Uproar in Shawnee

To staffers on the small (circ. 11,456) Shawnee, Okla. News-Star, there were unmistakable signs of a quiet invasion. Bootleggers and gamblers, driven from Oklahoma City 40 miles to the east, were settling in Shawnee, where local police were lax in enforcing the state's dry laws. The News-Star, Shawnee's only daily newspaper, had been as lax as the police. Then the paper got a stunning reason for changing its ways.

News-Star Reporter Jim Bradshaw, 32, went to County Sheriff Jim Harrington's office to find out why a known bootlegger for whom there was an arrest warrant had not been picked up. In a heated argument with Reporter Bradshaw, Sheriff Harrington knocked him down. With the help of a deputy, he punched and roughed up Bradshaw until a state-highway trooper stopped him. Then the sheriff jailed Reporter Bradshaw, bruised and stunned, on charges of "resisting arrest and abusing an officer."

After putting up bail to get Reporter Bradshaw out, News-Star Editor N. B. ("Beachy") Musselman went to work on Harrington. Said a Page One editor's note: "The News-Star has never published the criminal record of Sheriff Jim Harrington before because a man's past is not always indicative of his future actions. However, in the light of [what has happened], the News-Star feels an obligation to publish his past in full. We regret not having done so before." The record, spread across two columns of the paper, showed that Sheriff Harrington had been arrested three times for selling and transporting liquor. After his last arrest in 1940, he got a suspended sentence of a year and a day, and had his right to vote revoked.

The news of Harrington's criminal record caused an uproar in Shawnee. A local printer donated his services to print up grand-jury petition forms, and overnight more than 350 indignant Shawneeans signed petitions to call a special grand jury (only 100 signatures are required).

This week, as Shawnee got ready to file its petition for a grand jury to investigate Sheriff Harrington's regime, the local county attorney started action to challenge the sheriff's right to hold office. He also asked Oklahoma Governor Raymond Gary to help clean up bootlegging and gambling in Shawnee, and the FBI began an investigation to see if Reporter Bradshaw's beating was a violation of federal civil rights laws. As a result of its belated expose, the News-Star had also learned a lesson: the campaign to clean up Shawnee should not have waited until the beating of a staffer proved how bad things really were.

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