Police’s vehicle rules get LR look
Take-home cars’ efficacy the focus
A review of the Little Rock Police Department’s automobile take-home policy will focus on whether police assigned to the vehicles live too far away to respond in a timely manner to off-duty responsibilities, according to the department’s chief.
Among the 189 takehome vehicles assigned to Little Rock police, about 75 percent of the vehicles are taken outside the city, according to department data.
Of the vehicles taken outside city limits, most stay within 25 miles of Little Rock, but others are driven dozens of miles away, to cities such as Searcy, Hot Springs, Malvern and Greenbrier.
City Manager Bruce Moore announced a review of the take-home vehicle policy earlier this month, and he said in an interview that the action was prompted by residency proposals before the city’s Board of Directors.
Moore said he will be working with Little Rock Police Chief Kenton Buckner and the department’s assistant chiefs to review which positions are assigned take-home vehicles while examining the function of those positions.
“I haven’t done that with Chief Buckner since he’s been here, so I think it’s timely,” Moore said.
If any changes come from a review of the policy, Moore said, he will present
them to the mayor and the Board of Directors.
Department policy states that employees are assigned take-home vehicles if “the nature of the assignment mandate their return to duty during off-duty hours for investigation or other critical police responses.”
According to department policy, Buckner must approve the assignment of all takehome vehicles. Police do not pay for the vehicle’s gasoline if they use one of the city’s stations, and the department provides upkeep on the vehicle.
Investigators use the vehicles to respond to crime scenes during off-duty hours, said Tommy Hudson, president of the Little Rock Fraternal Order of Police.
The vehicles allow investigators and other responders to go directly to a scene instead of traveling to a police station first to gather equipment or pick up a department vehicle, which wastes critical time during an investigation, he said.
Members of the department’s SWAT team also have take-home vehicles so they can immediately respond to a call, he said.
But City Director Ken Richardson questioned how realistic it is to expect an officer to respond quickly when some live dozens of miles outside the city.
“Some of them are so far away,” he said.
Buckner said that question will be at the crux of Moore’s review, something he hopes will be able to set a reasonable expectation for those with takehome vehicles.
Richardson, who supported an ordinance last month that would have required new officers to live in the
Little Rock city limits, said he is concerned that Little Rock taxpayers are essentially subsidizing the safety of other communities when marked take-home vehicles travel outside the city. The department has a total of 65 marked take-home vehicles out of the 189 vehicles assigned to police officers.
“It contributes to the public safety of those outlying communities,” Richardson said.
When marked vehicles are driven in communities outside Little Rock, they deter crime and bring a sense of comfort to those residents while Little Rock taxpayers are faced with the cost, he said.
Richardson also raised concerns about the wear and tear the vehicles might face over longer distances outside the city, something he said could place an unfair financial burden on the Little Rock taxpayers.
The department’s upper command staff, including Buckner, three assistant chiefs and numerous captains, are also assigned take-home vehicles.
Members of the department’s command staff can be called out to “critical police responses,” which can range from an officer-involved shooting or a hostage situation to a mass demonstration in the city, Buckner said.
Vehicles are assigned to the command staff as a precautionary measure, he said, even though they are called out to scenes much less often than investigators.
“It’s not very often, but here’s the problem, can you tell me when it will happen?” Buckner said.
Capt. Heath Helton, who oversees the department’s training division, has been assigned a take-home vehicle off and on since 2004.
As a captain, he often uses his take-home vehicle to attend a number of off-duty neighborhood meetings and community-related events. He also uses the vehicle to
respond when alarms go off at the department’s training facility.
But Helton said he has also used his take-home vehicle to respond to critical police scenarios since becoming captain in March 2015.
Earlier this year, he responded off-duty after an officer-involved shooting at a Red Lobster in Little Rock, he said.
And last year, he used his take-home vehicle when the department’s SWAT team was called to respond to a suicidal person.
Helton also questioned whether an officer’s ability to respond to a critical situation is compromised by living so far out of the city. It’s good to review these policies periodically, he said, to ensure that the department is following best practices.
Some civilian employees in the department also have access to take-home vehicles, including the department’s neighborhood watch coordinator and the communication manager. Including the five take-home vehicles for non-sworn employees, the department has a total of 194 take-home vehicles between police and civilian employees.
Buckner said the neighborhood watch coordinator is assigned a take-home vehicle because that person is expected to attend evening neighborhood meetings and be present at events that can occur outside of normal business hours.
Yet department policy states that employees should be assigned a take-home vehicle if their positions require them to respond off-duty to investigations or critical police responses, such as an active-shooter situation or officer-involved shooting.
“It just made common sense to us,” Buckner said of the department’s decision to assign the car to the neighborhood watch coordinator, adding that he has some discretion over the policy.
While some outside the department see the vehicles as a comfy benefit, Hudson said they can also be a burden, as police can be called to crime scenes on weekends and at all hours of the night.
“So these aren’t the blessing everybody thinks they are,” he said.