Tulsa Sound Drummer Who Helped Launch The Gap Band Tells the Story of His Turn from Black Panther to Police Officer in New Memoir
Trilogy Christian Publishing releases From Panther to Police: My Life Story, Volume 1 (1946-2006) by Apostle Roscoe J. Dabney III on October 13, 2026
TULSA, Okla. (September 8, 2026) Trilogy Christian Publishing, the publishing affiliate of the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), announces the October 13, 2026 release of From Panther to Police, the first volume of the life story of Apostle Roscoe J. Dabney III. The 474-page memoir traces one man's road from the drum kit of Tulsa's fabled music scene to the Black Panther Party, and finally to a life of faith and a badge, all against the backdrop of the north Tulsa community that rose from the ashes of the 1921 Race Massacre.
Born in 1946 to a Tuskegee Airman and raised by his mother in the Greenwood-area neighborhoods of north Tulsa after his parents' marriage collapsed, Dabney was playing drums professionally by age fifteen. Through the 1960s and early 1970s he anchored the rhythm section of two of north Tulsa's working R&B bands, The Magnificent Seven and The Outback, house bands at the Rose Room and fixtures on the same stages where Ray Charles, James Brown, and Tina Turner passed through. It was Dabney who went to the home of Church Elder Orlando Wilson and Sister Irma Wilson to ask that their son Ronnie be allowed to play trumpet in his band, and who later brought in Ronnie's younger brother Charlie. The Wilson brothers went on to found The Gap Band, named for Greenwood, Archer, and Pine Streets. Dabney rehearsed with the group before their move to Los Angeles and turned down their offer to go with them as their drummer, a decision he says saved his life.
That world is the subject of a July 2026 feature from The Church Studio, Leon Russell's former Tulsa recording home, which places Dabney among the foundational figures of the Tulsa Sound. His own connection to the building runs deep: he later rented the house next door that once served as the Shelter Records office, and in the mid-1980s he kept an office and studio on the second floor of the same church, then known as Graystone Studio, where he says three miracles took place during the winter of 1985 and 1986.
Music was only part of the story. Dabney marched with CORE in Tulsa's 1964 civil rights demonstrations and was arrested twenty-two times in a single year. He served as a United States Marine in Vietnam and came home carrying wounds no one could see. Back in Tulsa he became captain of defense for the local Black Panther Party chapter, and the years that followed were marked by alcohol, drugs, and a night around 1980 when, by his account, only a hand from heaven turned a bullet fired at point-blank range into the ceiling instead of into a young mother and her child.
The turnaround came in 1983, when Dabney was born again in the bathroom of the house he shared with a girlfriend. He was ordained in 1985 under Apostle Grace B. Tucker at the House of Prayer Rescue Home, put his television production skills, honed since 1974, to work producing Christian programming on Tulsa's Channel 47, and in 1990 joined the Tulsa Police Department Chaplaincy Program. Volunteer chaplaincies with the San Clemente Police Department and Orange County Sheriff's Department in California followed. Then, on September 15, 2004, at age fifty-eight, the former Black Panther was sworn in as a full-time officer of the Tonto Apache Tribal Police Department in Payson, Arizona. He notes with some wonder that he is a descendant of Deputy U.S. Marshal Bill Colbert, a Choctaw Freedman who policed Indian Territory before Oklahoma became a state.
Written in a plainspoken, first-person voice, From Panther to Police does not clean up the record. Dabney recounts the addiction, the arrests, the broken relationships, and the fatherlessness he inherited and later repeated, alongside the string of events he can only describe as miracles. Volume 1 covers 1946 through 2006 and closes with his family, homeless in Payson, moving into a house on North Easy Street.
“People ask how a Black Panther who sold drugs in Apache Manor ends up wearing a badge,” said Dabney. “The honest answer is that I didn't do it. God did. I wrote this book so that the people I grew up with in north Tulsa, and anybody else who thinks they are too far gone, can see what He did with me.”
“Roscoe's story sits at the crossroads of Tulsa music history, the civil rights movement, and a faith journey that is hard to believe until you read it in his own words,” said Jason Martin, Acquisitions Executive at Trilogy Christian Publishing. “We are proud to bring it to readers.”
From Panther to Police: My Life Story, Volume 1 (1946-2006) (Trilogy Christian Publishing, paperback, 474 pages, $29.99) releases October 13, 2026, and is available for preorder now at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. It will be available through all major book retailers on release.
About the Author
Apostle Roscoe J. Dabney III is a Tulsa-raised drummer, television producer, ordained minister, longtime police chaplain, and Tonto Apache Tribal Police Officer. A Marine Corps veteran of Vietnam and a former captain of defense in the Tulsa chapter of the Black Panther Party, he was born again in 1983 and ordained in 1985. He and his wife, Bishop Sarah Dabney, founded Spirit Fire Ministries International in Tulsa. From Panther to Police is the first volume of his life story.
About Trilogy Christian Publishing
Trilogy Christian Publishing is the publishing affiliate of the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), the world's largest faith-and-family media network. Trilogy partners with authors to publish, distribute, and promote books that share the gospel and strengthen the Church, with titles available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and major book retailers worldwide.
Media Contact
Jason Martin
Acquisitions Executive, Trilogy Christian Publishing
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