Stimulus money to be used to bring back laid-off cops

By Ed Runyan

WARREN — The Warren Police Department will attempt to use federal stimulus money to help in an effort to bring 10 police officers back from layoff and retain 20 others.

The city will get $221,231 of a U.S. Bureau of Justice Assistance Grant. The department also will get an undetermined amount of federal money from another stimulus grant called the Community Oriented Policing Services Hiring Recovery Program (known as CHRP), said Capt. Tim Bowers of the Warren Police Department.

The city will seek enough money from the CHRP program to try to bring back 10 of the 20 police officers who were laid off Jan. 1 and retain an additional 20 officers whose jobs are at risk because of the city’s continuing revenue declines, Bowers said.

The program will pay part of the wages of employees on layoff or in danger of layoff for three years, Bowers said.

In the fourth year, the city must come up with the money to pay their wages.

The city plan would be to bank the $221,231 it will receive this year from the JAG grant, along with similar amounts in 2010 and 2011, to help pay the salaries in the fourth year (2012), Bowers said.

The Trumbull County Sheriff’s Department will use its $108,045 JAG share to buy new cruisers.

Warren and the sheriff’s department received the bulk of the $423,987 the federal government allotted in stimulus money for Trumbull County law enforcement agencies.

The police departments in Niles ($41,620), Girard ($20,295), Liberty ($10,589), Howland ($8,236) and Warren Township ($13,971) shared the other $94,711.

The amount of money provided to each department was determined by crime statistics generated by the various departments.

Specifically, the grant amounts were based on the number of the most serious types of crimes, including murder, rape, robbery, burglary and assault.

Today, the Trumbull County commissioners are expected to approve an agreement between the sheriff’s department and the six other departments that governs the use of the money.

Ernie Cook, chief deputy for the sheriff’s department, said the addition of stimulus money to the county’s JAG grant allocation significantly increased the county’s funding in that category this year.

The department received only $4,650 in 2008.

Though county police departments know how much JAG grant money they will get, they have to formally apply for the funds by mid-April, officials say.

The departments also have until April 14 to apply for the CHRP money. The county hopes to use money from that grant to hire five more deputies to patrol the townships that don’t have their own police department, Cook said.

The department has 15 deputies providing law enforcement to about 50,000 county residents, Cook said.

Eleven townships already have approved resolutions supporting the idea of forming a group police force with the sheriff’s department, Cook said. They are the nine of the 10 townships in the two rows of northern townships (excluding Kinsman), plus Southington and Newton townships.

runyan@vindy.com