Little Rock chief faces reporters in South Carolina, calls decision to apply for job a 'no-brainer'

He admits failure to connect

Little Rock Police Chief Kenton Buckner is shown in this file photo.
Little Rock Police Chief Kenton Buckner is shown in this file photo.

*CORRECTION: According to a statement he made to the media Tuesday, Little Rock Police Chief Kenton Buckner said during a community interview for his job in 2014 that he hoped to one day be able to say the city no longer had a Black Police Officers Association and a Fraternal Order of Police union, but one organization representing the whole Police Department. His statement was unclear in this story.

Little Rock Police Chief Kenton Buckner should have done a better job as an outsider of making the community understand that he cares about the city, he told journalists this week in Charleston, S.C., where he's interviewing for a job.

Buckner, who moved to Little Rock from Kentucky 3½ years ago, is one of five finalists for the Charleston police chief position.

The finalists interviewed for the job this week. On Tuesday, they each answered questions from the media.

Buckner said applying for the Charleston job was a "no-brainer."

Reporters there asked about Buckner's strained relationship with his city's Black Police Officers Association, which they had read about in Little Rock news reports. He addressed allegations from that organization and added that he should have tried harder to connect with the community in Arkansas' capital.

"When I look back introspectively, one of the things I think that is important is that before you provide constructive criticism to a community, it's important to make sure -- for you to make sure -- that they understand you love and care about that community as well," Buckner said, according to a recording posted online by WCSC-TV in Charleston.

"We just may have different routes to get to some of these mutually desired destinations," he said in the recording. "But it's important for them to know I'm coming from a good place. And being an outsider in that city, I don't know that I convinced them of that enough. That's something I certainly want to work harder on."

Buckner has not spoken to reporters in Little Rock since news broke Friday that he was interviewing for the Charleston job.

The Little Rock Police Department put out a news release that day saying Charleston had asked candidates not to make public comments in order to "protect the integrity of the process."

Speaking with the Charleston media was part of Buckner's interview process. He also had private meetings with city officials Tuesday. On Wednesday, he interviewed before a panel of community members, a panel of City Council members and some city staff members.

The Charleston mayor will appoint the new police chief, with the council's consent. A spokesman for the city said the mayor plans to make a decision quickly.

In the interview with reporters, Buckner said he applied for the job in Charleston because it was a unique opportunity.

A national search firm, Police Executive Research Forum, recruited applicants for the position.

The salary in the job posting is $150,000 to $170,000. The previous chief there, who retired last year, made $170,471 in 2016, a city official said.

Buckner made $145,526 in 2017 in Little Rock.

"Little Rock is a beautiful city. It has a lot of characteristics it shares with Charleston, but for me, I've been there four years -- coming up on four years in June -- [and] this was a great and unique opportunity," Buckner told reporters Tuesday in Charleston.

"It's another great community, great police department," he said of Charleston. "In 2015, I had the opportunity to vacation here for my Christmas break. ... To have the opportunity to serve as chief of police in a vacation city, it's kind of a no-brainer. Charleston is beautiful, also, so that's why I put in for the job."

Charleston, a city of about 135,000 people, has a crime rate of about 30 crimes per 1,000 residents, according to NeighborhoodScout.com. Little Rock, on the other hand, has a population of almost 200,000 people and a crime rate of about 86 crimes per 1,000 residents.

The website says Charleston is safer than 19 percent of U.S. cities, whereas Little Rock is safer than 1 percent. Charleston had 3,968 violent or property crimes reported in the data used, and Little Rock had 16,968.

On Tuesday, reporters questioned Buckner about allegations from the Little Rock black police association of "discrimination, inequities and disparaging treatment of minority-group officers and supervisors" under Buckner.

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He told the reporters that 40 percent of the people he has promoted have been black, while black officers make up just 30 percent of the force. He also said he had doubled the number of Hispanic officers during his short tenure from 11 to 21 or 22.

Under Buckner, the Police Department hosted several citizen police academies for Hispanics. He also learned Spanish in an effort to connect with that segment of the community. He closed his remarks in Charleston speaking in Spanish.

He said anyone who looks at the demographics of the people he has hired, promoted and transferred will see that members of minority groups have not been mistreated.

"But I do take some responsibility to say that I always have the opportunity for improvement," Buckner said, adding that he "could have been potentially reaching further across the aisle" with the Black Police Officers Association.

Calls to the association's president, Rodney Lewis, weren't returned Wednesday.

Buckner said his relationship with the group started off on a bad foot because of a statement he made during his open community interview for the Little Rock job. Buckner said that under his leadership there would no longer be a Black Police Officers Association and a Fraternal Order of Police union.

"The BPOA interpreted that as I meant to disband the BPOA, which is not the case. I just wanted, I think any objective person would prefer to have just one organization versus two, specifically when minority officers don't feel like they are being treated fairly," Buckner said.

Buckner described himself as "battle tested" after leading the department's response to a July 2017 club shooting in which 25 people were shot but none died.

The search firm hired to recruit the Charleston candidates put out a statement about Buckner this week in response to reporters' inquiries about him losing his gun in Little Rock. During a move from an apartment to his new house during his first year on the job, Buckner's firearm was lost or stolen.

"We do not believe these issues should prevent Chief Buckner from being considered.... We believe he brings real world experience from two large police departments. He has a very strong resume, and his areas of expertise and experience are impressive," the firm's executive search consultant, Charlotte Lansinger, said in a statement Monday.

Buckner retired as assistant police chief in Louisville, Ky., before becoming Little Rock's chief.

He has a master's degree in safety, security and emergency management and a bachelor's degree in police administration.

He graduated from Harvard University's Senior Executives in State and Local Government program and from the FBI's National Executive Institute. He is a member of the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies.

He said that on paper, many candidates may look the same, but what sets him apart isn't something that will be on a resume.

"If the notion of nine lives actually existed, if I were killed in the line of duty eight times, in my ninth life I would choose to be a police officer. That's passion. You can't fake that. You either have it or you don't," Buckner said. "And I can tell you, I'm in my lane of what God designed me to do, so I'm going to be successful wherever I am."

The other finalists for the Charleston job are three white assistant chiefs from other cities and the current interim chief from the Charleston department, who is black.

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