Investigator Sues Pulaski County Sheriff Over Public Records Withheld for More Than a Year to Shield Felony Tampering of Public Records by Little Rock Police Department

Investigator Sues Pulaski County Sheriff Over Public Records Withheld for More Than a Year to Shield Felony Tampering of Public Records by Little Rock Police Department

Pulaski County Sheriff, Eric Higgins and Retired LRPD Chief  & Current Director of CLEST, Heath Helton

Verified petition under the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act seeks an expedited court order compelling release of a withheld investigation file

LITTLE ROCK, Ark., August 14, 2026. Legal investigator and journalist Ean Lee Bordeaux has filed a lawsuit against Pulaski County Sheriff Eric Higgins, in his official capacity, and Pulaski County, Arkansas, asking a court to compel the release of public records that Bordeaux says the Sheriff's Office has withheld for more than a year. The verified petition was filed on August 14, 2026, in the Circuit Court of Pulaski County, Arkansas, as case number 60CV-26-10583. It asks the court for an expedited hearing under the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act, which requires a circuit court to set a hearing within seven days of a citizen's application.

The petition arises from two separate complaints that Bordeaux filed with the Sheriff's Office and that, he alleges, the agency combined into a single internal summary. The first, filed in 2023, is what the petition describes as a records-tampering complaint concerning public records of the Little Rock Police Department that Bordeaux says were withheld and destroyed in connection with his investigation of a Little Rock police officer. The second, filed in 2025, concerns separate records failures by Pulaski County and county officials.

According to the petition, the Sheriff's Office declined to investigate the 2023 complaint the same day it created its report, later reopened it as a Professional Standards investigation, and has refused to produce the resulting file. The petition alleges that the agency's no-records response is contradicted by the agency's own written communications. It also states that the investigating lieutenant told Bordeaux he had requested the same records from the Little Rock Police Department, that the department failed to produce them as the law requires, and that the records were missing or had been destroyed with no record of their destruction.

The petition further alleges that the Sheriff's Office withheld the entire file under a general claim that it is protected under the Freedom of Information Act, without citing any specific legal exemption, and that it delayed production by routing the request to the County Attorney for review. The petition contends that a referral for legal review is not one of the responses the Freedom of Information Act allows and does not suspend the deadlines the law imposes.

Bordeaux asks the court to order the records produced, to require a record-by-record explanation for anything the agency continues to withhold, to order the preservation of all responsive records, to protect personal identifiers that he says the agency disclosed without redaction, and to award his costs and litigation expenses.

“Public records belong to the public, and Arkansas law could not be clearer about that,” Bordeaux said. “When an agency answers a lawful request by calling an entire file protected without citing a single exemption, and then lets deadline after deadline pass, that is not compliance. I filed this petition because the court can require the answer that the Sheriff's Office would not give me.”

The Arkansas Freedom of Information Act opens the records of public agencies to any citizen, places the burden of justifying any withholding on the agency, and provides an expedited court procedure to compel disclosure.