R.I. municipalities get federal aid to hire police

01:00 AM EST on Friday, January 15, 2010

PROVIDENCE — Four Rhode Island municipalities and the Narragansett Indian Tribe will be hiring 26 new police officers, thanks to a $6.5-million grant from the federal government.

The funds are part of the economic stimulus plan. The money will pay for three years of salary and benefits for 13 officers in Providence, worth $3.53 million; 6 in Pawtucket for $1.76 million; 4 in Woonsocket at $666,024; 2 in Central Falls for $426,664 and 1 for the Narragansett tribe for $133,989.

The terms of the grant require the municipalities keep officers hired or retained with the grant money on the payroll for at least one year after the three-year subsidy expires.

Providence Police Chief Dean M. Esserman said the award means Providence will have 13 new cadets in the class at the municipal training academy that begins next month. In Pawtucket, Chief George Kelley III said the money will cover six cadets in the current academy class, which is slated to graduate in March.

About $1 billion was available nationally for the program, half of it targeted at cities with populations of more than 150,000. All the police departments that applied were judged, in part, on their community policing plans.

Bernard K. Melekian, director of the U.S. Justice Department’s Community Oriented Policing Services Office, the agency administering the grants, said there was no set definition of what community policing should be, but his agency looked for departments that had accurately assessed their community’s problems and had developed specific programs to deal with them.

The idea was more than simply having more officers walking the beat, he said. It was to get police departments to look for ways to work more closely with other agencies, such as probation departments, social service agencies, even municipal planning departments.

That way, he said, the grants not only encouraged the development of community policing programs, they provided the departments with the resources to enact them.

John Hill