An incident report from the Hot Springs Police Department, along with emails and texts from Hot Springs Convention Center employees, offer fresh insight about the arrest of lawyer Jennifer Standerfer at an Arkansas Bar Association convention last week.
The documents seem to contradict earlier statements from the bar association that they took a neutral position on convention attendees gathering signatures for citizen-led ballot initiatives and that they did not drive the complaints leading to Standerfer’s arrest.
Standerfer is a leader in a campaign to place a pair of measures on the November ballot that aim to protect transparency in government and guarantee Arkansans can keep accessing records under the state Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA. To do so, organizers must collect some 90,000 signatures by a July deadline. When Standerfer attended the bar association’s annual convention in Hot Springs last week, she brought along petitions with her, in case other attendees wanted to sign. On Friday, June 14, she was handcuffed by police, threatened with a criminal trespassing charge and escorted out of the convention center.
Police ultimately declined to press charges, but they removed Standerfer from the property and told her she couldn’t come back.
The bar association put out a statement Friday that said it was convention center staff who objected to Standerfer collecting signatures at the event. “No one who was authorized to speak on behalf of the Arkansas Bar Association requested the HSCC [Hot Springs Convention Center] to remove the attendee,” the statement said. They doubled down with an updated statement on Sunday: “Despite reporting in the media, no one associated with the ArkBar – staff or leadership – asked for the member to be removed from the property during the convention.”
But both a police report and multiple emails obtained through a FOIA request name the bar association’s Director of Operations Kristen Frye as one of the people who pointed Standerfer out to a Hot Springs police sergeant working the event off-duty as hired private security on Thursday, June 13. Records show that Frye communicated with convention center staff multiple times over the course of two days about Standerfer, seemingly to encourage them to force her to stop collecting signatures.
“The stories of the Arkansas Bar and the Hot Springs Police officers are inconsistent. So, we look forward to finding the truth,” attorney John Tull said Monday evening.
Tull is a lawyer for Arkansas Citizens for Transparency, the politically eclectic group behind the campaign to protect the FOIA in the wake of attempts by Gov. Sarah Sanders and her supporters to gut the law last fall. Tull and state Sen. Clarke Tucker (D-Little Rock), an attorney and fellow leader with Arkansas Citizens for Transparency, are representing Standerfer in this brewing dispute that threatens to leave egg on the faces of Arkansas Bar Association leadership.
Standerfer and her attorneys note that political speech is commonplace at bar association annual conventions. Candidates for office routinely hand out palm cards and stickers at the annual events. Standerfer has said she did not solicit signatures after police and convention center staff first asked her not to, but that she simply kept the petitions with her in case anyone approached her and asked to sign. The fact that she was singled out and arrested suggests that some political activity is allowed by the bar association while other activity is not.
The trouble began for Standerfer on Thursday, June 13, as she was carrying petitions and other supplies with her in a small wagon.
Emails and incident reports from Hot Springs police and Hot Springs Convention Center employees indicate that representatives of both the bar association and the convention center complained to police that day. Frye made the initial complaint to convention center employees about Standerfer’s petitions, according to an incident report produced by the Hot Springs Convention Center.
“Visit Hot Springs Director of Sales who’s the Sales Manager for the Arkansas Bar Association received a phone call from an authorized representative of the Arkansas Bar Association in regards to a woman being in the Plaza Lobby of the Convention Center with a wagon with a sign attached that was soliciting signatures in the midst of their exhibit hall,” the report says.
An email sent on Sunday from Hot Springs Convention Center Director of Sales Tammy Clampet to convention center CEO Steve Arrison chronicled the events leading up to Standerfer’s arrest. It names Frye as the person who made that Thursday phone call.
A separate document from Hot Springs Convention Center Director of Operations Jennifer Wolcott also indicates Frye initiated the crackdown on Standerfer’s petitions. And a text exchange on Friday morning, shortly before Standerfer was handcuffed, hints that Frye continued to encourage convention center staff to pressure Standerfer about her petitions.
Frye wasn’t the only bar association representative opposed to signature gathering at the convention. That June 16 email from Clampet to Arrison states that on May 7, during planning for the event, Arkansas Bar Association Executive Director Karen Hutchins told Clampet she didn’t want petitions at the convention.
