Just after press time last week, Pulaski County Deputy Prosecutor John Hout phoned to say that he had withdrawn his motion for a gag order in the Tracy Ingle case, an order we reported here.
Hout said that he had filed the gag order in order to keep things fair by making sure the police didn’t talk to the press before Ingle’s trial this summer, but decided later that the order wasn’t necessary. Our suspicion was along the lines that the state didn’t want more embarrassing information to emerge about the police handling of the case.
As you’ll recall from the Times‘ April 24 cover story, Ingle was shot five times by a North Little Rock SWAT team as they executed a no-knock search warrant on his house back in January, a warrant issued on a boilerplate affidavit with little justification for the extraordinary break-in.
Though no drugs were found in the house, Ingle has since been charged with three felonies, including one count of possession of drug paraphernalia (for a broken digital scale his sister claims belong to her) and two counts of aggravated assault against NLRPD officers Wesley Honeycutt and Steven Chamness, the cops who sprayed Ingle’s bedroom with bullets moments after breaking out his bedroom window in the middle of the night. Awakened by the noise, Ingle admits he pointed a gun at the officers, but claims he threw it down once he realized they were police.
Thanks to the Internet and a recap of the incident posted on the blog of Reason magazine, Ingle’s case has drawn nationwide attention. Ingle’s sister, Tiffney Forrester, has also started a website that details Ingle’s case and the ongoing effort to prosecute him: justicefortracy.com.
NLR mobile home park
North Little Rock Mayor Pat Hays made news this week for his proposal that the city borrow nearly a quarter-million dollars to establish an RV park on the Arkansas River across from the Clinton Library. Hays, who was out of town as we went to press, reportedly has reassured people worried about the aesthetics of a collection of rolling homes on the river — near gentrifying Argenta and within sight of the Clinton Library — that the RV park is just a “place-holder.”
That is, he reportedly envisions it as a temporary use for the land until a bigger development is possible. Someday, after all, the former Rock Island railroad bridge will become a pedestrian link between the library and North Little Rock.
Why cross the river from the library to see an RV park?