Funding received from the Wyoming Office of Homeland Security (WOHS) may not be worth the hassle, Saratoga Chief of Police Tom Knickerbocker said at the Dec. 2 Saratoga Town Council meeting.
“(The Saratoga Police Department) gets a fraction of a percent of the funding, but 100 percent of the rules and regulations,” Knickerbocker said.
The Saratoga Police Department receives an annual grant from WOHS. Last year, the Saratoga Police Department (SPD) received $4,600 and is expected to receive $5,800 next year.
While the grant was typically used by police departments to purchase additional items for which funding was not available from counties or municipalities, Knickerbocker said the grants now come with so much “red tape” it is not worth applying. He said the grants require too much manpower to completefor the little funding they receive.
Knickerbocker said the grant agreement for this year’s funding is 11-pages long and filled with guidelines of what the money can be used for. Knickerbocker said these extensive guidelines hurt small municipal departments which lack manpower and time to complete these grants.
“I think they are slowly trying to federalize our police departments, and I am against it,” Knickerbocker said.
There has been a nation-wide push to equip cameras on police officers since the events in Ferguson, Mo. Knickerbocker said he looked extensively into purchasing cameras for his officers. SPD has cameras located within their police trucks as well as small clip-on cameras with minimal video storage.
“More current, longer taping cameras are some that I have been looking in to, and it’s not cheap,” Knickerbocker told the council and audience members. “I am assuming if this is going to be a requirement … there would be some kind of funding and grants to acquire cameras that are capable of recording through an entire officer shift.”
Recently, Knickerbocker sent a grant request to Homeland Security’s State Homeland Security Program (SHSP) grant to purchase gun locks for SPD police trucks.
According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) for the fiscal year 2014 Homeland Security Grant Program, the SHSP support the implementation of strategies to “inform planning, organization, equipment, training, and exercise needs to prevent, protect against, mitigate, respond to, and recover from acts of terrorism and other catastrophic events.”
Despite this, Knickerbocker said he was denied that grant by the WOHS after he said he was told his department failed to show where the locks would be used to combat terrorism.
The SHSP grant funding guidelines states purchasing “weapons or weapon accessories” are unallowable costs through this program.
Knickerbocker added he was against militarizing the local police force.
The SPD received M-16 assault rifles and .45 caliber hand guns from a Wyoming state surplus under a previous administration. But Knickerbocker said his department will send the military-grade weapons back to the state because he feels they are not needed. The SPD has shotguns available to them, which Knickerbocker said was all that was needed in a town such as Saratoga.
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