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Joe Pittman (right), a Stafford deputy, and Jason Miller, a Caroline deputy, teach defensive tactics to recruits. |
BY EMILY BATTLE
The biggest impact of President Barack Obama's stimulus bill on local law enforcement agencies came earlier this year.
When the General Assembly learned that the state would receive $24.3 million in justice grant money from the legislation, it removed a proposed cut to sheriffs and other constitutional officers from the state budget.
Stafford County Sheriff Charles Jett said that saved him from cutting 14 deputies. Spotsylvania County Sheriff Howard Smith said it saved seven deputies in his department.
"We would have been in a crisis here if they had made that cut," Smith said. "Right now we can't afford not to have seven deputies. I know the economy is slowing down and people are out of work, but our work has increased. We are seeing call volumes go up."
Both sheriffs are hoping the stimulus will provide even more money so they can hire more deputies at a time when government budget situations have forced them to pare down their spending to the bare essentials.
The stimulus bill includes $1 billion in grants for hiring community police officers. Police and sheriff's departments from all over the country will compete for that money, which will pay for new officers for up to 48 months. After that period, the locality has to pledge to pay the officers' salaries for a year.
Jett said he plans to apply for 20 positions through that grant. A staffing study his department commissioned two years ago identified a need for 14 new first-responder positions and six new administrative positions.
Neither state nor local money has been available in recent years to pay for those positions, so Jett's hoping the stimulus money will help.
Smith said he plans to apply for money for six deputies.
The Fredericksburg Police Department also will likely ask for grant money for at least one officer through the community-police grant program.
The stimulus has also opened up other competitive grant programs, offering money to investigate Internet crimes against children and domestic violence.
Jett said he hopes to be able to fund at least one position with grant money to start a domestic-violence unit.
In addition to the competitive grants, the stimulus bill made money available to all Virginia localities through the Edward Byrne Justice Assistance Grant Program.
This is a program that distributes money to law enforcement agencies based on their jurisdictions' population and crime statistics.
In the past, it has provided some money for Fredericksburg and for Spotsylvania and Stafford counties, but most localities don't get the money every year, and many area localities have not received Byrne grants in any recent year.
Byrne grant money has helped departments with training or equipment purchases that they otherwise wouldn't have had money for.
The Fredericksburg Police Department, for example, has proposed to use its Byrne grant money to put officers through several training programs and to buy equipment, including a new police cruiser, that there's no money in the budget for.
But to get that money, local departments will have to fill out federal paperwork, just as for any other grant process. And most departments aren't sure exactly when they'll see the money, so it's hard to know exactly what they'll be able to do with it.
If Jett gets the competitive grant money for his requested 20 positions, he said, he would use Stafford's $120,000 allotment from the Byrne grant money to outfit those new officers with vehicles, computers and other necessary equipment.
Smith hopes to use Spotsylvania's $181,000 in Byrne grant money to put on active-shooter training--training for a situation in which a shooter is active in a school or other public setting--and buy equipment that he has had to cut from his budget.
But departments are finding it hard to make specific plans for exactly how stimulus money will help their operations, because getting the money involves a bureaucratic process that includes several different deadlines and some competition.
And since all of the money--including the money that forestalled the state cuts in the first place--is temporary, the stimulus leaves open the question of whether local and state governments will be able to shoulder the costs in two or three years.
"It's not the greatest, but it's better than nothing," Smith said. "At least for three years you're getting that money from the [federal] government."
Emily Battle: 540/374-5413
Email: ebattle@freelancestar.com
Here is what area police and sheriff's departments could receive from the justice assistant grants that are part of the stimulus package. In addition, many localities also are applying for competitive grants that are part of the stimulus bill. $59,867 Caroline County $16,996 Culpeper County $41,095 Town of Culpeper $57,076 Fauquier County $92,590 Fredericksburg $23,591 King George County $21,055 Louisa County $10,908 Orange County $181,375 Town of Orange $19,025 Spotsylvania County $120,240 Stafford County $17,503 Westmoreland County |
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