LRPD take home vehicles rack up around 5,392 miles getting cops into the city and back home each day
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| Most all LRPD take home vehicles go to homes outside LR |
Newly obtained records from the city of Little Rock and the Little Rock Police Department show that nearly all LRPD take home vehicles are used for LRPD employees to travel to and from their homes outside the safe city of Little Rock.
LR City Hall was the first to respond to our request for an updated record of take home vehicles for city employees.
Currently LRPD has 201 take home vehicles assigned to employees. This does not include vehicles that are assigned to "undercover" cops - more on that in a follow-up post.
Back in 2018, we obtained similar records. At that time LRPD had 136 take home vehicles. You can check out that post by clicking here.
LRPD sent this record. It provides more detailed information about the individual assigned a take home vehicle and the location the vehicle travels to and from for them to get to work.
According to these records, 130 vehicles of the 201 assigned are used by LRPD employees that live outside the city of Little Rock.
Those 130 vehicles rack up 5,392 miles each day they are used by the LRPD employees to get them to work in Little Rock and then back to their homes outside the city. That mileage figure does not include daily mileage racked up during the work day.
We also asked for fuel and maintenance records but those have not yet been provided. We will post an update or new story when those records are provided. Right now the city is taking three or four months to provide FOI responses.
New LRPD recruits get a $10,000 signing bonus.
The city provides a one time $5,000.00 payment if the recruit buys or rents a house in the city and $2,500 toward an apartment in the city.
The LR City Board of Directors is proposed to increase the entry-level salary of LRPD cops from $44,000 to $50,000 (a $5 million budget item) and give a 2.5% raise to all LRPD cops that have been on the job for 15 years. That is said to cost around $500,000.
The city just spent around seven million dollars for a new LRPD headquarters.
LRPD spends around $300,000 a year for the sketchy ShotSpotter gunfire detection system that is only placed in a 2.5 square mile area centered around the 12th Street substation. A UALR study (we broke the news about it) came up with no solid evidence of its value.
And yet the city has experienced 88 killings so far this year and has a shooting incident or two just about every day.
Perhaps the city board needs to carefully exam the LRPD budget and do some reallocating.
