Support for Arkansas Week provided by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

The Arkansas Times and Little Rock Public Radio.

Welcome to Arkansas Week.

I'm Dawn Scott.

It's good to see you.

The Arkansas State Police is launching a public education campaign.

And later, we remember a pioneer from the 1957 desegregation of Central High School.

But first up, lithium is in high demand as a critical ingredient for electric car batteries.

And Arkansas is getting international attention, as researchers say, millions of tons of lithium is located in a region in our state known as the Smack Over Foundation.

A key hearing is scheduled next month to determine royalty rates for companies eager to begin mining.

And joining us are Hugh McDonald, the secretary of the Arkansas Department of Commerce, along with Eric Pollack, who is a researcher for the University of Arkansas.

We so appreciate both of you being here with me today.

And first of all, we'll start with you, Secretary McDonald.

How significant is the amount of lithium in Arkansas in terms of helping meet the world demand?

Well, it's, you know, in one word is huge.

The recent U.S. Geological Survey, which which has put a lot of it in the media here recently, said it's I think they said this it would it's large enough to serve supply the U.S. demand for the U.S. demand for lithium production as it's projected in 2030.

So nine times that amount.

So it's a it's a huge resource for for Arkansas and, frankly, North America.

It's unbelievable.

What kind of interest is Arkansas seeing?

I know other energy companies are contacting us.

Yeah, we've received lots of interest.

Of course.

Standard Lithium has been there with the demonstration plant for a number of years, perfecting their technology for direct lithium extraction.

They have recently, within the last six months, done a joint venture with Equinor, which is a global oil and gas ENP company out of Norway.

Also last year, ExxonMobil joined with 120,000 acres of leased mineral rights.

So we're getting a lot of traction when those big ENP players showed up.

It really, really piqued the interest of the industry, the global industry that said that really said, you know, this direct lithium extraction technology is is a real thing.

And we believe and I think experts in the industry believe that there's there's a lot of high powered research happening all over the world, all over the country, all over the world on how to perfect direct lithium extraction at a commercial scale from an to to make it economic.

And, you know, Exxon and Equinor or standard lithium wouldn't be there investing the time and effort and the dollars if they didn't believe that they could make an economic.

So it's a huge opportunity for the states.

All from the smack over formation that we've been talking about.

But what is the administration done to really prepare for what's expected to be just a boom for them?

Yeah, it's a lot of stuff really behind the scenes.

Some public, but also, you know, last year or earlier this year, actually, the Department of Commerce in cooperation with a lot of the industry, hosted a conference, the Arkansas Lithium Innovation Summit here in Little Rock.

It was.

And we had people from all over the world actually come and and talk to us about that.

But we had companies, companies from all over the world as well.

It was just a day long summit, but it was a way to introduce the state and the lithium opportunities on a more global perspective.

We have visited with companies in Korea starting to build those relationships.

A lot of these Korean companies are world experts in battery technology, along with Chinese, which really dominate the market on a global scale.

But we've been working on.

So the summit was one thing, but with the working group that put the summit on that group has really continued to work as a as a as a group to work on issues for the industry, for example, whether it's workforce development, collaborating, getting the right groups together, getting power transmission lines to serve the area, which is a huge issue that that I've personally been involved in and the state and supporting trying to find ways to get the the power supply to these sites.

So a lot is a lot has been happening.

Well, let's get to Eric Pollack.

He was at this summit that you're talking about, which we'll talk more about in a moment.

But higher education, of course, is working with the state and other entities to promote this this industry.

And I want you to tell us what's happening, Eric.

Well, there's really sort of two aspects to the higher ed.

One is the innovation and the technology development.

And the second part of that is the workforce development.

This industry, it's going to require research scientists if in fact their technique, but it's also going to require operators and technical folks into the pipe running.

So it's not just the USA that interested in being part of this sort of across the hiring section, each one contributing to their mission.

And students want to be required to be.

We've talked about, you know, the creation of a workforce and, you know, a number of other issues that came out of this summit with 700 stakeholders I read Were there.

Talk a little more about what was discussed and what you took away from that.

Yeah, it's you know, I didn't know anything about the lithium industry when when I came to the Department of Commerce.

It's it's effectively a brand new industry that is fallen in Arkansas's lap.

You know, the potential for a new industry.

And what I've what I've learned is that it's a vast, global, very complex supply chain, that China dominates a lot of it today.

