The arrest and detention of City Director Ken Richardson by police last week inspired several community members to speak at Tuesday's Little Rock Board of Directors meeting, though officials were asked not to speak out because of an ongoing investigation.
Richardson was handcuffed, put in the back of a police vehicle and cited with interfering with governmental operations, a misdemeanor, after he had walked up to watch officers apprehending a suspect last Wednesday outside Kroger on Colonel Glenn Road. According to a police report, the subject said Richardson was filming and that he did not want to be filmed; Richardson, who is black, said he was just observing because of complaints about police interactions that he had heard from constituents.
"I am proud of this city, and it was kind of disturbing to me to read the newspaper to see that a [city director] was treated as Ken was treated," said Keyon Neely, a 41-year-old nonprofit director. "That was uncalled for."
Others, including Kerry Muhammad of the Nation of Islam in Little Rock and activist and contractor Robert Webb, called on the board to take action on police harassment of blacks.
Webb invoked Martin Luther King Jr.: "In the end, we remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends."
City Attorney Tom Carpenter said he had asked board members not to discuss the incident because of the ongoing investigation of the Little Rock Police Department.
"And that's not silence, Robert, that's the very justice that Dr. King asked us to bring," Carpenter said.
Richardson told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on Thursday that he found the encounter offensive.
An Arkansas Freedom of Information Act request for dashboard camera video or audio of the incident was denied on Tuesday, with the Police Department citing the ongoing investigation. However, the 1991 court ruling Hengel v. City of Pine Bluff states that not all documents connected with law enforcement are sufficiently investigative enough in nature to fall within the exemption for "undisclosed investigations."
Metro on 10/16/2019