HSPD requests new armored vehicle
The city has more than $40 million of unfunded capital needs and more than $7 million of federal pandemic relief funds.
The Hot Springs Police Department made its pitch Tuesday for some of the latter, asking the Hot Springs Board of Directors to consider using the restricted balance in the city’s American Rescue Plan Act allocation to purchase an armored vehicle for the SWAT team.
The Lenco BearCat is the preeminent armored tactical rescue vehicle, Interim Police Chief Billy
Hrvatin told the board. It would replace the 2002 Ford Excursion the SWAT team uses as its “jumpoff vehicle,” Hrvatin said.
“It has oversized running boards, so guys can offload off of it,” he said. “It has no ballistic protection.”
Officers have been shot at or been at scenes where shots were fired four times in the last eight years, Hrvatin said.
“Ballistic protection is a priority for us,” he said, noting the SWAT team has responded to 64 critical incidents in the last five years.
The $246,000 BearCat Hrvatin requested is built on a Ford F-350 chassis. Its armor is rated for a .50-caliber round. An armored fuel tank, blast-resistant door and top hatch are some of the other features. It can carry up to 12 officers.
“It has a stand-alone AC unit in the back, which is very important for guys wearing 25 to 50 pounds of gear in the summertime,” Hrvatin said.
City Manager Bill Burrough told the board last summer the BearCat would replace the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected, or MRAP, vehicle the city purchased from the Department of Defense in 2014. The inability to find parts has made it difficult to maintain the military vehicle.
Burrough told the board Tuesday the MRAP will remain in service.
“The MRAP still has a lot of life in it, even though parts are hard to get,” he said.
Hrvatin said the smaller BearCat is easier to drive than the 50,000-pound MRAP.
“It’s very easy to operate,” he told the board. “It’s like driving a truck. It has 360-degree cameras that make it easy to see around you. It’s not like driving the MRAP. That takes two people, because you need a navigator to help the driver see.”
The committee Burrough formed last year to prioritize the city’s unfunded capital needs rated an armored recovery vehicle as the most urgent item. It’s unclear how the committee determined its rankings. No minutes or attendance sheets were available, and no notices for its meetings were provided.
The city clerk’s office said none were required, explaining that the meetings weren’t open to the public. According to information the city provided, the committee comprised six members of the public: Linda Franklin, Alan Spraggins, Karen Kitchens, Bruce Jones, Todd Green and Mary Curry.
The city board will be the ultimate arbiter of how the projects are ranked. It’s in the process of developing its own priority list.
Hrvatin also requested a Draco Gas Delivery System for the BearCat’s breaching arm. The forced air delivery system can put tear gas into a structure or vehicle.
“It’s initiated by remote,” Hrvatin said. “It can put a lot of gas into a house very quickly.”
He said the ability to deploy gas remotely may have enabled a more expeditious resolution to the 11-hour standoff the SWAT team had at an East Grand Avenue trailer park in 2018. Gas deployed manually was unable to reach the suspect, who was shooting at officers from the back of the residence.
“We had a gentleman in a house that would not come out,” Hrvatin said. “We breached the front door, and he shot at us. At the time we had no remote delivery option for gas. We had to call the State Police. They brought their BearCat, which had a gas needle. They punched a hole in the wall and got him out of the house.”
Hrvatin said the remote delivery system costs $21,500. The 2019 police fund budget included $27,000 to equip the MRAP with a breaching arm and gas needle.
The city said its ARPA restricted fund had a $1.4 million balance. Department of Treasury rules require ARPA funds to be committed by next year and spent by 2026.
Earlier this month the board transferred the $6.74 million unrestricted ARPA balance to the general fund. The money reimbursed the general fund for salaries and benefits. The enabling resolution didn’t specify the time period the reimbursement covered. Putting the money into the general fund satisfied the 2024 and 2026 spenddown deadlines.
Last year, the city opted to put $10 million of its $11.37 million ARPA allocation into the unrestricted fund. Treasury rules allowed local governments to put up to $10 million into unrestricted accounts that can be used for government services that include road building and maintenance, health services, government administration, police, fire and other public safety services.
The city said $3.26 million was spent from its unrestricted ARPA account last year. About half funded the upgrade of the police department’s body-worn cameras and incar video systems.