A longtime wish from officers of the Lumberton Police Department has finally been granted, as the Lumberton Board of Aldermen recently approved the use of take-home vehicles for members of the police force.
That measure was approved at the December board meeting, where aldermen voted to allow police officers to take home their city vehicles after working hours, rather than leaving the cars at the police station overnight until the next shift.
“So the days that (the officers) work, they can travel from work to home in the patrol vehicles,” said Adrien Fortenberry, chief of the Lumberton Police Department. “Once we get enough units to where everybody can have their own vehicle … then every officer will have a take-home vehicle.”
Currently, Lumberton’s police department features five patrol cars on the road, including four regular squad cars in addition to Fortenberry’s unit. The force currently boasts four officers, although the department is budgeted for eight.
“I’m in the process of trying to recruit more people to the department,” Fortenberry said.
Prior the board’s recent decision on take-home vehicles, police officers were required to leave their patrol cars at the police station and use their personal vehicles to travel back and forth between work and home.
“Up until this point, with me being the chief, I was the only police officer that was allowed to take a vehicle home,” Fortenberry said. “So I responded all the time – when something goes on and I’m at home, that’s my department, so I respond to help those guys out myself.”
Fortenberry said the use of a take-home car for every officer should be a big asset toward recruiting new members to the department.
“It’s a big help,” he said. “If an officer is at home and we have an incident in the city that requires more officers to respond, then they’ll have that unit there at home with them to respond.
“They won’t have to waste any time going to the (police department), getting out of their personal vehicles and getting into a unit, to come to that scene. So that cuts down on the response time of officers arriving on scene to an incident.”
In addition to working with the board on take-home vehicles, Fortenberry also has collaborated with aldermen to raise the minimum pay for officers in the city. Currently, full-time certified officers receive $18 per hour, as opposed to the previous salary of $15.50 per hour.
“So now the pay is kind of up to the average of the surrounding agencies around us,” Fortenberry said. “So these are two things that we’ve worked on to try to attract more officers into the City of Lumberton.
“I think it’s going to be a big help, because there’s not a lot of people wanting to become police officers. So you have to have the tools necessary to compete with other agencies that already have these policies and pay in place.”
