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Arkansas law-enforcement oversight: commission flags more officers and cuts decertification backlog
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Summary
Chris Chapman, director of Law Enforcement Standards and Training, told legislators the commission flagged files to prevent rehiring without disclosure, increased decertification requests from 158 to 256, and currently has about 147 officers pending hearings after reducing backlog from roughly 4.5 years to 1.5 years.
Chris Chapman, director of the Commission on Law Enforcement Standards and Training, briefed a legislative committee on the state's processes for policing certification, decertification and interagency reporting. Chapman said separation forms now trigger a flagging system that prevents agencies from completing hiring paperwork without full disclosure when an officer's separation involves conduct in one of nine categories that can prompt decertification.
Chapman provided recent case-load statistics: the commission received about 158 decertification requests in the three years before the present administration and said that number rose to about 256 under current leadership. He said the commission currently has 147 officers pending decertification hearings and that backlog timelines shrank from about 4.5 years to roughly 1.5 years in many cases.
Chapman described the process steps: separation reporting, probable-cause review, administrative probable-cause hearings, and—if warranted—full decertification hearings before the commission, with a typical appeal path to circuit court and representation by the attorney general's office. He said roughly 90–95% of decertifications are tied to integrity or honesty issues, including lying during investigations; the commission also conducts about 250 agency compliance checks per year to audit agency records and encourage corrective action.
On citizen complaints, Chapman said most decertification work is prompted by separation documents or referrals from chiefs, sheriffs or prosecutors; citizen complaints that allege criminality are often routed to prosecutors for criminal investigation and may also trigger commission review later. Chapman confirmed that decertification packets are available under public-records law and are sometimes used in civil litigation.
What comes next: Chapman said the commission meets every other month for two days of hearings (about 12 hearing days per year) and could expand the schedule if workload requires; members asked for additional appeal and appeal-frequency statistics, which Chapman offered to provide.
