Bradley Fornash was a Conway police officer when he started joking with his son’s elementary principal that he could retire and work for the school.
Administrators took him seriously.
Fornash, 45, is the first school resource officer for St. Joseph School in Conway, said Courtney Pope, elementary principal.
“I got to talking to Mrs. Pope, the elementary school principal. … We were talking about security issues with the neighborhood,” Fornash said. “I started joking around, really. I said, ‘I can retire in July; you could just hire me then.’”
Pope said the school had experienced some break-ins, including the theft of thousands of dollars of technology, and Fornash was one of the detectives on the case.
She said Fornash mentioned he could retire, and it started out, ‘Wouldn’t that be great? Wouldn’t that be awesome?’” if he came to work for the school system.
“It’s not in our budget, but we decided we couldn’t afford not to have some sort of security on campus,” she said.
Pope said she was told Fornash is the first school resource officer at any Catholic school in the Little Rock Diocese.
Theresa Hall, superintendent of Catholic schools in Arkansas, said she didn’t know if any other Catholic school campus has a school resource officer.
“We’re in the middle of collecting our annual reports, which includes our staffing, so I can’t say,” she said.
Pope said there isn’t a precedent, so the school is learning as it goes.
“It’s going to be a position that defines itself as we need things,” Pope said, adding that Fornash has benefited the school in setting up educational meetings and in other ways.
Fornash said St. Joseph High School Principal Diane Wolfe contacted him about working as a school resource officer.
“They said, ‘We’ve got this position approved through the church and council. If you want to come to work here, let us know,’” Fornash said.
He retired from the Conway Police Department with 20 years of service. He had been a detective the past 13 years and a hostage negotiator for almost 17, he said.
“After 20 years, I was kind of ready to switch gears and slow the pace down,” he said.
Fornash grew up in Morrilton as one of three children. His parents are retired, but his mother, Doris, was a seamstress, and his father, Robert, worked at the former St. Anthony’s Medical Center, now CHI St. Vincent, for 30 years. His parents also clean Sacred Heart Catholic Church, as they have for many years, he said.
Fornash said he can’t point to a particular reason he went into law enforcement.
“It’s something I always wanted to do, as a kid — no history of law enforcement, just me,” he said.
Fornash got a degree in sociology with a minor in criminology from Arkansas Tech University in Russellville, and he worked at Morrilton’s Coca-Cola distribution plant, which has since closed, to pay his way. I did everything — loaded trucks, worked as a merchandiser, the loading dock at night. It made me not want to do that for a living,” he said, laughing.
He joined the Conway Police Department in 1998 and has been a detective for the past 13 years.
“I worked everything — homicides to petty theft. If it happened to be the week you were on call, you were lead detective — violent crimes, everything down to shoplifting.”
The most memorable case for Fornash was “a situation several years back, a guy (Daniel Horton) came up missing. His mama hadn’t heard from him. … I basically went all over Faulkner County and North Little Rock looking for him.”
Horton was missing from Conway, but Fornash tracked the man to a hotel in North Little Rock, so there were “jurisdictional issues,” Fornash said. Then-Conway Police Chief A.J. Gary “just told me to go with it, so I investigated the case.”
It turns out that Daniel Horton was killed by Gary Mallett on Mallet’s family property in Mallettown.
“When I got a search warrant for the property, we found [Horton],” Fornash said.
“It took me about three months to locate him and return him to his mother. He was buried on the property [in Mallettown],” Fornash said.
Mallett was charged with first-degree murder, but a jury convicted him of the lesser charge of manslaughter in 2016, Fornash said.
As a hostage-crisis negotiator, he dealt mainly with suicidal people who had barricaded themselves inside a residence, threatening to do harm to themselves.
That stress wears on a person over time, Fornash said. He loved his job, he said, but when he started as a school resource officer in August, the difference was immediately clear.
“It’s a good change, a slower pace,” Fornash said.
Fornash and his son, Aidan, ride to school together.
“He thinks it’s neat now, but I’m sure as he gets older, he won’t like it. He still hugs me when he sees me and stuff. I’m sure I’ll be an embarrassment for him one of these days,” Fornash said, laughing.
His responsibilities are to handle “normal day-to-day stuff.”
“I talk to students and counsel them if they need it,” Fornash said. “If there’s any disciplinary issues, I”ll be involved with that.
“It’s a lot less stressful, more laid-back. I talk to the kids and get to know the kids.”
He covers elementary through high school. The campuses are separated by busy Harkrider Street. He said he walks 6 to 7 miles a day, and he also has a golf cart to ride in.
He is working on active-shooter safety, and he said St. Joseph Catholic School will have training on campus Nov. 5 with the Conway SWAT team.
“We’re going to have a mock intruder drill, and the SWAT team is going to come in and show the students what it would be like if they had a real deal, what [the SWAT team] looks like if that happened, and ‘Here’s what we want you to do,’” Fornash said.
“We’ve really taken it seriously on the intruder scenario. This summer, when we started teacher in-service, every teacher had to have a plan,” he said. “They’ve been working on ‘Run, Hide and Fight,’ a national initiative. … Of course, you want to run and get to safety if you can, but research shows [if the intruder comes into the classroom], throw books, or throw whatever you can throw at them to try to distract them.”
Fornash said the Conway Police and Fire departments have been on campus to inspect the buildings and the layout to help with safety.
He said the St. Joseph students are well-behaved, and discipline problems are few.
“It’s not so much the students. It’s just trying to keep the bad things off the campus from the outside world. Just keep the peace, you know.”
That’s a job he takes seriously.
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.