Feds award Springfield $1.3M grant to hire police officers

The U.S. Department of Justice notified the city of Springfield yesterday it would receive a $1.3 million grant to hire 11 police officers.

Presented through the DOJ’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services Hiring Program, the grant funding would be given to the city over a three-year period, during which time the city must make a local cash match of 25 percent. After three years, the city would take on all ongoing costs for the additional officers, according to a news release.

The Springfield Police Department is scheduled to hold its next officer testing session Oct. 30 for an academy starting in February. The grant-funded officers are expected to graduate in the summer next year and hit the street in spring 2017.

Six of the officers would be dispatched to Zone 1, where the city held Community Listen events with residents of nine of Springfield’s northwest neighborhoods earlier this year. That initiative discovered a series of trends, including crime issues. The other five officers would be assigned to a new evening-shift traffic unit, addressing DWI, hazardous motor vehicle violations and neighborhood traffic concerns, according to the release.

“Traffic consistently rates as a top concern among citizens in our biannual citizen satisfaction surveys and speeding in neighborhoods was a problem brought up at all nine Community Listen meetings,” Police Chief Paul Williams said in the release.

Police spokeswoman Lisa Cox said via email the department currently has 306 sworn-in staff, including 17 officers who graduated in June and are nearing completion of their field training with a veteran officer. Another 22 are in the department’s current academy class, which is scheduled to graduate this winter.

The Springfield Police Department is among 1,103 law enforcement agencies nationwide to receive funding this year through the COPS Hiring Program, according to the release.