THOMAS Q&A, CONT.
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APRIL 24, 2014
ARKANSAS TIMES
done 35 years in law enforcement. That’s a nice, round number. Eighteen of those years, over half, I had the word “chief” associated with my name. Those are dog years. Regardless of anybody’s perspective of how cushy an assignment is, those are hard years. I would like to do some things for myself. I’d like to play a little golf. I’d like to play with my electric train. I’d like a few days off. Things that I rarely get in life: Fourth of July off. How good is that? I think the timing is good. It gives me a chance to de-escalate while I’m still healthy, to enjoy myself a little bit and have a little leisure time. AT: You think when something happens in Little Rock, you’ll still sort of sit up and start thinking about making decisions? THOMAS: Oh, no (laughs). I will recognize the difficulty of the situation. From the outside looking in, I will appreciate and understand how good or how bad the day
In that respect, I think we’re a lot better off. We’ve maintained our accreditation through three cycles while I’ve been chief. I’m very proud of that, because that’s not always easy. Our personnel have come through every time. So I think we’re positioned very, very well. Now, “better,” I’ll leave to other people to make their subjective judgments. Everybody has their own opinion of what’s good, bad or indifferent. But I think the department is positioned very well. AT: You talked about technology. I don’t guess being a cop bears much resemblance to what it was when you started in that respect. THOMAS: When I started, the radio had two channels. There was no such thing as a cell phone. The computers that existed were those big, chunky mainframes with black screens and the green type. In the patrol car, the blue lights had a choke rod.
BRIAN CHILSON
to give some resolution to families. You can appreciate, I think, the uncertainty and the anxiety the relatives have when they have situations where we haven’t brought it to a conclusion. You carry those with you. You wish you could solve them all. You hope someday something will turn. But on the main, you keep plugging away and you solve far, far more than you don’t. AT: You already retired once, in January of 2004. Why did you retire the first time and what brought you back? THOMAS: I retired the first time because I had the dream situation: I went to run a golf course (laughs). It was one of those “how can you say no” situations. It was a great job, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. But the situation at the department changed. The chief called me and asked if I’d come back to a business job. I’m of the generation that you just don’t say no to the chief of police. So, where the position [of police chief] vacated, I just felt like I wasn’t finished. I applied, and I was fortunate enough to be selected as the chief. AT: Has being chief been everything you thought it would be? Harder or easier than you thought it would be? THOMAS: You know, you have good days and bad days. I’ve been fortunate in my career. I’ve worked for a couple of chiefs and some very, very good assistant chiefs over the years. I spent nine years as an assistant chief, and I was able to see how they work on a daily basis, how they managed operations and how it affected them. But until you are in that position, I don’t think you truly appreciate it. You’re the ultimate arbiter. Everything that comes to the chief of police is a recommendation. It’s advice. Ultimately, the chief has to make a decision, and you have to make those decisions in a neutral, businesslike manner. That’s not always popular. It’s not always popular with just about any segment, whether it’s the press, the employees, whether it’s the citizens in general, one group or another. Rarely does any decision meet with universal approval. There’s always somebody that sees it a different way. You’re ultimately alone in that process. You have to do the best you can with what you have. Where you enjoy the job is seeing it all come together in the right way: people doing the right thing, working hard, producing good results. You have disappointments. You try to address those. But on the main, I can’t complain. It’s a great working environment, it’s a great job, it’s a great city. AT: So, why retire now? Why not two or three years down the road? THOMAS: I’m old! I am 58, and I think if you look back at my predecessors, they all left before that age. I got to looking at the pictures on the wall, and I realized that I was probably older than anybody since the pictures were black and white. I’ve
AFTER A NEAR-RIOT IN 2013: Talking to the media.
may be for some other people. They will always have my sympathy, my support and my admiration. But I’m going to think about other things. AT: You know, the Boy Scout Campsite Rule is to leave things better than you found it. Do you think the department and the city is in better shape now than when you became chief? THOMAS: Well, I don’t know that I can say that, because in my position, I rarely make direct impact on anything. It’s the people that are actually doing the work that produce results. I do think that the department, from the standpoint of technology, staffing and facilities, we’re in much better shape than we were five, six, seven years ago. That’s largely due to the 1-cent sales tax the voters passed a few years ago. We’ve been able to hire officers, we’ve been able to upgrade our technology and equipment. I think we’re positioned very well to face whatever challenges come in the future.
You pulled it and they rotated and went on. They were either on or off, and that was it. You look at a patrol car these days, with the laptop, with the in-car reporting, with Internet access for photographs and information that can be transmitted to the laptop, high-definition digital optics in there for recording of contacts, infrared devices, radar, GPS. The technology that’s in one patrol car now probably exceeds everything that the department had, collectively, when I started. It’s remarkable. And the practices, procedures and policies have changed. I think that’s a compliment to my predecessors, who worked very hard to improve and expand the department during their tenures. AT: Do you have any memorable failures or successes during you time here? Setbacks? Things you didn’t get done that you wanted to get done? THOMAS: You’d like everything to be done. You want to be the Olympic gymnast
who sticks the landing with arms up at the end of a vault. So I’d like for the buildings to be completed. The last class to be completed so we’re fully staffed. I’d like to finish on that note. But we’re so close right now that I feel very good about that. The disappointments? You’re always disappointed when you don’t solve something — when you have unfinished business out there. You’re always disappointed when your personnel, regardless of how well trained or how directed, sometimes they will fail you. We try to rectify that as quickly as we can, but it’s disappointing when you have those lapses in ethics. But, on the main, day in and day out, our personnel have always made me proud. They work hard, they try to do the right thing. Sometimes it doesn’t always work out. But when you look at the volume of transactions we do — 145,000 calls a year, 8,000 arrests, 25,000 tickets, and hundreds of thousands of individual contacts — and you look at the complaints, or the failures versus the successes and the commendations, it’s astonishing how professional the officers are, how well they deal with adversity, and how they keep coming back time and time again and doing the right thing. I mentioned once before, but the one thing that struck me: Several years ago, there was a tornado that came through Leawood and went up over Cammack. I happened to be the first officer on the scene because it was two blocks from my house and I was home when it came through. The first three people that I saw there were off-duty Little Rock Police officers. They weren’t called. They just knew that there was a problem — a bad situation. They were professionals and this is what they did. They immediately responded without any consideration for their own issues or problems. They knew it was a disaster and they responded. It’s that kind of spirit that the employees have that keeps you buoyed through a career. You see those things happen. You see people who are in a position to do the right thing, and they do it more often than not. That’s where you draw the pleasure from the job, to see that happen. THOMAS: You know, I was just thinking. I’m so old that I can remember when Max [Brantley, senior editor of the Arkansas Times] used a typewriter (laughs). AT: That’s pretty old! He’s been using a word processor for a while now. THOMAS: There you go. AT: You know, you talked about those ethical lapses among personnel. There have been some kind of high-profile useof-force cases while you were chief. The shooting of Eugene Ellison, Lt. David Hudson videotaped hitting a suspect, the Josh Hastings shooting. I know you might not be able to talk about specifics in any of those CONTINUED ON PAGE 14