CCPD logo

Unable to find a candidate for a grant-funded school resources officer position due to timing, the Crescent City Police Department plans to reapply for the same pool of money and try again.

The Crescent City Council on Monday unanimously ratified City Manager Eric Wier’s signature on a memorandum of understanding with the Department of Justice’s Tobacco Grant Administration.

This authorized the Crescent City Police Department to return about $115,000 of the original $354,000 grant the city received in 2018, according to Police Chief Richard Griffin. Griffin also received the Council’s blessing to apply for the DOJ’s 2021 Tobacco Grant program, which will pay for a school resource’s officer for three years.

“The request was for $115,000 of our funds to be given back so another agency could use it who was able to actually hire an officer,” Griffin told Councilors. “That would also set us up to work with this group again to apply for future (grants).”

According to Wier, the original 2018 grant was intended to pay for a school resources officer for three years. But the city didn’t receive that money until roughly a year into the program and at that point was “forced” to recruit for a 2-year position.

No one applied for the job, Wier said, and the city was unable to convince the Department of Justice to extend the grant for another year.

It was Del Norte Unified School District Superintendent Jeff Harris who originally approached the police department to add a second school-resources officer, Griffin said. This person would focus on Crescent Elk Middle School and the district’s elementary schools, while the current officer, Yeng Lo, would remained focused on Del Norte High School, Griffin said.

The original agreement with DNUSD had the school resource officer position for four years, Griffin said. If CCPD was unable to get more grant dollars to pay for that position, the city and school district would split the cost of the extra year, he said.

According to Wier, DNUSD would pay for 69 percent of the school resource officer position and the city would pay for 31 percent for that fourth year.

Even though the city didn’t hire a new school-resources officer, Griffin said the DOJ’s 2018 grant dollars were used for “existing patrol functions.”

“With Beachfront Park being a smoke-free park, we could then bill some of those (patrol) hours to that, so we’ve offset some of our costs that way and have been able to utilize that grant funding,” he said.”(DOJ) did work with us to allow multiple officers, including sergeants, to be able to bill that money when it was initially going to be (for) one officer.”

The DOJ Tobacco Grant program application is due to the agency by April 14, Griffin said.

In other matters, Councilors approved fundraising efforts for the Crescent City Police Department’s cadet program. Originally paid for through a donation from the Humboldt Area Foundation, Griffin said the cadet program also recently received $7,500 from the Wild Rivers Community Foundation’s Gil and Ann H. Hess Memorial Fund.

Potential fundraising efforts for the cadet program include the sale of shirts, patches and challenge coins. But Councilors loved the idea of immortalizing the city’s current and retired K9s as a stuffed animal.

“People love these K9s and I think if we had the collector’s editions, you’d want the whole set,” Mayor Pro Tem Blake Inscore said when Griffin showed off a stuffed animal version of Anderson’s K9 officer, Hiro. “I mean, I’d love to have them sitting on a shelf here in my office with a Crescent City patch on the back and the officer’s names.”

SHARE →