Pocahontas Mayor Reacts Aggressively to Viral First Amendment Auditor

POCAHONTAS, Ark. — Mayor Keith Futrell did not perform well recently in a First Amendment audit by the Random Patriot, according to many of the comments made by viewers of his latest video.

The YouTuber, real name Justin MacHenry from Conway, has over 120,000 subscribers. He visits different communities and tests whether government officials will violate his rights as he films in public places. The “audit,” as it is called, challenges government employees not only in respecting rights, but on their attitudes.

In a video posted this week, government buildings in Lawrence and Randolph counties were the subject of the audit. Justin visited both locations with a local activist, Luke Peppers of the Arkansas Corruption Channel.

Lawrence County

The visit to Walnut Ridge was mostly uneventful, as the two highlighted several signs outside of the county courthouse that say recording is prohibited inside the building.

However, the Lawrence County visit was not nearly as eventful as the visit to Randolph County’s largest community, Pocahontas.

Justin told NEA Report that he was there to see if his rights were going to be violated. He said he also likes to document various city hall buildings for his members-only paid subscribers, when videos are uneventful. This one was anything but.

Randolph County

The Pocahontas visit begins with Justin and Luke filming different city vehicles in the parking lot. Most of the windows are rolled up, but one truck has the window slightly open. This is the truck driven by Mayor Keith Futrell, who said he parked it under the shade due to the heat.

The mayor’s office is at the front of the building, facing the parking lot Justin was in. Through the glass wall, the mayor said he first noticed the men videoing different vehicles.

“I look out in the parking lot and I see a guy walk up and look at my truck and stick his hand in my window,” Futrell said. “Well, I don’t know what he’s doing.”

Multiple times during our interview, Futrell said he witnessed Justin sticking his hand or arm into the open window. The uploaded videos do not show this, and appear to show the outside frame of the window at the top of the video.

When asked, Futrell said this is because the video was deceptively edited.

“I saw enough to see where he had cut things and edited things and put things together, so I just quit watching it because I lived it,” Futrell said.

Justin strongly denied that his video was deceptively edited.

“I edit things to make the video better,” Justin said. “A lot of time, if you have 20 minutes of walking around and nothing happens, no one is going to finish watching the rest of it.”

The Random Patriot uploaded the uncut video of his Pocahontas visit here, in response to the mayor’s claim.

From the moment the mayor encounters Justin and Luke, he appears agitated, telling the two men that the next time they want to look at vehicles, come inside and talk to him first. Then he tells the men, “Hey, listen to me. Come here, both of you.”

“Let’s tone it down a little bit, alright?” Justin replies on video.

“Hey, I can’t hear, so I’m talking loud. You listen to me. I’ll talk,” Futrell says back in the video.

The 62-year-old mayor told NEA Report he can be “overbearing,” and mentioned the men not wishing to identify themselves as the reason for his response, which he acknowledged was aggressive.

“When I don’t have my hearing aids in, I can barely hear myself talk,” Futrell explained. “And I know I get overbearing with things, but to me, when a man, especially when he comes to city hall and wants something, says he wants something, but he don’t want to tell you who he is, like I said, I’ve never dealt with that situation.”

At this point in the video, neither of the two had been asked for their names. Once Futrell asks for their names, and they refuse to give them, tensions begin to rise further.

Pocahontas City Hall

The mayor continues to press the two for their names once inside. After being told no, he instructs an employee to see if the police chief is in the building. Luke presses the issue more than Justin, who at one point, tells the mayor he appreciates him asking if they need help, they do not, and they don’t need anyone’s help.

“Okay,” Futrell said. “Well, we don’t just let people wander around. Now you’re welcome to stay right here in this area. But that’s the only place you have access to.”

Justin described his words as an attempt to de-escalate the situation. He told NEA Report he tried to dial things down on several occasions, but the mayor became increasingly aggressive. Luke, however, was not as willing to be diplomatic. After the exchange continues, the mayor is heard telling him he’s not man enough to give his name.

“People who don’t want to give their names are cowards,” Futrell said in the video. “Put that on your screen. You’re a coward for not giving your name.”

Justin responds that this is how the mayor of Pocahontas treats people who come to his town. Futrell replies, “No. It’s not.”

“He’s hiding behind the gray area of the First and Fourth Amendments and apparently that’s his right to do so,” Futrell said.

There’s a moment when Justin again explains the purpose of his visit. He says the entire point of the video is to test whether their rights are going to be violated. The mayor laughs.

Pocahontas Police Chief David Edington emerges from the back office. He trades remarks with Luke. Then, with the mayor continuously asking The Random Patriot for his name, he tells him his name is Justin and offers to shake his hand. They shake, but Futrell appears to pull his hand in and not release it.

“Let go of my hand,” Justin says on video.

“Well, you wanted to shake hands,” the mayor says back.

Chief Edington sees the entire incident from feet away and laughs.

The mayor then walks into Justin’s personal space, with the camera almost touching the mayor. Justin asks him to get out of his personal space. Justin looks at the police chief and states that the chief just witnessed an assault, and he wants to file a report.

Edington, still smiling, makes what is perhaps the most concerning statement of the entire video, suggesting that Justin had attacked the mayor.

“Actually, what I thought I heard was your tripod hit him over there on the arm,” Edington says on video.

“I do feel he committed assault and battery on me, but I’m not pursuing charges,” Justin told a reporter.

The video continues as the police chief says that since they want to “sue us or whatever,” they need to make a report with the sheriff’s department. The mayor says he will call a deputy.

Several minutes later, Justin asks why they need a sheriff’s deputy here. The mayor tells him he asked for one. Justin said he did not. Futrell says the video will show he did.

