The Conway City Council approved 6 new police officers for the CPD this past Tuesday. The department will have 103 sworn officers after the addition of these new hires. Conway Police Chief Randall Aragon says the new officers were greatly needed by the community.
"Calls to service went up five percent from 2004 to 2005. In 2005 we had about 30,024 calls," he told Log Cabin reporter Stefanie Sampson. "Let's prevent that bicycle from being stolen and come up with a solution to prevent future crimes," adds Aragon.
The department is focusing their efforts on community policing to make the streets of Conway safer. The addition of the officers will give the department just below two officers per thousand citizens, a ratio that is comparable to cities of this size, according to Aragon.
Police also say that both violent and property crimes in Conway were up between 6 and 7 percent in 2005 matching a disturbing trend that is plaguing the law enforcement community all across the state. The addition of these new officers coupled with a restructure on roles within the CPD is the department's proactive attempt to stop this trend.
This philosophy is needed at the county level of law enforcement as well. For far too long the Faulkner County Sheriff's Office has been focusing mainly on reacting to crime rather that trying to prevent it. In far too many cases this reaction has come too little, too late leaving victims out in the cold with justice simply out of their reach. A push for more deputies and a more proactive approach to law enforcement is what the new sheriff needs to bring to the department.
The next question will be how to fund this, one way might be the massive delinquent fines the courts are owed. At last check there was an outstanding balance of more that 9.8 million dollars in delinquent fines. In the recent past the county has tried to address this problem by spending thousands of dollars printing the names of the offenders owing fines in the paper, this approach has failed and the fines remain unpaid.
Prior to this idea the Quorum Court rejected a plan to use a collection ageny that was offered by a local company, Within Sight, opting to have the sheriff's office handle this when the new jail opens. But this plan holds little chance of success when you consider the new jail is rated for less than 275 inmates and there are over 3000 people owing fines.
We emailed Chief Aragon about his recent time in the media spotlight. We wanted to remind him that the county's jail and fine collection problems have an affect on the city's crime rate, after all the county's judicial and incarceration systems are used by the city. Chief Aragon stated he is in favor of the collection agency plan and he plans on talking to his JP about adopting the program.
Aragon said, "I support (and have expressed such) your commentary on the collection agency issue and would hope that the county adopts that program; which is used nationally for collecting traffic ticket fines, etc."
It is time once again to revisit a collection agency plan for collecting the delinquent fines.
