Myrtle Beach receives $1.25 million grant to hire new officers

The Myrtle Beach Police Department has been awarded a $1.25 million Community Oriented Policing Services grant to hire 10 new officers.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a total of $98,495,397 in grant funding through the Department of Justice’s Office COPS Hiring Program to 179 law enforcement agencies across the country Monday. The grants are expected to help agencies hire 802 additional full-time law enforcement officers.

“We’re very gratified with the Department of Justice for funding it,” said John Pedersen, Myrtle Beach city manager.

The city, however, will stay the course with Myrtle Beach Police Chief Amy Prock’s plan of hiring 10 new officers each year over the course of seven years. More officers will be hired if possible.

“We have applied for this in the past,” Capt. Joey Crosby with the Myrtle Beach Police Department said. “We’ll be looking at how to fill those positions and where the officers will be going to.”

Crosby said that they will add more officers to the plan if possible.

In the first year of the plan, the city will need nearly $1.6 million and $5.3 million in year seven.

“Cities and states that cooperate with federal law enforcement make all of us safer by helping remove dangerous criminals from our communities,” Sessions said in a release Monday. “Today, the Justice Department announced that 80 percent of this year’s COPS Hiring Program grantees have agreed to cooperate with federal immigration authorities in their detention facilities.”

Beth Drake, U.S. Attorney for the District of South Carolina, applauded the DOJ’s continued dedication to fighting violent crime at the local level.

“The COPS grants will result in the hiring of additional officers in Berkeley County, Myrtle Beach and Spartanburg,” Drake said in the release. “Protecting our communities against violent criminals is paramount and we look forward to continuing these efforts and working closely with our state and local law enforcement partners.”

The Berkeley County Sheriff’s Department was awarded $1 million for eight new officers. The Spartanburg Department of Public Safety received $244,409 which will provide for the hiring of two new officers.

CHP provides grant funding directly to state, local and tribal law enforcement agencies to support hiring additional law enforcement officers for three years to address specific crime problems through community policing strategies.

In September, the Justice Department announced additional priority consideration criteria for the 2017 COPS Office grants. Applicants were notified that their application would receive additional points in the application scoring process by certifying their willingness to cooperate with federal immigration authorities within their detention facilities, according to the release.

Cooperation may include providing access to detention facilities for an interview of aliens in the jurisdiction’s custody and providing advance notice of an alien’s release from custody upon request, the release stated.

The COPS Office awards grants to hire community policing officers, develop and test innovative policing strategies, and provide training and technical assistance to community members, local government leaders, and all levels of law enforcement. Since 1994, the COPS Office has invested more than $14 billion to help advance community policing.

The Sun News reached out to Prock, but she has not yet replied.

This story was originally published November 20, 2017 at 3:30 PM with the headline "Myrtle Beach receives $1.25 million grant to hire new officers."