Ivan Whitfield, who will face Dutch King in a June 12 Democratic party primary runoff for Jefferson County judge, will retire as assistant chief of the Pine Bluff Police Department effective July 1.
“I am at the point now that I am ready to retire,” Whitfield said Friday afternoon. “I’ve been saying that I was planning to do this for a while. I’ve always said I wanted to leave on my terms and walk out like I walked in, with my head up.”
Whitfield said that he submitted his application for retirement to the Arkansas Local Police and Fire Retirement System in Little Rock earlier in the week.
“I’m trying to move forward,” Whitfield said of his impending retirement.
Whitfield ran against King and Alfred Carroll in the May 22 Arkansas primary election for Jefferson County judge and garnered 3,706 votes to King’s 3,408 and Carroll’s 1,969.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
The winner of the runoff will face Republican candidate Ted Harden, District 5 Justice of the Peace, in the Nov. 6 general election.
During the campaign, Whitfield used a commercial-style panel truck to promote his candidacy that was determined to have tags that expired in June 2008.
On the day of the primary election the truck was parked adjacent to the Jefferson County Courthouse with a new license plate and up-to-date registration stickers.
Whitfield, who has served with the PBPD for 30 years, was placed on administrative leave on Feb. 2 and then fired by PBPD Chief Brenda Davis-Jones Feb. 10, following an investigation into one of his weapons being found on a person of interest in a homicide investigation. He was reinstated by the Pine Bluff City Council Feb. 13.
The council had to amend two city ordinances which dealt with the authority of the police and fire chiefs to appoint and remove assistant chiefs in order to reinstate Whitfield.
After he was placed on administrative leave prior to his firing by Davis-Jones, Whitfield alleged that Davis-Jones’ decision was unwarranted and retaliatory because of his refusal to identify a person who provided information that reflected poorly on the chief’s boyfriend. Whitfield made those allegations in a letter from his attorney Othello C. Cross to the city council and city officials.
Whitfield detailed his version of circumstances that led to him being placed on leave and made his allegations against Davis-Jones in a three-page personal account attached to his lawyer’s letter.
In the account, Whitfield said that when a detective told him that one of his police department-issued service weapons was found on a person of interest in a criminal investigation, Whitfield responded that the person “must have stolen it or got it from someone that stole it.”
The Arkansas State Police began an investigation into the matter of Whitfield’s weapon along with others that have been discovered missing from law enforcement officers in the state. ASP spokesman Bill Sadler stressed that the agency’s investigation has nothing to do with personal disagreements between Whitfield and Davis-Jones.