What appears initially to be the worst of times in our lives suddenly turns out to become the best thing that could have happened to us. Just ask former Fayetteville High football star Terrance Rock.
Readers will recall Rock as the young man Centerton Police led away last November in cuffs from his classroom at the school after mistakenly arresting him on charges of residential burglary and theft of property.
Talk about an embarrassing experience for a top student, being perp-walked in front of classmates, teachers and administrators and shoved into a waiting patrol car.
Such inexcusable bungling proved to be an expensive "oopsie, our bad!" after the Centerton council voted 5-1 the other day to settle the resulting civil lawsuit against the city for $100,000. The fiasco already cost one officer his job two weeks after the false arrest was verified.
In what strikes me as a potential script for the blundering Inspector Clouseau of the farcical Pink Panther films, Centerton Police Chief Cody Harper and four officers were sued for their roles in the arrest that occurred as Rock was steadfastly protesting innocence and the fact he'd never even been in Centerton.
That mattered because the crime, which occurred Sept. 25, involved a man who accused three teenagers of stealing items from his home in that Northwest Arkansas community. Rock also said he knew nothing about the crime or anyone involved in committing it. In other words, he had no clue what was happening or why.
The suit said Centerton police obtained their arrest warrant for Rock by circumventing a review by the Benton County prosecutor's office. Rock's attorney Lance Cox, Prosecutor Nathan Dobbs and deputy prosecutor Carrie Smith later confronted the police with their mistake along with identity of the actual culprit.
Wish I could have been a fly on the wall at that meeting.
Rock's civil suit also claims the Centerton officers were improperly trained or supervised and it was obvious they made little, if any, effort overall to make certain they had the right person. Rock wasn't interviewed before being arrested. And arresting officers allegedly were bragging about the press they'd receive because the young man had been a star running back on the state champion Fayetteville team, according to the news story by reporter Tracy Neal.
Well, they certainly were right about making headlines with a high-profile case, weren't they?
And that, valued readers, is how young Mr. Rock's terrible (perhaps worst) day last November became what amounts to an expense-paid college education compliments of the city of Centerton and a band of inexcusably careless police officers who failed to cross a single t or dot an i in what should have been a simple burglary investigation.
A story like this only reinforces what I've repeatedly discovered and documented as a journalist over the past 46 years; far too many innocent people are wrongly charged and/or convicted in our nation because of carelessness, neglect, rushes to judgment and corrupt practices.
What a GIF it is
What's up with elected legislators and our money? I see Republican State Rep. Jake Files of Fort Smith now finds himself wading chest-deep in the same pool of General Improvement Fund muck that last year slimed former state Sen. Jon Woods and state Rep. Micah Neal, both Republicans.
In Woods and Neal's instances, according to federal indictments, the alleged crimes centered around some $600,000 in GIF grants being steered to Ecclesia College in Springdale in exchange for a little consideration for the elected point men.
Now Files is being visited by FBI agents peering deeply into his own GIF grant machinations regarding a new softball complex that he and his partner, Sebastian County Election Commissioner Lee Webb, contracted to build for the city (along with more than $25,000 reportedly put to his own use), according to a federal search warrant affidavit. Files says he's done nothing wrong and for now we will take him at his word.
The story about Files' involvement with the Fort Smith grant and serious questions surrounding the bid process used to acquire that surplus tax money leaves me scratching my head and wondering just how many good ol' boys in our honorable Legislature have dug into the public's GIF pot.
Reporter Dave Hughes' thorough news account the other day laid out a story about Files' role in securing the GIF grant in Fort Smith and how monies were disbursed and how the city subsequently canceled its contact with his firm ... and where the money went.
With each revelation about corruption (and possible abuses) in this grossly politicized grant program funded by state surplus whereby politicians bring public improvement money to their districts for pet projects, it's beginning to sound to me as if the GIF acronym could stand for Grow Income Free (and fast).
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Mike Masterson is a longtime Arkansas journalist. Email him at [email protected].
Editorial on 08/27/2017