Smith: NLR likely to hire chief in-house

Bradley set to leave police in March for City Hall post

— With the current chief of police taking a new position in City Hall, the mayor of North Little Rock said the city’s new police chief will likely come from within the department’s ranks.

Newly elected Mayor Joe Smith, who announced last week his plans to hire current North Little Rock Chief of Police Danny Bradley as his chief of staff, said that Bradley’s replacement probably won’t warrant a nationwide search.

“I’m real big on trying to promote from within if it makes sense,” Smith said. “I would be leaning in the direction of appointing someone who’s already on the police force.”

Assistant chief of police Mike Davis, who was promoted to the newly created position in October and is set to assume the role of interim chief of police in March, is the presumptive front-runner.

Smith said that the city has hired from both inside and outside the agency, one of the state’s larger police departments, selecting Chicago lawman William Nolan in 1990.

Nolan’s replacement, Bradley, was hired in 2001 when he had been acting as chief deputy for the Pulaski County sheriff’s office after a 20-year tenure with the North Little Rock Police Department. Bradley is the city’s longest-serving police chief.

Smith said that the timeline for picking a new chief has yet to be worked out, but at this point, he’s interested in maintaining continuity within the 191-officer department.

The new mayor hasn’t spoken to Davis yet, but he said he thinks the 27-year veteran has the “right qualifications” to manage a $20-million-a-year operation.

“Our department right now is really well-run, I don’t know if I want to change a whole lot in how we approach public safety,” Smith said. “This might be one of those times it doesn’t warrant bringing in new eyes.”

Davis was the only one of the department’s four captains to apply for the position of assistant chief, a position the department went without for nearly 30 years.

Smith and Bradley said that the department had grown to the point where the position was necessary to help Bradley handle both administrative and day-today issues.

With Bradley set to leave the department sometime in March, Smith said he was confident in Davis’ ability to run the department in the short term. Although Davis only has four months’ experience as a department executive, time spent in other positions should be beneficial, he said.

“If Chief Bradley was moving to Florida, I might be a little nervous, but he’ll only be a couple blocks away,” Smith said. “[Davis] is a wonderful police officer ... he understands the department, the community. He understands his men ... the only thing [Davis] would be short on experience would be the budget end of him being chief ... but I’m very experienced in that and so is [Bradley].” At the moment, Bradley is working two jobs - one as chief and one as Smith’s lieutenant - but he will gradually be scaling down his responsibilities with the Police Department, which will allow Davis to step up.

“There’s some people who think I get to draw two salaries ... I don’t get to draw two salaries, I’m doing two jobs and get to draw one salary,” Bradley said. “It’d be nice if I could draw two salaries, but that’s not the way it works.”

Bradley will collect retirement payments through the state’s Local Police and Fire Retirement System while he collects the same $95,194 salary at City Hall that he collected at the department.

David Clark, the executive director of the retirement system, said he couldn’t comment specifically on a beneficiary’s payout, but said that when a system member leaves to work a civilian position, he is eligible to draw his noncivilian benefits.

Given Bradley’s 12 years as chief and his current salary, the formula says he’ll collect an approximate annualized benefit of $33,516.

The double-dipping doesn’t concern Smith, who pointed out that the city has hired several retired officers, including Public Works Director Bob Ward, to work after their retirements from the Police Department.

Davis, who is currently salaried at $87,868 a year, will see a pay raise that “splits the difference” between his salary and Bradley’s, according to Smith, which is standard for interim department heads.

In an interview Friday, Davis said he looked forward to the opportunity to act as interim chief and he is equally excited by the prospect of becoming the permanent head of the department he grew up in.

“The day I hired on here, well, I never thought the [chance to be chief] could possibly come,” Davis said. “But as you continue through your career, you move up, you mature ... you get to think, ‘I could do that.’”

Detective Michael Gibbons, head of the North Little Rock chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police, which represents roughly 170 of the department’s members, said he looks forward to speaking with Smith about the future chief and shape of the department.

“As an administrator, you have to respect [mayor’s] decisions,” Gibbons said. “But you want to be heard ... we want [our voice] to be a part of the future and how the department is run.”

As for the short term, Gibbons said he and his organization are confident in Davis as an interim department head. Gibbons described Davis as a “cop’s cop” and said he has a compelling case for filling Bradley’s office in the next few months.

“He’s a long-term North Little Rock [resident], he lives and breathes this, he worked his way up from cadet and in his time here, he’s worked about every division we have,” Gibbons said.

“He’s a true officer at heart. The patrolmen, the guys on the front lines, you can’t ask for anything more than that.”

Arkansas, Pages 7 on 01/07/2013

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