Pickens Police Receive $29k Grant

Pickens police will be receiving new equipment designed to help them fight crime and stay safe.

Pickens Police Chief Rodney Gregory told council Monday night that the police department has been awarded a Justice Assistance grant.

“The total grant is $29,377,” Gregory said.

The grant will provide the police department with body armor for all its police officers, Gregory said.

“Everybody will fitted with new body armor,” he said.

The grant will also provide the department with new flashlights, fingerprint kits and 4 new digital cameras for police cars, Gregory said.

“One problem we have with flashlights, is the batteries running down,” he said. “These can be totally recharged in 90 seconds.”

Each patrol car will receive a print kit for fingerprinting crime scenes, Gregory said.

The four new cameras provided by the grant will mean that every patrol car will have a camera, he said.

Every patrol car in the department is equipped with a mobile data terminal, a computer in the car that allows the officer to file tickets electronically.

“We all do e-tickets,” Gregory said.

Those systems let officers stay on the road more, without having to report back to the police department building as often.

“They can do incident reports and tickets and everything right in their car,” Gregory said. “All they have to do is, before they go home, is come back and sync up with the server, and everything that's in their laptops will go into the server.”

The grant requires a 10 percent match, or $2,938, from the city, Gregory said.