Treasurer touts investment shift

Earnings $ 1.5M in 4 months

The state treasurer’s office is making more money on its short- term investments in recent months, and the results have been “phenomenal,” Treasurer Dennis Milligan told the state Board of Finance on Tuesday.

Milligan touted these results a day after the Jefferson County Republican Committee called for Milligan’s resignation and its chairman, Peter Smykla Jr. of Pine Bluff, said Milligan’s actions have been a “betrayal of our confidence and trust.”

The Benton Republican and former Saline County circuit clerk, who was sworn in Jan. 13, said Tuesday that his office has ma de $ 1.5 million by investing hundreds of millions of dollars of state funds for short periods during the past four months. Before then, the average return on these investments was $ 36,000 per year, he said.

These short- term investments previously were in money market accounts that paid 0.01 percent interest in recent years. Milligan’s office

The officers searched McIntosh and found bags of what appeared to be crystal methamphetamine and paraphernalia, according to the letter.

Lonoke County Sheriff John Staley was called to assist in the drug case, the sheriff said Tuesday. He said McIntosh had about an ounce of crystal methamphetamine on him and scales, leading officers to believe that he was selling drugs.

The letter said McIntosh was handcuffed with his hands behind his back and put in the back of the Lonoke County patrol car.

Stewart went to the patrol car and opened the door to talk to McIntosh. By then, McIntosh had his handcuffed hands in front of him, raised a gun and began shooting through the rear passenger glass of the patrol car toward Stewart and Blake, the letter said.

The agents took cover and, along with Staley, returned fire.

“In this case the evidence is uncontroverted that the agents and the sheriff reasonably believed that Mr. McIntosh was using deadly physical force upon them and their lives and/ or citizens at the scene were in danger,” Graham wrote in the letter.

Earlier speculation that the gun had been left in the car from another arrest or had been slipped to McIntosh by someone else was false, Staley said.

“We deemed the weapon had to be on his person,” Staley said. “It wasn’t left in the police car. We checked it before. And nobody made contact with the inmate in the car.”

Missing something during a pat down is unfortunate, but it can happen, Staley said.

“It happens to police officers all over this country,” he said.

Dina Tyler, the Arkansas Department of Community Correction’s deputy director, said it’s impossible to be 100 percent sure about how McIntosh got the gun or hid the gun because “the only person that knows is gone.”

Tyler and Staley said they were grateful for the prosecutor’s decision.

“We had thought it was,” Tyler said of the prosecutor’s ruling that the shooting was justified. “Our officers are trained very well. All indications following the incident was that it was justified.”

Staley said officers had no other option but to return fire, but it’s not something any of them wanted to do.

“I pray for the family of Jonathan McIntosh,” Staley said. “I pray for him.”