Vancouver will receive more than $1 million toward paying for 10 new police officers as part of a larger, $119 million federal grant designed to help departments with community policing.
The Vancouver Police Department said that the $1.25 million from the U.S. Department of Justice will go toward hiring four neighborhood police officers, four bike officers and two crime analysis and intelligence officers.
“The grant-funded positions will provide us an opportunity to address identified performance gaps that have occurred as a result of the economic downturn and reduction of staffing several years ago,” Vancouver Police Chief James McElvain said in a news release from the department. “We look forward to implementing our long-term plans, which include enhancing community policing to build trust between members of our department and the community we serve, improving efficiencies and solidifying public and private partnership opportunities, and efficiently addressing identified crime areas and trends through effective crime analysis and intelligence.”
The federal grants, announced Monday, were awarded to 184 law enforcement agencies around the country, and are aimed toward creating or preserving more than 900 police jobs, according to the Department of Justice.
The grant awards provide up to 75 percent of entry-level salaries and benefits for full-time officers for three years, provided an agency can make a 25 percent match. The grant money doesn’t replace any current local funding.
Vancouver police spokeswoman Kim Kapp said the city also will have to fully fund, on its own, one year of salaries and benefits for the 10 officers after the first three years.
The Vancouver City Council voted to OK the grant application in May.
The department had been authorized to hire 190 officers, and the council recently approved budgeting for eight more. The grant would bump the number of spots at the department to 208.
In 2009 — when there were about 162,000 people living in the city, according to the state Office of Financial Management — the department had 213 officers, Kapp said. The state’s most recent estimate pegged Vancouver’s population at more than 173,000 residents.
The grant terms give the city a three-year financial bridge, Kapp said. After that, the city will have to find a way to maintain the new positions.
According to the Department of Justice, the grant program — the Community Oriented Policing Services Hiring Program — gave extra weight to applying departments trying to hire officers with the goal of addressing trust and community relations, gun violence, national security and school-based policing in mind.
In Washington, the cities of Auburn, Burien and Walla Walla also received a total of $1.375 million toward 11 officer positions.
The Vancouver Police Department has received money through the grant program before, Kapp said.
In 2009, amid the Great Recession and the prospect of layoffs, the city won a $2.5 million grant to preserve 15 officer spots, she said.
