A Little Rock District Court judge said Tuesday that a teenager who received a controversial loitering citation from the Little Rock Police Department last spring will have her charge dismissed if she doesn’t get into legal trouble in the next 30 days, according to her lawyer.
Allison Johnson, 19, was present on May 31 when police cited a group of mostly Black teenagers for loitering during a gathering at Mabelvale Elementary.
An arrest warrant issued to Johnson for a failure to appear in court was also dismissed Tuesday, court records show.
Last May, LRPD officers ticketed and temporarily detained over 50 high schoolers and high school-aged teens gathered outside the school, with some teens handcuffed behind their backs. Most of the teens were participating in “junior takeover,” a longtime school tradition where high schoolers celebrate the transition to senior year.
Community outrage erupted once videos and photos from the incident were posted on social media, with local activists saying that race influenced LRPD’s actions that day.
Of the 52 youths police cited, 47 were Black and five were white. Videos posted to Facebook showed the arresting officers to all be white, although the videos did not capture the full incident.
A similar junior takeover event involving mostly white teens was happening at Allsop Park that same day and no one was detained or arrested, local activist and UA Little Rock Community Programs director Ryan Davis previously told Little Rock’s Board of Directors in a meeting that followed the incident. Davis’ organization is a nonprofit that helps impoverished children in the city.
Johnson was 18 when the LRPD cited her with loitering last year. She told the Arkansas Times that she was not participating in junior takeover and isn’t from Little Rock. She said she happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“I was down there [in Little Rock] with my family, and my auntie had told me to pick up my cousin, and when I was picking my cousin up, the police blocked us all in the parking lot,” Johnson said. “I wasn’t even there [at junior takeover].”
Johnson, who is originally from Marion, in eastern Arkansas, had just graduated from high school herself when the incident happened. She now lives in Jonesboro and attends college at Arkansas State University.
Johnson appeared in court in June as scheduled after being issued the citation and pleaded not guilty. Johnson had a subsequent court date in August but didn’t appear, she said, because she was under the impression that the charge was going to be dropped. Because she didn’t show up, the state charged Johnson with failure to appear in court and issued an arrest warrant.
Johnson said she didn’t know about the arrest warrant until last month.
She said the warrant had left her paranoid when she went out, and that she had never been in legal trouble before. She is in training to get her nursing assistant certificate.
“I feel like it should have never even got to this point,” Johnson said. “I really can’t make it to Little Rock whenever I want to because I do stay hours away, and I’ve been so paranoid lately. … It’s frightening because I never had anything done like this to me, because I’m a good child.”
Johnson’s attorney, Jimmy Morris, appeared on her behalf in court Tuesday morning.
Little Rock District Court Judge Jill Kamps issued a 30-day pass to dismiss for Johnson’s loitering charge, meaning that as long as she doesn’t get into any legal troubles in the next 30 days, the loitering charge will be thrown out. The judge also outright dismissed the arrest warrant out against her.
A small crowd gathered outside Little Rock District Court on Tuesday to support Johnson. Activists with Little Rock Freedom Fund, a social justice organization, held signs protesting the charges against Johnson as well as what Little Rock Freedom Fund founder Dawn Jeffrey described as the school-to-prison pipeline in Little Rock’s institutions.
“This situation should’ve never happened, let’s be clear,” Jeffrey said. “LRPD should’ve initially issued the students a warning. There was no sign of loitering.”
It is unclear whether there are other students who were charged during junior takeover day last May who still have charges and court dates pending. Jeffrey said that Little Rock Freedom Fund had been doing outreach, trying to identify students who might still be facing charges. The group is not aware right now of anyone else who is facing charges in connection with the incident, Jeffrey said.
