Working4You: Missing Evidence? Van Buren County says arrest video was deleted after glitch in system
VAN BUREN COUNTY, Ark – After a year of investigations on the Van Buren County Sheriff's Office, Working4You is finally putting eyes on a highly followed and controversial arrest in Van Buren County.
In January of 2024, Ronnie Dollar was arrested outside the Sheriff's Office for disorderly conduct.
Working 4 You: Man accusing Van Buren County deputy of excessive force makes claims of prosecutorial misconduct
The initial report says Dollar was aggressive and chaotic, but others claimed the former Chief Deputy acted wrongly during the arrest.
Working4You asked for video of the arrest but was told the incident was 'under investigation.'
The video was eventually obtained in December of 2024, but a portion of it was missing.
'The only thing that the sheriff's office claims was preserved was the video footage outside, which is bad enough as it is, but it still leaves questions about how it got up to that point,' said former Van Buren County Sheriff's Office employee Casey Cresswell.
Working4You obtained two videos, one taken from inside the lobby, and the other taken from outside the department.
In the video recorded in the lobby, we see Ronnie Dollar pace around for about a minute and a half, and just a woman comes up to the window, the video cuts to black.
We miss the entire conversation leading up to the arrest.
'What you miss is the aggressor is the one behind the badge, not the one getting jailed and accused of these false charges,' said Cresswell.
Cresswell says she was working the day of the arrest and claims there is a different version of the video that was deliberately deleted in an attempt to protect Adams.
In the months following the arrest, Dollar and his attorney Kent Tester filed a civil lawsuit against Van Buren County Sheriff Eric Koonce, his former Chief Deputy Derek Adams, and investigator Lt. Chasta Harrison.
Working 4 You: Are Education Freedom Accounts truly available to families of all backgrounds?
The lawsuit claims the three violated Dollar's due process and deliberately deleted evidence.
A letter sent to Sheriff Eric Koonce in March 2024, shows Tester asking the department to preserve 'all audio and video evidence related to the incident.'
A month later, Tester got word from the deputy prosecutor's office, the email reads as follows:
'The attachment is screenshots from Sheriff Koonce's cell phone; he took screenshots from the original video, but it was clipped. The original no longer exists.' – Phillip W. Ellis, T.A.
The sheriff's office told Working 4 You the missing video was caused by a glitch in the system.
'When the footage was downloaded to the disk, the video in the lobby wasn't checked as we were unaware of any issues. After it was discovered, it was too late to redownload the footage as our cameras only hold footage for 25 days,' said Lt. Chasta Harrison.
Cresswell worked at the Van Buren County Sheriff's Office for about a year, and says she never witnessed any recording issues with the security cameras.
'I have never seen a glitch happen to where the video footage wasn't recorded properly,' said Cresswell. 'In live time, the cameras they did have installed, they would lag bad in live time.'
Ronnie Dollar's attorney claims Dollar was assaulted by law enforcement during the arrest and said had the entire video been recovered the answer would be easy.
Working4You reached out to the sheriff and Lt. Harrison for additional comment. They said they could not speak on any ongoing or open investigations.
KARK 4 News has not been able to get ahold of Derek Adams.
'They need to be completely cleaned out or retrained. I really don't think they belong in law enforcement at all. They probably just need to be decertified and find a different career path for all those that are involved,' Cresswell said.
Working4You: Central Arkansas homeowners turn to AG's office with complaints about unlicensed roofer
Ronnie Dollar and his attorney Kent Tester have requested a jury trial in the Eastern District of Arkansas. The trial is scheduled for May.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
23 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Wanted Altoona woman found in an attic, claimed she hid as best she could
ALTOONA, Pa. (WTAJ) — A wanted Altoona woman who police said had two active warrants was arrested and jailed Tuesday. On Monday, June 9, Altoona police made a Facebook post in an attempt to locate 43-year-old Crystal Dollar. According to police, the Blair County Sheriff's Office had two felony warrants regarding her failure to appear on possession with intent to deliver drug cases from Altoona police and state police. Altoona police updated the post that she had been found Tuesday. According to a criminal complaint, police received numerous tips from the community and were able to locate Dollar in the attic of a home, trying to hide under a blanket. She allegedly told officers she got scared when she heard them knocking and tried to hide the best she documents filed June 10 show that Dollar was charged with one felony count of fleeing to avoid apprehension. She was placed in Blair County Prison, unable to post a $15,000 bond. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Yahoo
5 days ago
- Yahoo
House, Senate dispense with other priority bills
On a busy final day of regular legislative business, the New Hampshire House of Representatives and state Senate acted on some major bills including a permanent expansion of Education Freedom Accounts (EFA) along with a bell-to-bell ban on cellphone use in New Hampshire public schools. There were a few hiccups Thursday as the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to set aside a Senate-passed bill (SB 54) that would impose more penalties on motorists accused of driving drunk who refused to submit to a blood alcohol test. State Rep. Terry Roy, R-Deerfield, had convinced the House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee he chairs to add to the bill a proposed mandate that K-12 schools offer at least one hour a year of firearms training. Without debate, the House voted 256-106 to table the bill, effectively killing it for the year. State Sen. Victoria Sullivan, R-Manchester, authored the EFA expansion (SB 295) that has now passed both the House and the Senate. Currently, EFAs are only available to families that make up to 350% of the federal poverty level, which is just above $100,000 for a family of four. The bill would eliminate the income limit but place an initial enrollment cap of 10,000 students; presently abut 5,400 are enrolled. The Senate still has to agree with changes that the House made to the bill on Thursday before passing it, 190-178. Sen. Glenn Cordelli, R-Tuftonboro, said EFAs have been very popular among middle class New Hampshire families. But Rep. Kate Murray, D-New Castle, said this expansion will cost the state at least $17 million more a year and she said the public at large doesn't like EFAs. 