Jacksonville schools to regain two officers

Jacksonville will add two school resource officers to local schools after the city’s Police Department leadership received sharp criticism for reducing the number of those officers.

Mayor Gary Fletcher announced the move at a City Council special meeting Thursday night. The announcement from Fletcher followed an approximately hourlong executive session with City Council members.

The meeting comes days after the Jacksonville Fraternal Order of Police cast a vote of no confidence in the leadership of Fletcher and City Attorney Robert Bamburg, who serves as police director. Last week, Bamburg emailed a transfer notice to department personnel that affected most of the city’s certified officers.

The police organization condemned the transfer notice in a statement announcing the vote, saying the moves reduced the number of school resource officers and removed experienced detectives from the agency’s Criminal Investigation Division.

The statement raised concerns on other department topics and said Fletcher and Bamburg have shown an “inability” to lead the city’s Police Department.

The emailed notice gave information on the transfers of about 75 percent to 80 percent of the department, Gary Sipes, a former Jacksonville police chief and a spokesman for the city’s Fraternal Order of Police, said earlier this week.

Sipes also said then that the transfers went into effect on Sunday.

On Thursday night, Sipes said he was amazed and confused that Bamburg remained police director after the City Council meeting. Sipes also took issue with Fletcher’s statement at the council meeting that the transfer order put more officers on the street.

“He wants the citizens to believe that,” Sipes said. “But there’s no more patrol officers on [the] street today than there was a week and a half ago.”

Speaking at the City Council meeting, Fletcher said the city has put more police on the street and has saved citizens money.

He also reported that two officers who had been transferred from their jobs as school resource officers would return to the position. It was not immediately clear when the two officers would resume that role.

Earlier this month, Jacksonville began accepting police chief applications after the Arkansas Supreme Court ruled that a past false-report conviction disqualifies Geoffrey Herweg, who was hired as police chief last spring, from holding the position.

The court ruled that his false-report conviction was a “crime of dishonesty” that disqualified Herweg from serving as police chief under Article 5, Section 9 of the Arkansas Constitution, which prevents a person convicted of an “infamous crime” from holding “any office of trust or profit in this State.”

Last summer, before the state Supreme Court decision, a Pulaski County circuit judge removed Herweg from the post pending the outcome of a lawsuit filed by City Council member Tara Smith.

According to Sipes, the mayor blamed the Criminal Investigation Division for putting forward information on Herweg and the transfer notice was retaliation.

Daniel Gray, School Board president of the Jacksonville/ North Pulaski School District, said he first heard about the changes to the school resource officers when he received a call from a district official last week.

“Our administrators weren’t notified. Our staff wasn’t notified at the district office. So they were panicked. They were upset,” Gray said Thursday afternoon.

Before the Jacksonville police transfers, the school district had four school resource officers, Gray said. After the transfer notice, the district was left with two officers and a sergeant, he said.

Gray said he met with Fletcher to express concern.

“With everything going on nationally, we have been in discussions about increasing security. This is not the time to be reducing [school resource officers] in our buildings,” Gray said Thursday afternoon before the announcement from Fletcher.