Arkansas officer from violent arrest video accused of deleting evidence
Deputy Levi White, an Arkansas police officer who was caught on camera beating a handcuffed man in viral footage last summer, has been accused of deleting incriminating evidence by performing a factory reset on his work-issued iPhone, according to an FBI search warrant affidavit.
White "performed a factory reset that erased all data" on his department-issued iPhone after the arrest, around an hour and a half before department members arrived to claim it, two weeks after the incident.
"As a result, the FBI analyst was not able to retrieve any data from the phone, including call records, text messages, pictures, or any other information that may have been relevant to the federal investigation," read the affidavit.
Footage captured by an unnamed bystander, who was referred to as E.L. in the affidavit, showed White beating then-27-year-old Randal Ray Worcester, punching his head into the pavement outside a Mulberry, Arkansas, convenience store. Two other officers were involved in the violent arrest, including Zachary King, who was also hitting Worcester, and Thell Riddle, who held him down while he was handcuffed, and hit, kneed and kicked Worcester.
E.L. told investigators that she was "frozen in shock" as she captured the incident because the beating "was so violent."
White claims that he reset the phone to remove stored personal information, but records recovered by the FBI from White's personal phone showed texts "that indicate White and other officers recognized that White used excessive force," according to the affidavit.
He is alleged to have received a text from Riddle that described the incident as an "ass whipping."
This is not the first instance where White is accused of misleading investigators. During a 2020 probe into a violent incident in Arkansas, White, who had custody of a detainee after a "bloody" beating, told the FBI that he "did not recall" the condition of the detainee when he arrived at the jail.
After a phone call with the arresting officer responsible for injuries that resembled a "horror movie," White asked to speak to investigators again, and this time claimed that the detainee had banged his own head against the wall while being taken to a cell, contrary to all other accounts.
White and King were fired from their positions on the force in September of last year.
Riddle was on administrative leave as of October 2022, and told a federal grand jury that he was "appalled" by White's actions, which "violated 'morals' and 'human decency.'"
Last month, White and King were indicted on federal excessive force charges, and face up to a decade in prison.