The video does not show Justin or Luke asking for a sheriff’s deputy.

Justin calls the mayor a liar. The mayor says not to call him a liar, “boy.” Justin then responds by calling the mayor ‘boy’ in return.

Mayor Futrell told our reporter Justin had called him “boy” first.

“And it got heated, and he said I called him boy,” Futrell said. “Well, he called me boy several times before I ever called him boy.”

The video does not appear to show Justin calling the mayor “boy” until the mayor uses the term first. Our reporter asked Justin about the mayor’s allegation.

“What?” Justin replied incredulously. “Come on, dude. I don’t call people boy. That’s the silliest thing ever. That’s something someone like him says. There’s a type of person who says that. I’m not that type of person. It sounded weird coming out of my mouth.”

Then, the mayor tells his employee and the police chief how “lucky” they are.

The back and forth continues for some time, with the mayor appearing unwilling to disengage. Sgt. Trason Johnson with the Pocahontas Police Department arrives. The sergeant immediately escorts the mayor back to his office, realizing that city officials are continuing to give free content to the YouTuber. The mayor comments to the effect that he would have “drug them both out” as he is leaving.

The sergeant returns to the lobby. Justin introduces himself to the sergeant. Both identify themselves and shake hands. It is the most positive encounter between a city employee and the auditors.

The video continues, but there isn’t much else notable except for an argument with a female deputy from the sheriff’s office outside.

Despite the negative interaction, the mayor insisted that he never violated Justin’s First or Fourth Amendment rights, something Justin agreed with, speaking to our reporter.

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The Response

The video was published here on July 7. In three days, it has over 200,000 views and 10,000 likes. The comments are overwhelmingly negative toward the Pocahontas mayor.

In response to this, Mayor Futrell said he has not received any local calls or feedback expressing disappointment in his actions. However, numerous calls made to Pocahontas City Hall on Wednesday went unanswered. The mayor’s voicemail was also full. Eventually, NEA Report made contact with the mayor through email and spoke to him after he called our reporter later in the day.

Futrell also said there were approximately 330 million people in the United States, and most don’t believe what Justin is doing is right.

So far, not many have been commenting positively on the city’s social media pages in response to the video. Posts made on the mayor’s Facebook page lit up with comments from angry viewers responding to the encounter.

Then, the comments began disappearing.

In another development stemming from the video, critical comments of the Pocahontas city officials have been deleted from the city’s Facebook page.

The mayor said he has not deleted any Facebook comments, and he doesn’t use the website at all. However, the mayor stated that he understood several city employees were deleting comments.

“From what I understand, they were deleting some of the negative comments off of their Facebook page,” Futrell said.

He attempted to justify their actions by saying the comments were coming to their personal devices, and they didn’t want the comments on their devices. However, the comments were removed from a government page and not a person’s page. If city officials deleted comments critical of them, it likely could amount to a First Amendment violation.

…the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the interactive portion of a public official’s Facebook page is a “public forum,” so an official cannot block people from it because of the opinions they hold.

The case arose after the chair of a local board of supervisors in Virginia, Phyllis Randall, briefly blocked a critic from her official Facebook page and deleted a comment he made about her colleagues’ management of public funds.

– ACLU

Given that the mayor confirmed city employees removed the comments from a public forum, we asked the mayor if he thought maybe that would justify the reasoning behind a First Amendment audit of Pocahontas.

“Well, I don’t think so,” Futrell said. “The reason why: would you want your child to pull something up…they’re wanting to go to the aquatic center and they click on that and read some of that language…would you want to go sign up somebody for soccer or softball or whatever it is and you click on the link and it’s got all that profanity? You can only imagine what the comments were.”

The mayor said he would not allow comments to be deleted going forward.

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Although the mayor indicated that he believed he was right in the encounter, he also said he has learned from what happened. Before this incident, he said he didn’t know what First Amendment auditors were.

“They pushed my buttons, and they succeeded in exactly what they were trying to do,” Futrell said. “I wasn’t smart enough to know what they were doing, but I do now.”

Our reporter asked Justin if he was trying to ‘push Futrell’s buttons.’

“I don’t understand ‘push his buttons,'” Justin said. “I asked him to leave me alone so many times. That’s typical. He didn’t seem like someone that’s going to learn from it. He seemed like someone that’s going to justify his actions through and through. He will never admit to being sorry.”

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Arrest

Two days after the video was uploaded, Lucas Peppers with the Arkansas Corruption Channel was arrested in Pocahontas by the Randolph County Sheriff’s Office. The charge listed on the inmate roster is “contempt.” Online records are not available for the incident. NEA Report submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for the written contempt order.

Court sources suggest the incident was unrelated to what transpired with the mayor. Justin, who first notified us of the arrest, was still skeptical of the timing.

“He’s been in there so many times over the years, but it’s not until he goes viral with the mayor that he gets arrested,” Justin said.

UPDATE (1 PM July 11): The contempt order states that during active court, Lucas Peppers appeared at the entry door to the courtroom.

“He stood at the threshold of the courtroom door, peering through the window, waving at the court and recording the proceedings with a mobile device,” the findings by Judge Alex Bigger said.

The court document says Peppers was told that recording inside the courtroom is strictly prohibited, and he was disrupting the court.

“Within minutes, he returned to the entry door of the courtroom and resumed recording the court proceedings through the window,” the judge wrote.

Peppers was found in direct contempt of court, and the judge ordered his arrest.

The order states that Peppers was sentenced to 30 days in the county jail.

See Full FOIA: Peppers, Lucas Contempt Order