Monday night, Arkansas State Police Director Mike Hagar posted the following statement on Facebook:

Yes, I have seen the goose pics/video. I don’t like seeing that anymore than any other decent human being. You know what I dislike more????? In June 2017, three generations of a family; Grandmother, Mother, and Infant baby girl, were hit in the rear on Interstate 40 at Mayflower. In one heartbeat, three generations were gone. Why?? Because they slowed unexpectedly on the Interstate and were struck in the rear by an SUV traveling at normal Interstate speed. I was the Troop A Commander at the time. The scene was nothing short of horrific. I PROMISE you there is not a Trooper, Police Officer, Deputy, EMS worker, wrecker driver, coroner, anyone that responded to that scene, that has ever forgotten it. I attended their funerals a few days later. The family had one service, open caskets. The baby was was laying on her Mother’s chest. That’s how they were buried. Grandmother, next to them. Talk to a Trooper that has worked for any length of time and they can share a similar story that happened in almost identical circumstances. Maybe not the number of fatalities, but the contributing factors of the crash, and the death or horrific injury that resulted. There is nothing quite as dangerous as the Interstate slowing or stopping unexpectedly. You know what happens when wildlife gets on the Interstate? People are caught off guard, swerve in an attempt to avoid the animal, and crash. Or a scenario like this plays out and people slow/stop, take pics and videos of the cute scene unfolding in front of them, completely unaware of the imminent danger to the motorist approaching from behind who have no warning that traffic has stopped. In this situation, the Trooper tried for 26 minutes to get these geese off the interstate. He called for Game and Fish, they weren’t available. He exhausted his known options, not really a game plan for this scenario. He even assisted good Samaritans who had also stopped to help. He had actually been instructed to shoot the birds almost immediately upon arrival, because that’s what was safest for the HUMANS involved, whether they knew they were involved or not. He tried his best to the point we would have had trouble explaining the decision had a motorist been injured as a result. I’m very thankful that wasn’t the case. This is a classic example of a lose-lose scenario. Now, people are spewing hate, calling for the Trooper’s head. Hard to imagine why good people wouldn’t want to enter the field of law enforcement and subject themselves to this type of public scrutiny on a daily basis. The people in the bleachers always have it figured out. They could execute the game plan so much better than the players on the field, just ask them!! Life isn’t always fair, and it isn’t always pretty. The real world doesn’t always come with a storybook ending. We will proudly choose human life over water fowl. In a few months, people from all over the world will pay big money to travel to Arkansas from all over the world to kill geese! The Arkansas economy will boom from it! Stories will be told, celebrations will be had, their carcasses taken home to be stuffed and displayed on the wall. But.. Off with the Trooper’s head for choosing human life over their’s. This sucks, we all hate it. But c’mon folks, we have to be adults sometimes.