So, you know, what's really important for the state, you know, we have limited resources and we need to make sure we focus on where our strengths are because the supply chain is so vast and complex.

You know, it's just as important to focus on what not to pay attention to.

And one of the one of the that's so that's been one of the challenges.

We've hired a a globally globally known minerals outfit consultancy called Benchmark Minerals.

They've helped us really kind of define what the niche for Arkansas is going to be.

Hmm.

Well, Secretary McDonald, there's a two day hearing scheduled for November 4th and fifth in El Dorado.

And one of the things that's going to be discussed there is lithium royalties.

But once that's resolved, then what has to be done to really ramp up production?

Yeah.

Well, certainly the royalties, we've got to get that right.

Right.

For the mineral owners and right for the companies.

You know, I think everybody wants to see a thriving industry that will start in south Arkansas but benefit the entire state ultimately.

But as with any new industry, you've got capital investment, you've got workforce development we're working on with Eric and in an a broad array of stakeholders in developing the workforce development program from high school all the way to two year colleges, skilled trades as well as higher education as well.

So a lot of activities happening.

But you know, getting the people and getting the infrastructure that the companies will invest billions of dollars in in developing their refining capacities.

We'll talk about the environment, too.

I know there have got to be some safeguards in place to do this responsibly.

Obviously, that's on your radar, too.

Sure.

Sure it is.

And that the advantage one of the advantages that Arkansas has is that we've had oil and gas business for a hundred years down there.

The communities and the state is is well versed and organized and supports the industry and doing it doing it responsibly as well from an environmental perspective as well as, you know, common sense regulation to to support the industry as well.

So obviously, the Department of Energy and Environment is heavily involved in this as well and and supportive of the industry, but also ensuring that we do it responsibly from an environmental perspective.

Sure.

Well, on this program, we had Congressman Bruce Westerman a while back talking about this lithium mining.

And I'm curious what's being done on the federal level to assist you, to assist the state with this lot of lot of federal support, you know, on the in the Federal Inflation Reduction Act, the IRA, there's been, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars in terms of financial incentives to incent, incentivize the development of this industry.

Most of those dollars, however, have gone to the very far downstream side of this value chain.

And I when I mean the downstream side is that's the the EV battery, the EV assembly facilities, the battery assemblies.

What hasn't there hasn't been enough investment in is on the upstream and midstream side of this value chain.

Cathode manufacturers, anode manufacturers, the components that go into the batteries and that process.

And that's really where Arkansas's niche is going to be for the next three to 5 to 10 years to develop that industry.

Doesn't preclude us from competing for a battery plant or a or an EV plant.

But today the supply is built out in in North America for that.

And it's going to take a while for, you know, the demand to fill up that supply for the EV makers to ultimately build additional plants.

But that will happen in the future.

Well, and it's something that we're going to continue to follow and it's just something so exciting for our state.

What an advantage we have here.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's, as you said, has just fallen in our lap.

It's a once in a lifetime, maybe once in two or three lifetimes.

Opportunity for the state secretary of the Arkansas Department of Commerce to McDonald.

Thank you so much.

And Eric Pollock, the researcher with the University of Arkansas.

We appreciate both of you on the program today.

Thank you so much.

We'll be hearing much more about this in the coming weeks and months.

And we'll be back with more of Arkansas week right after this.

Welcome back.

The Arkansas State Police this month launched a public education campaign aimed at highlighting the services that it provides.

And each week through the end of the year, the agency is releasing short videos intended to highlight services and resources provided by different divisions.

Colonel Mike Hager is the director of the Arkansas State Police.

He is also the secretary of the State Department of Public Safety.

And we appreciate you being here.

Thank you so much.

We'll get to you in just a moment.

Before we begin our discussion, we want to see part of one of these videos.

They're being posted online.

Take a look.

Honor, accountability.

We can learn that.

We all make mistakes, guys.

Integrity, We love you too much to let other people achieve Transparency units.

Imperative that we get them right.

Proactive as have the tools you need and be able to do your job.

Unapologetic state on the ground.

Tierney's professionalism acts like you've been for because you have public safety with the servant's heart.

Is there anything I can do to help you?

Is your call to bow down and only hearing the phrase families worried about you?

They don't want you.

Here we are, your Arkansas State Police.

And once again, Colonel Mike Hager with us.

