Introduction to Arkansas Law Enforcement

The events to which I will frequently relate in this blog regarding my experiences as a result of my wrongful arrest and incarceration, about which I am not going to get explicit at this time, have to do with Arkansas' corrupt and malfeasant Law Enforcement community. I will cite a few examples here that may have received better, more objective, press than the matters particular to my own case.

In late Winter/early Spring of 2007, a State Trooper shot an unarmed man in the back. The individual was wearing only shorts and tee shirt and had raised his hands to give himself up. The warrant on which the justification for the attempt at arrest was based on an expired, out-of-state warrant that was accessed, according to court records, three hours after the shooting. The individual shot was charged with attempted capital murder of a police officer! Six months later, the court and law enforcement authorities offered to drop the charges if he agreed not to sue.

In Spring 2007, a State Trooper shotgunned and killed a mentally disabled man along a roadside. Initial justification was that the individual shot resembled an escaped prisoner from elsewhere and that the weapon's discharge was an "accident", as in "it just went off"! Firearms do not "just go off". Investigations revealed that the Trooper was neither where he was supposed to be, nor doing what he was supposed to be doing. Justification for that was that the stereo in his squad was jamming to country music so loud that he didn't hear his orders! In the end, the officer was charged and received a sentence of ninety days in county jail.

Where I was held, a senior sherrif's department officer was overheard in a conversation with a fifty-six or so year old prisoner who had taken an eighteen year old girl into his home. The officer asked if the prisoner had been having sex with the girl, to which the prisoner said "no". The officer then said that he personally preferred to get ahold of them four or five years sooner than that, before they had been with everyone else! No effort was made to protect this conversation, and I, personally, was within two feet of the participants.

In a related note, the same sheriff's office confiscated my notes, rather than returning them to my family with my other property as they are required by law to do. The missing notes contained information on continuing violations of law and general malfeasance by members of the Sharp County, Arkansas' Sheriff's Office; though I retain most of that information in my memory, dates and specifics were in the notes and necessary to accurate and confirmable reporting of events