Sen. Bruce Holland makes laws, he doesn’t obey them. Laws are for little people.
Clearly a big person — he has a sports car and a cowboy hat — the Greenwood Republican roared through Perry County last winter, outrunning a deputy sheriff who was in pursuit, blue lights flashing, at speeds up to 110 miles an hour. Holland was finally flagged down by a Yell County deputy in his front. A witness to the chase testified that Holland passed her and two other vehicles in a no-passing zone. His car “was just like a rocket,” she said. She herself was terrified, as people with good sense are when they encounter feral drivers on the highway.
In court, Holland tried to evade responsibility for his actions, just as he’d tried to evade the deputy, but Perry County District Judge Elizabeth Wise wouldn’t have it.
“The only reason someone wasn’t killed that day was probably luck,” she told Holland. She ordered him to perform 400 hours of community service, a substantial amount. (And probably the first community service Holland has ever done. He’s a man who asks not what he can do for the community, but what the community can do for him.) A no-nonsense, law-and-order jurist, Wise also ordered the senator to pay $890 in fines and court costs. She called his actions on the day of the chase “totally unacceptable.”
Holland whined and said he’d appeal to circuit court. If he does, he could end up with a harsher sentence. The standard penalty for fleeing a police officer is 10 days in jail. Ten days in the slammer might make a better man of Holland. Surely couldn’t hurt.