For LR, caravan problem persists
Police aim to halt drivers’ loitering
Little Rock police continue to struggle with containing caravanning-related offenses as participants are moving from one part of the city to another, according to law enforcement authorities.
Police Chief Keith Humphrey and his command staff have empowered every officer to be on the lookout for and to respond to these kinds of calls to avoid having too many officers in some areas and not enough in others.
“The problem can sometimes be how many resources can you afford to have in these areas, because when you take resources from one part, it might affect somewhere else,” Humphrey said. “So what we’re doing now is a departmentwide effort where officers, no matter what their assignments are, are working these details.”
The chief called caravanning “a fashion show on four wheels.”
Caravanning broadly describes a group of motorists driving to a specific area and planning to loiter. The practice is usually characterized by motorists blocking off intersections or loitering on private property to drift, do doughnuts or drag race.
Caravanning in Little Rock has caused property damage, noise and, occasionally, gunfire.
Mayor Frank Scott Jr. in early April banned caravanning.
In July, Humphrey met with Little Rock City Director Kathy Webb and worried residents who feared the issue had become worse, citing fireworks that were shot on July Fourth and gunfire that had been heard afterward. Webb represents Ward 3, which includes part of Hillcrest and Pulaski Heights.
On the night of Sept. 13, Broadway in Little Rock was temporarily blocked off by people doing burnouts and drifting in the intersection with 17th Street before leaving the area.
Humphrey said it is a known area for that kind of activity.
“We pretty much know what the patterns are in some situations,” Humphrey said. “We pretty much know that the Asher-University area is really big on caravanning and cruising, and there are certain other areas like Broadway and certain other areas of the city have become locations where people are doing the doughnuts.”
The detail responsible for Asher Street, one of the first places where caravanning became a problem, authorities said, has been established for years. But it’s never never been this large a problem, according to police spokesman Lt. Casey Clark.
“People laugh, but we attribute that to covid,” Clark said. “Everything’s been closed. The kids didn’t have anything to do, so we start having more and more kids coming out. We start noticing we’re not only having kids from Central Arkansas but all over Arkansas coming out, so we had to gradually step up our manpower more and more and more until at one point we were pushing over 50 officers per weekend night.”
This kind of activity is not too unusual for summer, Humphrey said, but there’s usually a drop-off in incidents going into fall.
“I think if school was [in-person] and other activities were in, I don’t think we would have the same type of activity that we’re having now, especially going into the fall months,” Humphrey said. “I remember last year, when we did this detail, it pretty much slowed down after Labor Day.”
Two days after the incident on Broadway, the Little Rock Board of Directors discussed the problem, with At-Large City Director Gene Fortson asking the mayor about the situation at locations including the Park Plaza Mall and with both Webb and Ward 6 City Director Doris Wright reporting complaints of ongoing issues with caravanning. Ward 6 is an area that includes part of central and west Little Rock.
“[Fortson] was accurate that temporarily the issue was sort of corrected at Park Plaza, but it’s back again and on Markham and Mississippi and down on Cantrell and Riverdale,” Webb said. “So it’s really getting more widespread rather than less.”
Wright told the mayor that she had a reemerging issue on a street in Ward 6 because law enforcement officers had been reassigned from the area.
“I still have an issue, mayor, on Ludwig Street,” Wright said, referring to a street just west of John Barrow Road. “As soon as the community resource officers were pulled out, the problems we were having over there came back.”
When the police cover a certain area these incidents are common in, the participants will move to other places in the city, which may include places they have not been before, according to Clark.
“Our detail has been working Asher [Avenue] and Colonel Glenn [Road] and some of the other hot spots, and what we’re seeing is some of that activity’s being displaced to other neighborhoods and other areas in the city that we typically haven’t had these problems in the past,” Clark said. “So now we’re basically reevaluating the plans that we had in place, which we’ve had to do several times during this process to facilitate what we’re doing to make it more effective.”
Much of the information received by police comes through community partners who contact officers when they see caravanning activity. Those partners, according to Humphrey, are crucial in tracking issues.
“We’ve gotten a lot of good information from our community partners, from our community watch groups, neighborhood association presidents, our Board of Directors,” Humphrey said. “So we’re getting enough intelligence to where we can pretty much put our resources where we believe they need to be to reduce the chances of these things happening.”
Last weekend was more productive for the department, according to Humphrey and documents from the department.
The only calls referencing crowds at the Asher Avenue and Colonel Glenn Road detail were regarding traffic leaving nightclubs in the area with security provided by off-duty officers, and those calls were handled by those off-duty officers, according to police reports.
However, this does not mean the groups did not operate elsewhere.
“We had very minimum traffic or incidents throughout the city this past weekend, but at the same time we know these individuals are going to places like Pine Bluff,” Humphrey said. “They’re going to Memphis. They’re going to Conway. They’re going to Texarkana. They’re moving around once they see there’s a heavy police presence.”
Humphrey described the caravans as fashion shows for cars.
“I got this cool car; I want everyone to see it,” Humphrey said. “I got some new rims on this car. I want everyone to see them. It’s a fashion show on four wheels. There are people that want to see how their car performs. It’s very dangerous because a car in the wrong hands is a weapon. And that weapon could hurt someone.”
The vehicles people want to show off cannot be junk cars. Humphrey said he is confused why an investment like an expensive vehicle would be treated carelessly.
“What I don’t understand is next to your house, your car is one of your largest investments, and I don’t understand how someone can damage an investment,” Humphrey said.
He said he also is troubled by the use of private property and how that property is being damaged.
“It’s a sign of bullying when people take over property or anything that doesn’t belong to them and hold people hostage to the point where you can’t move around freely,” Humphrey said. “It’s not going to be tolerated here in the city of Little Rock.”
When the police cover a certain area these incidents are common in, the participants will move to other places in the city, which may include places they have not been before, according to Clark.