Pulaski County Sheriff: Incumbent Eric Higgins vs. Paul “Blue” Keller
Opening comments
Eric Higgins
Thank you everyone for being here. I know it's been a long night. I appreciate you standing here with us for a little bit longer. Uh you know, four years ago, I ran for Pulaski County Sheriff and there were some things I wanted to accomplish. You know, I realized that the county and the sheriff's office did not have in-car cameras or body cameras in their vehicles. Didn't have GPS in their vehicles. So, that was something I wanted to address was to get the body cameras and I can say we have body cameras. We have body cameras even in the detention center. We're the first agency to have body cameras in the detention center. The thing I was looking at is increasing our response time or or improving our response time and we've been able to do that. Um unfortunately, when I took office at the sheriff's office, we weren't we weren't tracking crime or response times at that time but we were able to increase the technology to be able to do that. Uh you know, one thing I wanted to do was look at and embrace the history of the Pulaski County Sheriff's Office. I don't know if and if you remember that the sheriff's office has what we call the Junior Deputy Program that was started by Sheriff [Tom] Gulley and it's 1947 when he started that. That program kind of went away from the sheriff's office. So, I would embrace the history of the sheriff's office and we brought back the Junior Deputy Mentoring Program for our kids because it's very important that we invest in our kids and help them to follow in the right direction. Also, what I want to do is implement a re-entry program at the detention center. You know, some would say, what is the detention center? What does a county detention center have to do with reentry? I tell you, it has everything to do with with reentry because 75, 80% of the people booked into the Pulaski County Jail are released to our community and therefore, we need to try to address that issue and we've put together a program, a reentry program to help those who are in our facility, who want help to come out and and not reoffend and currently, we have about a 17% recidivism rate in our facility. Uh if you compare that to the state, the state has about a 47% recidivism rate and that means most people in our programs are coming out and are successful. Um we also when we look at the sheriff's office, you know, we have to have a holistic approach to dealing with crime. Now, we're going to arrest people. We're going to put people in jail. We do those things. We write tickets but we have to have a holistic approach that means looking at the issues in our community, building strong relationships in the community. That's why we have a neighborhood coordinator, a person who is a civilian person, works with us that works in our community. We have a citizens advisory group that we establish as people coming to the sheriff's office and we meet on a regular basis to talk about issues in our community and how we can address those issues in our community. In the sheriff's office, what I've tried to do is ensure that we are 21st century policing with technology. It's been mentioned. You know, and I can say it was mentioned at $2 million dollars a grant. We just got another $1. 6 million dollars in grants received this year. So, over $4 million dollars, approximately $4 million dollars in grants and three and a half years to address equipment in the facility to make it safer, to work with our youth in the community, and also work with our reentry and and what we're doing is trying to make a safer community and I can say in Pulaski County, in our area, we cover violent crime is 13% because what we're doing as a team. Appreciate your vote. Thank you.
Paul “Blue” Keller
Thank you, Neal. Thank you all that set this up. Uh we really appreciate it. I appreciate y'all sticking around while others left because we found throughout the campaign that a lot of folks don't even understand that if they live in the cities, that they vote in the county. We want you to know that you are part of the county and that we very very much value y'all just like the folks in the unincorporated areas. As Neal said, I'm from Arkansas, went to school up at [Arkansas] Tech, went straight in the army, infantry, airborne, ranger, special forces qualified. I was in there for 23 and a half years. I obtained Lieutenant Colonel and while I was there, I actually got to participate in what was called a crisis in Rwanda. And I think that's important for y'all to know because what we saw over there was the worst that men had for his fellow man but then we came together. We came with military. We came with law enforcement. We came together with NGOs, non-governmental organizations. We came in touch with the different groups in the area. And we sat down at the table and we started hammering things out. And within about 2 months, we had completely turned it around. And if you go back and you and you go YouTube or whatever you want and look at the Rwanda crisis and look at what they've got going over there now. It's fantastic. The love for each other. They've got, they've got past the hate. They got past the different racisms and they're doing very very well. I believe that we're getting close to the worst that we're doing for our fellow man right here in the county right now. We've got way too much crime. Crime is rising. Crime is rising. And here's the thing. If you look out the window, you're you're you're living here in the city. Folks are out in the county. You look out the window and your neighbor's house is burning down. Are you going to sit there in the chair and wait till it gets to your house? Or are you going to get up and go out and do something about it? And help your neighbor. We in the county and in the Pulaski County Sheriff's Office, I see us as being the epoxy that brings the PDs together. I have been endorsed by the Maumelle PD, the Little Rock PD, the Jacksonville PD, the Sherwood PD, the African American coalition of Arkansas the chapter 49 of the Special Forces Association I intend to work with all of these agencies to bring it together to make your streets, your homes, your areas safer for you and your families.
Question: Pulaski County, we'll have a new prosecutor next year How do you plan on working with that office to ensure law enforcement goals are met?
