A vote to require Little Rock police officers to live inside city limits failed 6-4 at a City Council meeting Tuesday that lasted until midnight.
After nearly two hours of discussion, including numerous comments from citizens, the board turned down Ward 1 City Director Erma Hendrix's proposal to adopt a residency requirement for uniformed police personnel.
Voting for the requirement were Hendrix and City Directors Ken Richardson, Doris Wright and Kathy Webb. Voting against it were B.J. Wyrick, Dean Kumpuris, Lance Hines, Joan Adcock, Brad Cazort and Gene Fortson.
Ten people from the audience spoke in favor of the mandate and six spoke against.
Hendrix said the recent national attention on the relationship between police departments and their communities after the deaths of black men at the hands of officers in several cities prompted her to bring the ordinance forward. It's a race issue, she said.
"It's startling that only 177, or 34 percent, of 527 Little Rock police officers actually reside in Little Rock. Of the 160 black officers, 99, or 62 percent, live in the city. Only 21 percent, or 75 of 354, white officers live in the city," said Hendrix, who is black.
At one point during Hendrix's comments, police officer John Gilchrist, who is white and the vice president of the Little Rock Fraternal Order of Police, told her she is doing what officers can't -- profiling.
For others who spoke, there were issues other than race relevant to the discussion.
Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen said it was "self-evidently wise" to implement a residency requirement of officers.
"First of all, police officers exercise the greatest and the only lethal authority in our community. And the idea of allowing people who are virtual strangers to a community to come in and have the greatest power in the community should be immediately apparent to anyone who believes in representation of democracy," Griffen said. "Secondly, we have to ask the question, do we want police officers to be neighbors or occupiers?"
In speaking against the residency requirement, attorney Ricky Hicks said choosing where to live is a fundamental right.
"When a police officer stops me, I am not concerned where he lives. I am concerned about what lives inside of him. I am concerned whether he's going to treat me or my son or members of my church or my family with kindness and courtesy and respect," Hicks said. "And to say a white police officer from Cabot or Benton will be less fair or courteous is just as [disengenous] as saying a black man is more prone to being a criminal than a white man. Generalizations about people are wrong whichever way they go."
Gilchrist, repeating what Police Chief Kenton Buckner had previously said, told the board that police who live outside the city say the state of the school district and cost of living in Little Rock are the reasons for living out of town.
City directors who opposed the mandate said they were in favor of adopting incentives that would encourage all city employees to live in Little Rock.
Over the weekend, City Manager Bruce Moore provided the board with cost estimates for a list of possible incentives to provide to the approximate 180 police officers and 106 firefighters who live in Little Rock.
For police, the city could offer take-home patrol cars. About 150 of the 177 Little Rock officers who already live in the city don't have take-home cars. To provide those, Moore estimated it would cost the city more than $7.7 million in immediate purchase costs at $51,709 per car, not counting ongoing maintenance.
Offering extra personal days to officers and firefighters who live in the city also would be costly, Moore said, because it would require providing overtime to cover the shifts to allow employees off.
A cheaper incentive would be to offer a $100-per-month housing allowance for city residents. With health care and pension costs added, the city would have to pay about $430,400 a year to offer that incentive now.
Other options mentioned were one-time closing costs up to $2,000 toward purchasing a home within the city or up to $1,000 to cover a deposit and first month's rent for employees not currently city residents who rent a home in Little Rock.
The board didn't vote on creating incentives Tuesday.
Metro on 06/17/2015