Emergency first responders updated the Public Safety Commission Wednesday about staffing, equipment purchases and crime and fire statistics.
The police department has 14 vacancies among its allotment for 151 sworn officers, Pine Bluff Interim Police Chief Ivan Whitfield said.
Asked whether that number was high, Whitfield said, “it depends.”
“It comes in spurts,” he said. “We had a lot of retirement this year. Probably almost half of [the vacancies].”
The department recruited at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff’s career fair Wednesday in an effort to fill some of the vacancies.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
The department also plans to purchase 17 new vehicles for its patrol division. The cost will be $7,500 per vehicle per year on a three-year rent-to-own lease, Whitfield said. The department replaced “four or five” in 2016, he said, a number that varies depending on available funding.
Many of the patrol vehicles have more than 125,000 miles, Whitfield said, and the department tries to phase them out after 150,000 miles because the cars become a safety issue.
“Our fleet runs 24-7, that’s why they have to be changed out much quicker because of that steady-rollin’ 24-7,” Whitfield said.
Often those miles “are hard miles,” he said, driven through all types of weather and at varying speeds. Sometimes buyers from Chicago and New York purchase patrol vehicles with more than 100,000 miles to use as cabs, Whitfield said. For that reason the department will sometimes sell the vehicles prior to 125,000 miles to recoup some value. Several department vehicles with too much wear to resell have been stripped of their engines, tires and motors and will be sold for scrap, he added.
Whitfield said he requested permission from the Public Safety Commission to shop for the new vehicles at local dealerships Smart Chrysler Dodge Ram Jeep and Trotter Ford.
“One good thing about shopping locally, they’ll probably work harder to make these vehicles available at a faster pace than going out of town to a city where they don’t know you,” he said.
The purchases will include 14 Ford Explorers and three Dodge Chargers. Most of the current patrol vehicles are Chargers, but damage to several cars during floods last year prompted a change of thinking.
“Our Chargers are set so low to the ground, when it floods [they get damaged],” Whitfield said. “So we’re trying something different with the Explorer.”
The police department also released crime statistics for 2016 on Wednesday. There were 10 murders; 60 offenses of rape or attempted rape; 134 robberies; 463 aggravated assaults; and 1,639 simple assaults.
June was the most lethal month with four murders, followed by December with three. Four homicides have been recorded in Pine Bluff in 2017.
There were 157 commercial burglaries, 918 residential burglaries and 1,566 thefts in 2016. The department recorded 259 cases of motor vehicle theft.
For the entire year police recorded 5,206 offenses, an average of 433 per month.
August was the busiest month for crime with 493 offenses recorded, followed by May with 492 and July with 488. February, with 345, and November, with 357, had the least crimes.
Total crimes for January and February 2017 were down from 2016. Police recorded 411 crimes this January, compared to 447 in January 2016. In February 343 crimes were recorded, down slightly from 345 during the same month a year before.
Thefts declined from 140 and 117 in January and February 2016, respectively, to 107 and 100 in 2017. Robberies (eight and seven in Jan.-Feb. 2016; 13 and 12 in 2017) and aggravated assaults (21 and 34 in Jan.-Feb. 2016; 42 and 37 in 2017) increased.
On the fire department side of emergency services, Pine Bluff Fire Department Chief Shauwn Howell said there were no large-scale fires during the month of February. He spoke again about the department’s high turnover rate due to noncompetitive salaries, a problem he said needed to be fixed.
“We’re eager to have a positive economic turnaround to offer more competitive salaries,” Howell said. “With reduced turnover, that would foster a more stable workforce, which is what we’re after, to enhance our teamwork. Any time you have as much turnover as we have, not having that longevity, has a lot of negative effects.”
Firefighters encourage residents to change the batteries in their fire alarms this weekend as daylight saving time strikes early Sunday morning, Howell said. Most fires start at night, so many fire departments stress a motto of “change your clock, change your batteries” twice per year during daylight saving time.