Higgins: You know, as sheriff, I work with the current prosecutor and I've already met with mister Jones, the new prosecutor and we've discussed some of his ideas. Um things are going to continue as always. We have to work together with the prosecutor's office to ensure that we are addressing crime and and when we are working with them as far as we prosecute individuals but also when you look at the detention center. Um we work with the prosecutor's office and the sheriff's office has worked with the prosecutor's office for a number of years during the Doc Hales administration dealing with the people coming into the facility. The number of people being arrested and those who are being released by authority, the prosecutor's office. That there is a list that's been going on for years and the current prosecutor works through. We've worked through a list with them. We've discussed that with the current prosecutor and we'll sit down with him and discuss ways we can continue to work together. Thank you.
Keller: Yes, sir. It's critical that that we work with the prosecutors I was speaking with Tim Griffin [Arkansas Attorney General candidate] not too long ago and I think everybody here understands if you've if you've been reading the papers, there's sentencing guides and matrices that determine how long a person has to stay in jail based on the crimes that they're committing on. I think that we would all agree because you read in the paper routinely that individuals who have gotten out of jail are back and they're doing things. They should still be in jail. So, Griffin is saying that what he's going to do is he's going to work with the legislature to try to change the sentencing matrices so that people spend more time in the jail if they need to and these are we're talking about violent criminals obviously. So, we've got to work with them and our capacity now as a director of the Criminal Investigation Division for the Insurance Department. We work all around the state. Uh we had lawyers today to go all the way down in El Dorado. Uh we see how important the local elected prosecutors are and they are the ones that actually decide whether to file a case or not. So, what we do is we investigate it. we present it to em, and then we have to live with what they decide to do. So, that is a very, very important part of the sheriff's office.
Neal Moore: This is a topic that's always hard to deal with, hard to talk about, hard to solve, who's ever going to solve it. I don't know. But would you support and and what ideas do you have for the possibility of the expansion of a second jail or a building in North Pulaski County and what do we need to do to get our jail to where it needs to be?
Q: Would you support jail expansion or a second detention facility?
Higgins: You know great, that's a great question talking about the detention center, expansion of detention. Is it necessary? Uh in some ways, there is some need for a new building. The current building we have was built in 1994 and when the county passed the tax to build that facility, there was no money to maintain the facility and when you're dealing with with a facility, you've gotta have the maintenance to to support that facility and we've had to spend in in this last two years spending over $3 million dollars just preparing the facility from locks that that can be compromised by detainees to replacing those locks to other systems in the facility. We've gotta correct those. You know, when you when you look at the capacity, I think we also have to look at what are we doing to get people out of that jail that won't reoffend and I think we can we can look at a reentry program that that we allow more people to be involved in the program. You need more space for that. Do you need more space to house more people? We do need more space to house some of the violent criminals. But that's the decision that the county's going to have to we as citizens are going to have to decide. Do we want to have more bed space in a county jail? But also it's not just having bed space but it's also reentry programs. How do we get people out of our facility that won't reoffend? But sometimes people are dealing with their primary issue. They're dealing with this drug addiction. And if somebody's dealing drug addiction and they're breaking into our houses. They're going to do 10 to 15 burglaries for any law enforcement agency. Uh arrest them and that those ten burglaries represents 30 victims in our community. That's people living in a home. That's neighbors, people at work. And so we have to address that. We have to address the underlying issue of why people commit crime. And try to address that. So they don't reoffend and become more serious create more serious crime. We have to address that. It's not just building more prisons to house more people or more jails to house more people. We have to look at what we are doing to help those who want those who are coming out of our facility. Maybe what the real issue is mental health issues, or drug addiction issues. We gotta address that at the same time. Thank you.
Keller: Agree with a lot that the sheriff had to say. Um we have to keep in mind that when it comes down at the end of the day, so much of it is determined by how much money is available. Uh you have to be able to make a case to go to the court, to go to the residence of the county to see. So, what we intend to do, what I intend to do right off the bat is make better use of the space that we have to make better operations of the facility so that folks can move in, move through, and move out as necessary. We believe that there's a greater value to education and motivation of personnel than it is to the incarceration of those personnel. So, what we do want to do is we want to work with programs that will identify working back again with the prosecutors as we were talking about and identifying the violent people and identifying those others that really don't need to be in jail that are probably going to learn from their first bad experience. We're looking at weekend jails. We want to be able to talk. We want to be able to get people in. People that have maybe written a lot of hot checks. That's the only way they see that they can feed their family. We bring em into jail on Friday night. They work with the work service on Saturday, Sunday, Sunday night. They go back home, get a good shower, and spend some time with their families. They're back to their jobs on Monday. We get them out of the way. We need to look at more electronic monitoring. We need to be able to get people out where we know you can keep an eye on em, get em out of the jail, make more space in the jail so that we can expand with what we've got as opposed to having to bill more.
Question: This is obviously a nationwide problem. How do you plan to attract and keep qualified deputies?
