Little Rock chief calls out his officers on race relations

Email to department says recent protest duty telling

 Little Rock Police Chief Keith Humphrey is shown speaking during a press conference in this file photo.
Little Rock Police Chief Keith Humphrey is shown speaking during a press conference in this file photo.

Little Rock Police Chief Keith Humphrey delivered a grave assessment of race relations within the Police Department in a letter to his staff Sunday.

In the emailed statement to department employees, the chief said he had never been more embarrassed in 32 years in law enforcement than when he witnessed the "segregated LRPD" on display amid protests in Little Rock after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

"I observed white officers and black officers segregating themselves. Whether it was intentional or not it was uncomfortably noticeable," Humphrey wrote in the email that was obtained by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette through a public records request. "I have attended many briefings here in preparation for major events since coming to the department. I have never seen anything as frightening."

Humphrey, who is black, said he observed a tense atmosphere, including a "lack of direct eye contact," and said it was "very obvious" that his presence made some officers uncomfortable.

Humphrey's statement was met with criticism from the Little Rock Fraternal Order of Police, a union that recently asked its members to consider a resolution expressing no confidence in the chief.

The former police chief of Norman, Okla., Humphrey has led the Little Rock Police Department for just more than a year since he was tapped by Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott Jr. in March 2019.

[DOCUMENT: Email from Chief Keith Humphrey to department employees » arkansasonline.com/62email/]

The letter from the chief comes amid broader turmoil within the ranks of the Police Department. Humphrey faces at least five recent lawsuits from assistant chiefs and other lower-ranking department employees. Many of them claim Humphrey retaliated against them because of their statements made during the investigation of the February 2019 fatal shooting of Bradley Blackshire by Officer Charles Starks.

Starks was fired after the shooting but later reinstated by a judge's order.

Humphrey said it is important that police always "do the right thing." In the aftermath of the death of Floyd -- an unarmed black man who died May 25 in the custody of police after a white officer, Derek Chauvin, pressed his knee into Floyd's neck for several minutes -- Humphrey said protesters would focus on Little Rock officers even though they did not "initiate" the nationwide anger.

"I wont [sic] go into the true history of law enforcement when it comes to communities of color," Humphrey continued. "We all know the history of our city. If you aren't aware of the history then I suggest that you quickly become familiar. Our communities of color are simply, 'Tired of being tired!' It is not only the communities of color. It is every ethnic group represented who continue to observe these horrific actions from law enforcement like those in Minneapolis."

He added that as these incidents continue to occur, protests "will become more frequent, larger, and volatile."

In their statements, the chief and the Fraternal Order of Police both referenced a contentious encounter that apparently occurred when Humphrey ordered officers to deploy to a scene. However, their recollections of the incident differed.

In his letter, Humphrey said that at one point he ordered officers and supervisors to "gear up and deploy" as a way to "cut the tension" while they were at a staging area monitoring the protests.

But a statement issued by the executive board of the union via Facebook on Sunday claimed Humphrey "was spreading tension and unease" at the command post during the protest Saturday.

"He yelled at officers, and ordered them to leave the staging area and respond to the incident without a plan, violating one of the basic tenants [sic] of incident command," the statement said. "Strong leadership in the command post made adjustments and our officers performed their duties exceptionally."

Humphrey declined to discuss the police union's statement when asked about it by a Democrat-Gazette reporter during a demonstration Monday outside City Hall.

"I can't really talk about that, but what I will say, the FOP has a right to their opinion," Humphrey said.

A police spokesman, Lt. Michael Ford, later said Humphrey had no comment on the letter.

"The chief claims that he saw a 'segregated LRPD,'" the union's statement said. "Where the chief saw division, we saw unity. Officers stood shoulder to shoulder in the face of violent assaults. The only color that mattered was blue."

The police union statement praised two assistant chiefs, Alice Fulk and Hayward Finks, who are suing Humphrey. Fulk and Finks "demonstrated excellent leadership in the unified command post," the statement said.

Ronnie Morgan, president of the union, said Monday that he had no additional comment beyond the statement from the union's executive board.

The union last week announced plans to ask its members for their input during a vote of no confidence in Humphrey.

Two Little Rock city directors, Lance Hines of Ward 5 and Capi Peck of Ward 4, have publicly expressed concerns about the police chief's leadership.

"When I'm hearing some of the things, the dysfunction that's going on, the lack of confidence in command staff, that's an issue," Hines told the Democrat-Gazette last month.

When asked Monday about Humphrey's letter, Hines wrote in an email, "I have already made my feelings about Chief Humphrey known."

Ward 6 City Director Doris Wright said she was not surprised by Humphrey's words, but she was glad he put his concerns in writing to the rank-and-file members of the department.

Wright said she had asked that the chief and the mayor update her on the status of the protests throughout the weekend, and Humphrey told her directly that he had witnessed racial divisions among officers during the briefings to prepare for the protests.

Segregation is an ongoing issue in the department, Wright said.

"The perception has always been in the community that LRPD was racially divided. That's not new. We have two police unions that don't always get along, they don't always agree," Wright said, referring to the presence of both the Fraternal Order of Police and the Black Police Officers Association within the department.

She said the chief had started a necessary conversation, and that she didn't remember a time the issue had been directly addressed by a Little Rock police chief.

"We would rather they not be a divided department. We want them to work together," she said. "This is what he said, and now they can discuss it. Everybody doesn't have to agree with it, but let's have a discussion within the department."

At-large City Director Joan Adcock said she thought the message was hurtful to members of the department, and that Humphrey should have addressed the issue with officers individually.

"I think it's very sad that a police chief, after officers have spent the last evening protecting the lives and the property of the city of Little Rock, to write such a negative and derogatory letter to them," Adcock said. "I think such things should be said in private and not where it could be spread all over the community. I wonder how they felt putting on those uniforms after they read that and going to work on Sunday."

Adcock said she also had "no confidence at this time" in the chief. She declined to specify her concerns, but said they had to do with ongoing lawsuits against the chief from members of the department.

"I think it's just, segregation right now isn't a problem, I think that the attitude and the lawsuits is the problem," she said. "I think anyone who has been in Little Rock and has read your articles and seen the TV, they know what's going on. They can see."

Asked for comment on Humphrey's letter, the mayor declined through a spokeswoman, Stephanie Jackson, who said Scott was focused on the protests and rising covid-19 cases.

Protests in Little Rock on Friday and Saturday were peaceful until late into the night, when police in riot gear broke up the rallies by deploying tear gas in the midst of demonstrators gathered at the Capitol. Scott noted pointedly during a news conference Sunday morning that it was not the Little Rock Police Department that used tear gas against crowds of demonstrators.

On Monday, State Police Director Col. Bill Bryant told reporters that state police used gas to disperse the crowd because of property destruction at a nearby building and a fire that was lit on the pavement using some type of flammable liquid.

In the letter, Humphrey seemed to acknowledge that his words would create controversy.

"There will be some who will frown upon this email," he wrote. "They will see it as one sided and accusatory. That simply is not true. As long as I wear a blue uniform some will consider me an enemy. This is not restricted to communities of color."

Humphrey also said the community feels the tension within the police department. If he notices it, he said, "others are noticing it."

"This current LRPD that will not be the department that will protect our citizens or each other," Humphrey wrote. "Attitudes and work ethics will change for the better."

Information for this article was contributed by William Sanders of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Metro on 06/02/2020

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