LITTLE ROCK — There’s a distinctly fishy fragrance wafting across Carroll County’s criminal-justice system nowadays. The suspicious odor is coming from the sheriff’s office in Berryville where the 2011 drug arrest of a now-28-year-old man has triggered a special prosecutor’s investigation.
Arkansas State Police confiscated two computer hard drives from the sheriff’s office dispatch center earlier this month in connection with the case. Those drives formerly contained police dash-camera videos that, according to Sheriff Bob Grudek, were destroyed by a lightning strike.
Though no one involved is talking about the ongoing investigation, especially not Jack McQuary, the special prosecutor named in this case, it’s apparent to me from having watched special prosecutors around our state over the years that he wouldn’t be issuing subpoenas if there wasn’t something that appears to be rotten.
The brouhaha stems from the Oct. 9, 2011, arrest of Jack Cody Mayes; Mayes was charged with possessing illegal drugs and paraphernalia that Sheriff’s Deputy Charles Dale said he found in Mayes’ SUV.
A drug dog was summoned to the scene, which later would raise questions about just what happened out there, and when. The dispatcher that evening said he’d entered the relevant times by hand and typed them into the computer later, which wound up causing legal confusion about how much time transpired between the traffic stop and the drug search.
The computer time stamp showed the time the notes were transcribed, not the time the call came in. And the sheriff said he didn’t remember how much time was involved.
The next thing ya know, Circuit Judge Kent Crow was ruling on the case, after which he declined to recuse himself after being asked to. And the prosecutor’s office-for whatever reason-wound up not prosecuting and had nothing to say about that decision.
I know, it’s a lot to digest in these few paragraphs. Suffice it to say, that fragrance I mentioned earlier continues to linger.
While this is a mildly interesting case in one respect, I also find it difficult to imagine a special prosecutor would be named to investigate a time discrepancy in only one drug possession case that was inexplicably dropped.
I also can’t help but wonder just how many other computer hard drives in other sheriff’s dispatch offices have been destroyed by lightning strikes each year.
Salute to Wal-Mart
A major international corporation that pledges to provide employment for at least 100,000 honorably discharged U.S. military veterans deserves a resounding hooray (perhaps even more appropriately, a hooah).
Wal-Mart’s mass hiring, covering veterans within 12 months of leaving active duty, is scheduled to begin on Memorial Day. That’s when various jobs in Wal-Mart stores, Sam’s Clubs and distribution centers across the nation will begin being filled.
Good for you, Wal-Mart. Gosh knows these folks from Bentonville have provided (and still do) the bull’s-eye over the years for critics of its ultra-competitive operational methods.
This move to assist those who have served our nation really won’t be a departure from what the biggest retail giant in the world has been quietly doing all along. In fact, Wal-Mart believes it already hires more veterans than any other private employer in the nation.
Bill Simon, the corporation’s president and CEO, told the media that hiring a veteran just makes good business sense. He’s right. Vets learn quickly, perform well under pressure, and are team players. Moreover, most have a passion for serving rooted in discipline and training. Wal-Mart (and many others) need those positive qualities more than ever today.
You can teach a person through a formal education. But you can’t teach or instill passion, or a work ethic, or the vital self-motivation to get off one’s intelligent rump and get a job done correctly.
I’d say the next group of potential employees that Wal-Mart and others would be wise to recruit and employ are those of the baby boomer generation. To me, they are last group, collectively, to have been exposed to the values inherent in work as well as sense of appreciation instilled as a natural part of their upbringing.
Lifesaving cables
The numbers are in. And they bode well for the steel safety cables spread last year along the median of Interstate 540. In the pre-cables year of 2011, the section of interstate between Exit 60 in South Fayetteville and Exit 86 in Bentonville saw 919 traffic accidents, including eight head on collisions that caused five of the 13 fatalities after drivers crossed the median. There was a total of 369 injuries caused by those accidents.
Nearly 1,000 accidents (averaging nearly three a day) seems more like bumper cars than a county fair carnival along a 30-mile stretch of highway.
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Mike Masterson’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected]. Read his blog at mikemastersonsmessenger.com.
Editorial, Pages 13 on 01/22/2013