Parkin Police Department put out to pasture

Our View

Parkin Police Department put out to pasture

Anyone who has lived in these parts for any length of time and travel U.S. Highway 64 between here and Wynne know the economically depressed hamlets of Earle and Parkin are best known for their notorious money-grabbing speed traps.

We’ve often wondered why the taxpaying citizens of these two rural communities would want to invest their money to finance ill-equipped and deficient police departments other than to have these low-paid and sometimes untrained “officers” prey upon innocent motorists who happen to be accused of exceeding the speed limit.

As we all know this stretch of highway is a popular route for motorists to use traveling to nearby recreation and vacation locations such as Heber Springs, Mountain Home and the like.

Knowing most of those motorists traveling this route are “outsiders,” these so-called law enforcement officers purposely park their, often-times, old and worn out cop cars on the side of the highway just waiting to stop their next victim.

We all know that while they have learned to keep their quotas within the law these two dying towns subsidize their mediocre budgets with the fine money they rake in from these transients.

To the of many people familiar with these shenanigans, news the other day that Parkin Mayor Willie Patterson announced the layoff of 10 police department employees and turned over law enforcement responsibilities to Cross County Sheriff J.R. Smith is certainly reason to celebrate, at least for the time being.

It seems this mayor and city council are feuding as well as issues the mayor has with the interim police chief who he fired and was later reinstated by the majority of the city council.

On Feb. 25, Patterson sued Wilson, saying he had not made a request to Patterson’s office for an appeal of his termination within 10 days.

The lawsuit filed by Patterson against the interim police chief earlier this year has since been combined with a lawsuit the mayor filed against the Parkin City Council in 2005 over whether it had the authority to initiate the firing of city employees.

While it is nice to know this “Barney Fife,” so-called police department, has been shut down, the fact of the matter is that this is all over a power struggle between the mayor and city council, even though it is ridiculous for a economically depressed tiny town such as Parkin to spend its dwindling tax base on something that is unnecessary in light of the fact that law enforcement can and will be provided by Sheriff Smith as well as the Arkansas State Police.

Meanwhile, the neighboring town of Earle, also a depressed and economically struggling shrinking “city” of just over 2,000 inhabitants, has a controversial mayor who can’t seem to get along with the city council.

Financial issues and personality conflicts, with poor judgment in hiring practices, has interfered, with aggressive ticketing on Highway 64.

This incorporated city’s police department has undergone massive turnover and the city’s poor maintenance of city vehicles has left one if its newest police cars with a blown engine and a $7,000 repair bill.

The city’s 2014 Dodge Charger police car blew an engine rod because it was low on oil and hadn’t been properly maintained.

In addition to the police car, the city’s bush hog, which is less than two years old, is also damaged, as well as its tractor.

The one single question that repeatedly comes to mind in all this is why the taxpaying citizens of these two depressed towns put up with a lack of leadership, accountability and just plain good, common sense?

There is no good reason for such waste and unnecessary spending when, in reference to law enforcement, Earle can easily request assistance from Crittenden County Sheriff Mike Allen.