For about a century, police departments in Arkansas towns have provided an escort for funeral processions.

A police car with flashing blue lights would drive slowly toward the cemetery, leading a line of cars with headlights on. It was a signal for other drivers to pull over and wait for the procession to pass.

But cities sometimes outgrow small-town traditions.

Only four of Arkansas’ 10 largest cities still provide the service - Fayetteville, Rogers, Bentonville and Pine Bluff.

Springdale was the most recent city to abandon it.

Springdale Police Chief Kathy O’Kelley made the decision last month, saying the practice of escorting funerals was dangerous to police officers and drivers.

Drivers can pass safely through an intersection ona red light only when a police officer is there directing traffic, O’Kelley said. There are 18 stoplights on one route across Springdale.

“I don’t have the personnel on duty at one time to adequately cover those intersections,” she said. “Really [the procession is] at the mercy of courteous drivers. ... Twenty years ago, you had far smaller communities that were a more homogenous culture, and you could do the escorts then.”

Out of about 200 funerals last year in Springdale, one or two police officers provided the procession escorts most of the time, O’Kelley said.

O’Kelley said Northwest Arkansas grew rapidly over the past 20 years, and police departments in that part of the state are just now dealing with this issue. Springdale’s population went from 29,941 in 1990 to an estimated 71,397 in 2011, according to census figures. During the same timeperiod, the population of the Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers metropolitan statistical area grew from 239,467 to 473,830.

“We are the second-largest metropolitan area in the state next to Little Rock,” she said. “We’ve been slow to make some of these changes.”

Nationwide, police departments are discontinuing the escorts because of safety and liability issues, O’Kelley said. Young people sometimes don’t know about the custom of stopping for a funeral procession, she said. And daytime running lights on many cars make it more difficult to recognize a funeral procession.

Funeral homes have other options, O’Kelley said. They can hire companies that provide vehicle escorts, equip the hearse with flashing lights and use it to lead the procession, or abandon processions altogether.

ESCORT ORIGINS

The origin of funeral escorts may reach back to a time when transportation was slower, said Abby Burnett of Kingston, an author who recently researched Arkansas funeral customs. It was considered bad luck for a funeral procession to stop on the way to the cemetery, she said. So if the lead car or wagon got to a railroad track, and a train blocked the road, the procession would circle the block until the train moved, she said.

“It’s possible that the police escort grew out of this,” Burnett said. “After all, a red light would stop a procession, and doesn’t the police escort ensure that the cars continue through red lights? Almost as importantly, according to folklore, it was very bad luck to meet, or pass, a procession.If that happened, one was to pull to the side of the road. ... In later years, people equated pulling to the side of the road with showing respect.”

In the 1970s, the Arkansas Funeral Directors Association and the Arkansas State Police joined forces to persuade drivers to abandon police escorts for funerals, saying that they caused accidents, Burnett said. According to Garden Sass: A Catalog of Arkansas Folkways by Nancy McDonough, the argument was made that “if the approaching motorist would slow their speed upon the approach of a funeral procession, this would indicate the desired respect for the deceased.” But the altered custom didn’t catch on, Burnett said.

Springdale funeral home directors have objected to O’Kelley’s decision.

“This is the first time I’ve ever known of where a police presence isn’t safe,” said Charles C. Farmer, owner of Sisco Funeral Chapel in Springdale.

O’Kelley said she remembers only one minor accident in Springdale during a funeral procession, and that was in the 1990s.

Farmer said the decision was made without input from funeral home directors.

“Certainly without police involvement, the funeral procession itself is gone,” Farmer said. “It’s done with.”

Kye Stokenbury, director at Memorial Funeral Home in Springdale, said advance notice of the change in policy would have given someone time to start a funeral escort business.

Stokenbury said processions across Springdale don’t require a lot of personnel; they can be done with a couple of police officers who leapfrog from one intersection to the next, which the city’s officers have done in the past.

But O’Kelley said the leapfrogging can be dangerous, as police cars speed around the procession to get to the next intersection to stop traffic.

