There are three candidates for Mayes County Sheriff: Albert McKee, Tommy M. Parker and Mike Reed. All three candidates are Democrats. The primary election is June 26. If a runoff election is needed, it will be Aug. 28.

Albert McKee, 51, is a Mayes County Sheriff’s Deputy. He was a late entrant to the sheriff’s race after Sheriff Frank Cantey decided last month not to seek a third term. McKee said he brings the most diversified experience to the sheriff’s office, having been in law enforcement 26 years, 10 of those years at the sheriff’s office.  

McKee was a policeman and later police chief in Adair for 15 years prior to coming to work at the sheriff’s office.  He said the biggest challenge for the next sheriff is methamphetamines. McKee said Rep. Ben Sherrer’s bill that would have required a prescription for pseudoephedrine, “would have knocked it out for the time being anyway.” McKee said there is no known way to make methamphetamines without pseudoephedrine.

Marijuana is the other big drug in the area, although McKee said law enforcement hasn’t seen as much of it as in years past.  McKee took part in a big drug bust a few weeks ago.

McKee said his most interesting case as a deputy was the Michael Cobb case.

On April 28, 2009, there was a house fire near Osage School. In the house, Michael Cobb’s body was found. “We believed at the time it was a homicide. We made one arrest in 14 months. Eight months after that, we were able to make an arrest on the wife.” McKee said investigators knew it was a homicide by seeing how the house burned. They knew it was arson. The fire had been started in several places and it was a quick fire. McKee said officers were able to arrest the suspects based on interviews and obtaining a court order for phone records and text messages.

McKee said that on drug cases, the sheriff’s department is able to arrest people rather quickly. On burglaries, the best thing that can happen is to catch the culprit within a week, McKee said. McKee said drugs play into crime in Mayes County between 70 to 80 percent of the time.

McKee has a 12-point agenda that he wants to implement if elected.  He wants to do ethics training for his staff once a year. This would include all deputies, jailers and staff, yearly training concerning the mentally ill, random employee drug testing, arrange schedules to have the highest number of deputies patrolling the county day and night, hold meetings with the public on a regular basis to get community feedback, implement a neighborhood watch program, apply for grants to fund programs and purchases, review procedures in the county jail to make sure it is being run efficiently, review all policies as needed, maintain a good working relationship with all other agencies and law enforcement, have advanced training on child abuse, narcotics and burglary cases and establish a drug task force to work with police departments throughout the county.



Tommy Parker, 54, says he is running for Mayes County Sheriff because he believes in the founding principles of the republic and he wants to replace arrogance in government that “self appoint and issue mandates without input from the citizens that put them in that office and it is time to put that to an end.”

Parker wants the citizens’ input through neighborhood crime watches and a citizens’ review board made up of residents from the towns and rural areas. Parker says that violent crime is a problem which needs to be addressed by the next sheriff. Drugs and terrorism are areas of concern to Parker.

He said he brings training, experience and technology to the office of sheriff.  He said Sherrer’s bill that would have required a prescription to obtain pseudoephedrine was a good one. “Anything you can do through, as an administrator, through legislation is a gigantic plus. It’s funny to me that throughout the year you see one or two drug busts but then at election time you see a whole bunch of drug busts.”

Parker said there are only two kinds of people who cook meth, “the ma and pa cookers and the mega cookers or super cookers.” The “supercookers are supplying many veins of the meth.” He said that while combating meth is a drain on man hours for the sheriff’s department, he believes that the more small dealers the sheriff’s office catches, the closer they come to the big dealers and then the sheriff’s office can confiscate their property.  “That’s a pay day that makes up for the time of busting the smaller dealers.”  

Parker said in addition to combating meth, the potential for terrorism in Mayes County is something that concerns him. Parker said terrorism could strike here as it could strike anywhere else.  

Parker cites his experience as a Pryor firefighter for 11 years. He has been a reserve officer for the Pryor Police Department. He has worked for the state recreation department, including working for the Grand River Dam Authority for the past 30 years, almost 20 as the assistant Lake Patrol Chief of Lake Hudson. He said he was offered the chief’s job or the superintendent for Homeland Security. He took the Homeland Security post.

Parker said that Cantey had brought things up to, “a pretty good level when you are looking at equipment.”

Parker said that while he loves the people in emergency services, he wants to dissolve what he calls “the buddy system.”  Parker said that is a system in which people are rewarded based on who they know rather than their qualifications. Parker said he wants to be a servant of the citizens. He wants a tracking system for all the calls that come into the sheriff’s office, then track the deputy assigned to that call. Parker said he used that system while at GRDA.

Parker said he doesn’t want to clean house at the sheriff’s office for the sake of cleaning house. If elected, he plans to do an audit of the office, an assessment and evaluation of the personnel in the office. Regarding the jail system, he said there have been a lot of problems with drugs in the jail and that it must be run more efficiently.  Parker said drug problems in the jail are as recent as a few weeks ago.

Parker said the promises made to the public by other candidates for sheriff can’t be kept, given the budget for the sheriff’s office.



Mike Reed lives in Locust Grove with his wife and children. He is 43. Reed said that he is running for sheriff because Mayes County is home, he was born and raised here and he wants to do what is best for the county.

“People in leadership positions need to have integrity and honor and do what is right.”  There are some who wear a badge and they are just bullies. I want our deputies to work with the people setting a good ethical, moral standard. I want my kids to look up to them,” Reed said.

Reed, who would be one of the youngest sheriffs in the state, said he looks at this as a “long term position” and that he, “didn’t want to wait for retirement to do this.”

Reed worked for the Pryor Police Department for 10 years. He went to work for the United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Service Division for 11 years where he handled financial contracts with various cities, counties and towns in animal-related issues from preventing cattle diseases to bird removal.

In October 2008, Reed went to work as a reserve deputy for the Mayes County Sheriff’s Office. In April of 2009, Reed said he told Cantey that he planned to run for sheriff in a few years. Reed said that on Nov. 19, 2010, Cantey met with Reed and asked him if he planned on running for sheriff in 2012. Reed said he still planned to run.

Reed claims, “On the Friday before Christmas, Frank (Sheriff Cantey) met with me again in his office and he told me he planned to run again for another term and that I had to leave the sheriff’s office.”

Reed went to work for a friend who was building a shooting range south of Pryor where he remains employed.

Reed said he wants to be a proactive sheriff. “This should not be the biggest county for methamphetamines.”  He would divide the sheriff’s office into three districts with deputies working the beat in those areas. Reed said this division would cut down the response time for the sheriff’s office to already have deputies patrolling the area.

Another idea Reed has is to create a drug task force to combat the methamphetamine problem. He would like to have the sheriff’s office assign a school resource officer to provide security and train his office annually on procedures in the event of a school shooting.  

As far as the jail, Reed said he would work to make it drug free. “It is inexcusable to have drugs in the jail and there have been; it’s public record.”

Reed said Rep. Sherrer’s bill that would require a prescription to obtain pseudoephedrine in pill form, was similar to one Oregon passed and the rate of methamphetamine cases in the courts dropped by 96 percent in one year.