By Ray King
A proposed resolution to pay Pine Bluff Police Offices a $3,000 bonus as a way to reduce the number of officers who are leaving for other jobs failed to win the approval of the City Council’s Public Safety Committee Wednesday.
Meeting by Zoom, committee members Joni Alexander and Chairman Glen Brown Jr., voted to send the proposal to the council with a “do not pass” recommendation.
Council member and former Pine Bluff Police Chief Ivan Whitfield, who is not a member of the committee proposed the idea of the bonuses, saying it would be something to “stop the bleeding” of officers leaving the department.
Brown was critical of the idea, telling Whitfield he (Brown) had been working on a package of ideas to address not only the problem of trained officers leaving but also ways to attract new applicants to positions in the department, and that Whitfield was not actively seeking a solution to the problem but instead was determined to “go your own way instead of working with us.”
Alexander told Whitfield that he should have discussed the proposals with the Mayor, Police Chief Kelvin Sergeant and with the Public Safety Committee first before bringing in proposed legislation the day of the committee meeting.
She went on to say that there have been more officers who have left since the city has increased the salaries that there were before those salary hikes went into effect, adding that just giving raises was only one of the reasons for officers leaving.
“Being a police officer is not as cool now as it was a few years ago,” Alexander said.
Sergeant told Deltaplex News earlier this week that there are currently 102 officers on the force. Four officers are at the police academy which will resume classes next week after being shut down because of weather conditions. When classes do resume, Sergeant said the officers in training will be locked in and will go to class seven days a week until graduating. Because of that, Sergeant said the city will have to pay overtime since they are supposed to work just five days a week.
On the subject of the officers in training, Sergeant said he had been notified that the Cross County Sheriff’s Office will be hiring one of the Pine Bluff officers when that officer graduates and Cross County has contacted the city to find out how much they will have to reimburse Pine Bluff to cover the officer’s salary while he is at the academy.
