❋Public Safety & Community Connection

Strengthening Our Partnership with P.A.C.T.

Drug and alcohol addiction affects far more than the individual struggling with addiction — it affects families, children, neighborhoods, law enforcement, and our entire community.

Lonoke County already has an important resource through the Sheriff's Office:

P.A.C.T. — Peers Achieving Collaborative Treatment.

I want Ward to become a more active community partner in supporting and promoting this program. When appropriate, our officers should be able to help connect individuals and families with people who understand addiction, recovery, treatment options, and the difficult road toward long-term stability.

Law enforcement will always have an enforcement responsibility, but there are also opportunities to interrupt the cycle of addiction before the next arrest, overdose, or family crisis.

We should take advantage of the resources already available within our county and make sure families know where to turn for help.

Better Training for Real-World Encounters

Our officers encounter people during some of the most stressful moments of their lives. Those interactions can become even more complicated when someone has a mental-health condition, autism, an intellectual or developmental disability, or an acquired brain injury such as TBI.

I would like to expand hands-on training that helps officers recognize when behaviors that may initially appear to be noncompliance, intoxication, aggression, or confusion could actually be related to a disability or mental-health crisis.

Training should include practical scenarios involving autism, traumatic brain injury, developmental disabilities, mental-health crises, communication differences, sensory overload, and de-escalation.

The goal is simple:

Give our officers more tools to keep themselves and the people they encounter safe.

Voluntary Emergency Information Registry

I would also like to explore creating a

voluntary and confidential emergency-response registry.

Families could choose to provide information about a household member who may need additional assistance or a different approach during an emergency — for example, a person with autism, dementia, an intellectual or developmental disability, mobility limitations, wheelchair or a traumatic brain injury.

With appropriate privacy protections and legal review, essential information could be available to our Police and Fire Departments before or during an emergency.

A parent could tell us that their adult child with autism may not respond to verbal commands. A family could identify someone who is nonverbal, prone to wandering, uses medical equipment, or may be frightened by lights, sirens, or physical contact.

That little bit of information could make a HUGE difference when seconds matter.

People Before Technology

Technology can be a useful law-enforcement tool, but every taxpayer-funded tool should periodically have to demonstrate its value.

That includes Ward's Flock camera system.

I support conducting a transparent review of the program: How often have the cameras directly assisted Ward officers? How many arrests, stolen-vehicle recoveries, missing-person cases, or investigations can be attributed to them? What is our total annual cost? What information is retained or shared? And are we getting enough measurable public-safety benefit to justify that recurring expense? In addition to the privacy concerns of data being shared?

This isn't about taking tools away from our officers simply for the sake of cutting something.

It's about determining where our public-safety dollars do the most good.

Ward has already committed significant funding to Flock technology. Before continuing or expanding those expenditures, I believe we should compare that investment with something equally important: investing directly in our officers.

If approximately $20,000 in recurring technology costs can instead help provide modest pay increases, additional training, retention incentives, or other resources for the men and women actually answering our calls, that deserves serious consideration.

Technology should support good policing — not take priority over the people doing the policing.

Bringing Officers and the Community Together

I want our residents to know our officers before they ever need them during an emergency.

That means creating more opportunities for officers to participate in community events, neighborhood gatherings, safety programs, and informal conversations with residents.

Positive interaction builds familiarity. Familiarity builds trust.

And trust makes it easier for someone to call an officer when they need help, report something that doesn't look right, ask a question, or simply start a conversation.

My goal is a Police Department that is well-trained, well-supported, connected to the community, and equipped with resources that have demonstrated their value.

Public safety isn't just about responding to crime.

It's about building a community where our officers and our residents

know they are on the same team.