Tyron Garth arrived at Tulsa’s municipal court at 7:45 a.m. Friday. He was a man on a mission hoping to clear his 18 warrants as part of the city’s Clear Your Warrants event.
By noon, temperatures would reach the lower to mid-90s. But Garth, in a sea of more than 1,000 people, kept waiting. When 3 p.m. hit along with near triple-digit temperatures, he was turned away.
“We was here at 7:45, 8 o’clock, and we didn’t get anything taken care of because of the lines,” Garth told The Eagle Friday. “We was just at the front of the line. We just made it, and they just closed it at 3 o’clock.”
The sheer number of people who showed up to take advantage of the city’s offer caught officials by surprise. They were expecting between 300 and 400 participants based on pre-registrations. More than 1,200 showed up.
Because of the overwhelming response, the city began scheduling appointments through September about three-quarters of the way through the day. But some attendees chose to remain in line in hopes of being seen.
The slow wait times made some folks agitated, while others couldn’t stand the heat.
“I heard a few people actually passed out too … it was pretty rough,” attendee D’Angelo Armstead told The Eagle. Armstead waited five hours to see court staff.
Members of Mizsound Production Management, a nonprofit focused on youth development, handed out water as the line grew in tandem with the temperatures. By 11 a.m., they had already made eight trips to get more water, according to Kim Kellum, a member of the organization.
“We were just picking up water all day long,” Kellum said. “We didn’t think it was going to rain, but it did. However, we planned for it to be a hot day, so we had water the entire day.”
Some, like Armstead, were lucky. He showed up around 8 a.m. but wasn’t seen until 1 p.m. He finally left the court two hours later after getting his warrants cleared.
“Once your name finally gets called, the process is pretty quick. The line (was the problem) and I feel like they were going a little slow,” he said. “It was all over the place. People cutting in line … passing out, extremely hot.”
The last time Tulsa hosted a Clear Your Warrants event in March 2024, 580 people took up the city on its offer, resulting in 1,043 warrants being eliminated. As of June 2026, the city reported 129,579 outstanding warrants with $5.8 million owed in fines.
After Friday’s event, 759 people were able to clear their name — amounting to 2,286 cases.
For Garth, who was rescheduled for later in August, the waiting period to clear warrants continues.
“Some people got help, but a lot of people are still in jeopardy of going to jail,” Garth said. “I feel like if they do events like this, they need to do it at places (like) the Expo Center. Why be at the courthouse? Go to a place where you can get everybody. You know you got thousands of people with warrants in Tulsa.”
Geneice Youngblood drove 45 minutes from Broken Arrow after hearing about the event at the last second.
She showed up in the afternoon and narrowly missed her window to clear some speeding tickets.
“My warrants are very old. They’re from 2007. So I’m hurt. I have a speeding ticket, and I’ve been trying to get it off for the longest time. So they told me that I can come back Monday,” she said.
As the event came to a close, 475 people were rescheduled for future court dates. The city told The Eagle they are evaluating every aspect of the event, including participant flow, scheduling and venue options to determine how it can improve the experience if similar events are held in the future.
Ismael Lele is a Report for America corps member and writes about business in Tulsa for The Oklahoma Eagle. Your donation to match our Report for America grant helps keep him writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting this link.
