HASKELL, Ark. — Update: 10:37 p.m. According to Assistant Chief Bill Hutto, himself, Chief Brad Hicks, and Officer Tim Howard remain in the department. This is a developing story.
After a contentious city council meeting and a dispute over grant funding, various officers with the Haskell Police Department resigned.
According to Haskell's Police Chief, Brad Hicks, at around 9:00 p.m. on Monday, every police patrol officer resigned, packed up their things, and turned them in to the chief.
Last month, the state awarded Haskell Police with $100,000.
Some of the officer's demands included better pay, new life-saving equipment, new vehicles, and opening up new positions to allow for more backup.
Prior to the meeting, Lieutenant Jimmy Foreman said, "I wish the citizens would speak out and let the City Council know that you know, their officers need help. They need units. They need safety equipment, you know, every other city makes it happen. Let's make it happen in Haskell."
Mayor Crookham explained that he didn't know about any of these issues until Monday.
The officers that walked out said that they've expressed their concerns to the chief many times— but were told nothing would change.
Crookham added that some of the officer requests aren't possible with grant money due to grant restrictions on what the funds can be used for. He also said that local tax revenue isn't enough to meet those demands.
Mayor Crookham explained, "Nine days as mayor now, so I really don't know what all has been going on with the former administration... We're kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place because we don't have the money and the people is not spending the money-- don't have enough revenue."
After Officer Joshua Dicicco and Officer Foreman spoke to the city board, the Mayor said that the board would take their words "into advisement."
Though when Officer Foreman clarified with Crookham that no changes would actually be made at the meeting that night, he led the walkout.
He along with several others resigned and told the board, "Y'all can find somebody else to patrol the city."
At the time of the walkout, we confirmed with Chief Hicks that all of the patrol officers had quit.
Saline County and Arkansas State Police are both prepared to cover calls as needed until these positions get filled. The mayor's office explained that the local school resource officers will not be impacted as they are with Saline County.
Crookham also added that the nearby cities that have raised officer salaries, can hurt staffing for their small-town police department that can't afford to do that.