An Arkansas State Police trooper resigned from his post two days after his estranged wife filed dozens of racist and offensive text messages into their divorce case, turning a bitter custody fight in Bauxite, Arkansas, into a public reckoning that cost him his career.
Michael Austin Kennedy, 32, stepped down on May 15 after the messages, filled with racial slurs targeting Black, Latino, Indian, Muslim, and LGBTQ people, surfaced in court filings and triggered an internal affairs investigation. His wife, Alana Kennedy, 33, a school counselor, had attached the screenshots to a May 13 amended complaint alleging her husband held white supremacist views and was unfit to raise their two children.
The case, detailed in a report by the Daily Mail, lays bare a marriage that disintegrated into mutual threats, accusations of extortion, and a scorched-earth legal strategy that left neither party looking clean, and left two children, Aaron and Alivia, caught in the middle.
The timeline of the Kennedy divorce reads like an escalating series of provocations. Austin moved out of the family's Bauxite home in January. By April, Alana was mocking his attorney and claiming Austin's parents were bankrolling his legal fees. By early May, the gloves were off.
On May 5, Alana sent Austin a message warning that court discovery could expose his alleged history of drug use. She wrote that it "[w]ould probably not be great for you if ASP found out you lied about that in your application." The next day she followed up, asking whether he'd "had a chance to think about whether you want your history of drug use coming out in court."
Two days later, Austin filed a motion for contempt. In it, he included texts from Alana that he characterized as threats. One read: "But know that I am fully prepared to share whatever screenshots I have and I do not care if they end up on courtconnect for all the world to see if you don't agree to my terms."
That motion was filed May 7. Six days later, Alana made good on the threat.
Alana's May 13 filing included dozens of text screenshots showing Austin using some of the most vile racial language imaginable. He referred to Black people as "subhuman trash" and "sub primate." He used the n-word repeatedly and without restraint, calling Black neighborhoods "N****rland," writing that "n****rs were n****ring in Little Rock," and responding to the Daniel Penny case verdict by writing about a "n****r criminal family" and declaring that "none of those n****rs deserve to live in a country where we raise our children."
Latino people fared no better. Austin used the slur "spic" in reference to a fatal wrong-way driving crash, writing: "White father of 3 killed right before Christmas by yet another wrong way driving drunk illegal spic. You don't hate them enough." He mocked a fast-food chain as "Spic-Fil-A." He referred to Indian people as "street s***ters."
In response to the New Year's Eve 2025 terrorist attack in New Orleans, Austin wrote: "A dirty turkey sand n****r attack in New Orleans. I love brown people and brown cultures. They're so lovely and diverse and I want my kids around more of them." The sarcasm was unmistakable.
He called a local justice of the peace candidate, Bailey Morgan, a "f***ing queer." He described restaurant employees as "third world employees" and spoke of people of "European decent (sic)" as the implied standard.
Alana's complaint alleged that Austin was a white supremacist who would "poison the minds" of their children with bigotry. She sought full custody, with Austin limited to every-second-weekend visitation, plus child support.
The filing landed like a grenade. Within two days, Arkansas State Police opened an internal affairs investigation, and Austin resigned on May 15. The case mirrors a broader pattern of public officials facing swift professional consequences once private misconduct enters the public record.
Austin's May 19 response to the court was blunt. He wrote that Alana "followed through with her threats and attached the text messages that she had been threatening to publicly release." He asked the court to seal all future filings from public view.
His attorney, Matthew Ingle, filed a response that attempted no defense of the language itself:
"The defendant 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."
Ingle characterized the messages as dating "back several months" and argued that Alana "had no problem with these messages until she decided that they would benefit her position in this legal proceeding."
That argument cuts both ways. If the messages date back months and Alana saw them in real time without objection, it raises questions about her own tolerance of the language inside the marriage. But it does nothing to excuse the content, and Ingle did not try.
In post-resignation filings, Austin offered a religious redemption narrative. He wrote: "That is old, terrible stuff. I am not that person. I am a Christian now... I repented before God. Months ago. And here you are, destroying new me because of old me. Pure, raw evil."
He accused Alana of "terrorizing me and making my life unlivable" and told her to "[q]uit harassing me during church." He described her custody strategy as "pure, Satanic evil."
