How to Get a Police Report in Arkansas (2026): Crash & Incident Reports

Arkansas runs its crash reports through a dedicated online purchase system operated by the Arkansas State Police, separate from the general incident-report process that covers arrests, thefts, and other non-crash offenses. The two paths use different statutes, different fees, and, importantly, a different bodycam rule than most readers expect.

Arkansas does have a dedicated body-worn camera confidentiality statute, but it covers only recordings depicting the death of a law enforcement officer. It is not a general bodycam-access law, and treating it as one would misstate what most Arkansas bodycam requests are actually governed by.

Information last verified on 2026-09-01. This article has not yet been reviewed by a licensed lawyer.

How to Get an Arkansas Crash Report

The Arkansas State Police (ASP) maintains a centralized, statewide crash-records repository with its own online system. The access right behind it is statutory: Arkansas Code § 27-53-209 makes all motor vehicle accident reports made by the Division of Arkansas State Police open to public inspection at all reasonable times, and § 27-53-305 does the same for traffic accident investigating officers' reports, with copies available from ASP in the same manner and for the same fees prescribed by § 27-53-210. Each of those provisions is subject to one mandatory redaction, described under "Who may request" below.

How to order: Use the ASP 'Crash Report Online Purchase System' at crashreports.ark.org, searching by report number, driver's license number, last name, or accident date. You can also mail a request to ASP Crash Records Section, One State Police Plaza Drive, Little Rock, AR 72209.

Fee: $10 per report if you were involved in the crash; $25 per report if you were not. Those figures come from Ark. Code § 27-53-210(b), amended in the 2025 regular session by HB1336 effective July 1, 2025, which raised the basic accident report fee to $25 while keeping it at $10 for "a person who was involved in the accident." A supplemental report is $1.50 per page. The Arkansas Department of Public Safety's crash-records page charges the same two figures.

A city or county agency charges differently. The two-tier fee applies to copies from the Division of Arkansas State Police. Section 27-53-210(c), which the 2025 amendment left untouched, still charges county and municipal law enforcement agencies' requesters a flat fee of ten dollars ($10.00) for each copy of a basic accident report and $1.50 per page for a supplemental report, with no involved-or-uninvolved distinction. Buying a crash report over the counter at a city police department costs $10 whether or not you were in the crash.

Timeline: Reports are typically available for purchase within 10 days of the report being completed and forwarded to the Little Rock repository after supervisor verification.

Who may request: Both involved parties (drivers, passengers) and uninvolved requesters (attorneys, insurers, the general public) may obtain a report. The fee tier is not the only difference between them, though. Under Ark. Code § 27-53-202(b)(2)(B), the name and address of an occupant under eighteen must not be open to public inspection under the accident-report subchapter or the FOIA, and must be redacted from copies "including without limitation written, photostatic, or electronic copies," unless the requester is the minor's parent, legal guardian, or legal custodian, or a representative of an insurance company that insures a person involved in the accident. Every one of §§ 27-53-208, 27-53-209, 27-53-210, and 27-53-305 opens with an exception for that provision. So an ordinary requester should expect a minor occupant's identifying details to be removed, and a parent, guardian, custodian, or insurer's representative can ask for a copy without that redaction.

How to Get an Arkansas Police Incident Report

An incident or offense report for an arrest, theft, assault, or other non-crash matter is not handled by the crash-records system above. It goes through a standard Arkansas Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the agency that investigated, whether the local police department or Arkansas State Police, since crashreports.ark.org is crash-specific and does not serve general incident reports.

Arkansas Code § 25-19-105(b)(6), confirmed directly against the statute's text, exempts 'undisclosed investigations by law enforcement agencies of suspected criminal activity' from disclosure under the FOIA. Arkansas courts read that exemption more narrowly than its wording alone suggests, and the difference matters to an ordinary requester.

First, the exemption protects records that are part of an open and ongoing law enforcement investigation, which is a question of fact in each case (Martin v. Musteen, 303 Ark. 656, 799 S.W.2d 540 (1990)). Sparse activity after two years on a 54-year-old case was not enough to show that an investigation was open and ongoing (Dep't of Ark. State Police v. Keech Law Firm, 2017 Ark. 143, 516 S.W.3d 265). A custodian who withholds on this ground is asserting a live investigation, not an unreviewable judgment call.

Second, not every law enforcement document is investigative in the first place. Under Hengel v. City of Pine Bluff, 307 Ark. 457, 821 S.W.2d 761 (1991), a police department's jail log, arrest records, and shift sheets are not records containing undisclosed law enforcement investigations, and are therefore subject to disclosure under the FOIA regardless of whether some investigation is ongoing. Hengel also held that because the jail division of a police department operates twenty-four hours a day, those are its "regular business hours," so those records must be available for reasonable public inspection throughout them; administrative divisions of the same department may keep different hours. All three of these points are set out in the Arkansas Attorney General's Freedom of Information Handbook, 22nd edition, at page 29.

Requests can be made in person, by phone, mail, fax, email, or another electronic method the custodian provides, and Arkansas Code § 25-19-105(a)(3) requires only that the request be specific enough for the custodian to locate the records with reasonable effort.

Arkansas Police Bodycam Footage

This is the point where a reader can easily be misled by a headline statute. Arkansas Code § 12-6-701 is a real, dedicated body-worn and dashboard camera confidentiality statute, but its scope is narrow: it applies only to a recording that 'depicts or records the death of a law enforcement officer.'

Confirmed directly against the statute's text, that narrow category is confidential and exempt from FOIA disclosure, with access limited to: a family member of the deceased officer (a minor child at least 14 years old may access it with a parent's written consent and supervision); the employing or investigating agency, Arkansas State Police, or the FBI, for an official investigation into the officer's death; prosecuting attorneys and defense counsel through discovery in a related criminal or civil case; or a person or entity that petitions a circuit court in the county where the record is held, showing good cause. A custodian who knowingly permits unauthorized access to a death-of-an-officer recording commits a Class D felony.

For the vast majority of Arkansas bodycam requests, an ordinary traffic stop, an arrest, a use-of-force incident that does not involve an officer's death, § 12-6-701 does not apply at all. Those requests instead run through the general FOIA law-enforcement exemption, § 25-19-105(b)(6), described above, on the same case-by-case basis as any other investigative record. See Arkansas Police Bodycam Laws and our guide to requesting body camera footage for the fuller picture.

Corrections and Practical Notes

No Arkansas-specific statutory process for correcting a factual error on a crash or incident report was found; contact the investigating agency directly.

Arkansas Code § 27-53-208 makes clear that a required accident report is 'without prejudice to the individual so reporting' and cannot be used as evidence in a civil or criminal trial arising from the crash, beyond a certificate proving one was or was not filed, so the report itself is not intended to establish fault in court.

For the aftermath of a crash beyond the report itself, see Arkansas Car Accident Laws. For the broader public-records framework, see Arkansas Public Records Laws and Arkansas Court Records. For the general process of filing or reading a report, see How to File a Police Report and How to Read a Police Report.

Disclaimer

This article provides general legal information about how to obtain a police crash report, incident report, or body camera footage in Arkansas as verified on 2026-09-01. It does not constitute legal advice and does not create an attorney-client relationship. Readers with a specific records dispute, or who need advice about a specific incident, should consult a lawyer licensed in Arkansas.

Last updated: 2026-09-01. Fees and portals reflect their published status as of September 2026.