2020, Durbin denied the allegations, saying he was exercising his rights to “voice my political opinion” and denied he made a Facebook post that threatened to financially ruin the person making the allegation and members of her group.
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