The rest of Austin's texts, however, painted a picture of a man consumed by grievance well beyond racial animus. He called Alana a "despicable and disgusting human being." He described any future child support as "court-ordered extortion and theft," writing that whatever was "stolen" from him would "100% go to DoorDash, Gym Shark sweatsuits, Amazon, 8 streaming services, new clothes for mom every week, and whatever other crap."
He accused Alana of being funded by "3 different men", her own income, "the guy you're leaving me for," and her father. He said he would quit law enforcement and "go cook at Blue House" to reduce his income. He accused her of "sneaking men into my house."
In one particularly alarming exchange, Austin wrote: "I have never threatened to kill you. I have threatened to kill Ethan Simpson. Because there is no justice in this world where innocent people die all the time and that motherf***** gets to live with no consequences." The identity of Ethan Simpson and the context of the threat remain unclear from court filings.
Alana's legal team fired back on May 20. Her lawyers wrote that Austin "is aware that the plaintiff and one of the children were all in therapy as a result of his behavior, and he has always blamed everyone else." They added:
"Since the motions were filed last week, the defendant continues to berate, harass and blame the plaintiff for his own behavior. Blaming others is exactly how the Defendant has been throughout the marriage. The text messages showing his bigotry and hatred toward humankind are perfect examples of how he treated his family because he feels he is supreme, and only his beliefs are correct."
Alana herself wrote to Austin during the dispute: "You are trying so hard to get me put in jail with one of the many women you cheated on me with and asking for sole custody for the sole purpose of tormenting me. You're still awful. You haven't changed at all."
But Alana's hands are not entirely clean in the procedural record. Her own texts show her explicitly threatening to weaponize the messages unless Austin agreed to her custody terms. Austin's contempt motion included her warning that she was "fully prepared to share whatever screenshots I have" if he didn't concede. She also threatened to expose his alleged drug use to his employer, a move that, whatever its merits, looks less like child advocacy than leverage.
The distinction matters. If Alana genuinely believed Austin's views made him dangerous to their children, she had every right, arguably a duty, to bring that evidence to a court. But the May 5, 7 texts suggest she first tried to use the messages as a private bargaining chip. When that failed, she filed them publicly. Austin's attorney called it a plan to humiliate. Alana's lawyers called it accountability.
One figure looms over the case without speaking publicly. Mike Kennedy, Austin's father, serves as a lieutenant colonel with the Arkansas State Police, the same agency his son just left. Alana alleged that Mike Kennedy threatened to have her arrested for accessing funds from a joint account and helped Austin harass her. No public statement from the elder Kennedy appears in the filings. The question of whether a senior ASP official's family connection influenced the handling of the internal affairs investigation remains unanswered.
Cases involving misconduct complaints in law enforcement routinely raise questions about institutional self-policing. When the accused officer's father holds a senior command position in the same agency, those questions sharpen considerably.
The custody case is ongoing. The outcome of Austin's May 7 contempt motion has not been reported. The specific court and case number have not been made public in available reporting. The children's ages remain undisclosed. The scope and findings of the internal affairs investigation are unknown.
Austin's request to seal future filings signals an awareness that the public record has already done its damage. Whether a court grants that request will shape how much more of this marriage's wreckage becomes public.
The pattern of government employees facing career-ending consequences for conduct exposed through legal proceedings is not new. Nor is the use of divorce filings as a weapon. What makes the Kennedy case notable is the sheer volume and toxicity of the material, and the speed with which it ended a law enforcement career.
Institutions that employ armed officers with the power to arrest, detain, and use force have a non-negotiable obligation to ensure those officers do not harbor the kind of contempt for entire categories of citizens that Austin Kennedy expressed in writing. His resignation was the right outcome. The Arkansas State Police cannot credibly ask the public to trust troopers who describe the people they serve as "subhuman."
But the way this information came to light, through a custody threat, not a conscience, should trouble anyone who cares about how misconduct gets reported and addressed in public institutions. The right thing done for the wrong reason is still the right thing. It is also a reminder that accountability in America increasingly depends on who has the ugliest screenshots, and the willingness to file them.
Two children in Bauxite, Arkansas, are living with the consequences. That part never makes the headline.
