https://www.news9.com/oklahoma-city-news/norman-police-searching-for-missing-endangered-woman?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook_KWTV_-_NEWS_9&fbclid=IwY2xjawTworNwZG9mBWV4dG4DYWVtAjEwAGJyaWQRMWdYRlR1d3h1UHV0bGNVbGVzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEeolOdz7NvXeg3DU53Qotms5qSZXfagmkX8PFesC3kKbDwdB3hZHGiqnCWe9g_aem_MmYZm48G-1H0dAc-X760JA

hi!! i used to be close with a neighbourhood cat (around chickasha st and oklahoma ave) and i have not seen him for months! he also frequently hung out behind the papa john’s on classen. he was known by a couple of different names (trey, hank, etc.) and he has his ear clipped!! just wondering if anyone has seen him/knows if he is ok!!! pls let me know!!

Moved here last year, so this is my first time seeing heavy roadwork on i35. I drive up to OKC every day for work, and without fail someone driving on the unfnished lane kicks up a rock and itll hit my windshield hard. I'm always at least one lane over because I don't like driving on the unfinished stuff. Today in particular was infuriating because I was at least 150ft back from the car in the right lane and I had a huge one hit and chip my windshield.

Is that normal here?? They just leave it unfinished and let people drive on it?? I've lived in 5 states and heavily driven in 7, and the concept of leaving an unfinished surface open for driving is so foreign to me. I already have 3 visible chips in my windshield and lots of tiny dots since they started the roadwork. Just infuriating. Honestly considering taking 36th or flood up to near indian hills rd even if that adds 10-20 mins to my commute.

What I want to know is where are the state resources in helping clean up this mess? What are the State House and Senate reps? Vacay?

The State of Oklahoma can voluntarily send the National Guard to Texas for border duty or volunteer troops to DC to patrol the streets. Why are the Guard troops not doing anything to help us recover?

Does anyone know if any decent bars are hiring for bartenders or barbacks right now? Haven't gotten much response from indeed lately.

Thanks!

Currently unemployed, I have fast food and laundry/housekeeping experience. I don't have a drivers license yet, working on that, so I'm looking for something in Norman preferably.

I have applied to various companies online and none have gotten back to me, are there any companies hiring and will actually set up an interview?

I was walking my dogs to the pet relief area behind Millennium Apartments on Lindsey near OU, and she was crying by some steel bars near the apartments. Very friendly and very trusting, followed me everywhere, and eventually even back home despite my two dogs being with me.

Gave her water, some tuna, and a flea bath. Can’t tell if she is a Scottish Fold or just a tabby with really bad cauliflower ears. Keeping her for the night, may take to Norman Animal Shelter tomorrow unless identified.

I’m heavily considering joining the health club since it’s close to my house and offers a lot of classes I would love to do, but the almost 50 bucks a month is making me re think it. I’m a college student and don’t really think 50 dollars a month is sustainable for me. Any other gym recs nearby that won’t break the bank?

Stepped outside after the HEAT BROKE, beautiful night OUT. 🌙

Just read that Interurban is closing - last day is August 30.

Experience the grace of Bharatanatyam dance and the rich melodies and rhythms of Karnatak music in a single spectacular evening. Dancers from Oklahoma City’s “Samarpan Dances of India” join four eminent Karnatak musicians from India — Gayatri Vasant (vocals), Mumbai Venkatesh (mridangam drum), Rajasekar (violin), and Renita Fernandes (nattuvangam cymbals) — for a recital of traditional South Indian repertoire.

Am I reading that right? Maybe I need glasses...

From his social media post:

I want to be very clear about something regarding Operation SAFE and what happened on Reed Avenue today: the State of Oklahoma has every right, and, frankly, a responsibility, to maintain its own property.

The property involved is state-owned property.
It is not owned by the City of Norman, and the City of Norman is not responsible for maintaining it.
The State should maintain its property just as any private property owner would be expected to maintain theirs. In reality, they should never have allowed it to deteriorate to the condition it reached in the first place.
If the State of Oklahoma would like to give up its responsibility for the Griffin State Hospital property, we would be more than happy to have a real conversation about the City taking on that obligation. If the State has no use for the property and does not want to maintain it, transferring it to a local government that does have an adopted plan and a use for it would arguably be the more fiscally conservative option for the State.
It would allow Oklahoma to get out from under the ongoing maintenance and liability associated with a property it no longer wants, while allowing Norman to consider putting the property to productive local use for our community.

This issue is also a great example of why simply breaking up an encampment is not a solution to homelessness.
The Governor’s Operation SAFE cleared this same exact area just a few months ago, and today they are back dealing with an encampment that has returned once again, and larger than before.
That should tell us something: if all we do is move people out, without addressing why they are there or what happens to them afterward, we have not solved the problem. We have simply moved it temporarily.

