BENTONVILLE — Police are investigating vandalism to the Confederate statue on the downtown square.
Gene Page, police spokesman, said the department received a complaint at 10:45 p.m. Saturday and found the bottom of the soldier's rifle missing.
The incident is under investigation, Page said.
Police investigated last year the theft of one of the cannon balls from the statue.
The stolen cannonball was a replacement for one stolen several years ago, according to county officials. The cannonball was later found.
The statue has been the source of controversy in recent years.
About 160 people attended a public hearing in 2017 headed by Compassion Fayetteville and the OMNI Center for Peace to discuss the statue's future.
Benton County owns the land the monument is on and has the authority to leave or remove it.
Jason Hendren, a lawyer, said at the 2017 hearing that the monument was erected in 1908, more than 50 years after the Civil War.
He addressed one specific point of historical contention, which was whether the statue is of James Henderson Berry, whose name is inscribed on the granite base.
Berry was a Confederate officer. He also was a lawyer in Bentonville, an Arkansas legislator, a speaker of the state House and a 4th Judicial District judge before being elected the state's 14th governor, taking office in 1883. He followed his time as governor with a 22-year stint as a U.S. senator, from 1885 to 1907, according to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture.
Some of the people who spoke at the 2017 forum cited his historical prominence to the area and the state as a reason to leave the statue in the square.
However, the statue isn't of Berry.
It's of a generic bearded soldier, according to the 1996 National Register of Historical Places registration form for the monument.