And we so appreciate you coming on.

I spent a good portion of last evening watching a number of these videos, and I'm quite impressed.

I am so curious where this idea originated, where it came from.

You know, when I took this job in January of last year, one of the first people that I met with and brought on board was Cindy Murphy, who our communications director and I worked for the state police since 1996.

And I recognized not just me, but a lot of people in the rank and file recognize that we've just never really done a good job at telling our story.

And that's not to tell it in a braggadocious way, but it's to tell the story because we want to let the people of Arkansas know what we do for them.

We're an expensive agency to find, and we feel like we need to let people know what we're doing with our tax dollars.

I'm a firm believer in being a good steward of that, and we just need to let people know what we're doing.

Well, talking about tax dollars, these are in house videos, so your people are doing them.

Yeah.

We have a just an amazing communications team.

Again, you have Cindy Murphy, Jonathan Nettles, Cheney, Ronke Runkle, Negin TI, all with a media background.

Laura, they they all bring so much to the table.

It's been a blessing to have that group and they kind of know what the media needs coming from that background.

And they've really been a blessing to us.

They've helped us tell that story and it's really important for us.

You know, you were talking about just needing to have transparency, but I'm also curious about a the need for recruiting and also a public relations component of this, letting the public know what you do as well.

Yeah, absolutely.

You know, and it's all of those things.

I mean, it does help us with recruiting, you know.

So a lot of people don't realize when they think about the Arkansas State Police, they think about that white car with the blue stripe, and they don't realize that we have five divisions of the state police.

We have a criminal investigation division, a regulatory division, and crimes against children.

There's so much other things that we do that people don't associate with the state police.

And that's our fault.

That's not the public's fault.

We've never told that story.

We've never let people know what we do.

And there's some people that they have a draw to the state police.

They want to be the highway trooper that is out there working.

But we also have people that they're driven to be criminal investigators, homicide detectives, things like that.

And that's a huge part of what we do.

So it's just a way for us to get that message out to potential applicants, but also to get that message out to our taxpayers and just let them know what exactly it is we're doing with their money.

The videos are quite substantial, too, and one of them I watched was the numerous drug busts that you had, you know, seized things like fentanyl, you know, other very dangerous things.

And then the crimes against children, of course, is something we hear about trafficking.

And that's something that you were heavily involved in.

Sure.

Yeah.

We actually started a human trafficking task force last year and we have a lot of success stories already that's come out of that.

And, you know, the crimes against children, the drug interdiction work that our guys do on a daily basis, you know, we take thousands and thousands of pounds of illegal narcotics off the interstates and highways every year, you know, dozens of guns, you know, put a lot of bad people in jail.

And, you know, that's our job.

It's public safety is first and foremost.

And, you know, traffic enforcement is a component of that.

And, you know, they you look at traffic enforcement versus the, you know, crash rates and the fatality rates and the two go hand-in-hand.

So we're we're big believer in that.

But we do a lot more than that.

And that's what we're trying to get that word out and trying to let people know exactly what we do.

We do have to, you know, talk about it's public perception of law enforcement.

Of course, you've been under scrutiny, not only state police agencies across the nation, but police in general instances of mistaken, ducked, recorded.

And I'm curious if there is a perception that you are working to overcome that the public may have about you in your organization?

You know, absolutely.

So I tell people all the time that when you see, you know, like an improper use of force or something that, you know, is kind of a black out in our profession, it's kind of like a plane crash.

They're very infrequent.

They're very, very uncommon to happen.

But when it does happen, you're going to hear about every single one of them.

It's big news and I would say I would argue that we're one of the most transparent occupations in the world.

Everything we do, we do it in front of a video camera.

And so we're going to catch our mistakes and we're humans.

And as long as humans do this job, we're going to make mistakes.

And when we do that, we're going to hold people accountable and we're going to address that with the end.

But unfortunately, you hear so much more about the negative of what law enforcement does.

It overshadows the positive.

And this is just an opportunity for us to try to show people the positive of what our guys are doing and not only just the negative that you tend to see on the news.

Well, you know, you one of the things that you posted was just a full police chase, which I found so fascinating on on your YouTube channel.

That's where you you can find these videos.

If our audience is interested in watching what is the goal of that similar, would you say, of what we've been talking about.

Just yeah well couple of things.

