The decertification hearing of former Madison County Sheriff’s Deputy Blake Hassell will not take place on Sept. 9 as previously scheduled.
The Commission on Law Enforcement Standards and Training (CLEST) hearing is being rescheduled due to “some administrative delays unrelated to the case,” according to Nick Genty, Deputy Communications Director for the Department of Public Safety and Shared Services Division.
CLEST may revoke a law enforcement officer’s certification after written notice and hearing if the commission finds an officer has broken the Law Enforcement Code of Ethics.
After Madison County Sheriff Ronnie Boyd requested Hassell’s decertification in November 2024, CLEST voted in January to proceed with a hearing.
At that time, Hassell’s attorney, Christopher Plumlee, said Hassell intended to contest any challenge to his certification as well as defend his name and reputation.
Genty said neither Hassell nor Boyd requested the delay.
Boyd requested Hassell’s decertification stating Hassell did not respond to a 911 call placed Aug. 5, 2024, in which a caller reported a woman yelling for help. Hassell initially said he had responded, but when questioned about the call, he admitted he had not.
Five weeks after the call, human remains were found in the area of the 911 call.
On Sept. 5, 2024, a parole and probation officer reported Taylor Barksdale was missing, Boyd has stated on Sept. 6, 2024, he began investigating her disappearance.
After finding human remains on Sept. 9, 2024, and opening a potential homicide investigation, Boyd identified the remains as belonging to Barksdale.
A press release from the sheriff’s office about a potential homicide appears to have been written and saved on Sept. 13, 2024. However, Boyd delayed sending the release until Sept. 18, 2024, just a few hours after The Record submitted a public records’ request for information about human remains being found in the Kingston area.
Boyd has stated several times that more information will be presented at the decertification hearing as to why neither he nor Sergeant Drew Scott, Hassell’s immediate supervisor, responded on Aug. 5, 2024, the day they learned Hassell had not.
“More of that stuff’s going to be figured out in the decertification hearing,” Boyd said. He said he had a “thought process” as to why he did not respond, adding, “at this point, I don’t think I need to elaborate on that at that moment.”
In January, Boyd said no one from the sheriff’s office followed up because the call, “was an emergency call and, you know, we didn’t receive another call after that.”
Barksdale’s case remains an open investigation. No arrests have been made.
Prosecuting Attorney for the Fourth Judicial District Brandon Carter said providing any updates on the investigation would be detrimental to the case.
The Barksdale family met with Carter two weeks ago, requesting a copy of the autopsy report from the Arkansas State Crime Laboratory, which they say Boyd has refused to release, and asked for more involvement from the Arkansas State Police in the case.
Carter said he had no comment on the meeting, the autopsy report or the state police’s involvement.
“My conversations with the family are going to stay between me and the family,” Carter said.
Sammi Wilmoth, attorney for the Barksdale family, also declined to comment on the meeting. Wilmoth said the family is “hopeful that whoever committed this crime will be held accountable. We’re still hopeful that will happen.”
Aug. 5, 2024, 911 Call
Kortney Cline said she called 911 on Aug. 5, 2024, at 12:34 a.m.
The sheriff’s office’s “dispatch call detail” report shows Cline told dispatchers that she “heard a woman in the woods behind her house yelling. Stated she believes at one point the woman screamed ‘help.’ Caller advised there is not a physical address. But it is an area where a bunch of homeless people were camped out.”
The sheriff’s office declined a public records’ request by The Record to release the audio of the 911 call stating it was part of an open investigation.
Matt Durrett, former Fourth Judicial District Prosecuting Attorney for Washington and Madison counties, told another media outlet in September 2024: “The caller reported that she could hear a woman screaming and it sounded as if she were in distress. Sounded, perhaps she was being beaten or being tortured.”
Hassell initially said he responded and the dispatch report shows a notation that the call was closed at 1:14 a.m. with the notation, “No signs of anyone here.”
After confronting Hassell about the 911 call and learning Hassell had not responded, Scott wrote a “verbal counseling” statement.
Scott’s statement tendered to CLEST was dated Aug. 6. That same statement given to The Record showed a marking through the number 6 with “corrected date 5” written.
In that statement, Scott wrote he asked Hassell why he did not respond. The statement notes Hassell told Scott that he “was just out in the area approximately 30 minutes to an hour prior [to the 911 call] and did not hear anything.”
In a statement written by Boyd, dated Sept. 17, 2024, and submitted to CLEST, Boyd said he informed Hassell on Sept. 11, 2024, that he was working on a missing person case involving a woman who could have been the person yelling for help.
“I informed him that all signs were leading back to the night of the call that he failed to respond and lied, saying he did,” Boyd wrote.