Higgins: As you mentioned, it is a nationwide problem trying to get people into law enforcement. You know, you have to look at salaries, you have to look at benefits, retirement issues are at play. But it's trying to attract the right people. Um because you don't just want anyone wanting to be in law enforcement. You have to have quality people to be in the profession. So, we are working toward that. We've established the sheriff's office under my administration to establish our own recruit school. Uh, authorized by the state and so we're able to recruit More people on our enforcement side. Uh I'm happy to say we're about three deputies short on enforcement and and so while you look at a lot of agencies in Pulaski County are struggling to fill this position. But it is a nationwide issue. We have to continue to try to improve the environment, improve the equipment, improve the training that we provide, and we've gone from 16 hours of training to 48 hours of annual training at the sheriff's office. Um you know, we have to look at work with the quorum court. Look at salaries. We compete with the surrounding agencies. You've heard today, you've heard people talking about the Maumelle Police Department. Uh we need to increase the salaries in Maumelle. That means that's a competition for the Pulaski County Sheriff's Office and so we have to look at that retirement system. I think we have to look at longevity pay. Those kinds of things to bring people in but you also have to help people realize it's a career, not just a job. It's a career and gets people who understand that this is about our community. It's about our safety and our community and so we have to continue to push that we continue to look for ways we've worked with the Quorum Court. We've got a $5, 000 bonus for new hires and I think that has significantly helped us where we, like I said, we have about three vacancies in our enforcement site. Detention was still struggling. Try to fill those positions. Most people who want to be in law enforcement don't want to be in the detention center and a lot of people come to work in the detention center. They're looking for the opportunity to move forward and go work in the enforcement side. So, we have to improve that environment and that's what we're doing, improving our environment in the detention center. Like I mentioned earlier, the locks failed. We hired new people and inmates were able to pop the lock on the cell and come out of their cell. Uh and you have one deputy in that unit with all those inmates. We've replaced all those locks. Thanks to Quorum Court giving us money to do that. It's about almost $2 million dollars to replace all those locks. We've done that. We're increasing the safety of the facility and I believe by doing that, we're going to see a change where we'll be able to retain more people. We're replacing the central control systems. That's what the systems that open up the doors. We are replacing the metal detectors with body scanners that can detect drugs and cellphones and other things. So, we're making a safer facility and and I think by doing that, we're going to be able to retain more people but it's a continuation of trying to recruit, recruit, recruit, and share people about the opportunity to come work at the sheriff's office to looking at the opportunities they have to move up and rank and have an impact to improve the quality life of people in our community. Thank you.
Keller: The way you recruit people is you provide a working environment that they feel comfortable in, they feel like they're well led, they feel like they're cared for. You have got to make sure that your people know that you are going to take care of their personal and their professional needs, both. We intend to do that by going out and recruiting veterans. We have already talked with the two sixteen. military police, battalion over in Arkansas Guard. We have relations there. We are going to these people whose jobs and their military training is police work. We're going to recruit them. We're going to bring them in. We're already working in the high schools with some high schools talking to them. Um and with other organizations in the Hispanic community. We've been talking to them because we need Spanish speakers. We need to be able to get into the communities because if you recruit from the communities, those officers will be able to go back down into that community and they will be able to relate and it will be safer for them. It will be safer for the community. It is about trust. It's about confidence. It's about training. We will train them so that they have the faith in themselves, the people around them, their leadership and they know that they will be taken care of. The salaries are not great but they're not that bad. When I went to the county, I took an $11, 000 a year pay cut because I wanted to be out there with the men and the women of the Pulaski County Sheriff's Office. We provide the environment, they'll feel the same.
Neal Moore: You know, we all wish that law enforcement officers could solve, could stop crime. Impossible. What you see is the, you know, it's a, we have a, we have a society many who are living in hopelessness which is, oftentimes, law enforcement has to deal with that. What do you see as the greatest challenges of local law enforcement in the next decade And how can we, how can we get into the community and what ideas do you have to, to reach into the community and and try to establish trust and good relationships?
Q: How would you build relationships in the community?
Higgins: So, it's so important that we build relationships in the community. We are not an occupying force. It is not just about going and making an arrest. We will do those things but it's about building relationships in the community. It's about going into the community, going to the neighborhood meetings, and talking to them, having presentations with them. You know, we partner with the food bank, the Arkansas Food Bank. We partnered with AT&T Arkansas, providing food packs three days worth of non-perishable foods in the trunk of police cars and our deputies when they come across a need in the community, you can meet those needs. If we're going to build relationships, we're in the community. We are driving down the streets, We're interacting with people in the community. We're seeing the need. So, we have to build partnerships with other organizations like the food bank, like City Serve, and other churches that provide tangible needs and when we see that, then, we can relate the information and they can meet the tangible needs but sometimes people get in kids getting in criminal activity but they're trying to meet they're trying to meet needs in the community. Trying to keep the lights on. They're helping grandmother keep the lights on. They're doing those kind of things. So, we have to do that. We have to build a strong relationship in the community. What we do, we have what we call a supper with the sheriff's office. When we go into the different parts of the community, we bring members of the sheriff's office and we sit down, we have a meal together, but the Sheriff's office doesn't pay for it. The neighborhood organization has to pay for it but we bring different people. Mechanic out of the jail. We bring other people there to sit down and build relationships because that's how you address crime in the community is building relationships in the community. That's how you also recruit in the community by building those relationships in the community.
