Benton County Sheriff's lieutenant fired after harassment complaints

The Benton County Sheriff's Office in Bentonville.
The Benton County Sheriff's Office in Bentonville.

BENTONVILLE -- Some employees at the Benton County Jail made bets on how long it would take for a jail lieutenant to send inappropriate text messages to newly hired women, according to a deputy who was questioned during an internal investigation.

The lieutenant, Randall McElroy, was fired July 16 after the inquiry into sexual harassment claims. Officials at the Benton County Sheriff's Office had received information McElroy had sexually harassed women at the jail for years, according to a report on the investigation.

The Sheriff's Office released a report on the internal affairs investigation, but redacted all the names from the documents except McElroy's last name.

The internal investigation was opened after a former employee filed a complaint. She reported several employees, including McElroy, went to Virginia in 2016 for training. She said McElroy had nude images of another deputy's wife and showed them to employees on the trip and at the Sheriff's Office when the group returned, according to the report.

She also claimed McElroy sent inappropriate messages to women and showed employees pornography at work on his county cell phone, according to the report.

McElroy was interviewed July 16 and said he shared flirtatious messages with a deputy. He said he could not remember inappropriately touching an employee as one female alleged, but admitted was intoxicated and did grab a female employee at an office Christmas party, according to the report.

He also acknowledged he put that he worked nine hours on July Fourth when he was off on the holiday. One of the deputies had mentioned the time sheet issue in an interview, according to the report.

"It was a mistake," the lieutenant is quoted in the report. "I'll pay it back."

Major Kenneth Paul and Lt. Joe Adams interviewed several deputies and former employees as part of the internal investigation.

A female deputy reported receiving a message from McElroy as recently as May in which he said within 10 years they should get married, according to the report.

The last time he messaged her she responded by asking him how his wife was, and the messages stopped, according to the report.

She said McElroy had been behaving inappropriately since a least 2012. Women at the jail accepted the behavior when they realized he was not going to get punished, the female deputy told investigators.

Another female deputy reported she had never directly heard McElroy talk inappropriately to women.

A former employee at the jail reported McElroy would "drunk message" employees, ask for topless pictures and later apologize and say he was drunk, according to the report.

The former employee did not think anything would be done because past complaints had not reached the appropriate level, the report states.

The sheriff's office didn't respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

Another female deputy cried for several minutes at the beginning of the interview, the report says. She said she went on a trip with jail staff and McElroy became extremely intoxicated and grabbed her breast. She told him to stop, and McElroy never said anything else, according to the report.

Another female deputy claimed McElroy groped her twice at a Christmas party and the inappropriate contact was not solicited or wanted, according to the report.

A patrol deputy was critical of the jail's leadership and said, "if you were a scum bag, you were promoted," the report states. The patrol deputy talked about the "Wolf Pack" at the jail and said it got to the point where bets were placed on when McElroy would text the newly hired woman.

Benton County Prosecutor Nathan Smith said the Sheriff's Office had not referred anything related to the internal investigation to his office.

NW News on 07/31/2019

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