Thread by @radleybalko

So I had a big story go up at The Intercept over the weekend. About 18 months of reporting.

Because it's quite long, here's a thread that I hope will persuade you to read it.

theintercept.com/2021/12/18/lit…

It opens with a black woman sergeant at the Little Rock PD receiving an odd text message from her white assistant chief.

The message, sent to her and 4 white women, asked the recipients to make sexual harassment complaints against the city's black, reformist chief.

The problem is that this sergeant had no such accusations to make. And when she pointed this out, she was pressured to file a complaint, anyway. She saw this as an attempt to bring down the chief because of his reforms.

She saw the texts -- which had been sent in the middle of the night -- just minutes after seeing the George Floyd video for the first time.

Over the ensuing months, the chief's critics made more accusations, including that he had sexually harassed at least 12 women, that he was having other affairs, including one with a woman for whom he tried to secure a high-paying job at the department.

18 months later, none of these accusations have panned out.

Critics have also publicized the chief's personal finances and fed the local news false stories about him.

He's been regularly attacked on pro-police sites like LawOfficer.com.

For example, one lawsuit claims that when a female officer reported a hostile work environment, the chief disregarded her and transferred her. But I spoke to the woman. She adamantly denied the lawsuit's claims. She said the chief is actually the only one who took her seriously.

In fact, she said the assistant chief -- the one who filed the lawsuit and who sent those text messages -- is actually the one who disregarded her complaint.

The fact that the assistant chief's lawyer then included the incident in her lawsuit is pretty brazen. It's also . . .

. . . a good sign that these lawsuits were not intended to prevail in court, but to generate public pressure to force the reformist chief out of office.

The entire campaign against the chief, driven by rivals for his job and the police union, is similar to one 20 years ago against the city's first black chief. He too was accused of sexual transgressions with a white woman, "reverse discrimination," and misappropriating funds.

Those allegations too never panned out.

These campaigns demonstrate how difficult it is to implement reform in cities with entrenched interests and powerful police unions, and how those interests preserve structural racism in police departments.

Black cops told me that those who speak out about racial profiling, abuse of force, and other misconduct are targeted by the FOP (which is why there's a black officers' union.) Meanwhile, if a new chief tries to change a system that protects white officers, the union helps ...

... white officers bring complaints of "reverse discrimination."

The story also includes one of the more poignant interviews I've ever conducted with a source. Troy Ellison is a black major at LRPD. In 2010, his father was killed in his home by two white officers. Ellison's...

... father was not suspected of any crime. The officers came into his apartment uninvited. When he told them to "get the f**k out," they confronted him, fought with him, and ultimately killed him.

The husband of the officer who shot him was in charge of the investigation.

Black officers say that investigation was also loaded with conflicts of interest, violations of procedure, and other signs of a cover-up.

Ellison and his family sued, which led to some pretty humiliating retaliation, including one incident in which he was forced to attend ...

... a use of force class with the officers who killed his father. The class was taught by the attorney defending those officers while representing the city in the lawsuit.

Today, Ellison is in charge of the riot team that shows up at protests. He talked to me about the internal conflict that roils inside him at those protests. He said he often feels he has one foot on both sides of the protest line.

There's a lot more.

But if all of this hasn't persuaded you, you might just read the story for the anecdote about how former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and his wife Janet often went jet skiing with the city's SWAT team.

(Really!)