Social Circle PD seeks grant for new officers

Federal funds could also buy new equipment

The Social Circle Police Department is applying for a $2.12-million share of a $3 billion federal grant program as a potential means of getting three to five years of funding for salaries and benefits for four new police officers,

The grant would also include federal money to pay for new equipment for the department, including four new, fully-equipped police patrol vehicles, 25 taser weapons, 25 new handheld portable radios and 10 license-plate reader cameras.

The application got the endorsement of the Social Circle City Council at its Thursday work session, as at least two councilmembers, Tyson Jackson and Adam Conavay, called it a “no-brainer.”

Social Circle Police Chief Jason Guest said it will be a matter of months, perhaps even a year or slightly more, before the police department will know whether it has received the grant. If the department does get the grant, its number of on-the-road officers will increase from 10 to 14, Guest said. Against that backdrop, Guest reported to the council that the volume of calls to the department has doubled in the past year.

Once the grant funding, if awarded, comes to an end, the city would be responsible for funding the salaries and other costs associated with the additional officers, should they be retained.

At Tuesday’s council meeting, there was some optimism that continuing growth in the city – another item of Thursday business involved plans for a new 61-lot subdivision – could help produce the tax revenue needed to keep up funding for those officers.

Without grant funding, the city would need $75,000 for each officer per year at the end of a four-year grant term to cover salary and benefits.      

The grant money is being made available through the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) BIDEN Program, with funding via the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed into law by President Donald Trump a little more than one year ago.

BIDEN is an acronym for Bridging Immigration-Related Deficits Experienced Nationwide, a tongue-in-cheek reference to Trump’s derisive attitude toward the state of immigration enforcement during the administration of former President Joe Biden.

According to a 21-page document from the DOJ’s Office of Justice Programs (OJP), eligibility for BIDEN grants includes a requirement that applicants either have, or commit to, a 287(g) partnership with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The reference is to Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, the primary immigration law of the United States. Section 287(g) allows ICE to delegate some immigration enforcement duties to state and local law enforcement officers.

In addition, according to the OJP document, grant applicants “must be fully participating in either HSTF (Homeland Security Task Force, a multi-agency effort targeting narcotics networks, child exploitation and removal of violent criminal aliens form the United States) or other major DOJ enforcement efforts, or commit to entering into and fully participating in those efforts.”

Elsewhere in the document, the OJP lists goals and objectives of the grant program, including to “(i)ncrease investigations and prosecutions of crimes by individuals unlawfully present and drug/human trafficking cases,” “(i)ncrease apprehensions by program-funded personnel,” and “(i)ncrease law enforcement agencies’ operational capabilities by providing equipment and technology that directly supports efforts to identify, locate, apprehend, investigate, detain, and transport criminal illegal aliens, drug trafficking suspects, human trafficking perpetrators,” and to “(i)ncrease temporary detention capacity in connection with enforcement actions.”