SNYDER, Okla. -- The police chief, the mayor and a councilman from a small, southwestern Oklahoma town resigned Friday, saying they were fed up with the public attention and criticism they received after the chief's wife appeared in various nude poses on a Web site and the photos began circulating around town.
"This has turned into a media circus," Chief Tod Ozmun said Friday. "I don't feel like me staying in office is going to benefit my department or my staff. This has turned into a mess. This is ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous."
Dozens of local residents had called for Ozmun's resignation, but the City Council decided last week that Doris Ozmun's adult pictures were protected by the First Amendment. A prosecutor had called for an investigation.
The chief read a statement from Clifford Barnard, the councilman who resigned:
"The citizens' concerns that we were not enforcing religious and moral beliefs was very heartfelt and I don't want to be associated with their moral or religious beliefs because I've never read anywhere in the Good Book that the Lord wanted us to persecute those that did not hold the same morals or values."
Mayor Dale Moore also resigned.
"I think this is wrong and I won't put up with it," he said. "I don't want to work in a community like this."
Shirely Anderson, who served as Snyder's mayor for five years until 1995 and whose husband, Billy Ray Anderson, was mayor for eight years before that, has been critical of the chief and his wife.
"They have no morals as far as I'm concerned," said Shirley Anderson. "That's the whole thing I think - morals. You should have respectable people in office. They need to go somewhere else where this is accepted."
Earlier Friday, the chief said the whole issue involving his 43-year-old wife had been blown out of proportion.
"People in this country do what she does on a daily basis," he said. "It's absolutely ludicrous. Makes no sense at all."
He said he has had lengthy discussions with his wife about the photos but does not tell her what to do.
"My wife is 6-foot-3 and weighs 300 pounds," he said. "If there is somebody that thinks they can control her, have at it. I have tried for 11 years and haven't been able to."
Doris Ozmun is known worldwide for her work as a plus-sized model on a pornographic Web site.
"This came to light because some of the people in town went onto the Internet to download pictures of her and started passing them out around the citizens here in town," the town's former mayor said.
Moore said he based his decision not to fire the police chief on what's best for Snyder -- either to keep a chief who many believe doesn't share their morals or to fire a man who's keeping residents safe. That decision was to keep Ozmun as police chief.
"We will take no action on Chief Ozmun," Moore said earlier this week. "He was not involved in these, and he has broken no laws."
"He's done more drug arrests, solved more crimes than anybody else in town has ever done," he added.
Resident Bryan Norton said he wants the chief fired.
"When our kids come home from school telling us that the chief's wife is a porno queen, how do you answer that?" said Norton.
Last week, the Ozmuns agreed to sit down with Eyewitness News 5 for an exclusive interview, but their attorney advised against it on Tuesday.
Tod Ozmun, 34, chief since January 2005, said he first met his wife 11 years ago. He said she is his former police partner.
Doris Ozmun was paroled in March 2005 after spending two years in the state prison system on drug-related charges. She released a statement in her defense:
"Hi, my name is Doris Ozmun. I am a 43-year-old adult model. I am in no way affiliated with the Snyder Police Department other than the fact I am married to the chief of police, Tod Ozmun. The Web site I am featured on is in no way affiliated with the Snyder Police Department nor the city of Snyder.
"I have done nothing illegal, and it is my First Amendment right of the Constitution. You do not have to like or agree with what I do for me to be protected by the First Amendment right."