“May 7 — Spoke with Karen Hutchins about people canvassing for signatures during their Annual Meeting. She didn’t want them to be a distraction to her event,” the email said.
The convention center communications also include a note about that May 7 phone call between Hutchins and Clampet, which further contradicts the bar association’s contention that they were neutral on signature collecting.
A six-page incident report crafted by the Hot Springs Convention Center captures the First Amendment issue at the center of the dispute over Standerfer’s arrest. Standerfer and other attorneys said politicking is standard at the annual convention, with candidates handing out campaign materials every year, including this one. So why was Standerfer the only one who got in trouble for political speech?
On Thursday, after she was first told by police and convention center staff that she could not have petitions at the event, Standerfer left a voicemail for Pauline Howard, event coordinator for the Hot Springs Convention Center. In it, Standerfer makes the case that she’d been singled out:
The Hot Springs police report, which you can read in full here, confirms the Arkansas Bar Association helped drive the complaints that resulted in Standerfer’s arrest. It also reveals confusion over what law Standerfer — who also uses the last name Waymack-Standerfer — might have broken.
Hot Springs Police Sgt. Patrick Langley, who was working the event off-duty as private security, wrote in the report that he “made contact with Waymack[-Standerfer] and advised her that she was being asked to leave” on Thursday. “She inquired whether it was convention center staff or bar association staff asking her to leave and I advised her that it was both.”
After Standerfer was escorted out of the building, Langley said, “She was advised that since she is a member of the bar association, she was allowed at the event, however she would not be allowed to solicit petitions.”
Langley’s portion of the report paints her as an uppity woman who refused to do what the officers wanted her to. On Friday, the sergeant wrote, “I was made aware that she had returned to the facility and officers responded to speak with her. Officers were then called back to the scene and Off. Handley [sic] reportedly had to detain the female due to her behavior and refusal to follow his commands.”
But the account given by Hot Springs Police Officer Ryan Hanley, who worked on security detail at the convention on Friday and was the one who handcuffed Standerfer, suggests she had largely done what convention center staff asked and that fellow convention goers weren’t bothered by what she was doing. From his portion of the police report:
At approximately 1052 hours, I was sitting in attendance for the judge’s roundtable questionnaire where guest speakers were interacting with judges and members of the Arkansas Bar Association.
During this time, I noticed that Jennifer was sitting at a back table with multiple signature forms in plain view. This occurred immediately after she had been politely asked by Steve Arrison, CEO of Visit Hot Springs, to stop asking for signatures. Although Jennifer was not verbally requesting signatures, she had multiple petitions laid out on the table and had two of her colleagues come over to sign the petitions during the discussions. This behavior was noted as disruptive to the judge’s discussions and guest speakers’ instructions.
Before approaching Jennifer, I made contact with one of the judges sitting at the roundtable and inquired about Jennifer’s actions. The judge responded that he did not notice anything during the tabletop discussions. After escorting Jennifer from the property, the same judge I made contact with advised that he did recall seeing the signatures on the table but did not notice what they were as she was sitting across from him.
Upon observing the convention center policy violation, I made contact with Jennifer and advised her of the reason for the contact. I explained that due to her continued violations of the rules, she would need to leave the property. Jennifer stated that she did not violate the law and refused to leave. Despite being given another opportunity to comply, Jennifer continued to refuse. She acknowledged why she was being asked to leave but still refused to leave the property.
As a result of the criminal trespass violation and Jennifer’s noncompliance with the order to leave, she was placed in hand restraints, checked for fit, and escorted out of the roundtable discussion room to the convention center lobby. I determined the use of hand restraints was necessary due to Jennifer’s refusal to comply with lawful orders during the investigation. This was to ensure officer safety, maintain control of the situation, and prevent her from harming herself or others. Jennifer’s continued noncompliance and disruptive behavior warranted the use of restraints to manage the
situation safely and effectively. She was also frisked for weapons.
The police report cites Waymack-Standerfer’s offense as trespass of real property. Would such charges really stick in this situation? We will never know. “After determining that Jennifer was only being difficult by failing to follow the rules in order to seek attention, I decided not to file criminal trespass charges,” Hanley wrote.