Va. police planner spends, with an eye on public safety

By Tony Stein
The Virginian-Pilot

CHESAPEAKE, Va. — In a way, it's a shopping list. Not, though, for the everyday items of our lives or for the toys kids hope Santa brings on Christmas. What Paul Leccese has been seeking is what a police department needs to meet the changing challenges of yesterday, today and tomorrow.

Leccese is the planner of Chesapeake's police department. The heart of his job is writing grant requests for federal and/or state money that pays for upgrades on a broad front of what it takes to keep a city safe and its police force ready.

He's done this for the Chesapeake department since 1993, When I talked to him the other day, he had prepared a list totaling the grants the department has won since 1995. The amount is $14.1 million. Unless you think like a congressman, that's real money.

A Virginia Beach native, Leccese is a civilian with a master's degree in criminal justice from Virginia Commonwealth University. He grins and says he wears a lot of hats. In addition to grant writing, he recruits volunteers for departmental office assistance. He teaches a criminal justice class at Old Dominion University, and some of those class members become interns with the department. He proudly says that about a dozen of them have become police officers.

He grins again as he says he also handles the corner of the department that sells police memorabilia.

But grant writing is center stage for him. The first one in '95 was to hire seven police officers to help establish a community policing program. He defined community policing as establishing a range of personal contacts between the police and the people they serve. That's a strong way to identify and deal with problems.

The astonishing impact of 9/11 changed his job. "In 24 hours," he says, "I went from writing grants for community policing to writing grants for homeland security."

A major focus was on improving port security with steps like stronger marine patrols. Leccese pointed out that Chesapeake's Elizabeth River port area is a center of activity involving chemicals.

Meanwhile, community policing still remains an important facet of the department's approach. That calls for officers on the street, and the latest grant to the city will pay for the hiring of five military veterans.

People, maintenance, computers, a boat, a domestic violence unit - he gave me a busy list of 48 grants. And he noted that Chief Kelvin Wright has some technology initiatives in place. They have included cameras that officers wear on their uniforms, license plate readers in patrol cars that connect directly to computers, sunglasses that are also cameras and tasers that can subdue violent subjects with non-lethal force.

Leccese had a statistic, too. The FBI tracks seven major crimes — homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny and auto theft. Leccese sends Chesapeake's numbers to the FBI and the rate of those crimes committed here dropped 14 percent from 2011 to 2012.

But technology and updated equipment didn't do all of that good. It took, as it always has, dedicated men and women who do the hard and often dangerous job of protecting the community.

courtesy photo Paul Leccese has been planner for the Chesapeake Police Department since 1993.

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