$640,000 in grants aimed at boosting county’s law enforcement efforts

DARLINGTON - The Darlington County Sheriff’s Office has won more than $640,000 in federal grants to help hire additional investigators and secure resources in the areas of narcotics, gang activity, criminal domestic violence and forensics.

Five grants totaling $641,127 will come from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Justice Assistance Grant (JAG) Program.

While the grants have already been awarded, Darlington County Council’s approval is required to accept them. Council is expected to vote on the grant awards during its meeting Monday at 6 p.m. at the county Courthouse Annex/EMS Building at 1625 Harry Byrd Highway, Darlington.

Sheriff Wayne Byrd said the grants will enable his office to hire investigators to focus on specific types of crime and free up other investigators to concentrate on other crimes such as burglaries and robberies.

“This is a lot of resources for a small county, and we’re glad to be able to get them,” said Capt. Andy Locklair of the sheriff’s office.

The largest of the grants is $213,382 for the narcotics unit. That funding will help put two highway interdiction officers on the two interstate highways that run through the county, I-20 and I-95. Byrd said the interstate highways are a main corridor for illegal drugs and cash flowing into and through the county.

“We’ve had a couple of deputies working the interstates sometimes,” Byrd said. But those officers also handle other cases in problem areas, keeping them off the interstates, he said.

“These two positions will help us get some of these drugs off the interstates,” he said.

That effort is in conjunction with a program operated by state and federal law enforcement officials focusing on interstate drug traffic, he added.

The grant will also help acquire a drug dog for the department, Locklair said.

As with all five of the grants, no matching funds from the county are required, and there is no requirement for the county to continue to fund the positions when the grant ends.

Another grant for $113,773 will fund a forensic investigator position which will allow for the more immediate processing of crime scenes without always having to rely on the State Law Enforcement Division’s (SLED) forensics investigators.

“We’ve always had to rely on SLED to process crime scenes. But with them covering the whole state, it’s getting harder and harder. We want to be able to be self sufficient. This grant will provide a crime scene investigator and equipment and tools to do the job,” Locklair said.

The sheriff’s office will continue to use SLED’s resources for major crimes, he added.

“When you say forensics, everybody’s seen ‘CSI’ on television,” Byrd said. “This doesn’t mean that we’re going to be able to solve crimes in an hour. But it will help improve the turnaround time in processing evidence.”

Related to that, a $106,126 grant will fund an automated fingerprint identification system (AFIS).

“AFIS has been around for years,” Locklair said. “Right now, when we lift a latent fingerprint from a crime scene, it has to be sent to SLED for processing. It can take from three to six months to get the results back.”

The AFIS system links directly into the state and FBI databases and can provide results from a fingerprint within a matter of hours, Locklair said.

“This can reduce the turnaround time on identifying fingerprints to 24 hours or less,” Byrd said. “That’s a huge difference in turnaround time.”

Just this week, deputies obtained an arrest warrant for a suspect wanted in a burglary who was identified from a latent fingerprint, Byrd said.

“The problem is the crime occurred in July,” he said.

The sheriff’s office also plans to make the new AFIS system available to all of the other county and municipal law enforcement agencies within the state’s Fourth Judicial Circuit, which includes Darlington, Chesterfield, Marlboro and Dillon counties, Locklair said.
A $108,141 grant will fund a gang investigator’s position. “Gang activity is huge across the whole state,” Locklair said.

One investigator has been working on gang-related cases, Byrd said. But that officer also has to handle other criminal cases.

Other cases regarding gang activity are divided among the different investigators on the staff, Locklair said. This position will concentrate on gang activity, Locklair said.

“The sheriff ran on a platform of doing something about gang activity. This will provide one person who will be more central and focused on gangs,” he said.

The investigator will also work with other gang activity investigators from other law enforcement agencies in the area and with SLED’s gang investigations unit, Byrd said.

And a $99,705 grant will pay for a criminal domestic violence investigator position. Locklair said more than half of all the calls reported to the sheriff’s office involve some sort of domestic violence.

“This person will focus mainly on the most serious cases,” Locklair said. Currently, criminal domestic violence cases are assigned to different investigators on the staff. “This will give us one investigator to handle these cases and who will have the opportunity to work with the Pee Dee Coalition (Against Domestic and Sexual Assault) and with other agencies,” he said.

The JAG grants are not from federal stimulus funds but are funds that would have been available to apply for under any circumstances, Locklair said.

The sheriff’s office recently received $470,763 in federal stimulus funds to help put three additional deputies on the force to focus on community policing efforts.

In other business Monday, council is expected to act on renewing County Administrator Phyllis Griffitts’ employment contract with the county for another year. There are no changes to Griffitts’ current contract except for the beginning and ending dates. If approved, the contract will commence on Nov. 1 and end of Oct. 30, 2010.

Council will also consider applications for grants-in-aid from the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Services (DHEC) for licensed ambulance services in the county. If awarded, the funds will be divided among the county Emergency Medical Services and rescue squads in the county based on emergency call volume.

The county is requesting funds for a trauma course, two EMT-intermediate courses, a paramedic course, a printer, software upgrades for the GPS units on each county ambulance, and a cascade system to support the tactical stretcher. Matching county funds for the grant were included in the county budget.

Lake Robinson is also requesting a color printer and Darlington Fireman’s Rescue Squad is requesting funds for Vertex handheld radios. Those agencies will provide their own matching funds.

Council will also consider for second reading an ordinance amending the county’s development standards ordinance to set new criteria for base flood elevation requirements to meet new federal and state standards for structures in Special Flood Hazard Areas.

Council is also scheduled to take up a joint resolution with Florence County and the City of Florence supporting the development and implementation of a regional and watershed focused stormwater education strategy.

Darlington County Fire District Chief David Williamson will present information and seek council’s permission to apply for three grants, one to purchase a personnel accountability system, one for the purchase of additional protective gear for firefighters and one to purchase a fire command vehicle.