Keller: Uh we cannot just be focused on making arrests. We have to build relationships and we have to see the needs in the community and work with various organizations to help meet that need and when the community sees us as a resource to the community. Then, we end up with a stronger and we'll end up with a safer community. the first thing that we've got to do if we want to be able to get down in the communities and work is we have got to get back to the basics. We have got to take control of our streets and our communities back from those that don't respect your rights, your property, your lives. As I said earlier, we are a county. There are five major municipalities in the county but none of us can bring the security back to where it needs to be by ourselves. We've got to come together. We have got to show those that would do harm to anybody else that the days, their days are limited. They need to go somewhere else. Once we do that, then, we get down into the communities and we as we said, we're going to recruit out of em. We're going to work with them. We're going to work through em and then, what we're going to do is we're going to show the people in those communities that the uniform that we wear and the badge that we carry and that the weapon that we carry is what we do for a living but that's not who we are. We are husbands. We are fathers. We're grandfathers. We're mothers. And when they understand that and when they see that and they see our deputies out there doing and doing and doing and a lot of times they see them by themselves because it's not like Little Rock. We don't have the manpower. They're going to see them as individuals and as individuals, we will be able to talk to them. They will be able to talk to us. We will be able to develop an understanding that will allow us to then even take security and policing missions to the next level.
Closing Comments
Higgins: You know, it has been a pleasure to serve you as Pulaski County Sheriff. Uh we've accomplished a lot in three and a half years. You know, we look at the budget, the county budget. There's only so much resources we can get from the county. They have limited resources. So, we've looked at grants. And we've given, we got over $3 million dollars in grants to help fund the things that we do at the sheriff's office. We also had someone establish a foundation. Uh Pulaski County Prevention and Reentry Foundation to bring resources from the private sector to support our youth program and to support our re-entry program. You know, we believe in a holistic approach to dealing with crime in our community. You know, we believe in having partnerships and we partner, we were contacted by Advance Auto. They want to partner with us. They give us a $25 gift card. So, if we stop a vehicle that has a bulb out or tail light out instead of issuing a citation, we can give them a gift card so they can get that fixed. We're moving forward in the sheriff's department. We can't go backwards. We have to continue to move forward. 21st century policing and and you know, continue to make repairs in the sheriff's office. We look at the data that we've been able to collect. I know that 70% of the time, deputies don't have a backup on a call and I'm only two deputies short in enforcement and so we're looking at bringing more people in. We work with the Quorum Court and they're going to do a study. I believe we need about 22 more deputies in patrol but we're doing a study. So, we're working with the Quorum Court. I think it's very important that as a sheriff that you're able to work with the quorum court, work with the community, look at the issues in our community, and address those issues. Come together and address those issues. Have a holistic approach. We are community focused. So, we're part of the community. We're empowered by the community. And so we have to be part of the community. We're safety driven, not risk driven. We're going to make arrests but we have to look at the issues in our community that create an unsafe environment for our citizens. An integrity base. We're going to do what's right which means we're also going to hold people accountable. We're going to hold deputies accountable. We're going to hold our administration accountable. We're going to do what's right. We continue to do what's right and we want to continue to serve this community. We are moving forward. There's so much more need to be done and I look forward to continue to serve you as Pulaski County Sheriff. Thank you.
Keller: I also would like to thank you for coming out tonight. Uh You are the people that we serve. You are the people that we answer to. We will need your feedback routinely. I hope that this time to come together tonight will let you know that I will be accessible to you. I am the only candidate on the stage that has been a Pulaski County deputy. I know what it's like to be out there. I can remember when Pulaski County was the premier enforcement agency in this state. I remember the leadership, I remember the butt chewings just as well as the pats on the back. But at the end of the day, I knew that we were a family. And I knew that I could go to them, my superiors with any question, with any problem, with any situation, and if it was personal or professional, they were going to help me out. We got to go back to those days. We have got to make the Pulaski County Sheriff's Office, the premier law enforcement agency in this state, and we can do it. There is no doubt in my mind I have served my country and the communities that I live in for five decades. I have enjoyed just about every bit of it. The lord has blessed me with those experiences. I want to take those experiences now to turn this sheriff's office around to serve you.
Forum Transcript: Higgins, Keller; Sheriff
Forum Transcript: Higgins, Keller; Sheriff
Forum Transcript: Higgins, Keller; Sheriff
The following is a rush transcript and has been lightly edited to correct transcription errors and has been formatted for publication.
