Incoming NLR police chief unfazed by interim designation
Tracy Roulston understands his time as North Little Rock’s police chief may not last beyond the rest of the year, but that doesn’t bother him.
Roulston, 58, will take over as the city’s interim police chief when current Chief Mike Davis retires March 1, but Roulston isn’t banking on becoming the permanent department head with a mayoral election scheduled for November.
North Little Rock Mayor Joe Smith has said he won’t seek reelection, which means the new mayor will choose the permanent replacement for Davis. Under the law, the police chief works at the discretion of the mayor.
“We knew that the election year was coming,” Roulston said.
Asked if he would stay on as chief if asked, Roulston replied “absolutely,” but he noted that he will likely step back into the assistant chief’s role next year.
“I would imagine that I will remain interim chief until that time, out of respect for the new administration coming in and for me, also,” said Roulston, who has spent 31 years with the Police Department. “Because I’m not quite ready to retire.”
Roulston joined the department in 1988 and has worked in the school resource officer unit and in special investigations. He earned the rank of captain in 2016 and was promoted to assistant chief in April 2019.
Smith has worked with Roulston for the better part of three decades, a factor that led the mayor to appoint Roulston as interim chief. Smith began working in city administration in 1989, shortly after Roulston was hired by the
Police Department.
“I’ve known him. I’ve watched him work,” the mayor said. “We’ve been co-workers for a long, long time.”
Davis informed Smith on Jan. 31 of his plans to retire. Smith said he had hoped he and Davis would retire simultaneously at the close of 2020.
“I just felt like I’d surprise everybody, leave a little early,” Davis said.
Roulston said staffing and recruitment will remain a challenge, in spite of a supportive mayor and city administration.
Aging officers and a low unemployment rate have drained police departments across the country, Davis and Roulston said. NPR reported in 2018, citing numbers from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, that the number of fulltime sworn officers working nationwide had dropped by 23,000 since 2013.
Two North Little Rock sergeants are to retire in March, Roulston said. Those officers can be replaced by promoting officers within the ranks, Roulston said, but hiring well-qualified people to replace the patrol officers takes time. Roulston said preparing a new officer to go on solo patrols is a nine- to 12-month process that includes hiring, training and riding along with an experienced patrol officer for six months.
“That’s where you run into your shortage of staffing at the patrolman level,” he said.
Another goal Roulston will concentrate on is improving the public’s trust in police officers.
He said the department is fortunate to have strong relationships with community organizations
— including churches, businesses and neighborhood watch groups — but there is more work to be done.
Police work relies on building trust within the community, Roulston said.
“We solve the majority of our crimes by people,” Roulston said. “That’s how we solve them. Not by fingerprints. Not by DNA. It’s by people telling us, giving us information. That’s the key.”
Danny Bradley, the mayor’s chief of staff and a former North Little Rock police chief
Davis informed Smith on Jan. 31 of his plans to retire. Smith said he had hoped he and Davis would retire simultaneously at the close of 2020.
who served from 2001 to 2013, said Roulston was the first choice to replace Davis, given his role as assistant chief. If officials hadn’t felt confident promoting Roulston, they would have looked deeper into the department’s ranks, he said.
“We felt like he was certainly capable and deserved to fill that position,” Bradley said.
“I think Chief Roulston will do a fine job managing the department until he or some other person is named the permanent chief,” he added.
Bradley said appointing Roulston to the interim role also allows the next mayor an opportunity to evaluate him as a possible permanent replacement.
“The department is in such good shape,” Bradley said. “Chief Davis has done a tremendous job. You know, if you had a troubled department it might be a different decision, but when you have a department that’s running well, I don’t think it hurts at all to have an interim position.”
“It’s a little bit longer than would be ideal, but I think the department will be fine.”