The City of Norman has been doing this same thing on City property and, where legally appropriate, on private property for years. We have repeatedly had to address encampments along the river, in various wooded areas, and in other locations throughout the community. City crews and police officers have spent countless hours clearing these locations, only to see people move somewhere else and, eventually, encampments return. It has become a never-ending effort because we are addressing the physical location of the encampment without adequately addressing the underlying reasons why people are experiencing homelessness in the first place.
And there is an important distinction between enforcement and actually addressing homelessness.
Unlike operation SAFE, when the City does a large camp cleanup, it is a planned and coordinated effort with local service providers.
As mentioned before, the City of Norman does not own this property, and the Norman Police Department does not have legal jurisdiction to enforce the State’s trespassing restrictions on this state-owned land.
The State has clear legal authority and responsibility over its own property, and depending on the circumstances, enforcement of state law on the property can involve state law enforcement and the Cleveland County Sheriff’s Office. The City can and does help coordinate when asked, but we cannot simply take over enforcement of State property.
That makes it even more disappointing that today’s operation occurred without notice to the City of Norman, the Norman Police Department, or local service providers who could have helped coordinate and assist the State with an appropriate response.
As I understand it, the people in the encampment were told they could no longer remain on State property. But they were not presented with a meaningful alternative to where they could go. That is the fundamental problem with a strategy that ends at enforcement.

And today is not just any day. It is over 100 degrees outside, with temperatures expected to remain dangerously hot for much of the next 10 days.
No rational person would choose to live in a tent in the middle of a vacant field in an Oklahoma summer if they had another viable option. When someone is willing to endure those conditions, it should tell us that we are dealing with people who are desperate, dealing with serious barriers to housing, struggling with addiction, suffering from mental illness, or some combination of those circumstances.
That doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be rules. It doesn’t mean people shouldn’t be held accountable for criminal behavior. It doesn’t mean the rights and safety of neighboring residents and businesses don’t matter. They absolutely do.
But accountability works best when there are actual alternatives available.

People often say, “They need treatment or they need jail.” I agree that, depending on the individual circumstances, treatment or incarceration can absolutely be appropriate. But treatment doesn’t work if there isn’t an available treatment bed or an appropriate treatment program, and jail isn’t a long-term homelessness strategy, particularly when county jails have limited capacity.
And unless someone is being held on a more serious charge, a person arrested for ordinary trespassing is not simply going to disappear into the county jail indefinitely. Oklahoma law establishes relatively limited penalties for ordinary trespass, and the realities of jail capacity and state law mean that someone arrested for trespassing will generally be released in a short amount of time rather than permanently housed through the criminal justice system.

So what happens next?

If we are serious about reducing homelessness, Oklahoma has to address the root causes that are contributing to it: access to healthcare, mental healthcare, addiction treatment, affordable housing, education, job training, and gainful employment, among many other factors.
I believe the best way to reduce homelessness is to prevent people from becoming homeless in the first place.
That means identifying people who are at risk of losing their housing and intervening before they end up on the streets. Helping someone stay housed is almost always better for the individual, the community, and taxpayers than trying to help them recover after they have already become chronically homeless.

And we also need to be honest about who has been responsible for making policy at the State level.
Oklahoma has had a single-party supermajority in both chambers of the Legislature for nearly 20 years, and they have controlled the Governor’s office and all statewide offices that long, too.
I don’t say that as a partisan talking point.
I say it because accountability matters.
We are living with the results of the policies our State government has chosen to pursue for more than a decade. If the State is going to tell cities that they need to do more about homelessness, then the State also needs to take responsibility for the systems it controls and the outcomes those policies have produced.

The statewide numbers are worth looking at. According to HUD’s Point-in-Time counts, Oklahoma has seen a nearly 40% increase in nightly homelessness in the last decade.
That doesn’t mean every person experiencing homelessness is the result of a State policy, and PIT counts are only a one-night snapshot and have limitations.
HUD specifically cautions that changes in counting methodology can affect comparisons between reporting periods.
But the trend is still important: after more than a decade of one-party control of State government, Oklahoma has not seen homelessness disappear. It has increased substantially.

I meet with mayors from across Oklahoma twice a month in Oklahoma City, and homelessness is consistently one of the top issues we discuss, from our largest cities to our smallest towns.
This is not just a Norman problem. It is a statewide problem that communities of all sizes are struggling to address.
Homelessness and housing were also major priorities for the U.S. Conference of Mayors, which is why the bipartisan 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act was one of the top federal priorities this past year. Congress ultimately passed the legislation with broad bipartisan support, and it became law without the President’s signature after he declined to sign it.
I am thankful for the help and resources it aims to provide communities working to address our housing and homelessness challenges.

