Little Rock is looking at an array of options to more quickly fill the ranks of its depleted police force, including returning to patrol duty the nearly 20 officers now assigned to the city's airport.
If that option were adopted, Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport/Adams Field, in turn, would create its own police force, an idea that first surfaced several years ago and one that airport officials again say they are willing to consider.
"That's one of [the options] being looked it," Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola said in an interview last week.
Other options to fill out Police Department numbers include:
• Hiring more noncertified personnel, which Stodola calls a "gray squad," to handle minor traffic crashes, which would free up certified officers for patrol duties.
• Overhauling the process by which candidates are recruited because, according to Stodola, the recruiting classes are too small, despite the wide net the department casts in its search.
• Running more than two classes for new officers per year.
• Retention bonuses for senior officers to encourage them to delay retirement.
Stodola said he asked City Manager Bruce Moore and Police Chief Kenton Buckner to develop the recommendations to be considered beginning next month.
"I've asked them to explore all these options and come up with recommendations," the mayor said.
The 500-officer department has more than 60 vacancies, and the number of openings has been growing for the past six years.
Having that many openings in the ranks has an effect on police response times and the overall visibility of officers in the city, Buckner has said. He said the vacancies leave fewer officers available to attend outreach events and force police to focus on their primary obligations, such as responding to 911 calls.
The problem is more officers are leaving the force, for retirement and other reasons, than the department is hiring, which is unsustainable.
"We have to catch up the shortage," Stodola said. "We've lost 37 officers on average over the last six years and have hired 31 officers on average over the last six years. That's 36 positions less. That has to change."
Although the mayor acknowledged spikes in some violent crimes, crime overall has declined in recent years. In 2015, the city recorded the lowest number of criminal cases since 1979.
There were 15,699 criminal cases last year, down almost 5 percent from 16,479 in 2014, according to police data. The statistics showed the decrease was driven by fewer instances of burglary, petty theft and vehicle theft, property crimes that account for more than three-quarters of the city's annual crime.
"I appreciate that, but there's still too many," Stodola said.
But getting more officers on the street won't happen overnight.
At a budget workshop earlier this month, the Little Rock Municipal Airport Commission discussed the possibility of the officers assigned to the airport being transferred to patrol duties. Commission members said they are open to an in-depth consideration of the idea at a future meeting.
"We want to be sensitive to the city," said Virgil Miller Jr., the commission chairman. "We have a great relationship with the city, and we want to do whatever is going to help them.
"And certainly as a citizen, I'm concerned about public safety, too," he said. "So if there's a way to work this out to keep the airport open -- if we don't have law enforcement officers out here, TSA will shut us down -- there's a balance. Some options have to be explored. It is something that needs to be talked about a lot more."
The airport now pays the salaries and benefits of the officers and firefighters assigned to it.
The $33.6 million operating budget for 2017 at Clinton National projects that the airport will pay $3.7 million in safety and security, a 4.3 percent increase over what the airport expects to pay this year.
The $3.7 million covers not only salaries and benefits for the police and firefighters but also provides funding for some security guards, and it keeps available some money for contingencies, such as if the security level at the airport increases and the Transportation Security Administration requires an additional law enforcement presence, airport officials said.
Officials considered creating a police agency for Clinton National beginning in 2006 because vacancies in five positions on the police force assigned to the airport forced the airport to pay as much as $500,000 in overtime annually. The airport and city eventually reached an agreement in 2008 to limit the overtime.
Police agencies that are independent of the city but operate within the city aren't unusual. The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences has its own law enforcement agency, as does the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
It isn't uncommon for airports, either. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey uses its own force to police its transportation infrastructure, including airports and rapid-transit systems. Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport in Savannah, Ga., which like Clinton National has just under 1 million boardings annually, has its own police force.
For now, 16 Little Rock officers and two traffic wardens are assigned to Clinton National. The officers have a presence at the airport 24 hours per day, seven days a week, providing support for the airport's security program, the airlines' passenger screening points and the airport's general law enforcement needs.
If the city wants those officers for patrol duty, it will take a while to get them because the officers' presence is mandated under an agreement with the Transportation Security Administration, according to Ron Mathieu, the airport's executive director."It would not yield in the short term the results that some say it would yield," he said earlier this month.
"We cannot operate this airport without [law enforcement officers]," he said. "The moment our LEOs would go, screening operations would cease at the airport and we would not be in operation. That leaves us little choice but to act quickly to ensure we have LEOs."
Any airport police department likely would be staffed, in part, by the officers now assigned to the airport, he said.
"If we were told today we needed to set up our own police department, the most efficient thing to do is to hire the police already here," Mathieu said.
To make a new agency more attractive, the airport likely would have to increase what it pays the officers, he said.
Clinton National also would have to hire a police chief and develop procedures and policies for a new agency.
"So it will probably be anywhere from a year to a year and a half to fully transition," Mathieu said. "Before you hire police officers, you have to have a program in place."
Other options the city is considering might deploy more officers on the street more quickly. Stodola cited the "gray squad" to handle minor traffic crashes. Creating that squad could be done faster than hiring additional officers, and it could have a similar effect, he said.
"It would give our existing officers more opportunity to patrol," Stodola said. "It takes three or four hours an accident, which really, really ties up a certified officer, [who] I think can do something a lot better than take down a report for the insurance department.
"Obviously, there are serious accidents and DWIs where an officer might be called in, but I do think we can take care of a lot of that volume."
Looking at how the department screens applicants might also help, he said.
"We have 600 applications and wind up with 30 people," the mayor said. "You do it twice a year. Sometimes we don't even get 30. This last class we had 12 or 15."
Officers rejected by the city's police screening have been hired by Jacksonville and the Arkansas State Police, among others, Stodola said.
"We, I think, pride ourselves in doing a very good job of training our police officers," he said. "We've got some professionals coming in to look at that selection process. There's some people, we don't understand why they get excluded."
Stodola also wants the department to consider running more than two classes per year. The classes typically run six months with an additional three months spent on field training. The state's law enforcement training academy lasts three months.
"Now our process is six months once you select somebody and then another three months of ride-along," he said. "By the time you interview people, select them, have them go through training and the ride-along, you have a whole year or more.
"We've got to run more classes. I've suggested running classes continually."
Stodola said that no matter what the department does, none of the fixes are quick enough.
"I don't want to presume what they're going to come back and suggest," he said. "But I think you're going to see us moving forward with a couple of different options like that to try and get caught up."
Metro on 12/19/2016