Valley task force gets boost with crime-fighting tools

By Denise Dick

The equipment will aid officer safety, an official said.

YOUNGSTOWN — Members of the Mahoning Valley Violent Crimes Task Force have about $12,000 worth of additional equipment to help them battle crime.

“This was all purchased by federal-forfeiture funds,” Randall A. Wellington, Mahoning County sheriff, said at a Friday morning news conference. “It’s an example of criminals’ money being used to arrest criminals.”

The equipment, consisting mostly of tools used to force entry, includes battering rams, sledgehammers, pry bars, flashlights and telescoping ladders.

Lt. Robin Lees, task-force commander, said the battering rams purchased with the forfeiture funds feature flexible handles and neoprene ends that keep shock from the force used from transferring to the person.

“Going back 25 years ago, rams were homemade,” Lees said.

The task-force officers who will benefit from the new equipment are from the sheriff’s office; Youngstown, Boardman, Campbell, Canfield, Mill Creek MetroParks, Girard and Struthers police; Mahoning County Juvenile Court Probation; Federal Bureau of Investigation; federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; Ohio State Highway Patrol; and Ohio Adult Parole Authority.

Having duplicates of the same tools enables officers to respond to more than one location simultaneously, Lees said, rather than waiting for a piece of equipment to arrive before making entry.

The collection of equipment displayed in the roll-call room of the sheriff’s department includes battering rams and sledgehammers of varied sizes. The varied sizes allow police to select the tool most appropriate to the location and situation, officers said.

“When I started, we had one ram, and that was it,” said Detective Sgt. John Elberty, commander of the Mahoning Valley Crisis Response Team.

The new equipment improves officer safety, Elberty said.

In a news release, Wellington credited Jon M. Holloway, supervisory special agent of the FBI office in Boardman, with initiating the equipment purchase.

Holloway got a commitment from the FBI’s Cleveland division to reserve U.S. Justice Department asset-forfeiture funding to reimburse the sheriff’s office for the purchases.

Asset-forfeiture money comes from assets seized from criminals and distributed to law-enforcement agencies by the courts.

The purchase also included a computer and software to be used at the Mahoning County jail.

“We book over 9,000 inmates per year,” said Maj. James Lewandowski, jail warden. “We have more than 500 inmates in our jail a day.”

The new software will allow information collected as part of routine jail operations to be used as criminal intelligence to help locate fugitives.

“That information can be shared with the Mahoning Valley Law Enforcement Task Force,” Lewandowski said.

Before the addition of the computer and software, that information had to be gathered by hand.

denise_dick@vindy.com