NY police agencies benefit from 'GIVE' grants

By Philip Gambini
Niagara Gazette

NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. — Niagara County was one of 17 counties in the state to receive a portion of $14.3 million in grant funding from the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services to combat violent crime in the region.

Provided through the state's Gun Involved Violence Elimination program, the $696,367 will be distributed to the county and split between the District Attorney's Office, the Niagara County Sheriff's Office and the Niagara Falls Police Department.

The DA and sheriff's offices will receive $346,885, while Falls police will receive $349,115. A fraction of the total will be directed to the Niagara County Probation Offices.

Formerly disbursed with the moniker Operation IMPACT, Falls police have now been awarded the funds for two consecutive years. The 2015 allotment marks a $15,000 increase from 2014.

The money is slated to support a hardware and software overhaul of the department's aging computer system, which at seven years old, Falls Police Superintendent Bryan DalPorto said, is outdated, has lapsed on warranty and cannot be efficiently serviced by contractors.

"This is a very important item for fire and police and really all the telephone systems in terms of emergency," he said.

The money will simultaneously fund two new positions and their fringe benefits: crime analyst, a full-time post salaried at $42,500 with $13,720 in benefits and a call-in coordinator, a part-time position with annual take home pay of $15,500 and $1,950 in benefits.

DalPorto said that the grant includes police overtime necessitated by a series of crime prevention methods implemented by his department. Overtime funds amount to $150,000 for use in: hotspot policing, data drive crime prevention; focused deterrent, a reduction method based on monitoring chronic offenders; crime prevention through environmental design, for which DalPorto's department has paired with city Community Development to identify neighborhood structures conducive to criminal activity; and street outreach missions aimed at direct, face-to-face work with the community.

"We've had a lot of success bringing crime numbers down with the use of this fund," DalPorto said. "It's paid huge dividend to the city."

According to the office of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, the GIVE grant attempts to correct decade-old policing strategies that distributed Justice Services funds across the state. Rather, Cuomo has elected to focus a slice of those funding efforts on the 17 counties outside of New York City that are responsible for generating a reported 87 percent of violent crime, according to a press release from the governor's office.

Other counties, including Albany, Erie, Monroe, Nassau and Schenectady, along with Niagara are urged to use the funding to "foster the use of data analysis, intelligence and partnerships to fight crime."

"Through the GIVE initiative, we are giving law enforcement agencies more resources necessary to fight gun violence in our streets in order to save lives and make communities safer," Cuomo said.

Copyright 2015 the Niagara Gazette