Helena police no longer to set bail

Chief, mayor vow to follow the law

— Helena-West Helena police will no longer set bail and fine amounts or collect bonds, the city’s mayor and police chief said Friday.

A 2011 audit of the city found that the Police Department was setting bail and collecting bonds from defendants, contrary to Arkansas law and the Arkansas Rules of Criminal Procedure, which state that only a court or judge shall fix the amount of bail.

Attorney General Dustin McDaniel released a nonbinding opinion Aug. 10 with a straightforward answer: No, police can’t set bail.

Members of the Legislative Audit’s Committee on Counties and Municipalities discussed the Police Department section of the city’s 2011 audit Thursday.

Chief Uless Wallace was subpoenaed to attend Thursday’s meeting after he failed to appear Dec. 14 when requested to do so along with other city officials.

The audit found problems in the mayor’s office, as well as in the offices of City Clerk Sandy Ramsey, Treasurer Patrick Roberson and former District Court Clerk Linda Danley.

Committee co-chairman Sen. Bill Sample, R-Hot Springs, said the Legislative Audit Division will make sure Mayor Arnell Willis and the local judge are aware of the attorney general’s opinion.

“It’s a questionable practice,” he said. “We all understand that an attorney general’s opinion is simply an opinion, but that looks like it could be a problem.”

Rep. Stephen Meeks, RGreenbrier, said committee staff members will return to Helena-West Helena to make sure the department isn’t setting bail.

“Ultimately our goal is to make sure they’re doing what they’re supposed to be doing in accordance with the law,” Meeks said. “It’s one thing to sit down there at the end of the table and tell us it’s stopped. It’s another to see what the reality on the ground really is.”

The committee does not meet again until after the 2013 legislative session, likely in May.

Sample said if the problem persists “I would imagine ... that it will be turned over to a prosecuting attorney then.”

Wallace said Friday that the city will make sure it complies.

Wallace notified department employees in a Dec. 20 memorandum that the department would no longer accept bonds. Instead, the arrested person will have to use professional bail bondsmen or be transported to the county jail.

He informed Willis in a Nov. 26 letter that the change would take effect at the start of 2013.

Willis said by phone Friday that he ordered the department to comply with the law as of Tuesday. He said the Police Department has set bail amounts for years.

“I am for complying 100 percent with the law,” Willis said. “You had five years of this going on. How did we get that far? It should have been stopped a long time ago.”

Willis was elected in 2010. Wallace was hired in 2011.

A similar audit finding was made when Wallace was chief of the Marvell Police Department in 2010. Wallace became police chief after six years with the police force in Helena-West Helena, about 20 miles away.

At the time, Wallace protested the finding that he was not legally allowed to set bail without judicial involvement, and the committee asked the attorney general’s office to weigh in.

The department agreed to stop setting bail amounts after McDaniel said in a nonbinding opinion that the amounts should be determined by a judge, not police.

Wallace was called before the committee to testify on that audit in September. He told committee members that the practice would stop in Marvell.

Arkansas, Pages 9 on 12/29/2012

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