Paid subscriptions make this reporting possible
Subscribe if you like, pay if you can
Pulaski County Sheriff: Incumbent Eric Higgins vs. Paul “Blue” Keller
Opening comments
Eric Higgins
Thank you everyone for being here. I know it's been a long night. I appreciate you standing here with us for a little bit longer. Uh you know, four years ago, I ran for Pulaski County Sheriff and there were some things I wanted to accomplish. You know, I realized that the county and the sheriff's office did not have in-car cameras or body cameras in their vehicles. Didn't have GPS in their vehicles. So, that was something I wanted to address was to get the body cameras and I can say we have body cameras. We have body cameras even in the detention center. We're the first agency to have body cameras in the detention center. The thing I was looking at is increasing our response time or or improving our response time and we've been able to do that. Um unfortunately, when I took office at the sheriff's office, we weren't we weren't tracking crime or response times at that time but we were able to increase the technology to be able to do that. Uh you know, one thing I wanted to do was look at and embrace the history of the Pulaski County Sheriff's Office. I don't know if and if you remember that the sheriff's office has what we call the Junior Deputy Program that was started by Sheriff [Tom] Gulley and it's 1947 when he started that. That program kind of went away from the sheriff's office. So, I would embrace the history of the sheriff's office and we brought back the Junior Deputy Mentoring Program for our kids because it's very important that we invest in our kids and help them to follow in the right direction. Also, what I want to do is implement a re-entry program at the detention center. You know, some would say, what is the detention center? What does a county detention center have to do with reentry? I tell you, it has everything to do with with reentry because 75, 80% of the people booked into the Pulaski County Jail are released to our community and therefore, we need to try to address that issue and we've put together a program, a reentry program to help those who are in our facility, who want help to come out and and not reoffend and currently, we have about a 17% recidivism rate in our facility. Uh if you compare that to the state, the state has about a 47% recidivism rate and that means most people in our programs are coming out and are successful. Um we also when we look at the sheriff's office, you know, we have to have a holistic approach to dealing with crime. Now, we're going to arrest people. We're going to put people in jail. We do those things. We write tickets but we have to have a holistic approach that means looking at the issues in our community, building strong relationships in the community. That's why we have a neighborhood coordinator, a person who is a civilian person, works with us that works in our community. We have a citizens advisory group that we establish as people coming to the sheriff's office and we meet on a regular basis to talk about issues in our community and how we can address those issues in our community. In the sheriff's office, what I've tried to do is ensure that we are 21st century policing with technology. It's been mentioned. You know, and I can say it was mentioned at $2 million dollars a grant. We just got another $1. 6 million dollars in grants received this year. So, over $4 million dollars, approximately $4 million dollars in grants and three and a half years to address equipment in the facility to make it safer, to work with our youth in the community, and also work with our reentry and and what we're doing is trying to make a safer community and I can say in Pulaski County, in our area, we cover violent crime is 13% because what we're doing as a team. Appreciate your vote. Thank you.
Paul “Blue” Keller
Thank you, Neal. Thank you all that set this up. Uh we really appreciate it. I appreciate y'all sticking around while others left because we found throughout the campaign that a lot of folks don't even understand that if they live in the cities, that they vote in the county. We want you to know that you are part of the county and that we very very much value y'all just like the folks in the unincorporated areas. As Neal said, I'm from Arkansas, went to school up at [Arkansas] Tech, went straight in the army, infantry, airborne, ranger, special forces qualified. I was in there for 23 and a half years. I obtained Lieutenant Colonel and while I was there, I actually got to participate in what was called a crisis in Rwanda. And I think that's important for y'all to know because what we saw over there was the worst that men had for his fellow man but then we came together. We came with military. We came with law enforcement. We came together with NGOs, non-governmental organizations. We came in touch with the different groups in the area. And we sat down at the table and we started hammering things out. And within about 2 months, we had completely turned it around. And if you go back and you and you go YouTube or whatever you want and look at the Rwanda crisis and look at what they've got going over there now. It's fantastic. The love for each other. They've got, they've got past the hate. They got past the different racisms and they're doing very very well. I believe that we're getting close to the worst that we're doing for our fellow man right here in the county right now. We've got way too much crime. Crime is rising. Crime is rising. And here's the thing. If you look out the window, you're you're you're living here in the city. Folks are out in the county. You look out the window and your neighbor's house is burning down. Are you going to sit there in the chair and wait till it gets to your house? Or are you going to get up and go out and do something about it? And help your neighbor. We in the county and in the Pulaski County Sheriff's Office, I see us as being the epoxy that brings the PDs together. I have been endorsed by the Maumelle PD, the Little Rock PD, the Jacksonville PD, the Sherwood PD, the African American coalition of Arkansas the chapter 49 of the Special Forces Association I intend to work with all of these agencies to bring it together to make your streets, your homes, your areas safer for you and your families.
