Attorney and former police officer enters race for Sixth Judicial District prosecutor

Bobby Forrest Jr., a Little Rock native, father or mother, protection lawyer, small-business proprietor and the brother of a homicide sufferer, introduced his candidacy on Friday to problem Will Jones to be the elected prosecutor for the Sixth Judicial Circuit of Perry and Pulaski counties.

Forrest, 33, stated he needs to guide the area into the longer term and promised that he’s bringing daring and progressive options to fight violent crime, consolation victims, tackle youngster perpetrators of crime and defend witnesses via a five-point plan he calls SMART Justice, which can be unveiled Monday on his campaign web site.

Forrest has his personal agency, The Chosen Legislation Group, and owns Xperience Kitchen and Lounge restaurant in downtown Little Rock.

A father of 1, Forrest hopes to turn out to be the district’s first Black elected prosecutor. He stated he is in a position to look again on the classes he discovered from a police profession that ended 10 years in the past along with his termination.

The race for the four-year publish can be determined in a nonpartisan election held in March to coincide with the state’s political primaries, with the winner taking workplace in January 2027.

“I’ve spent decades fighting for crime victims and safer communities with integrity and honesty, and I welcome the chance to compare our records in law enforcement and the justice system,” Jones stated.

Jones, 50, introduced final week that he is working for his second time period after securing the publish in 2022 with 53% of the vote. He’s a profession prosecutor who has labored on the native, state and federal ranges and taught on the native regulation college.

Jones’ marketing campaign announcement described his accomplishments of his first time period as serving to scale back crime, enhancing companies for victims, prioritizing group outreach and growing the effectivity of the prosecutor’s workplace. He stated he and his deputy prosecutors have contributed to a dramatic decline in violent crime, together with a 44% lower in Pulaski County’s murder price from 2022 to 2024.

Forrest, a protection lawyer for the previous six years, has a bleaker view of the previous few years, saying the area — with 25 murders up to now this 12 months — is caught in a “public safety crisis that threatens our communities.”

“Mothers are burying sons. Children are losing their future too soon, and places that were once safe grounds for families are now crime scenes. Families are scared, tired and desperate for change,” he stated, describing a “broken” justice system. “We all want the same thing, to feel safe in our homes, on our streets and in our neighborhoods.”

The authorized system wants to remodel to guard all and join with all, he stated, stating that his curiosity in taking up the prosecutor’s workplace is greater than politics. It is also about his personal loss: the unsolved homicide of his sister in North Little Rock.

Ursula Graham was was discovered shot to demise in her automotive on October 2023.

With greater than a dozen family and friends standing behind him at his announcement, Forrest stated he was beginning his marketing campaign in entrance of the sheriff’s workplace to honor Graham.

“Ursula worked as a deputy right here at this very spot,” he stated. “That pain lit a fire in me, a deeper drive to stop the bleeding, to prevent another family from feeling what mine has felt. To never see a mother bury their child from gun violence. I carry that pain with me every day but I also carry hope.”

Forrest stated he’ll convey a variety of expertise to the job, having seen the authorized system from each angle: as a sufferer who’s misplaced a beloved one, a protection lawyer and a police officer. Nevertheless, his regulation enforcement profession didn’t finish how he wished it.

“I made a decision that I thought was best, and looking back on that now, there was a better way to handle the decision,” Forrest stated. “I made a decision to protect someone who I feel like did not violate the law. The way I went about it was not the best way. It showed a lack of integrity in that moment. I felt like the system was not going to help him so I felt like I had no choice but to make that decision.”

Forrest joined the Jacksonville division in December 2012 after working as a navy police officer. Forrest rose to the rank of detective, however at age 23, and after two years with the division, he tried to assist a good friend who inadvertently purchased a stolen gun. The good friend was afraid of being arrested if he turned the weapon over to regulation enforcement.

Forrest had a police dispatcher test the weapon’s serial quantity via the state’s Crime Info Heart database in January 2015 to see if the gun had been reported stolen. Entry to that data is strictly managed by regulation, and improper entry generally is a felony.

The breach was found as a result of the gun was stolen. When the database confirmed that standing, the system mechanically notified the company that reported the weapon stolen.

Forrest didn’t report the weapon to the sheriff’s division like he was required to do, then gave “conflicting and misleading statements” about what he’d finished and why to his Jacksonville superiors, in response to metropolis data.

Forrest had additionally been disciplined a few weeks earlier for phoning 911 for a nonemergency objective. Forrest stated he had known as the emergency line as a joke after nobody answered the dispatchers’ direct quantity.

Forrest was placed on paid depart through the inside evaluation of his actions. He was then fired that very same month by interim Chief Kenny Boyd after findings of conduct unbecoming an officer, unsatisfactory efficiency, submitting inaccurate reviews and failure to present fully truthful statements.

State regulators on the Fee on Legislation Enforcement Requirements and Coaching revoked his peace officer’s license in October 2015 on the request of the police.

Requested 10 years later about what the group ought to make of his actions again then, Forrest stated he was a younger man who made a younger man’s mistake attempting to assist a good friend. He stated it is vital that prosecutors have the ability to inform the distinction between individuals who act maliciously and individuals who make real errors they will overcome.

“It’s a mistake that I own. Instead of locking me in on just that one mistake, look at the track(record) of what I’ve done,” he stated. “I would tell the community that mistakes happen and … in this job (as prosecutor) you’re going to be dealing with people who’ve made some intentional (bad acts) but you’re also going to be dealing with people who made mistakes.”