LITTLE ROCK — Less than a week after voters approved a 1 percentage-point sales-tax increase for the city, Little Rock police are lining up the next class of recruits.
Looking to hire more than 50 additional officers, police officials have gathered 60 applications for the department’s next training academy and will spend the next few months looking for more before cadet classes commence sometime in April, according to Police Chief Stuart Thomas.
“With a group that large, I’d be surprised if we got a dozen recruits out of it,” Thomas said. “That’s why we’ll be recruiting pretty aggressively during the last few months [of the year] to get an adequate group of candidates.”
Among the wide range of budget earmarks for public works, economic development and public safety, the city will set aside an estimated $5.6 million by 2015 to retain 27 police positions currently funded by grants and hire 52 new officers.
Currently staffed at 509 sworn positions, the department had kept 48 positions vacant to save money.
Since the Tuesday vote, the department is now authorized to employ up to 569 officers, according to Thomas.
That’s close to the all-time high the department saw in 1999, when it had 573 sworn officers and a higher crime rate.
After a year when the city saw the fewest major criminal offenses since 1979, Thomas still thinks the department needs to keep hiring — a process that could take as long as two years to complete.
“If you’re willing to accept this many [serious] offenses as acceptable ... I don’t adhere to that,” Thomas said. “I believe we can do better. I’m not satisfied with the level we’re at; that’s not the status quo we’re looking for.”
Along with taking immediate steps to pay for a $9 million upgrade of the public safety radio system, Thomas said that getting new bodies through the department’s rigorous 24-week training program is the top priority for a department rejuvenated with funding.
“Sure footing? Absolutely,” Thomas said of the outlook of a department that weeks ago faced the prospect of eliminating roughly 40 sworn positions. “As a result of this vote, we have become a stable, very secure employer. ... This is an opportunity for us to do a lot of things and make a lot of changes.”
The last recruiting classes to come through didn’t have such sure footing, according to police training staff.
The 15 rookie officers who graduated last November, as well as the six veteran officers who were hired later on, were paid for by a $3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Justice.
At the time, Thomas told the Democrat-Gazette he didn’t know how the department would pay for the next class.
And according to Lt. Randy Walker, a supervisor at the department’s training division, those positions would have likely been the first ones eliminated had the department needed to make more cuts.
Now, training staff for the department are looking to field around 500 applicants to fill the 60 open spots over the next two years.
“We’re going to be constantly recruiting for the foreseeable future,” Walker said. “We’ll never have an opportunity like this again.”
The new recruiting effort will go beyond the county lines, according to Thomas, who said his department’s competitive pay scale and security following the sales tax election should attract candidates even beyond Arkansas.
While targeting criminal justice students in colleges throughout the state, as well as networking with different military bases, both Thomas and Sgt. Keith Helton, another training division supervisor, said the department will strive to make the next class of recruits look more like Little Rock.
In a city that is roughly 42 percent black, Thomas said, only a quarter of his department is black, and the percentage of women officers is even smaller, about 20 percent.
Helton said recruiters will have to customize their efforts, including what publications or media outlets they advertise in, to make the department more of a reflection of the city it serves.
“Getting women interested in this is tough, no doubt about it,” Helton said. “But it’s important. ... You always want [a police force] to reflect the community in which you work.”
Where the officers go once they are trained depends on changes that take place in the next six months.
Thomas said that the new city revenues will do more than buy more officers and cars; it will give him the resources to modernize and reorganize a department he thinks is 15 years behind where it should be.
Those organizational changes, Thomas said, are still under consideration, but ultimately, he wants the new officers on patrol duty so that more officers can be put into crime prevention and community relations programs.
“Over the next two and a half years, we’re going to get to do a lot of things we’ve wanted to do for a long time,” Thomas said. “This isn’t just ‘add a few things to the same ol’. ... This [will be] a redesign of the entire department.”
Front Section, Pages 1 on 09/19/2011