Dardanelle Police Chief Montie Sims said he knew he wanted to be in law enforcement from the time he was a little boy and watched John Wayne get the bad guys in Westerns on television.
“I liked the idea of it,” Sims said of law enforcement. “I grew up where a bunch of your Westerns … were the good-guy law enforcement guy versus the bad-guy shootout-at-sundown-type thing.”
The 63-year-old Sims said he has “very fond memories” of growing up in the small city of London in rural Pope County, where his parents for many years had a country store/gas station. “They handled about everything,” he said. Sims worked there as a young boy, he said, making sure to heed his dad’s admonition to wash the window of every vehicle that stopped for gas and never to let a customer leave without asking to check the oil.
“We were also farmers; we had a poultry operation for a number of years,” he said. They sold eggs for commercial use and to hatcheries, and they were growers for Tyson Foods.
Does that mean he knows a lot about chickens?
“I know they’re good to eat, if they’re fried right,” he said, laughing.
When Sims graduated from Russellville High School, he attended Arkansas Tech University in Russellville until 1973, when he got a job as city marshal in his hometown. He was just 21, and it was the beginning of a longtime career in law enforcement.
“It was just a small, rural country town, and there wasn’t much going on,” he said. The salary was “very low. Matter of fact, I was city marshal, but it was on a part-time basis, so it was less than a couple of hundred [dollars] a week.” He also worked for his father at the store/service station.
In 1974, Sims got a job as deputy/investigator for the Yell County Sheriff’s Department, and he moved to Dardanelle.
“Back then, if you were deputy sheriff, you did dual roles for everything. That was interesting and a challenge,” he said.
After about two years in that position, he went to work for the Dardanelle Police Department. After a couple of years, “politics changed,” Sims said, so he went back to the sheriff’s office as chief deputy for 1 1/2 years. “Politics changed again, and I went back to work at the city’s police department,” Sims said.
“The biggest outstanding memories I had were just, basically, meeting the people and working with the public. There was always something new, something different going on during those times. It was never boring. I don’t think I’ve ever had a boring minute in law enforcement. Even though a lot of times you may be dealing with the same people, there was always a different twist to it,” he said.
Sims stayed with the Dardanelle Police Department until 1983, when he did a year’s stint with the Morrilton Police Department as a criminal investigator. Exactly a year later, he said, he was asked to come back to Dardanelle as chief of police, and this time, he stayed put.
The world has changed since 1984, and law enforcement with it.
“When I went to the [law enforcement training] academy back in ’73, it was a four-week course. Now, just the basic level of law enforcement training in our state is a 12-week course, and they’re even talking about adding more weeks to that, which is good. Then you get into your specialized training and stuff like that,” he said.
The equipment being used today, compared to 1984, “it’s amazing, especially with the technology age of computers and networking,” Sims said.
“When I started law enforcement, everything was paper — paper warrants and everything like this, and you just went out and started looking for people you had warrants on. Back then, your communities were not as populated as they are now, so you got to know everybody in your community, in your county,” he said. “Today, without the use of computers and electronic filing, there’s no way you could even begin to handle the amount of paperwork involved in it.”
Officers’ equipment has also changed dramatically, he said. Body cameras were something akin to science fiction back when Sims started — today, all nine of his certified officers wear them.
“Every officer, when they come on duty, one of the first things they pick up is their body camera. We’ve had them for two years,” Sims said. “My officers, they love them. They know that yes, when they’re wearing those things, it’s going to show what’s going on, and it’s going to show that they’re being professionals, or it’s going to show they’re being nonprofessionals, but they have no problem with that.
“One thing I’ve been very blessed with here is I have a city council and a mayor that work with the police department very good, as far as trying to allow us to stay abreast of equipment. I went to my city council two years ago and said, ‘Hey, I need [body cameras] not only for the protection of my officers, but the protection for who my officers come in contact with.’” Sims said the City Council “did not hesitate” to fund the equipment.
“As an administrator, as chief of police, I don’t care whether it’s the department of one [law enforcement officer] or a department of 500. If you do not have a working relationship with your mayor, city council … or however it’s set up, you can’t function. Budgeting is involved, and things like this.”
Dardanelle Mayor Carolyn McGee said Sims has been involved for years with the Free State of Yell Fest, “and he does a lot of extra work on that. It has been an asset to us because it’s good to have a continued individual working on it, knowing the good and the bad you need to straighten out. He’s involved in the community; he really is.”
Sims said he decided after working as chief for a few years that it was time to give back to the community that had provided a good living for him and his family. He is a member of the Dardanelle Area Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors and previously served on the board of the Arkansas River Valley Area Council Inc. Community Action Partnership.
“It’s an action group that came about to help the underprivileged,” he said. He’s also on the board of Counseling Associates Inc.
Sims’ work in the community hasn’t gone unnoticed. He was named 2014 Citizen of the Year by the Dardanelle Area Chamber of Commerce in January, an honor he also received in 2002.
“I’m very proud and very honored to receive that award,” he said. “What I did to get it I don’t know, except that I try to be a good member for the chamber of commerce. To me, the chamber of commerce can be and should be one of your basic roots for your community and set the style for your community as how, when people come into your community, what do they see? Do they see progress? Do they see a clean town? Or do they see negatives? Do they see an active chamber of commerce? If they do see a clean town, an active chamber, maybe that’ll be the place they choose, one, to live, or choose to live and start a business.”
Handling crime in the community is also part of that quality of life, he said.
Most of the cases the Dardanelle Police Department handles are related to drugs.
“Today, we’re dealing with drugs that are in our community and the effect that drugs have on the families and community. And you see a lot of other crimes — burglary, thefts, fraudulent use of stolen credit cards — which have become a big thing in the state of Arkansas and everywhere else. What you see is, these crimes are being committed by people who are going to turn around and use money or items to purchase or obtain drugs.”
Many of the subjects he sees come through the door are poor, too.
“Yell County is a very rural, rural county. Statistics show that it’s been below poverty level for several years,” he said. “I’ve been in some houses that would blow your mind. It’s sometimes hard to believe that, especially in today’s world, today’s times, that you have people out there living in conditions [that when] come winter and bad weather, they may not have the money to afford electricity to even keep them warm, much less enjoy some of the luxuries that we enjoy.”
He said it’s especially hard to see small children in some of the deplorable living conditions that he and his officers encounter.
“It’s pretty unbearable to think [about], … that kids are living in what they live in. You go home and pray about it,” he said.
“In law enforcement, I have a philosophy of three things: God first, family second, department third. In community, it’s God first, family second, community third,” he said. “That’s just how I try to look at things.
“I’ve just been so blessed with so many things, but that’s how I try to work at things. I’ve always tried to work to have a department that not only men and women in that department are proud of, but that the community is proud of.”
It goes back to his childhood hero, John Wayne.
“To me, he exhibited a lot of what we like to think America is made up of, even though he was just an actor. He still exhibited a lot of that in his movies,” Sims said. “A lot of his movies portrayed that everyone wanted to be treated right and respected, and that’s what I try to do.”
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.