The Police and Fire committee met last week to hear a report from Blytheville Chief of Police Ross Thompson. Thompson reported that the department is currently staffed at 31 officers with a budget of 40. Recently, Thompson has been exploring different methods to help recruit certified officers to the Blytheville Police Department. During last month's committee meeting, the committee requested that Thompson look into the possibility of the BPD offering sign-on bonuses. He presented a rough idea for what that might look like to the committee.
"Last meeting you guys had asked about the sign-on bonus and you asked about me looking into it and maybe seeing what other departments were doing. That is what we've done this past month since the last meeting. We did contact another department that is in our general area…that is offering a sign-on bonus…we have a recommendation here that is just a recommendation to the committee. It would take some changes in the budget, but it is just a start. We were looking at a $5,000 sign-on bonus for a certified lateral officer with three or more years of experience," Thompson said.
Thompson said the department would like to pay the bonus out with half of the bonus being given when the officer started and the other half being rewarded on the first year anniversary of the officer's employment. Thompson said he would also like to include an expectation that the officer works for the department for a set minimum amount of time after receiving the bonus.
"These non-certified applicants that we have. We will be sending them to the academy. We will be paying their salaries for 13 weeks and they won't be working here. The first year of a non-certified officer's career is genuinely not much productivity; it is a lot of learning. They will be with training officers, they will be at the academy…it can take a few years before an officer becomes really productive and understand the application and has lost a few cases in court and learned from it," Thompson said.
He also noted that it cost the department $8,000 in salary pay alone to send an officer to the academy, so, by comparison, the amount of the sign on bonus paid across a year's time is significantly lower than the cost to have a new officer trained.
"If you consider the amount of money that you spend to outfit and equip, and pay insurances, pay lot fee, pay payroll taxes, by the time you pay all that in the first year, it is a considerable amount of money," Thompson said.
Thompson also spoke about the crime statistics of Blytheville and how "crime is down."
"Have any of y'all been to Detroit lately? I've not been to Detroit, so I don't know if the crime is bad in every single neighborhood, I don't know if the crime rate is up or down, all I can tell you is what I hear in the media…What tends to happen are that these major events are what your community is remembered by. Not the fact that our burglaries a few years ago were in the 500s and then last year it ended up being less than 200. Major decrease in crime, in property crime. Major decrease in robberies but at the first of the year we have this series of events that has taken place and that is what we are known by," Thompson said.
He added that he can't get into specifics about cases, but some of them are related and others are not. He said in the cases that are related there are generally people who know about them way before anything ever happens.
"My goal as the police department is to put these fools in jail. That is what my job is and that is what this department's job is at this particular moment. I talked to the guys with Healing in the Hood just the other day. There are certain things that we have planned and certain things we already had planned…the bottom line is there are people out there that know right now that could help us put a stop to it right now," Thompson said.
Thompson said if a citizen knows something they have to come in and talk to the department before it happens, so the police can act accordingly and stop acts of violence and crime before they happen. Thompson said that does mean people will go to jail, but it will stop the violence and crime before it happens and make Blytheville a better place to live.