Boyd wrote that he told Hassell that he “did not see any possible way” that Hassell could remain employed by the sheriff’s office.
Hassell asked for “further consideration on the matter,” Boyd wrote.
“After taking some additional time, I came to the same conclusion that Deputy Hassell could no longer be an effective representative of the Sheriff’s Office,” Boyd wrote.
In a text message last year, Hassell denied lying.
“I was honest about why I did not respond from the very first time I was asked about it,” Hassell wrote.
Last year, when The Record asked Boyd what Hassell said when Boyd confronted him about not responding, Boyd said, “I never got a good answer.”
According to employment records submitted to CLEST, Hassell worked for the Springdale Police Department from Aug. 5, 2019 to July 29, 2021.
Hassell was hired by the Madison County Sheriff’s Office on April 3, 2024, and resigned Sept. 11, 2024, in lieu of being fired.
Hassell did not respond to a request by The Record for comment for this article.
Hassell’s Statements
In Sept. 2024, when asked about the 911 call, Hassell told The Record he didn’t know anything about it or Barksdale’s death. He later issued a statement to The Record stating that he was at the location twice prior to the 911 call and there were no signs of anyone being there.
If Hassell was in the area prior to the 911 call, Cline said, “he didn’t come down my road.”
Hassell said the residents of the area “were known to be off their medication and not in their proper state of mind,” and “screaming and chasing objects that are not there.”
Cline said when she placed the call, she didn’t identify anyone by name or refer to anyone on medications.
Hassell said at the time of the 911 call, he was working a “very high priority investigation.”
“Due to my past experience of false 911 calls at that location and vagueness of the call, it was not determined to be a high priority at the time,” Hassell wrote in a previous text message to The Record.
Cline has made several calls to the sheriff’s office over the course of several years.
But, she said, “There’s no abuse of 911.”
In January, Boyd issued a response to Hassell’s statement about false 911 calls.
“I want to clarify that the Madison County Sheriff’s Office has never said that there was a history of 911 calls from the residence of the caller,” Boyd wrote.
“We have no record of there being any intentionally false emergency calls from that residence. Frequently, the caller and law enforcement cannot determine if there is an actual emergency until someone gets on the scene,” Boyd said.
In Boyd’s Sept. 17, 2024, statement Boyd said Hassell was “counseled on the importance of answering calls and not letting past incidents cloud present events.”
Cline has been the subject of podcasts and Facebook accounts criticizing her for allegedly calling 911 numerous times. She said she worries the criticism could scare people away from making future 911 calls when needed.
She said she had been told by the sheriff’s office that law enforcement needs to have “just cause” to investigate and “can’t just pull up on” residents in the camper that was near her home.
She said the Aug. 5 call provided reason for someone from the sheriff’s office to come to the area and “nobody did.”
Caller Follows Up
Cline said she felt the screams for help she heard on Aug. 5, 2024, constituted an emergency when she made the initial 911 call.
“I do know I absolutely wasn’t like, ‘I don’t know, you might should come,’” she said.
She said she heard the screams throughout the night, so she called again, and again, she said, no one responded.
Boyd has stated repeatedly that no evidence of a second call exists.
“I know I called a second time” Cline said, “because I talked to a male and a female,” two different dispatchers.
Madison County time sheet records show dispatchers Collin Kilbourn and Mickayla Littrell worked the night of the Aug. 5.
“The reason I know there’s a second call is because the girl told me, when I said, ‘No one came,’ she said, ‘Yes, he did. He was there, and he knocked on their front door and no one answered,’” Cline said.
“And I said, ‘Well, then this is how I know you’re wrong. There is no front door. They’re in a camper.’ So I’m sure about that,” Cline said.
Cline also followed up again mid-morning on Aug. 5, 2024, sending Boyd an email about no one responding. Cline told Boyd she called 911 because she could hear a woman screaming.
“I don’t know how she was being assaulted, but the screaming went on for hours,” she wrote to Boyd. Cline told Boyd she waited until 3 a.m. thinking an officer would respond.
“No one showed up,” she wrote.
She told Boyd she was frustrated because a legitimate reason existed for the sheriff’s office to investigate but nobody responded.
In a response email approximately 30 minutes later, Boyd wrote, “We had a deputy go out there around 1:14 AM, and he did not see any signs of anyone in the area. I haven’t been able to talk to him, so I can’t give you any details further than that.”
Cline emailed back, told Boyd she appreciated him getting back to her, and wrote, “I assure you, no one came.”
Cline said she didn’t hear from Boyd again until he showed up at her house letting her know that they had found “the girl I called about.”
A year later, Barkasdale family has no answers
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Sheriff requests former deputy's decertification
