LR police let more go home with cars

Policy expansion first sought in ’17

The arrival of more than 100 police vehicles purchased by the city of Little Rock in February is allowing the agency to complete the long-planned expansion of its take-home vehicle program, marking the first time many patrol officers have been allowed to drive their vehicles to and from work, authorities said.

In the past, the ability to take home city-owned vehicles had largely been restricted to the department’s leadership and members of specialist units such as SWAT officers and detectives, police spokesman Mark Edwards said.

Those vehicles are largely unmarked, in contrast with the patrol vehicles many officers will now get to take home, Edwards said. SWAT officers will also be getting marked vehicles, he said.

The city’s Board of Directors voted in February to spend about $3.57 million on 80 2023 Ford Police Interceptors and an additional $1.15 million on 27 2023 Ford F-150 Police Responder trucks, according to the two resolutions.

The department’s leaders have wanted to expand the take-home vehicle program to the majority of its officers since at least 2017, but an on-paper policy change that year was delayed by order of City Manager Bruce Moore until the department had filled vacancies in its ranks and addressed an uptick of violent crime, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported at the time.

It wasn’t clear if the department had met the staffing level and violent crime reduction Moore had in mind when he delayed the plan in 2017, but on Friday he took a positive tone about the plan now being rolled out by the department.

As of Aug. 7, violent crime was down 4% compared with that date last year, data posted on the city’s website showed, but the violent crime rate was still 7% higher than the five-year average. In 2017, city leaders were concerned over a 21% jump in violent crime in the first four months of the year when compared with that time period in 2016.

The department had about 69 officer vacancies at the end of July, officials said, with their numbers bolstered by a graduating recruit class. On March 31, 2017, the department reported 65 vacancies.

Regardless, the department and leaders like the city’s Board of Directors have been in talks to change the policy for some time, Moore said Friday.

In addition to being more convenient for officers, the expanded take-home policy is anticipated to cut down on maintenance costs for the patrol vehicles, which now are usually are passed off when officers change shifts, putting strain on the machines that were run without a break.

Moore and Vice Mayor Lance Hines pointed to evidence presented to city leaders that the patrol vehicles last longer in city service if they’re allowed to be taken home at night and parked instead of run continuously, although the details of those findings weren’t immediately available.

The decision to change the take-home vehicle policy has been “board-driven,” said Hines, who joined the board in 2010 and has been vice mayor since 2015.

While the board members were briefed on the policy, they did not vote directly on the changes, Moore said.

The terms for use of the take-home vehicles have changed slightly since 2017, primarily to provide an incentive to officers who live in the city.

Officers living in the city will get priority for takehome vehicles, while officers living outside the city limits but within 25 miles of the city’s center at Boyle Park can take home a vehicle if they agree to pay a monthly fee of no more than $100. Officers who live farther than 25 miles from the city’s center will need written permission to qualify.

That’s slightly different from the plan approved in 2017, which would have required officers living farther than 25 miles from the city to park their vehicle in “a secure location” within the 25-mile radius overnight.

Moore thinks the availability of take-home vehicles will be an additional perk to officers in the city, but said he doesn’t think it’s the city’s business where its employees live.

“I don’t think it’s the role of government to tell people where they live, but if you drive a city vehicle, there will be some parameters,” Moore said.

The restrictions are a fine tradeoff and a further incentive on top of pay bonuses for officers living in the city, Hines said. It’s not realistic to expect all officers to live within the city’s limits, he said.