The we have standing for your requests for all of our police uses of force, our pursuits, a number of different things that every Friday we have a for you requests and they're released out on YouTube.

A lot of people think because of the names of some of the channels, that it's actually a state police or a state sponsored YouTube channel that's not necessarily well, it's not the case.

We're not the ones putting that out there.

But we have very liberal for you laws in Arkansas.

And so those that that information is going to be put out there.

Now, we do have a YouTube channel within the state police and a lot of times with our news releases, we'll include the video.

So people, they're going to see it anyway, but they need to see it with context.

They need to understand this is why we were doing what we were doing.

This is why that, you know, we were in that pursuit because if you just watch the video, you really don't get on YouTube.

You really don't get that.

I mean, you see the video.

A lot of times it's edited.

They just want to see the dramatic parts of the video.

But you really don't get the context of what went on behind that and why we were doing what we were doing from the very start to the very ugly.

Yeah.

And for our audience watching for you, we're very familiar with that term.

But that's freedom of information request, just so that there is transparency among law enforcement and the public.

Right.

You know, the how how are you deciding which functions to to showcase of your department?

This is going to continue through the end of the year.

So are you just going to show everything?

Really, it won't be everything, but we try to balance it with public interest and but also things that just may not be as well known.

So we have a full time interstate criminal patrol team that, as has been highlighted, we have a full time aircraft section, you know, the human trafficking task force.

And there's different things that to your average citizen, doesn't know what we're doing.

So we try to balance it with a an interest, but also with the educational component of, you know, just letting people know and just give you an example.

You know, of course, Arkansas Razorbacks trump everything in Arkansas.

So we're doing a Razorback edition of this, and we've got Coach Calipari, Coach Pittman that have recorded little videos for us.

And we're going to kind of show what the state police does in the function of not only the Razorbacks, but also you see a issue where we have troopers that are traveling with the team, providing security at those venues.

And you know, we're going to highlight just little things like that, just to give people an idea of what we're doing.

Have you gotten feedback from the public?

We have, yeah.

We've gotten a lot of feedback.

We have a pretty significant following now on our social media channels, whether it be Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, I guess.

And we've we've got a lot of feedback and almost overwhelmingly it's all positive feedback.

You know, you're always going to have a few.

But that's that's to be expected.

Sure.

Well, we appreciate you coming on the program today and showcasing what you're doing with Arkansas State Police.

And I'm sure we'll be hearing more and seeing more in the coming weeks and months.

Colonel Mike Hager, the director of the Arkansas State Police, we do appreciate your time.

Thank you so much.

I appreciate the invitation.

Thank you.

And we'll be back with more after this.

It was 67 years ago that Arkansas was making headlines around the world when a governor sent the National Guard to prevent the integration of Central High School.

Scenes of angry white mobs prompted President Eisenhower to counter by sending the army to escort nine black children into the school.

Last weekend, one of the Little Rock nine Thelma mother's shed where died of complications from multiple sclerosis.

She was 83.

Here are some highlights from an interview with where I was.

I was at Horace Mann at the 10th grade and the Board of Education said, Well, I know the same people who lived in central Los Angeles area who are interested could sign up for a transfer so that my friends and I say we go to Central, but we hear that they have better equipment than we do better supplies and, you know, might be just a better place to go.

Mm hmm.

So as we closed, schools really had a bit of will.

So I could have walked essential for my house.

So we signed up to Go Central.

Then Faubus came to TV and said that he foresaw some trouble to call out the National Guard to protect me.

How long I was supposed to pull.

I came and saw those people from all over the state and lots of other states that license plates from all over the place because they felt like, hey, if this was essential, then black people in our community will be expected to integrate schools, too.

So we can't let this happen in La LA.

Mm hmm.

That's why they were out there, because I think the race will look a lot better.

I think things are better.

Mm hmm.

So I hope that I had something to do with it.

I put myself out of civil, but I still do.

The last time all of the Little Rock nine were together was on November 8th of 2009.

That is when the New Yorker organized a photo shoot outside of Central with the photographer known as Pluton.

Taking a powerful black and white image, Jefferson Thomas would die the following year in 2010 at the age of 67.

And now Thelma.

Mother said where has become the second of the nine to die.

She had faced health struggles for most of her life.

I'm Don Scott.

Thanks for watching.

Support for Arkansas Week provided by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, the Arkansas Times and Little Rock Public Radio.