It was while leapfrogging from one intersection to the next on his motorcycle that Trevor Phillips, a Tuscaloosa, Ala., police officer, died on May 21, 2011, according to the Officer Down Memorial Page, odmp.org. Phillips was attempting to pass the funeral procession when a motorist in the procession made a U-turn in front of the motorcycle, causing a collision that threw Phillips from the bike.

OTHERS CONTINUE

Fayetteville Police Chief Greg Tabor said his department will continue providing the escorts, which are usually done by his three motorcycle officers. Tabor said he doesn’t remember an accident ever occurring in Fayetteville during a funeral procession.

“It’s just not created a problem for us,” he said. “I don’t remember ever getting a complaint. ... I think the small amount of risk, however small it is, is worth the service it provides to the community.”

Two motorcycle officers can leapfrog more nimbly from one intersection to the next than officers driving cars, Tabor said.

It costs the Fayetteville Police Department about $13,000 per year to provide the escorts, he said. That’s based on two officers working an hour during a funeral procession. There were 220 funeral processions in Fayetteville last year, he said.

Funeral processions aregreat for public relations, Tabor said.

“I get more positive emails and positive notes written to this department over funeral escorts than I do over any other thing,” he said.

Nevertheless, providing the escorts is a low priority. If all officers are busy, the funeral procession will have to proceed without them,Tabor said.

Jeff Hubanks, police chief in Pine Bluff, said his department has been providing the police escorts ever since he got there 28 years ago.

“It’s not something we do for every funeral by any means,” he said. “As far as I know, we’ve always done them on request.”

People still pull over in Pine Bluff and let a funeral procession pass, even if it’s on a four- or five-lane highway, Hubanks said.

The Jefferson County sheriff’s office, where Pine Bluff is the county seat, handles more escorts, even within the city limits of Pine Bluff, Hubanks said.

Major Lafayette Woods Jr., a spokesman for the sheriff’s office, said they do the escorts “solely as an expression of care and regard for the bereaved families.

“The only hazards or immediate danger to the general public is when motorists fail to yield to emergency vehicles” during a funeral procession, he said in an e-mail.

PRIVATE PRACTICE

Mike Littlefield, funeraldirector at Shinn Funeral Service in Russellville, said police stopped escorting funerals there about 30 years ago.

“Whenever I started here 30 years ago, the police would escort,” he said. “But the police stopped not too long after I started. They decided they couldn’t take their officers offduty to escort funerals.”

Instead, most escorts in Russellville, population 27,920, are done by Leonard Hudson, owner of A&A Transport.

“We’ve never had any problem with the escorts,” Hudson said. “You don’t try to stop traffic coming toward you. That’s up to the individuals. ... You want to avoid themain part of town as best you can.”

Bill Booker, president of Roller Funeral Home in Little Rock and a board member of the Arkansas Funeral Directors Association, said “it’s an emotionally charged issue.”

Neither Little Rock nor North Little Rock has provided police escorts duringhis 33 years in the funeral home business, Booker said. Instead, families hire companies that escort the procession.

Booker said most of the escorts for Roller funerals in central Arkansas are provided by Fully Involved Motorcycle Escort Service in Little Rock. The company charges $160 for one escort and $255 for two, Booker said.

Richard Dixon, owner of Fully Involved, said off-duty police officers and firefighters often work for his company escorting funeral processions. They can use their lights and legally block intersections, he said. Other employees use different colored lights and can’t legally block the intersection.

Vehicles leading a funeral procession may be equipped with flashing purple lights, according to Arkansas Code Annotated 27-36-306.

Roller Funeral Home has 28 locations in 24 Arkansas cities, many of which still provide police escorts for processions.

“We’re able to rely on the city and the county to provide escort cities for us in our smaller cities, rural areas,” Booker said. “You could look at it like it’s a public service. There’s a safety element to an escort being supplied to a funeral procession.”

Booker said the escorted procession is a longtime Arkansas tradition.

“I always looked at it as a sign of respect,” he said. “Of course, things do have to change. It probably is a transition that is under way.”

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 15 on 02/03/2013