As a kid, George Bethel Jr. would eat breakfast on Saturday mornings at a restaurant in Brinkley with his dad, the city’s police chief, and other officers.
His dad’s position made an impression on his son.
“I was pretty fascinated with his job, and the respect he got from the community was always big with me,” Bethel said. “He hired me as a part-time summer police dispatcher when I was 17. There was no doubt in my mind what I wanted to do.”
Bethel, 61, is the new Mountain View police chief. He came out of retirement to take the position in April after chief B.J. Day resigned.
“The chief who was here, I liked him; he was a good man. I think he was doing a good job,” Bethel said.
Bethel and his wife, Julie, were living south of Mountain View, and he was working as a deputy in the Stone County Sheriff’s Office in Mountain View.
“We had been coming up here with her dad for years to Bean Fest, and we fell in love with it,” he said of the community.
They started looking for land to build a home on after Bethel retired, and he said his wife, Julie, called him one day.
“She said, ‘We’re moving to Mountain View.’ I said, ‘We are?’ She said, ‘Yeah, I just bought the land,’” Bethel said.
He and his wife, who have a combined five children, moved from Little Rock to Mountain View in March 2017.
After a lifetime in law enforcement, Bethel could have enjoyed a life of leisure.
His career had started at age 17 when his dad gave him that part-time dispatcher’s job in the Brinkley Police Department. He has three younger sisters, none of whom are in law enforcement.
He attended Memphis State University (now the University of Memphis) and came back when his dad, George Bethel, hired him in 1978 as a Brinkley police officer.
“It was tough; he was harder on me than anybody,” the younger Bethel said. “He really didn’t want me to get into police work; he was hesitant to hire me.”
His father, who retired after 40 years as Brinkley police chief, knew the dangers of the job, Bethel said.
“It was small-town police work, a lot more of public relations than it was policing. It was a good community,” he said.
Bethel worked for his father for three years, then was hired in July 1980 by the Little Rock Police Department, where he worked for five years in patrol.
“I was a pretty good street officer. I just had the nose for sniffing out crimes and people who were doing things wrong, and the number of arrests I was making on the street without an assistant — I was pretty much doing it on my own.”
In 1986, he was asked to join the Detective Division, which he did, and he worked there until he was promoted and went back to the streets as a patrol supervisor from 1987-89. From there, he became a supervisor for the plain-clothes street-crime unit.
“We served warrants, did surveillance. I really enjoyed my street-crime unit,” he said. “We solved a lot of big thefts. We set up surveillance to catch people when they were doing the crimes. We got involved in some good stuff, solved some good burglaries. We helped with any homicide, burglary, car-theft rings.
“One of the big things we did, … there were large thefts after hours at Park Plaza and University Mall [in Little Rock]. Stores in there were having large clothing thefts. We set up inside the [University Mall] and had a couple of chase cars on each side of the mall. We were watching on cameras with the assistance of the stores.”
Bethel said he and other officers saw two or three cars come to the mall and people go in, even though it was after hours.
“They gained access to the mall and were going around to the different locations and stealing clothes and putting them in large baskets and taking them out and putting them in cars. We took them down when they all went outside and got back everything that was taken. That was pretty exciting,” Bethel said. “They were having help from the inside; it was somebody inside who was letting them in. We got them all — the one who let them in and the ones doing the stealing.”
Then, a lieutenant friend of his in the Police Department asked him to supervise a watch, so Bethel went back to patrol on a permanent shift of 11 p.m. to 7 a.m.
“Everybody loved working 11-7 because that’s when everything happens,” Bethel said. He stayed in that position from 1991-97 and made a name for himself.
“Our watch was probably one of the best watches the Little Rock PD probably had ever had. We solved more burglaries and robberies by catching people red-handed. We were known,” he said.
“We were able to apprehend more robbery suspects and more burglary suspects. It got to one point where the Detective Division was coming to our squad and asking for information. … We knew everything that went on in that town. That was rewarding, in itself, when you’ve got some of the best detectives in the state coming to us and asking for information; it was really cool,” he said.
