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Mikel Blocker wore two badges at once. Newton County’s elected sheriff made him chief deputy — and the city of Jasper put him in a patrol car at the same time. Detective Aaron May Carter worked the county’s major cases. On September 11, both men were arrested within hours of each other, each charged with theft of a firearm.
The arrests
The Arkansas State Police Criminal Investigation Division made both arrests after the 14th Judicial District Prosecuting Attorney requested an independent probe. Multiple firearms were recovered during the investigation, according to the state police release. Blocker, 36, was booked into the Newton County Detention Center; so was Carter.
By the end of the week, both men were out of a job. Sheriff Glenn Wheeler terminated Blocker from the sheriff’s office, and Jasper’s police leadership ended Carter’s employment as well — Blocker’s dual-role arrangement with the Jasper Police Department died with his arrest.
What the sheriff said
“This breaks my heart,” Wheeler said in a statement issued jointly with Jasper Police Chief Mike Henderson, adding that he requested a “thorough and independent” investigation rather than keeping it in-house. That call matters: the case was handled by state investigators from the start instead of either of the two agencies that employed the men.
Same day, same charge
Two officers from the same small county, arrested the same day on the same felony charge, is rare even by Arkansas standards. What makes it stranger is the overlap: the county’s second-in-command was simultaneously drawing a city paycheck as a patrol officer, an arrangement that raises the question of just how many hours — and for whom — he was actually working.
Both men are presumed innocent until proven otherwise. The charges are felony counts, and the case remains open in Newton County District Court. We will follow it and update this story as it moves.
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