North Little Rock Mayor Terry Hartwick is defending a city employee after a video showed the employee confronting a homeless man while brandishing a golf club.
On Wednesday morning, George Mays, a homeless man, was sleeping in a tent with his girlfriend in North Little Rock’s Riverfront Park when a city employee pulled up to his tent in a city pickup truck, demanding he leave the area.
Mays, a former chef who has been homeless for about a month, filmed part of the interaction and posted it to Facebook. He said he was complying with the employee’s orders and packing up his belongings when the employee pulled a golf club out of his truck and began brandishing it.
“He’s like, ‘I need you to leave now.’ And I’m like, ‘Sure, I heard you the first two times. If you just give me a second, I will pack my stuff up and I will leave. You don’t have to be so aggressive.’ And when I said that, he literally went to his truck and he came out with that golf club,” Mays told the Arkansas Times.
It was at this point that Mays began filming the interaction with his cell phone.
The man wielding the golf club is Patrick Lane, longtime director of the North Little Rock Street Department. In the 47-second video, Lane repeatedly tells Mays and his girlfriend to leave the area and at one point threatens to take their belongings.
At some point after the video cuts off, Lane flagged down two passing police officers, Mays said. At that point, Mays began filming again until Lane and the officers left the area:
Lane did not respond to a request for comment and referred the Arkansas Times to Hartwick.
Hartwick said he told Lane to “lose the club” but that no administrative action would be taken.
“I don’t know where he got it. I don’t know if he’s had it before. I don’t know if he picked it up along the way,” Hartwick said.
It isn’t clear where Lane got the golf club but some of Hartwick’s comments indicate Lane may have previously used it.
“Those homeless people are living in tents. Sometimes, he’ll tap the tent to make sure they’re OK, but he didn’t threaten them with it. He just had it in his hand,” Hartwick said.
Hartwick went on to say that Lane carried the club because homeless people “sometimes get very vicious.”
“He does it because these people who are homeless sometimes get very vicious towards people … I saw the video. I didn’t see anything wrong. I just told him to lose the golf club. Fair enough?” Hartwick said.
In addition to defending Lane, Hartwick painted Mays as the aggressor in the situation and said he “went ballistic when he saw the golf club.”
Hartwick also accused Mays of being abusive toward a woman in the video.
“This person was very abusive to, not only our street department, but this lady,” Hartwick said. “Who was this lady that he’s being very abusive to?”
The woman in the video is Mays’ girlfriend, Kelsea Wiley.
“He told her to shut up or something like that,” Hartwick said.
Mays does not tell her to “shut up” in either video, a claim that Hartwick made multiple times while speaking to the Arkansas Times.
Hartwick may have been referring to a point in the initial 47-second video where Mays can be heard saying “You better quit yelling at me, Kelsea,” as Lane repeatedly tells them both to clear out of the area.
While Mays’ videos don’t show the entire interaction, they show a clear imbalance of power between the two parties. Lane has a weapon. Mays does not.
Mays said he was not aware of North Little Rock’s ordinance against public camping and had slept in the same spot the night before with no issue.
“I was originally sleeping on that gazebo that’s right beside that bridge there, but a city park officer did come and tell us that we couldn’t sleep there,” Mays said. “He didn’t mention anything about the ordinance or anything, so I still didn’t know about it.”
Many Arkansas cities have adopted ordinances prohibiting public camping. Homeless advocacy groups have criticized the ordinances for leaving homeless people with fewer places to legally inhabit or sleep.
“Being out here and being homeless, it’s not easy at all,” Mays said. “There’s no safe places for you to sleep.”
Mays said he posted the video to Facebook to spread awareness about how homeless people are treated.
“I am not proud to be homeless. I don’t want to be homeless, and more people know that I’m homeless now. And, so yeah, it bothers my pride a little bit, but it’s awareness. I don’t feel like that guy should have treated me that way. He shouldn’t have been so aggressive,” Mays said. “Maybe to some people it’s not a big deal, but to me it’s a big deal. It bothered me emotionally. I’m already going through enough emotional stress already and I just wanted people to see how he’s treating people.”
Mays, who said he’s trying to leave Arkansas, said shelters and resource centers for homeless people are often full or nearly impossible to travel between on foot while carrying everything you own.
“I’m out here and there’s programs that help, there’s places that feed, but it’s only so much,” Mays said.
