The new sheriff of Hot Spring County said Monday that he likely will ask the Arkansas State Police to investigate what he described as the trashing of the department's Malvern office during the previous administration.
Former Sheriff Ed Hollingsworth denied the allegations and said that if new Sheriff Mike Cash had seen the department when Hollingsworth took office four years ago, "he'd have thought it was beautiful."
Hollingsworth said the sheriff's office was built above an old morgue and an old hospital. The basement was flooded for six to 10 years, he said, and pumped out while he was mayor.
"It is dry now," he said. But "once that stuff seeps into the walls, there's nothing you can do."
Cash defeated now-former sheriff's Deputy Woody Perry in a runoff in November. Hollingsworth did not seek re-election.
Cash, who took office Sunday, said the office was in a mess when he visited it a couple weeks ago and is worse now.
"There's a strong smell of urine and just trash," Cash said. "I mean there's just stuff thrown everywhere. There's holes in the wall where they've thrown knives. ... We found a knife sticking in a wall when we got here. ... We found where they shot a BB gun into a door across the hall."
Cash said the urine odor also was present when he visited the office earlier.
"I don't know why they did it, but I just know it's a mess," he said.
"It's destruction of public property, criminal mischief or whatever you would call it," Cash said. "We'll probably ask the state police to look at it."
Hollingsworth said that the office has had the same urine smell for years.
"It smelled like that eight years ago," he said.
Hollingsworth denied his employees were throwing knives at the wall.
He said he had received a subpoena and didn't have a cork-board pin handy, so he just stuck the subpoena up with a knife about the size of a pocket knife as a reminder to himself.
"It wasn't a giant knife," he said.
Hollingsworth said he later put the knife in his desk.
Cash said sheriff's office vehicles also were left "filthy."
"One of them was so bad that if you slapped the seat, there was a cloud of dust." Another had so much dirt in the floor board, "you could clean the floor out with a shovel," Cash said.
The brakes are worn out on several cars, Cash added, and they are being repaired.
"I don't know if they rode around with the foot on the brake or not," he said.
Told of Cash's car allegations, Hollingsworth said, "In my opinion, he's just looking at anything he can. ... We're not going to send a guy on the road doing 130 mph with dirt and bad brakes. .... There's no way on God's green earth we'd do that."
Cash said some of the people who worked for Hollingsworth and who still work there "don't want to sit on the chairs and things like that" because they know what's there.
DNA testing of areas where Cash believes people urinated has "crossed our minds," he said.
Cash said he doesn't believe Hollingsworth caused the damage but believes "it happened on his watch."
"It was his responsibility to prevent it," Cash said.
Cash said he didn't think the campaign was especially bitter, but Hollingsworth, who endorsed Perry, said Cash's campaign "was just trashing the sheriff's office from day one."
Perry could not be reached for comment by phone Monday. There is no listing for him in the Malvern area's directory assistance. Hollingsworth said Perry is g̶o̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶w̶o̶r̶k̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶ a candidate for a job at the* University of Arkansas at Little Rock Police Department. b̶u̶t̶ ̶h̶a̶s̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶s̶t̶a̶r̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶y̶e̶t̶.
Cash said some deputies under Hollingsworth still work at the department and don't act as if they know how the place got so bad.
Hollingsworth said the sheriff's office "looks 10 times better" now than it did when he first took office.
As for Cash, he said he's working for now out of the clerk's office down the hall from the sheriff's office.
State Desk on 01/03/2017
*CORRECTION: Woody Perry, a former deputy for the Hot Spring County sheriff’s office, has applied to work for the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Police Department but has not been hired, a university spokesman said. A previous version of this article quoted the former sheriff who incorrectly stated Perry’s work status with the university.