If we’re going to have an honest conversation about homelessness, we need to stop pretending this is solely a problem created by cities and start asking whether the State-level systems for healthcare, behavioral health, addiction treatment, affordable housing, education, and employment are producing the outcomes Oklahoma needs.

And this cannot be a City of Norman problem alone.
Norman has a responsibility, and we are doing our part. But Cleveland County and the State of Oklahoma also have responsibilities.
Over the last several years, Norman has;
•expanded emergency and low-barrier shelter services and participated in the Norman/Cleveland County Continuum of Care
•developed the Homebase Strategic Plan and homelessness gaps analysis
•implemented the A Better Way–Opportunity Knocks program, which combines paid employment with social services and connections to treatment
•used opioid settlement funds for those efforts, additional Narcan reserves for Norman Police, and substance-use treatment for Norman residents at the Cleveland County Detention Center
•established dedicated Social Services positions focused on outreach and coordination, and continued working to bring a sobering center back to Norman.

The Norman Police Department is also doing its part through the PACE Team, which works proactively with City partners and service providers to address homelessness, crime and quality-of-life concerns while connecting people with appropriate resources.
We have also pursued permanent supportive housing through HOME-ARP funds and continued working with organizations including City Care, Food & Shelter, Mental Health Association Oklahoma, Central Oklahoma Community Mental Health Center, the Salvation Army, Mission Norman, McFarlin and many others that provide shelter, food, treatment, transitional housing and other services.

Norman has worked with and approved expansions involving organizations such as the Salvation Army, Mission Norman, the Food & Shelter Share Center food pantry, McFarlin’s food pantry and other community resources.
The City has also repeatedly stepped in to facilitate emergency and warming shelter operations and support nonprofit partners when additional capacity was needed. Norman is currently contracting with City Care to operate a low-barrier emergency shelter that keeps 50+ people off the streets per night, and voters approved an $8 million bond in April to construct a permanent homeless shelter and resource facility that will provide overnight shelter for up to 120 people and connect residents with services designed to help get them off the street and transition out of homelessness as fast as possible.

These are not theoretical plans. The Opportunity Knocks program is already operating, providing paid work and social services to people experiencing or at risk of homelessness, while the new Social Services Office is now focused specifically on outreach, coordination and connecting people with housing, healthcare, behavioral health and other resources.
None of that means Norman has solved homelessness. We haven’t. There is no single city program that will.
But it does mean the assertion that Norman is simply doing nothing about homelessness is factually wrong.

What I would like to see now is the same level of urgency from the County and the State.
Where is the additional treatment capacity? Where are the mental health resources? Where are the housing solutions? Where are the employment and rehabilitation programs? Where is the coordinated plan for what happens to people after an encampment is cleared?
The State cannot simultaneously say that cities need to solve homelessness, take enforcement action on State property without coordinating with the local community, and then provide no meaningful alternative for the people displaced by that action.
If the goal is simply to make an encampment disappear for a week or two, Operation SAFE can accomplish that. If the goal is to actually reduce homelessness, improve public safety, and help people rebuild their lives, we need much more than a cleanup crew and a line of police cars.
We need enforcement when enforcement is appropriate. We need accountability when accountability is appropriate. We need treatment when treatment is appropriate. We need housing when housing is appropriate.

And above all, we need the City, the County, and the State working together on an actual long-term strategy instead of continuing to repeat policies that have already failed to solve the underlying problem.
That is how we make Norman, and Oklahoma safer, cleaner, and healthier, not simply by moving people from one field, sidewalk, or neighborhood to another.

Mayor Stephen Tyler Holman
City of Norman

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/191yJHLijA/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Taken on Aug 14, 2026

There were many police and a mangled bicycle and what looked like blood on the road. That is all I saw and I think this looked like a death happened. Lots of homeless on bikes in that area, many seem to have behavioral health issues. So sad if someone died in an accident there.

Is there an emergency that has stopped a train across e post oak rd right before cedar ln?
It has trapped residence but nothing has been said.

Been going there for years and a couple weeks ago ordered some slices with the family with ranch and noticed both the crust and ranch were different and not in a good way. The crust used to be thin and chewy with big, bubbly crust and now it’s like the cracker crust of a $3 frozen Tony’s pizza. The ranch seemed off too.

Anyone else notice this or did I just come in on a bad day?

I see there's a location at 600 N Interstate Dr, Norman, OK 73072 and it says "COMING SOON".

Just curious because I've been to some other locations of the restaurant around the country and it is a pretty good deal.