Question: Pulaski County, we'll have a new prosecutor next year How do you plan on working with that office to ensure law enforcement goals are met?
Higgins: You know, as sheriff, I work with the current prosecutor and I've already met with mister Jones, the new prosecutor and we've discussed some of his ideas. Um things are going to continue as always. We have to work together with the prosecutor's office to ensure that we are addressing crime and and when we are working with them as far as we prosecute individuals but also when you look at the detention center. Um we work with the prosecutor's office and the sheriff's office has worked with the prosecutor's office for a number of years during the Doc Hales administration dealing with the people coming into the facility. The number of people being arrested and those who are being released by authority, the prosecutor's office. That there is a list that's been going on for years and the current prosecutor works through. We've worked through a list with them. We've discussed that with the current prosecutor and we'll sit down with him and discuss ways we can continue to work together. Thank you.
Keller: Yes, sir. It's critical that that we work with the prosecutors I was speaking with Tim Griffin [Arkansas Attorney General candidate] not too long ago and I think everybody here understands if you've if you've been reading the papers, there's sentencing guides and matrices that determine how long a person has to stay in jail based on the crimes that they're committing on. I think that we would all agree because you read in the paper routinely that individuals who have gotten out of jail are back and they're doing things. They should still be in jail. So, Griffin is saying that what he's going to do is he's going to work with the legislature to try to change the sentencing matrices so that people spend more time in the jail if they need to and these are we're talking about violent criminals obviously. So, we've got to work with them and our capacity now as a director of the Criminal Investigation Division for the Insurance Department. We work all around the state. Uh we had lawyers today to go all the way down in El Dorado. Uh we see how important the local elected prosecutors are and they are the ones that actually decide whether to file a case or not. So, what we do is we investigate it. we present it to em, and then we have to live with what they decide to do. So, that is a very, very important part of the sheriff's office.
Neal Moore: This is a topic that's always hard to deal with, hard to talk about, hard to solve, who's ever going to solve it. I don't know. But would you support and and what ideas do you have for the possibility of the expansion of a second jail or a building in North Pulaski County and what do we need to do to get our jail to where it needs to be?
Q: Would you support jail expansion or a second detention facility?
Higgins: You know great, that's a great question talking about the detention center, expansion of detention. Is it necessary? Uh in some ways, there is some need for a new building. The current building we have was built in 1994 and when the county passed the tax to build that facility, there was no money to maintain the facility and when you're dealing with with a facility, you've gotta have the maintenance to to support that facility and we've had to spend in in this last two years spending over $3 million dollars just preparing the facility from locks that that can be compromised by detainees to replacing those locks to other systems in the facility. We've gotta correct those. You know, when you when you look at the capacity, I think we also have to look at what are we doing to get people out of that jail that won't reoffend and I think we can we can look at a reentry program that that we allow more people to be involved in the program. You need more space for that. Do you need more space to house more people? We do need more space to house some of the violent criminals. But that's the decision that the county's going to have to we as citizens are going to have to decide. Do we want to have more bed space in a county jail? But also it's not just having bed space but it's also reentry programs. How do we get people out of our facility that won't reoffend? But sometimes people are dealing with their primary issue. They're dealing with this drug addiction. And if somebody's dealing drug addiction and they're breaking into our houses. They're going to do 10 to 15 burglaries for any law enforcement agency. Uh arrest them and that those ten burglaries represents 30 victims in our community. That's people living in a home. That's neighbors, people at work. And so we have to address that. We have to address the underlying issue of why people commit crime. And try to address that. So they don't reoffend and become more serious create more serious crime. We have to address that. It's not just building more prisons to house more people or more jails to house more people. We have to look at what we are doing to help those who want those who are coming out of our facility. Maybe what the real issue is mental health issues, or drug addiction issues. We gotta address that at the same time. Thank you.
Keller: Agree with a lot that the sheriff had to say. Um we have to keep in mind that when it comes down at the end of the day, so much of it is determined by how much money is available. Uh you have to be able to make a case to go to the court, to go to the residence of the county to see. So, what we intend to do, what I intend to do right off the bat is make better use of the space that we have to make better operations of the facility so that folks can move in, move through, and move out as necessary. We believe that there's a greater value to education and motivation of personnel than it is to the incarceration of those personnel. So, what we do want to do is we want to work with programs that will identify working back again with the prosecutors as we were talking about and identifying the violent people and identifying those others that really don't need to be in jail that are probably going to learn from their first bad experience. We're looking at weekend jails. We want to be able to talk. We want to be able to get people in. People that have maybe written a lot of hot checks. That's the only way they see that they can feed their family. We bring em into jail on Friday night. They work with the work service on Saturday, Sunday, Sunday night. They go back home, get a good shower, and spend some time with their families. They're back to their jobs on Monday. We get them out of the way. We need to look at more electronic monitoring. We need to be able to get people out where we know you can keep an eye on em, get em out of the jail, make more space in the jail so that we can expand with what we've got as opposed to having to bill more.
