Grant Aims to Help Law Enforcement

Orange County was one of seven communities in North Carolina that received the grant from the Community Oriented Policing Services, or COPS, program of the Justice Department.

Other N.C. communities that secured grants are the High Point Police Department, the Monroe Department of Public Safety, the city of New Bern, the Surry County Sheriff's Department, the Vance County Sheriff's Department and the town of Troy.

Orange County Sheriff Lindy Pendergrass said the grant will enable the department to improve its automated fingerprint identification system, allowing officials to pull up such data in a matter of minutes instead of the hour it now takes.

Pendergrass said the system is used not only to obtain information on suspected criminals but is also available to citizens for background checks.

He said the department has received close to $2 million from COPS since its incarnation in 1995, using parts of this funding to create school resource officer positions. The department is on the short list to receive more funding for these jobs in the future, he said.

Gilbert Moore, spokesman for the COPS office, said the program aims to employ technology against crime.

"The goal of the program is to provide (these agencies) with funds to procure technology," Moore said.

He said that since it began in 1995, the program has successfully improved crime-fighting resources. "We have seen law enforcement agencies upgrade their technological capacity," he said.

The criteria for the grants included time saving, community policing, local domestic preparedness, information sharing and strategic planning, he said.

Moore said new tools, such as technology that will allow officers to prepare reports in their vehicles, will equate to more police in the field, which he said in turn serves as a crime deterrent.

Due to the competitive nature of the COPS program, Moore said, only 294 of the 502 applications were granted, with $62 million distributed across the nation.

"We had to leave $20 million (for the program) unfunded," he said.

He said some of the grant recipients this year had applied the previous year, and were reconsidered. "We gave them an opportunity to amend their applications," he said.

Pendergrass said Orange County has applied for technology grants for years.

The office of Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., is working with the Orange County Sheriff's Department about how to use the grant, said an Edwards spokesman.

He said crime has been reduced significantly since implementation of the COPS program. "It's a great program, and hopefully we'll be able to continue funding projects (like this for a long time)," he said. "Now is not the time to be reducing funding."

Pendergrass said the grant is much welcomed by the department.

"We're just tickled to death to get it."

The City Editor can be reached at citydesk@unc.edu.