This COPS grant will fund base salary for two officers for three years with the City committing to pay for the officers’ salaries in year four. The two new officers will be dedicated to a new neighborhood community oriented policing program.
The department originally submitted the grant application in 2009 with a different scope of work and the application was not funded; however, COPS placed the grant on a pending status for any available funding in 2010. The Department received word in June of this year to resubmit the grant with any changes that may have occurred since the original application was filed. The application was modified to dedicate two officers to a neighborhood community oriented policing program.
City Manager Kevin Carruth said, “This grant will allow the Police Department to proactively address those immediate conditions that promote crime, social disorder, and the fear of crime so that as these conditions improve, neighborhoods are restored. The grant will provide the people necessary to concentrate on developing partnerships with individuals and organizations in the community as well as give us the opportunity to rethink the Department’s approach to management and problem solving.”
Paris Police Chief Bob Hundley outlined the program saying, “The genesis of the current program was a COPS grant from several years ago that provided funding for one officer for one year. That program went very well as the officer assigned to a small geographical area was able to literally clean it up and demonstrate significant reductions in crime statistics. Unfortunately, without grant support the project was not sustainable and, when the officer was removed from the program after a year, the area the officer was working returned to its previous levels of crime in about six months. Although short in duration, this pilot project proved that community policing can work in Paris.”
Currently, officers in the Patrol Division spend most of their time in patrol cars running from call to call their entire shift, leaving very little to no time to develop relationships with the community. Officers involved in community policing, on the other hand, spend more time with citizens developing mutually trusting relationships, and allows officers to move out of traditional police roles to help in the anti-crime efforts by addressing other community concerns such as dilapidated structures and overgrown lots. As the focus of the community policing program is brought to bear on a neighborhood, crime will either stop or move to another area where the attention is not as acute. Because the grant is a four-year project, officers will be able to move to where the crime has moved and continue to focus on the criminal activity.
According to Chief Hundley, the Department is in the process of analyzing its statistical data in order to identify where to begin the program. Once the targeted area has been identified, officers will begin meeting with citizens in that area. The program is not expected to begin until the end of December.