Grant awards provide new equipment, improve PCSO service

Budgets have been reduced, yet crime has risen during this economic downturn. We have improved staff training, added new technology and equipment to ensure improved safety for Pinal families. Many citizens questioned how law enforcement could improve service and purchase millions of dollars in new equipment while in an economic recession. Budgets have been reduced by 10 percent, many vacant staff positions frozen, or even laid off.

We are working smarter and demanding accountability. We hired Tim Gaffney as our grant administrator, and he applied for nearly $7 million in new grant funds to enhance law enforcement operations. PCSO did not have a coordinator and, therefore, lost millions in state and federal monies.

Today, we have 49 grants that are worth $6,888,610.53 and another six pending, which are worth $761,026. Finance managers Anna Parra and Linda Martinez do an amazing job keeping track of these grants and the required financial reporting.

Just this month we received over $1.3 million in grants. Our $320,000 “Pinal County Regional DUI Task Force” van was fully funded by the Arizona Governor’s Office of Highway Safety and came with an additional $130,000 to fund officer salaries to provide sustained DUI enforcement throughout Pinal County. We have all13 local police agencies participating in weekly DUI enforcement details. This goes a long way to combat alcohol-related collisions, which are the leading cause of death for people between the ages of 6 and 33; more than 50 percent of all fatal collisions in Pinal County are alcohol related. These facts should alarm everyone. Pinal County police chiefs and your sheriff’s office are now fighting DUI with zero tolerance. Gone are the days when a DUI drivers get stopped by the police and are allowed to park their car and get a ride home.

We received four grants, totaling $498,000, to purchase upgraded portable radios (Motorola XTS2500) which will greatly improve communications and officer safety. Hard charging patrol Sgt. Jason Villegas even wrote a grant request, and we received nearly $250,000 towards this total award! This radio allows PCSO interoperability, which is the ability to speak directly with other emergency responders. Many citizens believed deputies had this ability, yet we could not speak directly with other law enforcement agencies or fire departments.

Grant funding is also paying for new communications consoles in dispatch, training programs, computers and radios in patrol vehicles, new ballistic vests, handheld radar units, portable breath test machines, computer aided accident reconstruction equipment, stop sticks, light towers for night emergencies and motorcycles.

Your sheriff’s office has come a long way in 10 months. I appreciate our 700 full-time employees who have embraced the many changes since I became Sheriff. Their passion and dedication to serve our Pinal families is simply amazing. I’m very proud of their hard work ethic and their discipline, as their workload (crime) has increased. Together, we are fully committed to improve operations and law enforcement service until we attain our goal in becoming the finest sheriff’s office in Arizona.

Respectfully,

Paul Babeu, Pinal County Sheriff

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