Partne Daugherty, the woman who first unearthed Little Rock police video and audio recordings that put a much different light on the arrest of Surgeon General Joe Thompson, is still sniffing into the work of Little Rock police through Freedom of Information Act requests for tapes from patrol unit dash cameras.
Here, about 7 hours after Thompson’s arrest, Daugherty finds a snippet of video from what she says is the cruiser of Officer Chris Johannes, who took down Thompson in the bust and who, we’ve reported, has used force dozens of times in both on-duty and off-duty circumstances. He’s the officer who shot into a fleeing car occupied by black men at Park Plaza, where he works private security, because they didn’t stop when he tried to question them about why they’d spoken to a white teen who walked by in the parking deck. This video appears to be made in a similar parking deck.
What’s going on here? Making a funny video? Watching TV? Good questions. I’ve asked police for more information if available. You’ll see a reader has found a TV clip that matches up with what you hear on the video Daugherty has posted, if it hasn’t been manipulated. Perhaps it was just to make a funny video clip made by the officer during a slow period matching that dialogue with the man seen off in the distance. (Yes, there are some departmental rules on use of social media, digital devices and related matters. But it could be Johannes was at work at Park Plaza on his off-hours security job.)
PS — Is Partne Daugherty a pseudonym? (Partne is “entrap” spelled backwards). More on that if I can, but her clear interest in police misdeeds, whatever the motivation, is a separate issue from what the videos themselves show. We had obtained our own copies of the Thompson arrest videos before her own YouTube posts had been made and then picked up by others, including Fox 16 and the Arkansas Project. UPDATE: She says her legal name is Partne A. Kiesling-Daugherty and supplied a driver’s license as evidence.