Metro Wins Grant to Hire Officers

Metro Police will soon have federal money to hire fifty new officers.

The stimulus funds will pay for three years of entry-level salary and benefits. After that, Metro must keep the officers for at least another year, paid for with local or state money.

In total, Metro will get 8-point-6 million dollars. The funds cannot be spent on anything other than compensation, so it won’t pay for any new equipment or vehicles that the officers may need. Officials say they’ve secured another grant to pay those costs.

When the fifty positions become a local budget item they’ll cost at least 3 million dollars a year.

Nashville is getting the maximum number of officers ultimately allowed under the grant program. Still, that’s less than half of Metro’s original request for 120-enough to open two new precincts. Mayor Karl Dean says officials are reassessing plans for using the new officers.

“I’m committed to working on these new precincts, but we’ve just got to go about it in a thoughtful way.”

In Tennessee, 168 law enforcement agencies applied for the grant; nineteen made the cut. Most are in small communities that will be adding one or two officers.

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More from Dean:

“I understand that in three years this is going to be our responsibility. But we’re a growing a city. The census report shows we are a city where people are moving to. We are a city where people want to invest in. We are a city with a great future, and we’ve got to have the police department we need to make sure the city stays safe.”

The COPS Hiring Recovery Program is administered by the US Department of Justice. The 50 officer (or 5% of the agency’s existing force, whichever is larger) maximum was not set until the selection process was already underway. The cap was set in part because many agencies applied for a relatively large number of officers.

The grants were awarded based on financial need, the latest crime statistics, and “community policing activities,” as determined by each agency’s responses to a series of questions. The program as a whole was required to give half its funds to communities whose population totals 150,000 or more, with the other half going to smaller communities.

Nashville was awarded the largest grant in the state. Memphis and Jackson are the only other Tennessee cities getting ten or more officers.

Tennessee law enforcement agencies receiving COPS grants

COPS summary of Tennessee’s applications and awards

Complete list of agencies that applied and their scores

Winning applications can be found on the COPS website

note: portions of applications dealing with total number of officers and the dollar value of salary and benefits were altered by the DOJ during the application process to reflect allowable amounts