Lawmakers OK $25,000 for police chief’s widow

The widow of an east Arkansas police chief who collapsed after a high-speed pursuit will get an additional $25,000 from state coffers for her husband’s death.

On Monday, the Arkansas Legislative Council’s Claims Review Subcommittee granted Matilda Bradford an additional $25,000 on top of the $50,000 she was awarded in September by the Arkansas Claims Commission.

Keith Bradford was hired in early 2012 to be the lone police officer in Turrell in an effort to address an increase in drug-related crime.

On April 2, 2014, Bradford joined in a high-speed pursuit with neighboring law enforcement agencies, but the pursuit ended by the time he reached the scene. While back at Turrell City Hall an hour and a half after the chase, Bradford collapsed and died from a heart attack.

Bradford’s wife filed a claim with the Arkansas Claims Commission — a quasi-legal body that hears cases that are barred from civil court through sovereign immunity — in December 2014 for $200,000.

On Dec. 22, 2014, the commission gave her $50,000, finding that she was entitled to some money because her husband died in the course of his job. But the commission rejected any claims for more compensation because Bradford was not killed in the line of duty nor was his death the result of “exceptionally hazardous duty.”

Her attorney, Scott Richardson, told lawmakers Monday witnesses described Bradford as “shaken” and noticeably on edge following the chase.

An attorney with the Arkansas attorney general’s office, Charles Lyford, said the state Crime Laboratory’s autopsy did not show that the heart attack was prompted by the pursuit.

Richardson disputed the autopsy’s findings. He also told lawmakers that for two years, Bradford endured high degrees of stress as the town’s lone officer.

With faulty radio equipment, isolation from backup law enforcement and not even a bullet-resistant vest, Bradford was constantly subjected to working conditions that were “exceptionally hazardous,” Richardson argued.

The chief’s wife told lawmakers that their home had been targeted by burglars twice since he began policing the town and his vehicle vandalized.

“How many chiefs of police do you know whose homes were burglarized, whose cars were vandalized?” Richardson asked lawmakers. “You think those crimes weren’t trying to send a message?”

The co-chairman of the joint committee, Rep. Bob Ballinger, R-Hindsville, said he sympathized with the work Bradford did but said that poor equipment and isolation are factors encountered by many law enforcement officers in the state. He was worried that extending more money to Bradford’s widow would break from how lawmakers have handled such requests in the past.

Another co-chairman, Sen. Jeremy Hutchinson, R-Little Rock, lobbied for more money for Matilda Bradford, and asked fellow lawmakers to put themselves in the shoes of the chief or his widow.

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