Little Rock will spend almost $10,000 for every day Police Chief Kenton Buckner keeps in place a mandatory overtime plan meant to address the city's violent-crime outbreak.
The plan calls for 45 officers -- 15 each from the downtown, southwest and northwest patrol divisions -- to work four hours of overtime each per week, spread out across shifts. The added patrols will take place from 2 p.m. to 2 a.m. daily in targeted areas.
Buckner said Wednesday that he's reviewing the need for the increased overtime schedule every 30 days, and the overtime plan will continue as long as necessary.
According to a memo from City Manager Bruce Moore to city directors Tuesday, the schedule could quickly get costly.
It's estimated that the added overtime will cost $9,950 every day, or almost $279,000 each month. From the time it started in mid-August through Dec. 31, the city can expect to spend $1.25 million, the memo said.
For now, the money is coming out of the Police Department's budgeted overtime fund. That fund is about $2 million of the department's $71.6 million 2017 operating budget. If the department continues on pace with the overtime schedule into the new year, that allocation would have to increase.
Moore said Wednesday that he expects police overtime to go over budget and that he will ask the city Board of Directors to approve a budget amendment later this year to pay for the overage.
"The amount of money it is costing us to put additional police officers on the street is way down on the list of things for me to consider as it relates to public safety," Buckner said in a phone interview Wednesday. "While certainly money is always an issue, and I can't act as if that's not part of the equation, it's not something that would deter me from making the decision that I feel is the right thing to be able to provide efficient police presence to our citizens."
Buckner said he's concerned about officers getting worn out with the mandatory overtime but that continued violence has to be addressed.
As of Wednesday afternoon, the capital city had recorded 45 homicides so far this year. That's three more than police logged in all of 2016. It puts the city on pace for the highest number of killings since 1993, when police recorded 76 homicides.
Police had logged 2,292 violent crimes in Little Rock through Aug. 28, a 17 percent increase compared with the same period last year, according to preliminary department data.
Citizens can expect added patrols in the city's "hot spots," department spokesman Lt. Steve McClanahan has said.
The locations of the patrols could change daily. The officers will be placed in areas where the Police Department's "intelligence-led-policing data" determine that a stronger police presence could prevent and deter criminal activity.
"We allow the data to speak to where we direct our energy and our resources, and we have the supervision in place to ensure our officers are in those areas," Buckner said.
The officers working the extra hours "will be instructed to take action to address any criminal activity occurring in the assigned locations," Buckner wrote in an Aug. 15 memorandum to Moore.
All officers and supervisors assigned to the patrol divisions and property crimes units will sign up for the overtime by seniority. They can either work four hours after a regular shift ends or four hours on a day off.
The estimated cost to continue the overtime was determined by assuming an average hourly overtime rate of $41.05 for officers and $49.48 for sergeants.
"The rotation will repeat as necessary until the additional patrols are no longer necessary," Buckner wrote in the memo.
At the same time the Police Department is dealing with an increase in violent crimes, it's also dealing with widespread job vacancies.
Last month the department was short 80 sworn officers. As of this month, there are 55 vacancies if the 27 recruits currently in the training academy are taken into account, Moore said. Another academy class will start training in November.
Becoming fully staffed could help reduce the cost of added patrols, but overtime will always be needed throughout the year, Buckner and Moore said.
"There are too many things that are unplanned or beyond my normal capacity with staffing to be able to respond to, and overtime is the thing that helps me to be able to address those issues," Buckner said. "Obviously if we get closer to authorized strength we'd be able to do some of these strategies with more on-duty personnel as opposed to an overtime officer."
As the city continues to grapple with the increased violence and homicides, Buckner and Moore will join Mayor Mark Stodola today in a panel discussion on the topic.
Rex Nelson, senior editor and columnist for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, will moderate the event at 7 p.m. in the Ron Robinson Theater at 100 River Market Ave. The Central Arkansas Library System is hosting the event.
Information for this article was contributed by Scott Carroll of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Metro on 09/07/2017