Incoming West Memphis Police Chief casts vision

Pope makes first address to the public, pledges ‘ accountabil-ity, transparency…

engaging the community’ in new role

news@theeveningtimes.com New West Memphis Police Chief Michael Pope was praised by his former boss before announcing priorities for the department. The chief gazed onward, outward and inward during his public introduction the Wonder City's top cop. He looked to the future for the police department. Pope looked inside the department and announced changes. The chief looked out of the department and into community relations.

He made the remarks at his introductory press conference and also at his first city police commission meeting.

Pope's former boss, Shelby County Sheriff Floyd Bonner issued a glowing endorsement of the new chief in an exclusive interview with The Evening Times before the press conference, June 2.

'I am so proud of him; I think you guys hit a home run,' said Bonner. 'He has a good servant's heart. He is very personable. Soon, your citizens will find out he is very approachable.

That's important now in the climate we live in with all the issues concerning the police. He will be very community oriented. He'll have community meetings and be very connected and transparent because that is what he did here. He will be out knocking on doors before you know it.'

Pope holds a masters degree courtesy of the Shelby County Sheriff Office and 30 years experience, of late in the domestic violence and sex crimes division as a detective lieutenant. According to Bonner, Pope had supervised 12 people at his last county post.

Pope announced his first priority as managing the department. The chief issued his watch words.

'The forefront of my service I commit to accountability, transparency, intentionally engaging the community and having a zero tolerance administration,' said Pope. 'As I transition into this new role I can guarantee a strong stance for excellence with our highly capable officers in West Memphis.'

Pope took a communityfirst perspective.

'I plan to build trust with this community and begin with conversations in the faith based leaders, school leaders, and restructuring the broken images of our youth, ' said Pope.

After almost a week on the job Pope brought some specifics improvements to the police commission.

'The first week was a lot of what I'd call pomp and circumstance,' said Pope. The chief moved his agenda for transparency and accountability forward with commissioners. He announced intentions to form an internal affairs division headed by a sergeant or lieutenant.

'Citizens with a complaint will receive a letter with a statement of the result,' said Pope.

The chief said he'd consider a remote office like a substation as an office for internal affairs. The department has two substations, one outside the Holiday Plaza Shopping Center and none at the new fire station on East Broadway at South

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Photo by John Rech CHIEF (cont.) Loop. ‘A lot of times people don’t want to go to police headquarters

to make a complaint about the police,' said Pope.

The new chief wanted to get to know each officer in the department.

'I plan to meet with all of them and sit down with each of them for at least ten minutes,' said Pope.

Pope indicated some rebranding within the department was in order to match federal phraseology and desired to establish stricter protocols through written policies, something his Shelby County cohorts confirmed he did in his detective role.

'I want to rename our intelligence unit,' said Pope.

'We'll establish protocols to build state cases, wait for search warrants and make good arrests. We'll work with the FBI and federal tasks forces for indictments that meet the highest standards of the law.'

Pope wanted to advance surveillance technology. He plan to ask for funding to establish a drone unit to patrol the hotel and casino district to combat car theft.

The SWAT team could employ the drone as part of its emergency response as well.

Pope told commissioners he wanted to upgrade other surveillance cameras, different than the three dozen sky cops in the city.

'With slot cameras we can enter a suspect's vehicle description and the cameras will pull up any images of that vehicle type along with the plate numbers to assist our investigators,' said Pope.