NWA editorial: A case fumbled

Lawsuit unfortunate, needed in teen’s arrest

Being a police officer these days means working under more scrutiny than a drug kingpin who is the subject of 24-hour-a-day surveillance.

Some of that comes from high-profile transgressions by a minority of officers, whether it's the Rodney King beating or those instances in which an officer fires too quickly.

What’s the point?

A lawsuit can be about accountability. A teenager’s arrest by Centerton police last fall showed a need for some accountability.

Some of it stems from the proliferation of cameras in society, expanding the video snippets from which even legitimate law enforcement techniques employed in moments of high danger can, in calmer times, look like overreactions.

Holders of most jobs don't live with the potential that their daily performance will be dissected and measured against a strict set of standards. On the other hand, most jobs don't grant their holders authority to deprive people of their liberty or to engage in behaviors that could prove deadly.

The point is law enforcement officers live with high expectations. A concomitant point is that nobody should believe it should be any other way.

The actions of the Centerton Police Department are under what perhaps is the most intense form of scrutiny: a lawsuit by a citizen who claims he was wrongly arrested.

Such claims are often viewed with skepticism. In some people's minds, an arrest is tantamount to guilt no matter how much the judicial system is built on the basis of innocence. In the case of Terrence Rock, the more one examines the evidence, the more one becomes convinced the only reasonable conclusion is he never should have been arrested.

But Terrence Rock, whose attorney filed his lawsuit against Centerton this week, was arrested last November at Fayetteville High School, where he was the football team's leading ball carrier. As one would expect, the arrest of a high school football star, on a team that would go on to win the state championship, attracted a lot of attention.

The case started two months before Rock's arrest, when three teens stole items from a Centerton home. After investigating, officers from Centerton went to Fayetteville High School and arrested Rock.

There was one key problem with the case: Terrence Rock had never set foot in Centerton in his young life.

Still, he spent a night in the Benton County jail before his release on $10,000 bond. Three days later, Centerton Police Chief Cody Harper issued an apology, acknowledging Rock had not committed or been implicated in the crime for which he was arrested. It was, Harper said, a case of mistaken identity.

Three weeks later, a Benton County prosecutor asked that charges be dropped like a ... rock.

Rock's attorney explained the police confused his client with another Fayetteville High School player. But, according to information revealed since Rock's arrest, that confusion appears to have been the result of a lack of thorough police work. Officers didn't interview Rock before they arrested him. They had used social media to identify their suspect, but picked the wrong guy. Harper fired one police sergeant and disciplined another officer for their roles in the mistaken arrest.

It was an awful example of police conduct, the kind that makes other officers cringe. And it makes things all the worse that the person affected by the poor investigation was just a high school kid.

So now the lawsuit moves forward, with Centerton in the position to defend what can hardly be defended. The question, most likely, will really come down to what sort of relief Rock deserves.

Hopefully, the lawsuit can serve a broader purpose, reminding Centerton and other officers why policies and procedures exist. Yes, they're cumbersome, but they're designed to help police officers get it right.

An arrest may seem like a run-of-the-mill event to officers who deal with them every day, but to an average person, being arrested is one of the most jarring and damaging moments of their lives.

We hate to see any public entity sued because it's ultimately the taxpayers who pay a price. But lawsuits also can be about accountability. Everything about how Rock was treated suggests the need for it.

Commentary on 04/28/2017

Upcoming Events