20060912 KDDC City officials resign over spouse’s porn on the Web

Mayor, Police Chief and Councilman resign over Chief’s wife’s porn pictures on the Internet.

Posted by Kevin Dayhoff September 12^th, 2006 – with some hesitancy…

This just in, according to KTEN Channel 10, a web site by the name of “Strippers Online,” and many other news sources; the Snyder Oklahoma Police Chief, Mayor and a City Councilman have resigned in light of the resulting controversy involving the Police Chief’s wife appearing nude on an internet web site.

What little institutional reverence I still possess couldn’t stop me from posting this story. I could have done so much more with the following; however, I was held back by my shriveled, but never-the-less, functional sense of propriety, such as it is.

I am, after-all, a pasty-faced, overweight, caffeinated, vacuous, mild mannered college drop out, hilltop hillbilly farmer artist and pajama blogger - with no leadership skills and decades of unaccounted-for time, fighting off the forces of poverty, the intellectually stunted and the artistically disinclined.

And of course, the fear of a reprimand from my wife, my mother and several other dozen friends, weighed heavily as I worked this post up. Good friends - who have a knack of telling me when I’m acting like a jerk.

Meanwhile, back to the exciting story at hand. Here goes. I’m goin’ in.

Now you may wonder, couldn’t the chief ask his wife not to do such a thing?

Oh, did I mention his wife is 6-foot-three and weighs 300 pounds.

Well, I’ll tell ya what - - You tell her what she can and can’t do. I’m going bowling.

Published accounts report, “Earlier Friday, the chief said the whole issue involving his 43-year-old wife had been blown out of proportion… "People in this country do what she does on a daily basis," he said.

"It's absolutely ludicrous. Makes no sense at all.” … He said he has had lengthy discussions with his wife about the photos but does not tell her what to do. "My wife is 6-foot-3 and weighs 300 pounds," he said. "If there is somebody that thinks they can control her, have at it. I have tried for 11 years and haven't been able to.”

People in this country may or may not do what she does on a daily basis, but it is certainly not the behavior expected of a community leader.

One news source said, “Some local residents called for Chief Ozmun's resignation, but the City Council decided the pictures were protected by the First Amendment.”

"As Mayor and council of the city of Snyder ... we do not endorse pornography; however, we do endorse an individual's rights under the First Amendment of freedom and expression." But the bad feelings over the photos continued.”

Gee, one can only wonder why the bad feelings persisted?

It’s good to see the city council standing behind the mayor - - especially on such a principled issue. LOL

In one published account, mayor “Moore says he finds nothing wrong or illegal with what Ozmun's wife was doing and he doesn't want to work in what he calls ‘a community like this.’”

Okay. Hmmm. “A community like this?”

The pictures were referred to as appearing on “adult site;” but “They were vulgar," Larry Dismore, owner of Larry's Drugs in Snyder said of the photos, some showing the chief's wife with an American flag draped off her shoulder.”

Hey – at least she’s patriotic.

“Tod Ozmun, 34, chief since January 2005, said he first met his wife 11 years ago. He said she is his former police partner.”

Oh, get out of here. A former police partner. They sure don’t make police partners the way they used to.

But wait its gets better. Apparently the pictures were circulated throughout the town. Can you imagine? Wouldn’t such a thing get the tongue’s wagging in Westminster.

Then again, it would give the usual suspects, who show up at each common council meeting in Westminster, something substantive to complain about - - instead of the incredibly mindless drool for which they are so unpleasant at each and every council meeting ad nauseam.

The Police Chief’s wife, his former police partner, “Doris Ozmun, who was paroled in March 2005 after spending two years in the state prison system on drug-related charges, has an unlisted telephone number and has not been at her place of employment to comment.

She earlier told The Oklahoman she had decided to remove the photos from the Internet. "I just don't understand," she told the newspaper. "I could if I had done something illegal, or if I had murdered someone. But this is amazing. "You know what I call this? I call this a witch-hunt."

Kiowa County District Attorney John Wampler has asked the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation to look into the matter. Wampler has said the photos would not be protected under the First Amendment if they could be shown to meet the legal threshold for impermissible obscenity.

"In my opinion, the photos that I was shown are obscene based on local community standards," he said. "Whether a court would agree may be a different matter."

Well, this sure made last night’s Westminster Common Council meeting look pretty boring.

Kevin Dayhoff writes from Westminster Maryland USA.
E-mail him at: kdayhoff@carr.org
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