Arkansas state trooper resigns after divorce filings expose racist text messages

An Arkansas State Police trooper resigned last month after his estranged wife included dozens of screenshots of racist and extremist text messages in their divorce case, messages his own attorney acknowledged were "entirely improper" and a source of "profound" shame.

Michael Austin Kennedy left the force on May 15, the New York Post reported, after the texts became part of the public court record. His wife, Alana Kennedy, had filed for divorce in April 2026 and initially sought joint custody of the couple's two young children. But she changed course in May, filing an amended complaint that asked for sole custody, and attached at least 30 screenshots of messages exchanged between the two.

The messages, as described in court filings, included slurs directed at Hispanic, Black, Muslim, and LGBTQ individuals. Some compared Black people to gorillas and monkeys. Others called for the Muslim holiday of Ramadan to be banned in Arkansas. Kennedy also allegedly sent photos of himself posing with a detained Hispanic suspect he had arrested while on duty, referring to the person with ethnic slurs, treating the arrest, his wife alleged, like a trophy.

A custody fight turned public reckoning

The divorce began as a relatively standard split. Alana Kennedy's April filing asked for joint custody. Something changed between April and May. Her amended complaint escalated the case sharply, labeling her husband a white supremacist and arguing his views posed a direct threat to their children.

The amended complaint stated that Kennedy is "a white supremacist and as such is going to poison the minds of the children with his views and actions." Alana Kennedy told the court she feared he would "instill this same hatred" in them, as KATV reported from Little Rock.

The shift from joint to sole custody, backed by 30-plus screenshots, turned a private marital dispute into a public scandal that ended a law-enforcement career.

Kennedy's attorney responds, but concedes the core facts

Court documents filed by Kennedy's attorney did not dispute the authenticity of the messages. Instead, the filing attempted to provide context and distance Kennedy from the content. His attorney wrote:

"The Defendant (Kennedy) makes no excuse for those statements; they were entirely improper, do not reflect the Defendant's values today and the Defendant is profoundly ashamed of them. However, context matters regarding the current litigation. These communications date back several months, well before this divorce case was ever contemplated or filed."

Kennedy also claimed in his filing that the texts were "outdated" and came before he sought therapy and spiritual guidance. His attorney did not specify when that counseling began or what form it took.

The filing went further, casting the disclosure as retaliatory. Kennedy's attorney wrote that Alana Kennedy had made threats, and that Kennedy was forced to resign after she followed through on them, leaving the family, including their two minor children, without health insurance.

"After Plaintiff (his wife) followed through with her threats, Defendant had to resign from his employment, leaving the parties and the minor children without health insurance coverage."

That framing raises its own questions. If the messages were genuinely months old and predated the divorce, why were they still on a phone or accessible enough to screenshot in bulk? And if Kennedy's values had truly changed, why did it take a divorce filing, not a voluntary disclosure to his employer, to bring them to light?

What the agency hasn't said

No statement from the Arkansas State Police appears in any available reporting on the case. There is no indication of an internal investigation, a disciplinary finding, or an agency-issued comment. Kennedy resigned; the record, for now, stops there.

That silence matters. A trooper who used racial slurs in private messages, and who allegedly posed for photos with a detained suspect as a kind of personal souvenir, raises serious questions about how he conducted himself on duty. Were complaints ever filed? Were stops or arrests reviewed? Did supervisors know? None of those questions have public answers yet.

When law-enforcement officials face serious allegations, the public has a right to know whether the institution responded or looked the other way. A resignation without a public accounting is not the same as accountability.

The broader pattern of private conduct meeting public consequence

Kennedy's case fits a familiar arc: a public official's private behavior surfaces through legal proceedings, and the fallout is swift. The mechanism here, divorce filings, is unusual but not unprecedented. Court records are public documents. Once Alana Kennedy attached those screenshots to an amended complaint, they became part of the permanent record.

The pattern is not limited to law enforcement. Elected officials and candidates have faced career-ending revelations from their own digital trails. Archived social media posts have surfaced to derail political campaigns, and ethics investigations have quietly resolved cases that deserved more public scrutiny.

What distinguishes Kennedy's situation is the nature of his job. A state trooper exercises enormous discretionary authority, over traffic stops, arrests, use of force, and interactions with people of every background. The public extends that authority on trust. When private messages reveal contempt for entire communities, that trust is gone.

Conservatives who champion law and order understand this better than anyone. The badge carries weight precisely because the public believes the person wearing it will enforce the law fairly. Officers who hold the views described in these filings don't just disgrace themselves, they hand ammunition to every activist who wants to paint all police as bigots.

Unanswered questions

The court docket, the county, and the case number have not been identified in available reporting. Kennedy's attorney's name has not been published. The current status of the custody dispute remains unclear. No criminal charges have been filed.

There is also no public record of whether the Arkansas State Police reviewed Kennedy's case history, his stops, his arrests, his use-of-force reports, after the messages surfaced. When agencies face allegations of misconduct, independent review often reveals gaps between official narratives and ground-level reality. Whether that kind of review will happen here is an open question.

Kennedy's attorney argued that context matters. Fair enough. But context cuts both ways. A man who sent 30-plus messages laced with racial slurs, who posed with a detained suspect and used ethnic slurs to describe that person, and who called for banning a religious observance, that man was carrying a badge and a gun while serving the people of Arkansas.

His attorney says the messages predate the divorce by several months. Even accepting that timeline, "several months" is not ancient history. It is not a youthful indiscretion from a decade ago. It is recent enough to raise legitimate concerns about every interaction Kennedy had while on patrol.

Public officials whose misconduct is quietly swept aside do lasting damage to the institutions they represent. Kennedy at least had the sense to resign. But resignation is not the same as transparency, and the Arkansas State Police owe the public more than silence.

What accountability actually looks like

Kennedy's defenders, to the extent he has any, will point to his claim of therapy and spiritual growth. People can change. That's a core conservative conviction, redemption is real, and grace matters. But redemption requires honesty, not a legal filing that frames the exposure of your own words as someone else's threat.

The people who deserve the most consideration here are the ones with the least power in the story: the two young children caught between parents in a bitter custody fight, and the communities Kennedy was sworn to serve and protect while privately expressing contempt for them.

Good policing depends on public trust. Officers who shatter that trust don't just fail themselves, they make the job harder for every colleague who puts on the uniform and does the work honestly. That's the real cost, and no resignation letter can cover it.