'Between the thousands of emails and online sign-ins against this bill, and warrant articles passed in communities throughout the state, the public has repeatedly expressed its strong disapproval of the voucher program,' Murray said. 'Instead of listening to the people we were elected to represent, Republicans voted to raise taxes to expand an unpopular program to that subsidizes wealthier households whose students are already in private schools.' Cellphone ban The House gave final approval to the cellphone ban (SB 206) that would direct all school boards to adopt policies that prevent student access throughout the school day. Earlier this year, the House and the Senate approved separate, more limiting bills that merely directed local officials to adopt the plans to deal with the issue. Gov. Kelly Ayotte urged the Senate to approve the House plan, which was similar to what the governor proposed in her budget last February. 'Screens are distraction for students and a barrier for teachers to do their jobs. A bell-to-bell ban on cellphones in the classroom will help kids focus on learning and let teachers do what they do best without being the phone police,' Ayotte said in a statement. 'I'm glad to see the House pass this today and thank them for taking action to help deliver a best-in-class education for all of New Hampshire's students.' In another mild surprise, the House voted 170-168 against legislation to move the state primary election from September to June in time for the 2026 election. Last March, the House had approved a different bill to make that change but to not have it begin until 2028. Rep. Matt Wilhelm, D-Manchester, said state and local election officials along with the candidates need more time to cope with the change. House Election Laws Committee Ross Berry, R-Manchester, had said there was still time to act, but the House narrowly disagreed. 'OK, I guess it's 2028,' Berry said in response. The state Senate has yet to approve the House-passed bill (HB 481) to move the primary for the 2028 election. klandrigan@

Yahoo
02-06-2025
- Yahoo
The week ahead: Hot button bills face lawmakers in final, regular week of business
The final week of regular business for the New Hampshire Legislature features showdown debates on many top issues, from parental rights and mandatory prison terms for drug dealers, to a 'bell-to-bell' ban on cellphone use in public schools and universal access to Education Freedom Accounts (EFAs). While much of the attention at the State House will be on the finishing touches to a proposed two-year state budget in the Senate, lawmakers face a Thursday deadline for final action on all other bills. Once they clear those decks, the closing weeks of the session will come down to the work of committees of conference to be named to thrash out differences between competing versions of the same bill. Gov. Kelly Ayotte has listed parental rights as a priority issue for her to achieve in 2025 and the House and Senate each have their own versions (HB 10 and SB 72) to debate this week. The real battle is in the House where House Child and Family Law Committee Chair Debra DeSimone, R-Atkinson, has crafted a compromise said to have the backing of Senate GOP leaders. DeSimone defended the most controversial provision that could prevent minors from being able to obtain contraception without parental consent. 'Disastrous consequences' 'No children should ever be prescribed any medical procedures or medication without parental consent to protect all children from undue and unnecessary harm by parental knowledge and information provided concerning family history,' DeSimone said. 'This bill is necessary to continue to build a strong, healthy society.' Rep. Heather Raymond, D-Nashua, said such a policy could have disastrous consequences. 'In states like Texas which now require parental permission for birth control, teen pregnancy rates have increased along with the rates of maternal and infant death,' said Raymond, noting that New Hampshire has the lowest teen birth rate in the U.S. House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Chairman Terry Roy, R-Deerfield, has reworked a bill (SB 14) that also has Ayotte's backing to impose longer minimum mandatory prison sentences for possessing large amounts of fentanyl or selling drugs that cause someone's death. 'It's time for New Hampshire to reclaim its place in New England as the state that dealers fear to tread,' Roy said. Roy's proposal would allow a judge to impose a more lenient sentence if the offender met several conditions including a clean record prior to this latest conviction. 'Under this bill, if a defendant is cooperative with law enforcement, not a leader in a drug dealing organization, does not have a recent conviction for the same thing, and the charges do not involve violence, a judge is free to use their discretion,' Roy said. Rep. Buzz Scherr, D-Portsmouth and an appellate law expert, said the bill is a political talking point, not an answer to dealing with deadly overdoses. 'Mandatory minimums for fentanyl continue to have a superficial political attraction as an easy solution, but, they always fail in practice,' Scherr said. 'We do not need to spend even more money on prisons for a solution that doesn't work.' Firearms training in public schools Roy championed another sweeping and controversial provision, adopting a mandatory one-hour firearms training course in K-12. A former police officer, Roy attached his provision as an amendment to an unrelated bill (SB 54) that would increase the penalty for someone accused of driving drunk who refuses to take a blood alcohol test. The House and Senate will each vote on two bills (SB 295 and HB 115) allowing all families regardless of income to receive a taxpayer-paid scholarship to help offset their student attending a private, religious, alternative public or home school program The House is likely to approve Ayotte's approach to cellphone use, which is to direct school boards to adopt policies that restrict access throughout the school day (SB 206). Both the House and Senate have passed versions of a more lenient reform that would give school boards more latitude on when they would be accessible. Democrats on the House Finance Committee oppose this latest idea because Republicans rejected their attempt to carve out an exemption for any teacher who wanted to incorporate cellphone use into a specific lesson plan. In other actions: • Mandatory mask policies (HB 361): The Senate is likely to pass this House-endorsed bill to block school districts from requiring mask wearing; former Gov. Chris Sununu vetoed an identical bill last year; • Capital budget (HB 25): The Senate will vote on its version of a two-year budget for public works projects financed by state, federal and fee-backed bonds. • Risk pools (SB 297): Secretary of State David Scanlan opposes and HealthTrust, the largest risk pool, supports this bill to allow either regulation by Scanlan or the Insurance Department of these programs that offer health, property or liability insurance to governmental units. klandrigan@