New details of the public intoxication arrest of Saline County Sheriff Bruce Pennington surfaced in supplemental reports released Thursday by the Benton Police Department.
According to the reports, Pennington resisted officers’ attempts to arrest him by pushing officers, balling up his fists, taking an aggressive stance, refusing to be put in handcuffs, refusing to get into the police car and refusing to cooperate during a breath test test.
At one point, he told an officer that the officer was trying to end Pennington’s career, the reports said.
The reports were released with permission from the special prosecutor assigned to the case, and some of the details contradict what the sheriff told reporters at a news conference two days after his arrest. When reached by phone late Thursday, Pennington said he hadn’t yet seen the reports but attributed some of the inconsistencies to his drunkenness when he made the statements to police, and he said he stands by what he said at the news conference.
He also rebutted one comment in the reports made by a witness who said Pennington was inebriated before he arrived at Denton’s Trotline, a restaurant in Benton where he was arrested just before 8p.m. June 29.
“It was obvious that Pennington had already had a couple alcoholic drinks prior to arriving at Denton’s and was only served two drinks before he was cut off,” Robert Denton, owner of Denton’s Trotline, is quoted as saying.
But Pennington said that he talked with Denton for about 10 minutes when he first arrived and if he had been drunk, Denton wouldn’t have served him because the restaurant could have lost its liquor license.
B enton off icer Jason Moore was the first to respond to the restaurant after a 911 caller reported a very intoxicated man getting into a vehicle. When Moore arrived, Pennington denied being drunk and said he was about to drive home, according to Moore’s account.
Pennington told Moore that he was going to call Police Chief Kirk Lane because Moore “had no right to request him to blow into the” breath-test device. When Pennington finally agreed to give a breath sample, he attempted to cheat the test by putting his tongue in front of the plastic straw, Moore said. After several attempts, Moore never got an accurate reading.
Pennington told reporters at a news conference July 1 that he never took a breath test. He also said he never intended to drive drunk, and that he was sitting in his SUV waiting for his nephewto pick him up. But Moore’s report states that Pennington “continuously stated he was OK to drive himself home and adamantly refused to accept a ride.”
At the news conference, Pennington also told reporters that the two drinks he had at Denton’s caused him to be so belligerent because he hadn’t eaten all day, which conflicts with what Lane wrote in a report - that Pennington told police he had “a big dinner before going out that night.” The sheriff told reporters July 1 that he had been working in the yard under the sun all day and had stopped by Denton’s to eat, but decided not to eat because it was busy.
In the phone interview Thursday night, Pennington again attributed his statements to police to his drunkenness and said that if he had intended to drive, he had time to leave before police showed up. But the reason Moore found him sitting in his driver’s seat without the keys in the ignition, staring at his phone, was because he had already called his nephew to pick him up and was waiting.
He has since pondered on how the two gin and tonics he had at Denton’s could have caused him to become so belligerent, he said, and he has come to the conclusion that along with having worked in the sun and not having eaten, he had taken a prescription pain pill thatnight for a mending Achilles tendon, which he tore in January, and it likely counteracted with the alcohol.
In Lane’s report, the police chief said Pennington continued to act belligerently after being brought to the Police Department, at one point throwing his watch at a table, - breaking the watch into pieces - and even getting on the floor and refusing to get up.
“Based on the hardship that the sheriff’s incarceration would have caused subordinate staff at the detention facility, I decided that a citation of the two charges would be sufficient. I also decided that the sheriff would only be released when he sobered and became reasonable,” Lane wrote.
Pennington was charged with public intoxication and refusal to submit to arrest. He has a court date set for Aug. 5 in Benton District Court.
Cody Hiland - the special prosecutor assigned the case at the request of Saline County Prosecuting Attorney Ken Casady, who is friends with Pennington - said that the video footage of Pennington’s arrest taken from a patrol car’s dash camera won’t be released until the trial.
“We don’t want to prejudice the case in abundance of caution,” said Hiland, who is prosecuting attorney for the 20th Judicial District, which includes Faulkner, Van Buren and Searcy counties.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 11 on 07/13/2013