“We had a few good car chases,” Bethel said, including after a pizza-store robbery. “We had a really wild police chase and ended up in North Little Rock. We got the two guys in the store. We got the gun, got the money, everything taken in the robbery. If something happened, we normally caught them.”
In 1997, Bethel was asked to supervise the DWI squad and the accident-reconstruction squad, which also did DWI enforcement. He supervised the motorcycle unit and two hit-and-run officers.
He did not have to ride a motorcycle and didn’t want to, Bethel said.
In 2003, the motorcycles were reassigned to the three precincts in the city, but he remained in special operations over the hit-and-run officers. They handled dignitary visits and special events, which included Razorback football games, the Arkansas State Fair, Riverfest, the Little Rock Marathon and all 5K races in the city.
“My responsibility was to set up security for the events and traffic control,” he said, adding that a Razorback football game would take more than 100 officers for traffic control.
“The craziest was when presidents would come to town, and we worked real close with the Secret Service, because they were responsible for the protection of the president when he went anywhere.”
The opening of the Clinton Presidential Library was a huge undertaking, he said. “We set up security and traffic patterns for that,” and he said it involved the Secret Service, the FBI, the National Guard and the Coast Guard, along with every law enforcement agency in Pulaski County.
“The lieutenant (Nathan Tackett) and I who worked on that, we got a really good commendation from the United States Secret Service for how successful it was and how the event went down,” he said.
“I developed a security and traffic pattern for around the State Fair to try to reduce crime,” Bethel said, adding that the Little Rock police chief at the time agreed to let Bethel implement his idea.
“We greatly expanded our security zone,” he said. “Presence is a big deterrent. [The troublemakers] saw us and didn’t come in. It just cut down on the amount of problems we had. Thefts were down, break-ins were down … everything.”
Bethel retired in February 2017 as the senior sergeant at the Little Rock Police Department after almost 37 years.
After moving to Mountain View a month later, he met Stone County Sheriff Les Bonds, who asked Bethel to help out at the Stone County Sheriff’s Office. Bethel said he told Bonds he wasn’t interested in a job, but Bonds asked him to “grab a car and help them out” on a part-time, volunteer basis. Bethel agreed and volunteered 20 hours a week.
The sheriff kept asking him to come on full time.
“I finally broke down,” Bethel said, and he became a full-time deputy.
“It’s a totally different world [than Little Rock]. It’s a very slow place, very few calls, very little trouble,” he said. “It’s all pretty petty crime.”
Bethel said he worked in 2018 and 2019 for the Sheriff’s Office; then he called Mayor Roger Gardner and said he heard the chief-of-police position was coming open. Bethel met with the Mountain View City Council and was hired.
Gardner said Bethel is perfect for the position for many reasons.
“One of the things is, when I met George, he seemed like a good people person,” Gardner said. He found Bethel to be a good listener and good at talking to people.
“I thought he’d be good for our tourism area. We have several events going on in Mountain View at all times, and he was good at events,” Gardner said, citing Bethel’s experience with organizing presidential visits and the Arkansas State Fair.
Although Mountain View’s population is 2,743, the mayor said, the city could have 5,000 to 10,000 people come to town for an event.
“George has had a long list of stuff under his belt; he can handle everything that comes along,” Gardner said. “We’re proud to have him.”
Bethel oversees nine officers and four reserve officers.
“There are a lot of good people in this town, a lot of good people in this county,” Bethel said.
“The chief who was here, he’s got everything lined out. I’ve pretty much got my feet on the ground, trying to learn. I won’t make any changes till I get my feet on the ground good. They’ve got a great group of officers. They’re involved in community, a lot of community services, Special Olympics and projects for the mentally ill. They sell fireworks, and the proceeds they get … they use for community events.
“They do an outstanding job. They care about this place, … and I like that,” Bethel said.
It’s the same example he saw growing up and has followed all his life.
“After watching my dad while I was growing up and the respect everybody gave him, it just stuck with me,” Bethel said.
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.