$500,000 earmarked for Vermont police

With the state government short of money, Vermont’s police agencies are getting a nice gift from Uncle Sam this year.

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., was in Waterbury Tuesday to announce $500,000 in federal grant money for law enforcement around the state.

The money will pay for training sex-crime investigators, for new technology at the Vermont Criminal Justice Training Council in Pittsford, for new cameras for police cars, and for police officers in schools.

“These are tight times; budgets are tight,” Sanders said at a press conference at the Department of Public Safety in Waterbury. Policing is a difficult job in Vermont, Sanders said, given the state’s rural landscape, and he thinks the federal money will help cover what the state can’t.

“In this state, we have thousands and thousands of miles to be patrolled,” he said. “We have a lot of territory to cover, and we don’t have the manpower for it.”

Many small communities have no police forces, and rely on the state police for coverage.

The federal money is in the 2010 Commerce, Justice and Science Appropriations bill.

The biggest chunk, $200,000, will go to the Vermont Criminal Justice Training Council, the police academy. The money will pay for laptops for students and wireless access at the Pittsford campus.

The grant earmarks $100,000 for training and expanding the state’s special investigation units, which investigate sexual violence and child sexual abuse. The state now has units in eight of the state’s 14 counties: Bennington, Chittenden, Franklin/Grand Isle, Lamoille, Rutland, Washington, Windham and Windsor.

Robert White, executive director of the Northwest Special Investigations Unit in St. Albans, said the state wants to add units in the other counties.

When asked why Vermont State Police are just now expanding their sex-crime investigation wing, White and Sanders said changing laws and cultural values have fueled the push.

“There’s a lot more sensitivity than there was 20, 30 years ago,” Sanders said.

The remaining money will go to the school resource officer program, which puts police officers in schools to foster a better relationship between police and students and to short-circuit developing problems, and to a new camera system for sheriff’s departments around the state. Each program will get about $100,000.

The camera upgrades are essentially the same as Vermont State Police got from a grant last year, said Lamoille County Sheriff Roger Marcoux. The digital system will replace antiquated VHS recorders in many cruisers, or put cameras in cars that don’t have them, he said.