Imagine an estranged husband goes to the house of his ex-wife and three young children in Port Arthur at 11 at night. The family is in bed when they hear banging at the front door and someone yelling at the top of his lungs. The children’s mother races to the front door to try and calm down her ex-husband. After two minutes of arguing he brandishes a handgun and shoots her. The children begin screaming and running in all directions.

At 11:05 p.m. a call comes into the Port Arthur police department from a neighbor stating they heard gunshots next door.

On duty officers rush to the scene arriving at 11:15 p.m. to find the man has taken his children hostage and is threatening to kill them all and himself. A call is sent by dispatchers at 11:18 p.m. to all “on call” officers to be on scene. Time is of the essence.

Four of the on call officers live in mid county, so when the emergency call comes in, they get dressed, jump in their personal vehicles and drive to the police department arriving at 11:30 pm.
They log out their designated vehicle, load up their gear and are on the road, rushing to the site of the standoff at 11:45p.m.

No sooner than 11:55 p.m. backup arrives at the location.

The scenario above may be extreme, but could be reality under a new policy put into place late last month.

On Sept. 26, directed by city council, City Manager Brian MacDougal implemented the following policy across all city departments.

“Effective Immediately, per city council, all city personnel that currently take a vehicle home, outside of city limits, with exception of our K-9 officers, are no longer allowed to take them home. This includes those individuals that are on call in various departments. No exceptions. The vehicles should be left at your place of work.”

For some departments throughout the city, I can understand how this new policy can be good. But when it comes to law enforcement, I just don’t see it or agree with it.

Initially, police officers signed an agreement with the city to take a vehicle home at the end of a shift. This was a job benefit. In exchange, the officer would make himself or herself ready for a call when needed.
This ultimately reduced the time an officer would need to respond.

Without signing this agreement, an officer can only be placed on call for a limited period of time and the officer must be paid two hours standby time for every day he or she is on call.

Now, if an officer lives outside the city limits and is called out, he or she must drive to the PAPD office in downtown Port Arthur, sign out a vehicle, load their equipment and hit the road as quickly as possible.
How realistic is this? Approximately half of the officers currently on the Port Arthur police force reside in mid county communities. So by numbers alone, there is a 50 percent probability of an officer being made later by the policy change.

Let’s look at it a little differently. Sabine Pass is in the Port Arthur city limits. If an officer lived out there it would take a good 15 to 20 minutes to get from there to downtown Port Arthur. And it would take even longer to get to the north east side of town. How does that compare to an officer living in Port Neches or Groves who could get there much faster, saving valuable time?

It’s decisions like this that boggle the mind. This is a decision that clearly was not thought through completely. I understand making decision based on expenses, finances and even public appearance, but to make a decision without understanding the full impact of how that decision will negatively affect a community is negligent.

I would be willing to bet that the next time the city and police union begin negotiating their next contract, this will be a big issue.

Rich Macke is publisher of The Port Arthur News. Contact him at rich.macke@panews.com