Citizens for Credibility & Trust/Truth in Little Rock Leadership

Citizens for Credibility &Trust/Truth in Little Rock Leadership
https://www.scribd.com/document/363355314/Citizens-for-Credibility-Trust-in-Little-Rock-Leadership

ARKANSAS TIMES

The city of Little Rock is at a crossroads. Violent crime and the inability of our city leadership to effectively deal with it has caused the Governor of the state to take it upon himself to establish a task force to address the mounting concerns of the citizens of Little Rock and Arkansas.

At a press conference back in July, a week after the mass shooting at the Power Ultra Lounge, Governor Hutchinson stated that "the looming cloud of violence harms us all," and "if Little Rock is not safe, then we cannot succeed in our goals as a state."

At the same time, our city of Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola insensitively joked about the shooting and quipped that the reason no one was killed was because the shooters were “bad shots.”

Frustration of citizens and police officers with the current state of affairs is at an all-time high.

Citizens have a lack of respect and trust for police officers that overwhelming choose to live and raise their families somewhere else other than within the city of Little Rock.

Fittingly donning the title of "mercenary cops”.

Chief Buckner has insensitively stated that his officers choose to live outside the city that they are paid to serve and protect, ironically because of crimes as well as the quality of our schools. Basically, it’s a nice place to be a mercenary cop but they ‘sure as hell’ don’t want to raise their children here with the rest of us.

Overworked and stressed-out officers have mistaken cellphone for guns twice in a months time, incurring significant additional liability for the city that could outweigh or negate any potential or intended efforts to curbing and/or preventing crime.

Chief Buckner and City Director Bruce Moore have both stated we cannot “police our way out of this.”

Yet, the city has spent approximately $416,464 for costs associated with mandatory overtime for officers to patrol high crime areas using funds from unfilled police officer positions. Another $200,000 is projected to be expended by the end of the year for mandatory overtime.

For several years, the Little Rock Police Department has been understaffed (consistently 60 – 70 vacant positions) and they spent $120,000 on a consultant to review their officer recruiting, advertising, selection and hiring process. In September the board approved a $9,000 payment for a new police recruiting website (yearly fee) which is in addition to a $36,000 payment for web hosting. Just this week the Board of Directors approved $150,000 to provide public relations, advertising and marketing for the police department. The city has also spent $198,000 to date in bonus payments to police recruits that complete training and expects to spend another $229,000 in bonus payments by the end of the year,

The city spent approximately $400,000 on riot gear in 2015; over $250,00 for unmarked vehicles in June of this year and then over a million dollars for 60 new patrol vehicles in August. $80,000 for Tasers, $57.000 for a computer-aided dispatch system in August. $255, 000 for 60 new Motorola radios. $273.000 for 60 watch guard video cameras for police cars. $189, 000 for 60 new Dell laptop computers for police cars, $120,000 for 60 modems for police cars. $601,000 for a one year’s extension to the maintenance agreement for the 800 mHz radio system for the police department in October.

The city is also purchasing a building (across the street for the existing police headquarters) for a new police headquarters at the cost of over $900,000.

Obviously, the city is providing the necessary equipment and means to hire police officers and provide them with equipment and facilities to do their job and we still have issues, then we must look at the administration of the police department. LEADERSHIP not funding or a lack of equipment resounds as most blatant reason for failure at the LRPD. When Chief Buckner is confronted with this he has no good answers, only threats against those that dare question his decisions or his authority or attempt to hold him accountable as all public employees are.

In March of 2015 the Racial and Cultural Diversity Commission (RCDC) met with Chief Buckner after he stated in a newspaper article that “it’s very well-noted that much of the challenges that we have with the Little Rock Community lie within our minority areas.”

Buckner demanded that the RCDC give him a letter grade on his performance as chief after a year on the job.

They did just that and he received an "F" grade. The only positive marks he received were for attending meetings, giving away turkeys at Thanksgiving, and using social media. He failed on every aspect that involved planning and administrative functions.

Buckner has lost his control & temper at board meetings and even told directors that questioned his decisions about reassigning officers from the COP program to other posts was “dangerous.”

