Jenks Construction Company Owner Frustrated Over Property Thefts

A Green Country man is fed up after thieves have stolen high-dollar items from his construction sites over and over again.

The owner of Southstone Construction said he can't get the police to pay enough attention to property crimes and it's costing him big time.

Kyle Ray said everyone is hiring right now, and he wishes people would just get a job instead of stealing from hard working Oklahomans.

Ray said property crimes have gotten out of control.

"Once they find it, they get at most a slap on the wrist,” said Kyle Ray, Southstone Construction.

Ray said there needs to be harsher penalties.

"TPD, they literally told me 'that's a property crime, we do not care, that's what insurance is for,'” said Ray.

His construction company has been hit many times over the last few years at sites all over Green Country and a lot of the times, it’s in Tulsa.

"We pay them as taxpayers to protect us and to serve us and they're not doing didly about property crimes. I don't know why property crimes are not on a higher level of priority,” said Ray.

He said someone stole more than $140,000 worth of equipment last summer. He said thieves have taken trailers, building materials, rebar, and vehicles.

Ray said an ex-employee stole the same skid-steer twice within a few weeks and again, the third time, just last month.

"I recovered it the first two times, but this third time he got smart and drove away from the scene, disabled the GPS equipment that we put on all of our equipment and got away,” said Ray. "That guy is probably out stealing from other contractors around town."

He said he's had issues communicating with several law enforcement agencies.

"It's so frustrating and I just want to go knock on the door and execute some of the vigilante justice, but now at that point you know, I'm a criminal and they're gonna come after me,” said Ray.

We contacted Tulsa Police but haven't heard back. However, last year's stats show Tulsa had more than 20,000 property crimes in 2022, which would be thousands of cases per detective in that unit.