With Arkansas appellate courts beginning their fall session, Little Rock residents can look forward to the potential resolution of the decision to fire Charles Starks, the Little Rock police officer who killed a car-theft suspect barely six weeks after Mayor Frank Scott Jr. took office.
Starks appealed the termination decision made by Police Chief Keith Humphrey -- who was the first major hire of Scott's administration -- which resulted in Pulaski County Circuit Judge Tim Fox overturning Starks' firing and reinstating him to the force.
The order to reinstate Starks ultimately cost Little Rock almost $61,000, with $28,178 going to cover Starks' lost wages and another $32,730 to reimburse his legal expenses.
Starks' firing had further fallout, with two top police commanders -- one of whom eventually left the department -- suing the chief, claiming that their testimony that Humphrey deliberately rushed the probe had embarrassed the chief so much that he had launched a campaign of retaliation against them and their supporters on the force.
The family of the man Starks killed, Bradley Blackshire, also has launched a federal civil rights lawsuit against Starks and the city. The 30-year-old man's killing led to street protests in the city, some resulting in vandalism.
Starks would quit about nine months later, complaining in an ongoing lawsuit against the chief and mayor that they had deliberately made his working conditions intolerable to retaliate for having to rehire him.
In his ruling putting Starks back on the force, Fox agreed with Humphrey that Starks had violated police safety protocols in the fatal encounter with Blackshire and should be punished. But the judge deemed firing Starks too severe since Starks' use of force was not at issue in the firing decision.
Fox reduced the termination to a 30-day suspension, stripped Starks of his six-year seniority as an officer and reduced him to rookie pay.
It was a ruling neither side agreed with, resulting in dueling appeals to the Arkansas Court of Appeals by Starks and the city. Court filings show the high court had been fully briefed as of August, meaning the appeals judges could rule at any time in the coming weeks.
To overturn Fox's ruling to reinstate Starks, the appeals court will have to find that the judge acted against the preponderance of the evidence or that his decision was clearly a mistake. During the course of proceedings, Fox has noted that the standard of appellate review for these kinds of rulings is "the highest, most stringent standard."
In his appeal of Fox's ruling, Starks asks the appeals court to exonerate him with a ruling that he did not deliberately violate procedure in his February 2019 face-off with Blackshire in a west Little Rock parking lot.
Starks maintains that Blackshire, behind the wheel of a stolen car, was deliberately trying to kill him with the vehicle after refusing Starks' commands to park the vehicle. Starks was on foot after parking his squad car, shooting into Blackshire's car after it had clipped him.
Starks had been on patrol when he was ordered to intercept the car Blackshire was driving after another officer recognized the vehicle as one that had been reported stolen. Blackshire's family said he had borrowed the car from a friend.
The police chief and the judge separately determined that Starks violated police rules that require officers to get out of the way of an oncoming vehicle if standing their ground would require them to shoot.
In its appeal brief, city lawyers call Fox's reinstatement order clearly erroneous, noting that the police chief's decision to fire Starks was upheld by a 5-1 vote of the city Civil Service Commission after hearing testimony from 16 witnesses, four of them Starks' supervisors and commanders. All of Starks' supervisors opposed firing Starks.
The city claims that Fox was wrong to consider testimony of two officers outside of Starks' chain of command, Sgt. James Stephens of Internal Affairs and Assistant Chief Alice Fulk, both of whom disagreed with the decision to fire Starks. Fulk has since gone on to become chief of the Capitol Police Department.
Their testimony should have been deemed irrelevant and been disregarded since neither was involved in the internal probe of Starks' actions, the city's attorneys stated.
The city's position is that without their input, Fox would not have been able to find grounds to overturn Starks' firing.
City lawyers further argue that Fox did not give enough weight to Starks' testimony that he had deliberately moved in front of Blackshire's car to get to cover.
Rather than disregard how Starks came to kill Blackshire, the judge should have considered that Starks deliberately and unnecessarily put himself in a situation that made the use of deadly force highly likely, the city lawyers state in their brief.
Fox wrote in his decision that he evaluated Starks' actions leading up to the officer's decision to shoot and found no fault with his actions once he got out of his squad car. But "a number of Starks' [previous] non-emergency decisions fall below the threshold of a reasonable certified law enforcement officer," the standard that the court is required to apply, the judge wrote.
Fox described two "illogical" decisions by Starks before he encountered Blackshire that resulted in Starks violating police procedure: parking his squad car in a manner that required him to cross in front of Blackshire's car to confront the driver, but not parking the squad car in a way that would have kept Blackshire from exiting the parking lot.
The judge addressed the serious consequences, particularly Blackshire's death, that resulted from Starks' decision to confront Blackshire.
Beyond killing Blackshire, his passenger could have been killed or wounded, as could anyone in the immediate area, the judge wrote. The officers racing to assist Starks could have been hurt or killed, he wrote. The death of one person is serious, Fox said, but the outcome of the confrontation could have been even worse.
But the question of Starks' firing is not the only issue the appeals court has been asked to resolve. City lawyers are also asking the court to overturn Fox's contempt findings over the city's decision to suspend Starks without pay and withhold his gun and badge once he was ordered rehired. The city wanted to keep Starks off active duty until the appeal of his reinstatement could be decided.
Two weeks after Fox ordered Starks to be rehired, Starks complained to the judge that police would not fully reinstate him because authorities were withholding his gun and badge and had suspended him with pay. Starks petitioned Fox to hold the mayor and chief in contempt.
Starks' lawyers accused the mayor and the police chief of stigmatizing Starks in a move that not only violates the court order overturning Starks' firing but also financially penalized Starks by preventing him from taking off-duty law enforcement work, which can add as much as $20,000 annually to his income.
Starks got his gun and badge back at the judge's order after a hearing a couple of days later, with Fox stating that if Starks' gun and badge were not returned as soon as possible, the judge would seize the chief's gun and badge, hold them until Starks' were returned, plus impose a $10,000 fine for every day Starks was further denied gun and badge.
Fox found the decision to withhold Starks' equipment was "an intentional and willful violation" of his order to reinstate Starks, although he declined to impose any penalties since Starks' equipment was returned almost immediately.
CORRECTION: Bradley Blackshire, who was fatally shot by a Little Rock police officer during a traffic stop Feb. 22, 2019, was 30. An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated Blackshire’s age.