Oklahoma City code inspectors, facing no response from out-of-state apartment owners and no help from the state's Department of Environmental Quality, cited the complex's employees 45 times while 38,000 gallons of sewage poured into Broadlawn Lake.

The sewage spill at The Retreat at Lakeside, 5304 Willow Cliff Road, lasted for several months and the clean-up is continuing more than a year after it was first reported. The former property managers, Katie Koppes and Latoia Smith, meanwhile have spent the past year getting citations they received off their records and even hired their own attorney — all because the city chose to go after them instead of the owners at Cooper Street Capital, a private equity firm based in Aspen, Colorado, and run by president Branden Cooper.

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