Even after 34 years on the Pine Bluff police force, Chief Ivan Whitfield freely admits that he doesn't have all the answers.
It's been decades since he patrolled the streets. The community has changed. Drugs have become more potent and suspects more unpredictable.
So when Whitfield decided it was high time for his officers to receive the pay and benefits they deserve, he went straight to the source -- his officers and command staff -- for help in preparing a proposal for the City Council.
Whitfield gathered patrolmen, vice officers, captains, lieutenants -- personnel from every division -- in a conference room last week where he sat down with a pen and notebook and picked up on several concerns.
• Longevity pay.
• Certificate awards.
• Step increases.
• Flexibility in shifts.
"There was a wide variety of things they suggested," Whitfield said. "At the end of the day, I don't want them to say, 'This is Whitfield's plan.' I want everything to be inclusive as we go forward."
About 20 days remain in the self-imposed 30-day deadline for Whitfield and his group to complete the formal proposal. Numbers still have to be crunched; research and comparisons with neighboring police departments aren't finished; and bar graphs and pie charts are yet to be produced.
The top priority, Whitfield said, is to get the salary high enough and incentives attractive enough to keep his officers -- who are trained on the city's dime -- from leaving for more lucrative opportunities.
Ward 3 Councilman Bill Brumett said the proposal cannot come soon enough.
"We train somebody, get them up and running and positioned, then the next thing we know people offer them a hiring bonus," Brumett said. "We're looking for ways to stop that."
There are 147 slots for officers on the Pine Bluff Police force to serve the city's 43,841 citizens, but only 133 are filled. Recruiters from departments throughout central Arkansas are often in Whitfield's office reviewing his officers' files.
The Arkansas State Police and the Little Rock Police Department have both recently announced recruiting campaigns.
The Little Rock Police Department is hiring a professional marketer to aggressively fill 80 vacancies on its 620-officer force and offering new officers a $5,000 sign-up bonus as well as another $5,000 if they buy a home in the city.
Whitfield feels the recruiters' breath down his neck as they scrutinize his trained officers.
"Those that we lose because they seek better pay, that's the heartache," Whitfield said. "That's a loss that this community continues to invest our money in. We have to figure out how to stop the bleeding."
In an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette survey with seven central Arkansas police departments, Pine Bluff is the lowest-paying for new recruits with a beginning salary of $31,000, along with holiday and vacation pay and health insurance.
Starting pay elsewhere can be much higher: Little Rock's is $41,432; The Arkansas State Police starts its troopers at $40,340. Beginning pay at smaller departments in the region is also higher: the 36-officer Maumelle Police Department pays $33,750; the Sherwood Police Department, with 72 officer slots, pays $35,984; the Benton Police Department, with 71 spots, pays $34,041.
The department closest in size and city population to Pine Bluff is North Little Rock, which has 186 officers serving about 66,278 residents and pays new officers $38,600.
All but two of the departments surveyed -- Benton and Sherwood -- said they receive numerous applications from Pine Bluff. In answer to a Freedom of Information Act request, the Little Rock Police Department supplied a list of 80 names who have applied from Pine Bluff since 2016.
Whitfield said he gives priority to applications from those who live in the Pine Bluff because he hopes they will be more likely to stay.
"But even with that, there's a young man now contemplating going to the Pulaski County sheriff"s department. He's from here," Whitfield said.
Pine Bluff officers are attractive to other departments because they come highly trained, Whitfield said. New recruits spend about 30 weeks in training between in-house training, their time at the Arkansas Law Enforcement Training Academy and the required 12 weeks of riding along with a field-training officer before they are sent out on their own.
The answer is not only a higher salary but also an incentive to reward longevity, Whitfield said. A step-grade system -- where officers move up in grade and salary depending on a certain number of years worked -- is needed and will be a major part of the proposal.
A step-grade is different from a promotion to another position because it's based solely on longevity.
"You only have so many slots you can promote people to. You'd love to promote everybody," Whitfield said. "But you can't have all ranking personnel with nobody able to handle the calls."
Of the seven departments surveyed, Pine Bluff is the only one that does not use the step-grade system to reward length of service.
"Those types of systems do reward seniority and ensure that employees earn a progression of wages that move through the assigned pay range," said Stacey Witherell, director of Little Rock's Department of Human Resources.
New officers with the Pine Bluff Police Police Department should be paid between $35,000 and $37,500, Whitfield said.
"We should not be happy, we should not be satisfied until they make a salary that's comfortable enough to keep them here," Whitfield said. "To make ends meet, they're having to take other jobs and they wear themselves out. We should pay them enough so they don't have to do that."
Pine Bluff Mayor Shirley Washington said she's reviewing the budget, looking for savings to finance higher pay for all of the city's first-responders.
"We have the same bleeding in our Fire Department as we do in the Police Department," Washington said.
Washington created a budget task force earlier this year, and said she hopes the city can find a way to provide raises for all city employees.
"I look [to] 2018 for things to get moving," Washington said. "I'm now meeting one-on-one with department heads to find ways to cut the fat. We have to take care of our first-responders. Some people don't like it when most of our budget goes to our first-responders, but safety is so important."
Pine Bluff voters in June overwhelmingly approved a seven-year, five-eighths percent sales tax that is expected to generate $32 million, which will be added to another $20 million in private donations promised to the Go Forward Pine Bluff initiative. The goal is a renewal for the city to attract jobs, tourists and in general lift the community, which has a declining population.
Whitfield pointed out that public safety is crucial to the success of the program, but he is defensive when he hears the oft-repeated pejorative of "Crime Bluff" to refer to the city he loves.
"When you do your homework, it's very undeserving," Whitfield said. "When you really break it down, it's not true. We have our crime, but our crime rate continues to drop."
In 2016, there were nine homicides in Pine Bluff, down from 15 five years ago in 2012, according to the Arkansas Crime Information Center. Overall, the number of violent or sexual crimes -- such as homicide, rape and aggravated assault -- has diminished over the past five years, from 2,895 incidents in 2012 to 2,315 in 2016.
In comparison with other cities of similar size, though, Pine Bluff's crime rates are higher. In 2016, North Little Rock recorded 11 homicides and 1,321 violent or sexual crimes. Bentonville, with a population of 46,458, did not have any homicides during the same time period and reported only 428 violent or sexual crimes. Conway, population 66,104, had five homicides in 2016 with 1,771 violent or sexual crimes.
"We have crime like everybody else, but there's a another level and a different taste in crime here," Whitfield said. "Let's use homicide, for instance. Of the homicides that we've had, how many of those did somebody kick in their door and they were killed? Not a one. Most of them were in the midst of people putting themselves in a bad position."
His department and community are different too, Whitfield said. And a Pine Bluff police officer is a proud thing to be, he added.
"Our morale is great. The majority of our citizens respect our police officers. That's a big plus," Whitfield said. "As a command staff, we treat our officers with the utmost respect. So you have a department where you're able to move up and you have the support of the command staff and the community. And you'll be part of a community that's going to bounce back from a setback. That's what we can guarantee if you become a Pine Bluff police officer."
A Section on 09/05/2017