Sheriff Dale Furr’s department earned a final ranking of 88.2, making it the 50th highest index of 50 North Carolina agencies that got money. No. 51, was passed by.
This index was compiled using two factors: fiscal distress and crime and community policing.
Fiscal distress pertains to the economic position of the government which oversees the police department, while crime and community policing pertains to public outreach programs and preventative measures to reduce crime.
An example of this is a program the Rockingham Police Department instituted last summer on Long Drive using COPS funding.
In the community policing program, officers patrolled the neighborhood in shorts and t-shirts to seem less imposing than uniformed officers, and were charged with developing relationships with the people in the community.
The theory is that people will be more willing to report crime when they have a personal relationship with officers, Police Chief Robert Voorhees explained to the city council in his annual report.
When a position is added with this grant funding, the base salary of an officer is paid for three years, then the department picks up the tab in the fourth.
Rockingham was seeking money to retain four officers who were originally hired using outside funding, but it ranked 57th on the federal list and got nothing in this round.
Rockingham had a index score of 86.1, in part because of the prevalence of Crime and Community Policing programs in place in the city.
Hamlet was a few steps lower on the totem pole, with an index of 80, and Police Chief John Haywood explained he was asking for two officers to augment the department’s outreach programs.
“We do a lot of things working with community leaders, business owners and civic organizations,” he said. “We’re at Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, churches, schools ... I’m a big believer in helping the community, because they’re the ones that will help you solve a crime.”
He speculated the existence of such programs at his department most likely hurt its case for funding.
COPS Spokesman Gilbert Moore explained the agency was only able to honor 14 percent of the funding requests it received, and based on this fact expects to see increases in funding in the next fiscal year. That won’t Rockingham, because it will run out of funding for the four officers on Oct. 31.
Moore also said funding is appropriated through the legislature, meaning the agency doesn’t know how much funding will be available until it is signed into law.
“We had a number of applications from all across the country, and these were strong applications,” he said. “We will keep these applications on hand, should we be in a position to fund them in the future.”
There was about $1 billion in grant funding available, while law enforcement agencies across the nation requested more than $8 billion.
The money to fund the billion dollars of grants was provided through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, signed into law in January.
The COPS program is administered by the U.S. Department of Justice.
Wadesboro in Anson County had the third highest index score in the state at 98.7. It was bolstered by high scores in fiscal need and the Crime and Community Policing Index.
The Richmond County School system ranked near dead last when it came to COPS funding. While its financial need index was actually higher than the City of Rockingham’s, it’s final score was just 11.2.
Moore County Schools was also near the bottom of the list of funding requests, with a score of 4.4 percent.
Finishing dead last on the COPS list was the WakeMed campus police department with a score of .9.
The highest percentile total score in the state came from the Fairmont Police Department, which scored in the 99.5 need-based percentile.
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