The best policy

IT’S ONE of his admirable features. The chief of Little Rock’s police department always seems to say what he’s thinking. No PR mumbo-jumbo for him. When asked about the recent dip in Little Rock’s murder rate, Kenton Buckner said: “Is it true that our visibility and increased officer presence is a contributing factor? Yes. Is it the contributing factor? I don’t think that anyone can say that. Because if [violent crime] were to go up tomorrow, I wouldn’t be able to tell you why.”

Little Rock has increased police patrols throughout the city, but when gangs start shooting and retaliating and re-retaliating and re-re-retaliating it can be impossible to stop. As a police chief of a smaller crime-ridden city told us years ago, he could put the 101st Airborne on the streets and it wouldn’t be able to stop many of these shootings.

Then again, we once had a police chief explain any increase or decrease in crime this way: If crime stats in his town went down, it was because of outstanding policing policies. If crime stats went up, it was because the community trusted his department to report more frequently. Either way, he won.

An honest police chief doesn’t have magic powers to stop crime; he has no cape and super powers. But at least when Kenton Buckner talks to the public, the rest of us can know the city’s top cop isn’t talking rubbish.