Meet the Arkansas State Police: Episode 3 - Major Jason Aaron

 

Russ Racop - April 28, 2021

 

 

Jason Wayne Aaron joined the Arkansas State Police in 1988.

 

 

Aaron was commissioned as an Arkansas State Trooper in 1998 and initially assigned to the department’s Highway Patrol Division, Troop H (Crawford County).
His subsequent promotions and assignments include promotion to the rank of sergeant in 2006, assigned as a Highway Patrol Division post supervisor, followed by a promotion in 2012 to the rank of lieutenant and assuming command of the department’s Criminal Investigation Division, Company E headquartered at Harrison.

During 2014 he transferred as CID company commander, assuming duties at Company D, headquartered at Fort Smith and two years later was promoted to captain and commanded the Highway Patrol Division, Troop H also headquartered at Fort Smith.

 

Arron replaced Brian Davis, the former Troop H leader, after he was arrested by Fort Smith police for illegal sexual activity in a Fort Smith city park.

 

You can read our posts about Davis by clicking here and here.

 

On December 1, 2019, after the most recent promotion, Major Aaron was given command of the Arkansas State Police Highway Patrol Division, Eastern Region encompassing six troops in east, central and south Arkansas.

Aaron is a resident of Crawford County.

In 2004 when Aaron was just a regular trooper, he was involved in a traffic stop.

 

Aaron became suspicious of the Hispanic driver because he observed the driver of the vehicle had a brand new cellular telephone, new atlases, fast food wrappers, and energy drinks scattered in the front.   Aaron considered the presence of these items as indicators of possible criminal activity.

What a crock of shit. That scene applies to most anyone making long road trip in unfamiliar areas.

 
Aaron harassed the driver for a few minutes make him nervous, and subsequently wrote the driver a warning ticket for following the vehicle in front of him too closely.

Additional state troopers arrived, after the warning ticket had been issued,  making the driver more nervous than he was before.

With adrenaline rushing in their bloodstream, troopers then searched the vehicle and found three boxes containing around 95 pounds of weed.

 

The Arkansas Court of Appeals agreed with the driver and found that Arron that the trial court erred in failing to suppress the evidence seized from the traffic stop because a reasonable suspicion did not exist to continue to detain the driver after the warning ticket was issued.

 

Arkansas State Troopers are still pulling individuals over like Aaron did back in 2004.

You might recall the post we made about Arkansas Law Student Marion Humphrey, Jr. who was pulled over last year for driving while black.

 Here's a video of that incident.

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Coming up next in Episode 4 of Meet the Arkansas State Police we will feature Trooper Alan Aiken, one of the insurrectionists at the failed coup on January 6th in Washington D.C.

 

Former Arkansas State Trooper sentenced to two years for stealing over $30k in a drug sting - It's not the first time he got caught messing with cash as a cop

Allen Scott Pillow

 

Russ Racop - April 24, 2021

Allen Scott Pillow, 56, of Paragould, AR, a former Arkansas State Police investigator and lieutenant with the Greene County Sheriff's office was sentenced to two years in prison and fined $15,200 on April 21st  after pleading guilty late last year to stealing more than $30,000 in government funds when FBI agents set him up in a sting operation in late 2019.

Pillow was arrested Nov. 5, 2019, after the sting operation during which Pillow pocketed $30,400 in cash that he believed was part of $76,000 in illegal drug proceeds he had recovered from a planted rental vehicle. 

The money was recovered the next day after a search of Pillow and his home. He pleaded guilty in December to one count of theft of government property before U.S. District Judge Lee P. Rudofsky.

Rudofsky during his Judiciary Committee hearing in July 2019

According to the complaint, FBI agents contacted Pillow on Nov. 4, 2019, to request that he search a vehicle parked on the Lowe's parking lot in Paragould. Agents told Pillow they were Tennessee law enforcement officers who had tracked the vehicle from Tennessee but lacked authority to do anything more than keep the vehicle under surveillance outside of the state.

The complaint said the vehicle had been left in the parking lot, unattended, with a glass pipe and a partially opened red backpack in plain view from outside the vehicle. The backpack contained $76,000 in cash in 10 bundles of $7,600, each with the serial numbers recorded.

Pillow searched the vehicle and confiscated the backpack and the pipe, then headed to the Greene County sheriff's office after telling investigators he would let them know how much money was in the backpack once he had counted it, according to court records. Later that day, Pillow called one of the undercover officers and told him he had recovered $45,600 from the backpack.

The next morning, FBI investigators executed a search warrant on Pillow's home, his department-issued vehicle, and the narcotics office and evidence storage area of the Greene County sheriff's office, according to court documents. Pillow was found to have $2,300 in cash in his pants pocket that matched to the missing money. Another $23,820 was discovered in a safe hidden inside a cooler in the attic of a detached garage at Pillow's home. The remaining $280 was not recovered.

Investigators found documentation at Pillow's office indicating that he had filed an initial report that said $45,600 in cash that was recovered from the backpack was placed into evidence.

It wasn't the first time the disgraced former ASP Trooper was involved in a situation with cop money.

In 2014 Pillow was employed by the Arkansas State Police as a sergeant in an undercover capacity. He was caught exchanging $600 of his personal funds for alleged counterfeit money in an undercover operation and being "untruthful" (cop-speak for lying) in an internal investigation. Pillow should have been fired but was only demoted to the rank or corporal with a reduction in pay.

The demotion didn't last long as this social media post made by the Arkansas State Police indicates - he had his former rank and pay back by July 2016 in spite of his being a document liar, a/k/a, A Brady Cop.

We have a serious problem here in Arkansas and throughout the United States with law enforcement agencies that have corrupt, lying cops on public payrolls instead of having their law enforcement credential permanently revoked.

Unfortunately the Arkansas State Police is no exception and they have refused to provide public records regarding Troopers.

Stay tuned for information about that.

 

 

 

Meet the Arkansas State Police: Episode 2 - Cpl. Christopher L. Aaron

 

Russ Racop - April 19, 2021 

 

Christopher Lee Aaron joined the Arkansas State Police back in 2012.

  

In 2017, Aaron was received awards in connection with him saving the life of a friend.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Aaron, 38 (DOB: 09/14/1982) resides in Almyra in Arkansas County.

 

Aaron has been unlucky in love though.

In 2019 his wife filed for a divorce alleging he had inflicted "personal indignities" and rendered her life "intolerable". 

Aaron filed a counter-claim and he tried to get his child support payment lowered claiming the State Police pay was lower that what he was capable of earning so the court should not use imputed income as a basis for determining the child support payment amount.

That didn't work out so well for him.

 

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Coming up next in Episode 3 of Meet the Arkansas State Police we will feature Major Jason Aaron.

Major Jason Aaron

 

Meet the Arkansas State Police: Episode 1 - Col. William J. Bryant

Russ Racop - April 13, 2021

 

Governor Asa Hutchinson appointed former U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration official William J. "Bill" Bryant as the 19th director of the Arkansas State Police on January 12, 2015.

The then 58-year-old Bryant automatically assumed the rank of colonel and took over the state's largest law enforcement agency.

Twenty years of Bryant's nearly four decades in law enforcement were spent at the Little Rock District office of the DEA. During a stint at DEA headquarters in Arlington, Va., Bryant served as chief of congressional affairs under then-administrator Asa Hutchinson.

Bryant, now 64 (DOB: 07/29/1956) resides in Little Rock.

 

 

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Coming up next in Episode 2 of Meet the Arkansas State Police we will feature Trooper Corporal Christopher Aaron.

Corporal Christopher Aaron