Chiefs’ hirings need oversight, lawmakers told
Posted on Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Arkansas has about 350 police chiefs, but no state agency checks to see whether the cities conducted the required background checks.
So, the Arkansas Association of Chiefs of Police is seeking a state law to establish the qualifications police chief applicants would have to meet and a way for the state to see whether cities conform to the rules.
But some city officials want the state to stay out of their affairs.
North Little Rock Chief Danny Bradley, past president of the chiefs group, says he wants to ensure the quality of police departments statewide.
“It’s not a good argument to leave it as a local option,” Bradley said. “We’re all subject to the communities when we go there.”
The Arkansas Legislative Task Force on Criteria and Qualifications for Chiefs of Police was set up by the Legislature last year to issue recommendations to the 2009 Legislature on what, if anything, needs to be done.
“Our recommendation may be that the way it’s operating now is not broke,” said Sen. Jerry Taylor, D-Pine Bluff, cochairman of the task force. “I’m not sure there is a problem. But I don’t know yet. You don’t want a person acting as a police chief who is totally unqualified so the state does have an interest in it. But cities feel like it should be their call if they’re paying the bill. We’re trying to find a balance.”
Bradley said there have been a handful of problems in recent years regarding police chiefs that led his group to propose state standards.
He said background checks are required for police officers, including chiefs. But he said he knows they aren’t done all the time. He said some of his officers have moved to work in other cities and those cities never contacted his department for references.
A state agency should make sure those checks are done at least for police chiefs, he said.
The chiefs group is also proposing that chiefs take eight hours of professional training a year, or 24 hours for chiefs at cities or more than 25, 000 people, and that requirements be set for additional background checks beyond a criminal record, such as credit histories and references.
Don Zimmerman, executive director of the Arkansas Municipal League, said his group hasn’t decided what position to take on the proposal.
“Certainly police chiefs are not immune from making mistakes, and whether this would prevent that I don’t know,” Zimmerman said. “I don’t know what our position would be but it would probably come down for local control.”
He wondered if part of the motivation from the chiefs was to set higher standards that would give “more incentive for higher pay.”
Bradley disputed that.
He said that might be the case if the proposed changes included a requirement of a college degree. “Minimal training — eight hours a year — I don’t think that’s going to result in a big pay increase,” he said. He said that other states’ requirements vary. For instance, Georgia requires annual training and Massachusetts requires police chief applicants to take the state civil-service test.
Last year in Lonoke, ex-Police Chief Jay Campbell was convicted of managing a criminal enterprise and drug charges. He was sentenced to 40 years.
“What happened there in Lonoke was embarrassing to all of us,” Bradley said. “Certainly with that type of situation, we take into consideration what we can do to spare our profession to keep that from happening in a different situation.”
But Zimmerman and Taylor said they don’t know if there’s anything state regulations could have done to prevent the situation in Lonoke.
Act 287 of 2007 by Sen. Mary Anne Salmon, D-North Little Rock, set up the task force. The police chiefs association asked Salmon to sponsor it.
Zimmerman and Taylor said some smaller cities are worried about any state regulations turning into an unfunded mandate.
The state already requires that city sewer operators be certified, but Zimmerman said the chiefs proposal would be unique for city employees in that it would set up specific background criteria.
The chiefs’ proposal also would require at least three years’ experience as a police officer and at least 40 hours of police management training or the equivalent college hours in management.
The background check would include a criminal-record check through the FBI, a driving-record check in all states where the applicants lived over the past five years, contact with every place of employment since age 18 to obtain work history including any sanctions or acts or allegations of dishonesty, and written references or documented interviews for character and conduct with landlords, neighbors and friends.
Cities of 25, 000 or more would have to hire chiefs with at least 10 years’ experience in law enforcement and at least 100 hours in police management or college management courses.
Bradley said the state would provide the annual training for free to cities at the Criminal Justice Institute at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and the chiefs group also does free training. Background checks would cost less than $ 1, 000 each, unless the police agency wanted to do that research in-house.
“You don’t have to do a background check on everybody, just the one you want to hire,” he said. “Usually someone who is local, everyone knows so it’s not going to be a big deal. But there is the occasion that they hire someone they really don’t know.”
The Law Enforcement Standards and Training Commission could keep up with whether the cities did the proper checks on chief applicants, Bradley said.
He said that shouldn’t be too much of a burden because he doubted a large number of chiefs would be hired each year.
The average salary for police chiefs in Arkansas ranges from $ 31, 193 to $ 65, 882 depending on the size of the city, according to the Municipal League.
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