One of the reasons Buckner was selected as chief was his so-called “knowledge and perspective on community policing.” Another was his “approach to offender re-entry to the community.” Yet, Buckner has contradicted such accolades by complaining in a recent board meeting about prisoners being “dumped” into the city.

Black police officers have long complained about discrimination, inequities and disparaging treatment of minority officers and supervisors under the command of Chief Buckner.

Their complaints were ignored or summarily dismissed.

After several years of being ignored, the black police officers submitted a plea for the board to investigate complaints and allegations concerning the chief or hire an outside entity, not associated with the city to look into the matter.

The board unwisely and oddly turned the matter back over to Chief Buckner, who had previously stated he would not look into the allegations echoed in their July 5^th letter to the board and his statements of, “I’m the Chief”, resounded as his response to these serious allegations. He made it clear, backed-up by city manager Bruce Moore, that he had absolutely no intentions to investigate this matter at all.

Buckner has refused to enforce certain laws and ordinances (curfew – because he stated it doesn’t work as well as the avoiding of ticketing law enforcement officers for traffic accidents and offenses because that is a "practice in other places").

City Manager Bruce Moore often runs interference for Chief Buckner at board meetings when Buckner becomes out of control, frustrated and unprofessionally lashes out.

Moore has exhibited a lack of fiduciary responsibility in the hastily concocted bonus program incentives for police cadets, as they are given with no strings attached. He has not put any stipulations or developed any policy in regard to the bonus program and will not answer questions put to him about the bonuses.

Two officers that received the bonus left employment shortly after receiving it.

Not having controls in place is unacceptable.

Moore has used poor judgment and made defamatory and reckless statements to the board in emails.

Both Buckner and Moore have lost the respect and confidence of the public in their ability to effectively carry out the duties and responsibilities of their positions.

They both must to resign or be relieved of their positions immediately for their blatant and documented malfeasance and misfeasance. For fostering a spirit of distrust between personnel and citizens and for an all around lack of ability required from leadership that this growing city depends upon in these modern times.

There is no other alternative. If this does not happen, further actions from the citizens of this city can surely be expected in the near future. The citizens of this city will hold all public personnel and lawmakers accountable for their actions from this point forth. This matter will not just "go away.":

• MARCH 2017- A well-known corruption investigation blog received an anonymous whistleblower letter detailing information that only the blog publisher, Internal Affairs and upper senior command would have been aware of at that time, prompting Corruption Sucks Blog to publish it in it’s entirety within days of receipt following due diligence.
  The contents of this whistleblower letter exposes the leadership of the LRPD as violating very serious internal policies as well as criminal & civil rights laws against complaining citizens in a well-documented fashion.
• MAY 2017- Well-known community activist Rev. Benny Johnson appeared before the city board to address the issues detailed within the Corruption Sucks Blog whistleblower letter, as well as other violations of policy, like the Chief appearing in ads supporting political actions in uniform. He was met with serious resistance and disrespect by Bruce Moore in a defaming email sent to the board calling Rev. Ben a liar. Moore unprofessionally refuses to apologize or retract his remarks, even after being proven to be incorrect in a documented fashion.
• JUNE 2017- Well-known community activist Rev. Benny Johnson appeared before the city board AGAIN, to address Bruce Moore's defaming email claiming that his accusations were a "lie" and again unprofessionally refused retraction after being corrected by city attorney Tom Carpenter. He additionally questioned why the whistleblower letter is still not being addressed. Bruce Moore became belligerent and confrontative with Big Ben during this meeting addressing public accountability on the part of Moore and Buckner. Tom Carpenter added that it is a VERY serious violation for a chief to NOT take a drug test, the same should hold true for an Asst. Chief.
• -JULY 2017- After numerous attempts by the Little Rock Black Police Officer's Association to convince LRPD Chief Kenton Tremar Buckner to investigate the allegations detailed within the Corruption Sucks Blog whistleblower letter, as well as for other acts of inequality, they requested that the City Board of Directors look into these claims of policy and criminal violations. This is in reaction to the Chief disregarding their complaints by stating he is the Chief and he chooses not to investigate. Bruce Moore echoed that he supports the chief in his decisions to not investigate claims of criminal and policy misconduct, lending to the air of corruption.