Auburn receives grant for 4 additional police officers

The Auburn City Council accepted grant funds last week which will result in an additional four full-time police officers in the city. The grant funding provides the city with $500,000 to use over three years from the United States Department of Justice COPS Hiring Program. Auburn was one of 180 recipients out of more than 700 applicants from around the country. The grant was written with the intent to fund the Auburn Police Department's Problem-Oriented Policing (POP) team and would consist of one sergeant and two officers. The fourth officer would go toward an administrative sergeant. "This innovative policing approach allows the officers to solve crime utilizing creative and strategic policing methods, including identifying specific problems in our city and devising solutions using a wide variety of public and private resources," Mayor Sandy Amara said. According to the staff report, the POP team will work to "build legitimacy and trust" between the Auburn Police Department and community while they are also trained in developing long-term solutions for reoccurring problems within the city. The new POP team will "provide a specialized level of service to the community," the report states. "This team will be a very specific team as far as what they are doing," Police Chief Ryan Kinnan said. "But they are going to be all over the place as far as community outreach to businesses, service clubs, business groups." Kinnan spoke specifically to the importance of hiring the two additional sergeant positions. He said one sergeant will oversee the POP team, and the other position can free the workload of other department leadership. "This is for the longevity of our organization as a whole," Kinnan said. "That is why it is such an important piece to what it is we are doing and what it does to build on our problem-oriented policing approach and community policing approach." To accept the grant funding, which is $41,666 per new position, the city has to commit to funding the positions for five years. According to the staff report, that would result in $130,000 in 2022-23, $364,000 in 2023-24 and $418,722 in 2024-25. In years 4 and 5, it would mean an ongoing cost of $530,000. City Manager John Donlevy said funding for the current-year budget should be covered by salary savings. In the second and third years of the grant, Donlevy said the city is expecting a higher than anticipated sales-tax revenue. "We are going to grab the windfall from our second-quarter sales tax and we will pull that down into a revenue account," Donlevy said. Beyond the three years of the grant funding, Donlevy said the department "can absorb the positions through attrition" if necessary. Amara said she fully supports the addition of these positions and hopes they can address the increase in property-related crimes and vandalism. "We must have a strong police department to deal with our issues now," Amara said. "We have the funding to do it. This is a top priority. Chief Kinnan's proposal is well conceived, well thought out and needs to be implemented now."