City of Little Rock approves lease agreements for LRPD vehicles

Little Rock, Arkansas – On Tuesday, the board of directors for the city of Little Rock gave their approval for spending more than $1.2 million to continue supporting the vehicle lease agreements for the Little Rock Police Department. The director of Fleet services for the city provides an explanation regarding the significance of those funds to public safety.

Willie Hinton, who works for Fleet services, stated that the Little Rock Police Department cannot effectively keep the city safe if they do not have the appropriate equipment. He stated that the taxpayers ought to be aware that more than 350 of those patrol and unmarked vehicles require a significant amount of maintenance.

“It’s an expensive endeavor, but it’s truly important to us that when we say that we have our patrolmen on the street, that our patrolmen are on the street,” Hinton said. “You have to have the tools they need to do that.”

According to Hinton, the cost of each patrol vehicle rises to $78,000 once all of the necessary communication devices and other equipment are installed. He stated that patrol vehicles have idle hours, and each hour is equivalent to 33 miles and that they constantly need to be replaced.

“Once you get over 100,000 miles and whatever those hours are, while it looks like you have 100,000 miles on it, it might have 200,000 miles on it based on the idle hours,” he said. “Police idle a lot because they have to keep that equipment running in the car.”

According to Hinton, in order to strengthen the non-patrol division, they leased a number of vehicles from Enterprise leasing corporation, with the exception of the 51 patrol cars. According to him, their fleet services have a yearly budget of 18 million dollars, which is used to cover various costs such as insurance, fuel costs, and maintenance.

According to Hinton, the vast majority of their funds are allocated to the upkeep and operation of the LRPD vehicles. He stated that they are currently formulating a strategy to revise the take-home car policy of the department within the next month.