Pine Bluff City Council approves higher rewards after funds transfer

PINE BLUFF — City Council members have approved a budget adjustment request by the Pine Bluff police chief that will allow the department to offer higher rewards for information leading to homicide convictions.

The City Council unanimously approved the request March 18. It will allow police to move $50,000 from salary funds into a reward fund. The $50,000 comes from salary money that was not used in January and February because of vacancies within the Police Department.

The department has 17 unfilled positions, each with starting salaries of $30,846 annually.

Pine Bluff police are investigating six unsolved homicides since the beginning of the year. The latest occurred March 16 when police found Ashton Jackson, 34, of Pine Bluff dead from an apparent gunshot wound near Martha Mitchell Expressway and Blake Street.

There have been 92 murders reported in Pine Bluff since Jan. 1, 2014, and 33 remain unsolved, according to police.

Police Chief Kelvin Sergeant said reward amounts would be decided on a caseby-case basis, depending on the type of information given and how much the information assists in moving the case forward.

“More times than not, when you’re giving this type of reward money you’re saying for arrest and conviction, which means that person would have to testify,” Sergeant said. “If a person is willing to testify and their information is very pertinent to the case, the amount would increase.”

City Council member Steven Mays, chairman of the Ordinance and Resolution Committee, asked the police chief how difficult it is to get people to testify.

“That’s just case by case,” Sergeant said. “Some people may feel that whatever has happened, they are serving justice simply by coming in and testifying without a reward. Some people, you have to do some things to get them to come forward, and sometimes reward money, whatever it is, may make that happen.”

City Council member Win Trafford, chairman of the public safety committee, noted that the matter was discussed at length at the March 6 committee meeting, after which members recommended that Sergeant take the request to the council.

Because no line item existed for a reward fund and there were no undesignated general funds that could be tapped for that purpose, it was decided that Sergeant would request the transfer of funds from unused salaries to initially fund the rewards.