Asked directly in person Monday, Pine Bluff Police Chief Brenda Davis-Jones refused to answer all but one of the questions about the iPad and iPhone bought for her with city money within four months of each other in 2011.
The city of Pine Bluff spent $798 to buy an iPad 2 for Davis-Jones four months before spending $747 to buy her an iPhone 4 and accessories, according to documents received last week by The Commercial in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.
Questions about the iPhone purchase and other issues were raised at the April 16 City Council meeting by Alderman Thelma Walker. A list of followup questions about these issues was sent to Davis-Jones by email after attempts to contact her by phone were unsuccessful. Davis-Jones did not respond to the email, and The Commercial subsequently submitted FOI requests for documents related to the questions.
At the April 16 meeting, Mayor Carl A. Redus Jr. said he approved the purchase of the iPhone because the chief needed to be able to tie into the department’s server and its 13-unit camera system, which the department announced in November 2011 it was planning to launch to aid in the investigation of crimes. At the last public report to the council on the system, police IT employees were still working out some bugs with the system.
In response to the questions Monday, Davis-Jones responded that the camera system has been up and running for the past two months. According to the FOI documents, the iPhone was purchased for her on Dec. 14 and the iPad on Aug. 3.
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To subsequent questions, Davis-Jones only replied “that’s what Shapiro is for” to one of them — referring to police Capt. Greg Shapiro, who serves as the department’s public information officer after normal business hours — and stood silent to the rest. The questions were:
• What work-related tasks can the iPhone do that the iPad could not do, which made the purchase of both devices necessary?
• How much is the monthly data plan cost for the iPhone?
• And why did you not wait until it was time for a phone contract upgrade so that the iPhone would have cost less?
The documents about the iPhone upon which Walker based her questions indicated that it was purchased for $747 on Dec. 14. The bill amount included an iPhone 4, car charger, pink stereo plug cable and $100 in other items that were illegible on a photocopy of the receipt. A total of 11 items were purchased. The iPhone was listed as costing $550.
According to the FOI documents received last week, the city purchased an iPad 2 with wifi and 3G connection capabilities and 32 gigabytes of storage for Davis-Jones for $797.51 on Aug. 3, 2011. There is a check mark on the receipt next to the one-year service plan for 3G data access for the device. The monthly cost for the data plan is listed as $37.99, which is in addition to the cost of the actual iPad.