A former Arkansas police chief who was fired from his post in 2015 was arrested in Texas Sunday on a charge of driving while intoxicated, the Texarkana Gazette reported Wednesday.
Robert Eugene Philson, 52, initially told the officer who stopped him that he was still the police chief for Waldo in Columbia County and he continued to try "to use his position as police officer or investigator to influence [the officer's] decision on whether to arrest him," according to a probable cause affidavit cited by the newspaper.
A wildlife officer in Bowie County, Texas stopped Philson's car after it was driving erratically and at one point in the wrong direction on a local road, police said. Philson said he was leaving his daughter's graduation after having drunk a single beer, adding that he was the police chief in Waldo, the affidavit said.
"Mr. Philson continued to state he was a police officer and he always just gave officers a ride home," the affidavit states. "Mr. Philson then changed his story to he was retired from Waldo P.D. and is now was a special investigator with the state of Arkansas at the local [Arkansas Department of Correction] unit in Texarkana. Throughout the contact with Philson he tried to use his position as police officer or investigator to influence our decision on whether to arrest him."
Philson was fired as police chief in January 2015, according to a previous story in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. No reason for his dismissal was given then.
Philson was booked into the Bowie County jail, though online records show he has subsequently bonded out.