 100vw, 780px”>Mike Hagar, Arkansas State Police Director, speaks to reporters during a press conference on Feb. 28, 2025. <span class=)
The Arkansas State Police and more than a dozen county prosecutors announced plans to crack down harder on people who flee from state troopers during a joint press conference Friday.
Arkansas State Police engaged in 553 pursuits in 2024, a number that has grown exponentially since 2017, when state troopers engaged in only 74 pursuits, ASP Director Mike Hagar said.
The press conference didn’t contain any actual news, just an announcement that Arkansas prosecutors had agreed to aim to forgo plea deals and more harshly prosecute people who flee from state troopers.
“Sometimes as a tool, law enforcement and prosecutors will work together to engage in, you know, some type of a plea bargain or something like that. And there’s some instances where those felony fleeing charges have been null-prosse’d [dropped] or they’ve been reduced, or they’ve been wrapped up in a bigger package,” Hagar said. “The commitment that we’ve asked for from our prosecutors is that those situations will be very few and far between.”
Daniel Shue, Sebastian County prosecuting attorney and president of the Arkansas Prosecuting Attorneys Association, said prosecutors “want to work with state police” but would still prosecute on a “case-by-case basis.”
“You’ve got to have individualized justice or you don’t have justice at all,” Shue said.
In Arkansas, fleeing from an officer is, at minimum, a class-A misdemeanor with two days in jail. Speeding while fleeing bumps it up to a class-D felony, punishable by up to six years in prison. If you substantially threaten the lives of others, it is a class-C felony punishably by up to 20 years in prison.
“We will do what is safest for the public and that’s why we’ve instructed them [state troopers] that as soon as you can articulate the suspect is fleeing, put them in the ditch,” Hagar said.
Videos of Arkansas state troopers engaging in pursuits have become extremely popular on YouTube, with some garnering tens of millions of views.
“A public service announcement will be released later today that will feature graphic video of state police pursuits similar to the ones that have become so popular on YouTube,” Hagar said, though he stressed that the PSA is not “entertainment.”
The deranged PSA features glitched-out, badass-hacker editing and clips of state troopers engaging in PIT maneuvers set to rave music.
Check it out, it’s pretty entertaining:
