R.I.: Grant to bolster crime fighting

By Tatiana Pina, Journal Staff Writer
The Providence Journal
Copyright 2006 Providence Publications, LLC

CENTRAL FALLS, R.I.- The Police Department will be tracking sex offenders who register in the city, home in on crime trends and trace fingerprints in 20 minutes thanks to a federal grant.

Police Chief Joseph Moran and Maj. John Desmarais told the City Council last night that a Justice Assistance Grant will allow the department to bolster its commitment to community policing.

The $21,000 grant will allow the department to pay officers overtime to monitor the city for particular crimes. The Police Department has divided the city into four districts to better analyze crime. "If [analysis] shows a crime trend we can narrow it to that area and concentrate on that," Moran said.

"It can be as small as getting lights put on the street where it's dark," Desmarais said after the council meeting.

If, for example, a business owner's shop has been broken into, the police could do an analysis of the business at night and may notice that the back of the building is not well lit, he said.

Once a trend in crime has been identified, the police get together with citizens and business owners to brainstorm for solutions. In the center of the city, for instance, there has been a rash of stolen Honda Civics, Desmarais said. The police are considering strategies.

"It could be coming up in plain clothes or taking an unmarked car to the area," Desmarais said.

The police will use some of the grant money to pay an officer to track sex offenders registered in the city. Desmarais said he did not know the exact number of sex offenders in the city but that the department is currently checking its numbers with the attorney general's office. The department plans to have an officer visit the residences of sex offenders to see if they are still living at those addresses.

"If he has moved and didn't tell us that it's a violation of the condition of his release and the mandatory notification of the police," he said. "We can get a warrant for his arrest."

The police are not there to harass the person, just to make sure "he is abiding by his conditions," Desmarais said.

"The last thing the Police Department wants is a sex offender to slip through the system and, God forbid, something happens to a child," he said.

Also, under the grant, the police will lease a fingerprint machine that will record people's fingerprints, palm prints and the side of a person's palm digitally. This can be checked against prints in the attorney general's data base as well as the FBI's, Desmarais said.

"We can have a person's prints in 20 minutes," he said. The machine costs $600 to rent each month, which includes maintenance. After five years, the Police Department would own the machine.

"It will bring us well into the 21st century," Desmarais said.

Desmarais said the Police Department's plans are ambitious for the amount of the grant but "we're going to do the best we can. Hopefully, this will be a vital project that works and we can keep it funded. It probably won't be a lot, but it's a start."