FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — With violent crimes increasing nationwide, the Fayetteville City Council and Fayetteville Police Department (FPD) are looking at ways to increase the number of police officers, taking a proactive stance against the rise of violence in the area.
The $625,000 grant will fund five full-time police officers over the course of three years with the purpose of the grant to target violent crimes and gun violence through community policing.
“It would give them give them the opportunity to target those specific crimes and those areas that we need to target," said Fayetteville Police Sgt. Tony Murphy.
Community policing is a big portion of what the FPD does, with the department hosting more than 200 community events each year that target gun violence.
"If we receive this grant we would go out and talk about gun safety, we’d not only talk about it with adults...if permitted we would talk with children. We’ve done backpacking initiatives, we’ve also done.. not only backpacking initiatives, we’ve done food drives, and we’ve done national nights out," FPD Chief Mike Reynolds said.
This grant provides officers more time to focus on educating the community and taking guns off the streets.
“Where normal patrol officers, they’re out patrolling, doing accident reports, taking other types of reports, they’re running from call to call and often times don’t have a lot of time to stop and educate the community when it comes to gun violence,” Murphy said.
In 2020, FPD saw a 26% increase in violence with 18 shootings and tied a record for seven homicides. The following year had a 4% increase.
"We know what’s going on in our communities, I think it behooves us to get ahead of that in Fayetteville, I think this grant will help us do that,” Murphy said.
Chief Reynolds says they are providing all this data to the city council members and says he is hopeful for their support.
He points out that the safety of citizens is important for both the police department and elected officials as well.
Chief Reynolds says if the grant is not approved they'll find other options to address the gun violence in Fayetteville. The city council will vote on the initiative next Tuesday night, June 7.
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