Little Rock Police Officer Marcus Getter has been arrested last month for stealing a purse back in November, but for some reason the mainstream media was a month late reporting on Getter's activities. On November 12, 2020 Little Rock Police arrived at Bar Louie on Cantrell Avenue to find a woman claiming her purse had been stolen. After months of investigation they finally realized that the man caught on camera stealing the tape was one of their own. The purse has over $1,600 in it. Getter is now on leave. Other than that nothing has been released publicly to explain Getter's actions.
Since the LRPD took months to identify one of their own people and another month for media outlets in Little Rock to report on the arrest, we can only speculate as to why Getter did what he did and why his department was so slow at doing anything about it. It is well known that there is a culture of transphobia within police departments. Such culture could make an officer feel like he had little options but to steal a purse in order to answer his own gender identity questions without suffering the humiliation of being seen purchasing a purse somewhere. Then again he could easily just buy a purse and say it was a gift for a woman in his life, so why the theft? Nobody is saying that cops are the brightest knives in the drawer, but even they should realize that buying a purse and saying it is for a girlfriend makes them look straighter than not doing anything at all. He was probably drunk, saw something he always wanted to prance down main street with, and just took it without thinking. Another possibility is that he just needed to pay his tab and didn't want to use his own credit card for fear of leaving a paper trail. A paper trail to what? Maybe he was out with another woman (or man) and didn't want his significant other to see Bar Louie on his credit card statement. Your guess is as good as ours at this time.
Since the LRPD has not explained why it took them months to identify one of their own that was caught on video tape, we can only speculate as to what took them so long. Could it be that the LRPD officers investigating the incident were so racist that the second they saw a black man on camera that they focused their attention solely on black neighborhoods in an effort to pin the theft on someone that looks like Getter? Maybe they recognized him right away and were hoping they could make it go away. Anything is possible, so your guess is as good as ours. What we do know is that they worked with a suspect that was caught on camera for months before figuring it out. Timetables like this make the future look bleak for anyone in Little Rock waiting for the LRPD to find their stuff.
Conclusion
If the LRPD does not want us speculating then they should release more information.