Question: This is obviously a nationwide problem. How do you plan to attract and keep qualified deputies?
Higgins: As you mentioned, it is a nationwide problem trying to get people into law enforcement. You know, you have to look at salaries, you have to look at benefits, retirement issues are at play. But it's trying to attract the right people. Um because you don't just want anyone wanting to be in law enforcement. You have to have quality people to be in the profession. So, we are working toward that. We've established the sheriff's office under my administration to establish our own recruit school. Uh, authorized by the state and so we're able to recruit More people on our enforcement side. Uh I'm happy to say we're about three deputies short on enforcement and and so while you look at a lot of agencies in Pulaski County are struggling to fill this position. But it is a nationwide issue. We have to continue to try to improve the environment, improve the equipment, improve the training that we provide, and we've gone from 16 hours of training to 48 hours of annual training at the sheriff's office. Um you know, we have to look at work with the quorum court. Look at salaries. We compete with the surrounding agencies. You've heard today, you've heard people talking about the Maumelle Police Department. Uh we need to increase the salaries in Maumelle. That means that's a competition for the Pulaski County Sheriff's Office and so we have to look at that retirement system. I think we have to look at longevity pay. Those kinds of things to bring people in but you also have to help people realize it's a career, not just a job. It's a career and gets people who understand that this is about our community. It's about our safety and our community and so we have to continue to push that we continue to look for ways we've worked with the Quorum Court. We've got a $5, 000 bonus for new hires and I think that has significantly helped us where we, like I said, we have about three vacancies in our enforcement site. Detention was still struggling. Try to fill those positions. Most people who want to be in law enforcement don't want to be in the detention center and a lot of people come to work in the detention center. They're looking for the opportunity to move forward and go work in the enforcement side. So, we have to improve that environment and that's what we're doing, improving our environment in the detention center. Like I mentioned earlier, the locks failed. We hired new people and inmates were able to pop the lock on the cell and come out of their cell. Uh and you have one deputy in that unit with all those inmates. We've replaced all those locks. Thanks to Quorum Court giving us money to do that. It's about almost $2 million dollars to replace all those locks. We've done that. We're increasing the safety of the facility and I believe by doing that, we're going to see a change where we'll be able to retain more people. We're replacing the central control systems. That's what the systems that open up the doors. We are replacing the metal detectors with body scanners that can detect drugs and cellphones and other things. So, we're making a safer facility and and I think by doing that, we're going to be able to retain more people but it's a continuation of trying to recruit, recruit, recruit, and share people about the opportunity to come work at the sheriff's office to looking at the opportunities they have to move up and rank and have an impact to improve the quality life of people in our community. Thank you.
Keller: The way you recruit people is you provide a working environment that they feel comfortable in, they feel like they're well led, they feel like they're cared for. You have got to make sure that your people know that you are going to take care of their personal and their professional needs, both. We intend to do that by going out and recruiting veterans. We have already talked with the two sixteen. military police, battalion over in Arkansas Guard. We have relations there. We are going to these people whose jobs and their military training is police work. We're going to recruit them. We're going to bring them in. We're already working in the high schools with some high schools talking to them. Um and with other organizations in the Hispanic community. We've been talking to them because we need Spanish speakers. We need to be able to get into the communities because if you recruit from the communities, those officers will be able to go back down into that community and they will be able to relate and it will be safer for them. It will be safer for the community. It is about trust. It's about confidence. It's about training. We will train them so that they have the faith in themselves, the people around them, their leadership and they know that they will be taken care of. The salaries are not great but they're not that bad. When I went to the county, I took an $11, 000 a year pay cut because I wanted to be out there with the men and the women of the Pulaski County Sheriff's Office. We provide the environment, they'll feel the same.
Neal Moore: You know, we all wish that law enforcement officers could solve, could stop crime. Impossible. What you see is the, you know, it's a, we have a, we have a society many who are living in hopelessness which is, oftentimes, law enforcement has to deal with that. What do you see as the greatest challenges of local law enforcement in the next decade And how can we, how can we get into the community and what ideas do you have to, to reach into the community and and try to establish trust and good relationships?
Q: How would you build relationships in the community?
Higgins: So, it's so important that we build relationships in the community. We are not an occupying force. It is not just about going and making an arrest. We will do those things but it's about building relationships in the community. It's about going into the community, going to the neighborhood meetings, and talking to them, having presentations with them. You know, we partner with the food bank, the Arkansas Food Bank. We partnered with AT&T Arkansas, providing food packs three days worth of non-perishable foods in the trunk of police cars and our deputies when they come across a need in the community, you can meet those needs. If we're going to build relationships, we're in the community. We are driving down the streets, We're interacting with people in the community. We're seeing the need. So, we have to build partnerships with other organizations like the food bank, like City Serve, and other churches that provide tangible needs and when we see that, then, we can relate the information and they can meet the tangible needs but sometimes people get in kids getting in criminal activity but they're trying to meet they're trying to meet needs in the community. Trying to keep the lights on. They're helping grandmother keep the lights on. They're doing those kind of things. So, we have to do that. We have to build a strong relationship in the community. What we do, we have what we call a supper with the sheriff's office. When we go into the different parts of the community, we bring members of the sheriff's office and we sit down, we have a meal together, but the Sheriff's office doesn't pay for it. The neighborhood organization has to pay for it but we bring different people. Mechanic out of the jail. We bring other people there to sit down and build relationships because that's how you address crime in the community is building relationships in the community. That's how you also recruit in the community by building those relationships in the community.
Keller: Uh we cannot just be focused on making arrests. We have to build relationships and we have to see the needs in the community and work with various organizations to help meet that need and when the community sees us as a resource to the community. Then, we end up with a stronger and we'll end up with a safer community. the first thing that we've got to do if we want to be able to get down in the communities and work is we have got to get back to the basics. We have got to take control of our streets and our communities back from those that don't respect your rights, your property, your lives. As I said earlier, we are a county. There are five major municipalities in the county but none of us can bring the security back to where it needs to be by ourselves. We've got to come together. We have got to show those that would do harm to anybody else that the days, their days are limited. They need to go somewhere else. Once we do that, then, we get down into the communities and we as we said, we're going to recruit out of em. We're going to work with them. We're going to work through em and then, what we're going to do is we're going to show the people in those communities that the uniform that we wear and the badge that we carry and that the weapon that we carry is what we do for a living but that's not who we are. We are husbands. We are fathers. We're grandfathers. We're mothers. And when they understand that and when they see that and they see our deputies out there doing and doing and doing and a lot of times they see them by themselves because it's not like Little Rock. We don't have the manpower. They're going to see them as individuals and as individuals, we will be able to talk to them. They will be able to talk to us. We will be able to develop an understanding that will allow us to then even take security and policing missions to the next level.
Closing Comments
Higgins: You know, it has been a pleasure to serve you as Pulaski County Sheriff. Uh we've accomplished a lot in three and a half years. You know, we look at the budget, the county budget. There's only so much resources we can get from the county. They have limited resources. So, we've looked at grants. And we've given, we got over $3 million dollars in grants to help fund the things that we do at the sheriff's office. We also had someone establish a foundation. Uh Pulaski County Prevention and Reentry Foundation to bring resources from the private sector to support our youth program and to support our re-entry program. You know, we believe in a holistic approach to dealing with crime in our community. You know, we believe in having partnerships and we partner, we were contacted by Advance Auto. They want to partner with us. They give us a $25 gift card. So, if we stop a vehicle that has a bulb out or tail light out instead of issuing a citation, we can give them a gift card so they can get that fixed. We're moving forward in the sheriff's department. We can't go backwards. We have to continue to move forward. 21st century policing and and you know, continue to make repairs in the sheriff's office. We look at the data that we've been able to collect. I know that 70% of the time, deputies don't have a backup on a call and I'm only two deputies short in enforcement and so we're looking at bringing more people in. We work with the Quorum Court and they're going to do a study. I believe we need about 22 more deputies in patrol but we're doing a study. So, we're working with the Quorum Court. I think it's very important that as a sheriff that you're able to work with the quorum court, work with the community, look at the issues in our community, and address those issues. Come together and address those issues. Have a holistic approach. We are community focused. So, we're part of the community. We're empowered by the community. And so we have to be part of the community. We're safety driven, not risk driven. We're going to make arrests but we have to look at the issues in our community that create an unsafe environment for our citizens. An integrity base. We're going to do what's right which means we're also going to hold people accountable. We're going to hold deputies accountable. We're going to hold our administration accountable. We're going to do what's right. We continue to do what's right and we want to continue to serve this community. We are moving forward. There's so much more need to be done and I look forward to continue to serve you as Pulaski County Sheriff. Thank you.
Keller: I also would like to thank you for coming out tonight. Uh You are the people that we serve. You are the people that we answer to. We will need your feedback routinely. I hope that this time to come together tonight will let you know that I will be accessible to you. I am the only candidate on the stage that has been a Pulaski County deputy. I know what it's like to be out there. I can remember when Pulaski County was the premier enforcement agency in this state. I remember the leadership, I remember the butt chewings just as well as the pats on the back. But at the end of the day, I knew that we were a family. And I knew that I could go to them, my superiors with any question, with any problem, with any situation, and if it was personal or professional, they were going to help me out. We got to go back to those days. We have got to make the Pulaski County Sheriff's Office, the premier law enforcement agency in this state, and we can do it. There is no doubt in my mind I have served my country and the communities that I live in for five decades. I have enjoyed just about every bit of it. The lord has blessed me with those experiences. I want to take those experiences now to turn this sheriff's office around to serve you.