What’s a constable?

LITTLE ROCK — IT WAS dour old John Adams, the first vice president of the United States, who described that job as “the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived.”

At the time that founding father could have had no idea that the people of a future state would contrive another constitutional office whose clearest function is to invite mischief—that of constable. And to multiply till there are now some 700 of these amateur lawmen roaming Arkansas looking for trouble and occasionally making it. For they tend to have just enough openended authority and vague training to be dangerous.

The grabbiest of them—Rick Scott in Pulaski County—also wants local taxpayers to pay him a salary of $40,000 a year plus more than $60,000 in expenses for a vehicle, siren, radio and ammunition. (What, no machine gun and dress uniform with epaulets?) That’s a $100,000 package in all.

The 76-year-old retired computer programmer lives on Panther Mountain Road outside Little Rock. Call him the law north of the Arkansas River. Constable Scott says he doesn’t do much—“I try not to make a big deal of it. I just go get the newspaper, or go get the mail, rather, and I drive around and see what’s going on.” So $40,000 a year going on $100,000 in all is no big deal?

It sounds like the man needs a more useful hobby—one that doesn’t afford him so much opportunity to get in others’ way. As for enforcing the law, or even obeying it, Mr. Scott says he needn’t abide by a 2007 statute requiring constables to wear a uniform or drive a marked car while patrolling because those requirements aren’t in the state constitution. “My agency,” he explains, “has authorized bib overalls.”

In short, Mr. Scott is the kind of law enforcement officer who would make Barney Fife look professional.

When the grabby constable’s request for $100,000 a year made it to the quorum court, it had the good sense to vote against even considering it, 7 to 3. The three suckers—Shane Stacks of North Little Rock, Paul Elliott of Maumelle, and Doug Reed of western Pulaski County—soon had reason to wise up. Mr. Stacks said he wouldn’t object to giving Constable Scott a few dollars if he would use the money to get some (much needed) training. Justice of the Peace Elliott, a former police officer, said he’d just misunderstood the motion before the quorum court. Unlike sparsely populated parts of the state, he added, Pulaski County doesn’t need any constables, calling them “a lawsuit waiting to happen.”

THE BEST way to prevent such mischief is simply to do away with the office of constable and leave law enforcement to the real lawmen. Police forces and sheriff’s officers have enough of a challenge making sure all their sworn officers are welltrained and well-disciplined (occasionally they make embarrassing headlines even for the best of law enforcement agencies) without having hundreds of these wanna-be cops wandering the state.

To quote Pulaski County’s sheriff, Doc Holladay, there wouldn’t be any problem with constables patrolling their neighborhoods “in the same manner as a neighborhood crime watch.” Instead, the occasional Rick Scott develops delusions of grandeur and wants salary-and-expenses to match.

Sue Madison, a state senator from Fayetteville, had a better idea last year: She proposed amending the state’s constitution to let counties vote on whether to keep the office of constable. That would be a start.

Even better would be just writing this office out of the Arkansas constitution. That much amended document (born 1874) is quite long enough without including a standing invitation to trouble.