Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott talks about violent crime at a community meeting at Second Baptist Church. Brian Chilson

Little Rock Police top brass, Mayor Frank Scott Jr. and a handful of local leaders came out Monday to talk with the public about the higher violent crime rates this year that have some people on edge.

The meeting took place at the Second Baptist Church downtown, and Pastor Preston Clegg said the breakdown of normal services and routines during the pandemic laid bare challenges that were perhaps less obvious before.

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Brian Chilson
2BC Pastor Preston Clegg shared a favorite quote, “If we do not learn to transform our pain, we will transmit it.”

The church sits between three high rises full of vulnerable people, Clegg said, and the uptick he’s seen in drug use, mental illness and violence in the neighborhood lately brought to mind a favorite quote: “If we do not learn to transform our pain, we will transmit it.”

The number of murders in Pulaski County have been creeping up since 2020, a reflection of a nationwide increase in violent crime that’s playing out in urban and rural areas alike. The number of murders in the city is still a good bit below what they were in the 1990s, when Little Rock achieved national infamy as a hotbed of gang violence. Still, Little Rock’s homicide rates are higher than the national average. In February, the Little Rock Board of Directors declared violent crime a public health emergency.

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“We do everything we can do in this city to ensure that every resident, visitor and business owner is safe,” LRPD Chief Keith Humphrey told the crowd of about 60 people filling the pews.” Each time something happens we go back to the drawing board to see what we could have done differently,” he said. Ultimately, Humphrey said, the challenge is too big to be handled by policing alone.

Brian Chilson
LRPD Chief Keith Humphrey said police need community support to combat violent crime.

“We’ve got a problem in this nation of violence conflict resolution,” Humphrey said. “People do not know how to agree to disagree and it spills over to the point where people use guns to settle their differences.”

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Humphrey also called on parents to take a more hands-on approach by digging into backpacks and reviewing their children’s cell phones to see what they’re up to.

Humphrey and Andre Dyer, the major at the 12th Street Station, said police are trying to make time to get out of their cars and into neighborhoods for more face-to-face interaction, while still working their way through the large number of calls they must answer.

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Mayor Scott acknowledged the increase in crime, and said the strategy includes increasing patrols, proactive policing and investing $2 million in prevention, intervention and treatment services for children. Scott also pointed to Arkansas’s serious gun problem, which local leaders have limited power to change.

Arkansas’s wildly permissive gun laws green light firearms for just about anyone, anywhere, at any time, and the state’s pro-gun culture correlates with high rates of violent crimes. Arkansas has the eighth highest rate of gun deaths in the nation. Despite our high rates of murders, suicides and unintended shootings, Arkansas lawmakers continue to make guns easier to come by, not harder.

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Both the mayor and the police chief expressed some frustration at not being able to do much about the flood of guns out there. When citizen Dale Carter proposed making carrying guns in public illegal inside city limits, Humphrey answered, “I wish.”

 

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