LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Little Rock Police Chief Keith Humphrey issued a statement Thursday in response to a claim from a local television station that he abused his power to attend an event in North Little Rock.
The report claimed Chief Humphrey used his lights and sirens in his city-issued car to go around traffic near Verizon Arena to attend an event featuring Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and former President Bill Clinton.
In a statement released on Twitter, Chief Humphrey said the accusations are inaccurate. “These false accusations made in the media are not only an attack on me, but every man and woman who wears a Little Rock Police uniform. This story only hurts the mission of the Little Rock Police Department, and effects the relationship between our department and the public,” he said in the statement.
Humphrey goes on to say he was invited to the event at Verizon by the Secret Service and activated his blue lights before entering a secured barricaded area so that a North Little Rock Police Officer would be aware a fellow officer in “a dark vehicle with tinted windows” was approaching.
Humphrey says this was for safety and out of respect for the NLRPD officer working security. “The reports of using my lights and sirens to drive through intersections in the city of North Little Rock are completely false,” the statement reads.
THV11 reached out to the LRPD asking to speak to Chief Humphrey. He declined, but instead directed us to a video posted Thursday on the department’s YouTube page, which appears to show the incident from a nearby surveillance camera.
You can watch the video below: