It’s about accountability

Mayor Frank Scott isn’t at all forthcoming on controversies besetting his personal selection a mere 14 months ago of Keith Humphrey for Little Rock police chief.

Mainly the mayor will tell you only that he can’t tell you. He will cite human-resources privacy or pending litigation.

He will assert that he is exercising a chief executive officer’s singular leadership.

You have to wonder, though, if there is a form of leadership that might entail more public accountability than that.

Scott told me one thing clearly: He is by law the CEO of city government and thus he hires and fires the police chief. He said he hasn’t seen any reason to fire Humphrey. He said that, at the unfortunate risk of sounding a bit imperious, that will just have to be that.

Scott hastened to add that he respects views to the contrary, though they might not be based on the extensive privileged personnel information available to him, and that he reserves the option to “pivot” from his position if he sees any reason, which he hasn’t as yet.

I brought the matter up with him Thursday after a week’s emboldening of expressions of concern about—indeed a lack of confidence in—this embattled chief, whom Scott hired in March 2019 from the police chief’s job in Norman, Okla.

City Director Lance Hines told a radio interviewer that he had lost confidence in the chief, mainly because of new revelations of judgments against Humphrey for credit-card debt in excess of $30,000 as well as Humphrey’s apparent interest in hiring a finance official with personal debt issues.

Then, on Wednesday, City Director Capi Peck provided a Facebook Live telecast to members of the local LifeQuest continuing education program, and, upon being asked about controversies besetting the chief, answered on point.

Peck said she simply lacked confidence in the chief and believed that rising “dissension” and “uneasiness” in the local police ranks represented “the last thing we need right now.”

The credit-card debt is not the underlying issue. In that regard, Humphrey has made a public statement that he took responsibility for certain family-related debt and agreed to a judgment and payment plan. That’s fine by me, if so.

The underlying issue is the charge—Hines alluded to it in the radio interview—that Scott hired Humphrey with the implicit or explicit directive that the new chief fire officer Charles Starks, who encountered an erratic motorist in February 2019 and wound up fatally shooting that motorist.

The victim was African American and the officer white. Scott, only in office three months as the city’s first-ever popularly elected black mayor, was known to be concerned about racial tensions. If you ask Scott that rather basic question—whether he directed the chief to fire Starks, which the chief did two months into the job—he will explain that it is an issue in litigation and that he can’t talk about it for that reason.

I’m wondering why “no” would be inappropriate as an answer both in litigation and in life. If it were the right answer, that is.

I have previously speculated uncritically, even sympathetically, that Scott at least signaled to Humphrey that he wanted the officer fired, and that, if the Civil Service Commission later reversed the firing, so be it.

But the Civil Service Commission upheld the chief. Then Circuit Judge Tim Fox ordered Starks reinstated at a demoted level.

Two assistant chiefs of police who testified that Humphrey pressured them to work quickly in the Starks case have since filed suit alleging that Humphrey has mistreated them in the workplace as a result of their testimony.

Scott may think some of this controversy has to do with sour grapes from people who wanted to be chief themselves—such as the two assistant chiefs—or supported internal promotion.

In fact, I’m told he thinks that precisely.

A police chief’s assuming a judgment for repayment of debt perhaps not directly his own and then firing an officer and engendering resentment would not by themselves compel the firing of the chief.

But Peck told me that there are reports from within the ranks of police department dysfunction based on communication and policy failures at the top that raise concerns about public safety.

All of that would seem to compel something else. It is that Scott take a public moment, and soon, to say that, while there are personnel and legal issues limiting what he can say, he certainly can and should affirm to the city directors and their concerned constituents that he maintains confidence in the chief and supports him based on his performance in his job, and tell us how so.

The reasons a mayor deems a police chief to be doing his job adequately—that is not privileged information. It’s public accountability.