SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (WAND) — At Tuesday night's Springfield City Council meeting, alderpersons unanimously voted to move three ordinances to council consideration that will give the Springfield Police Department over $3.4 million dollars.
Council voted to proceed with accepting the 2024 Community oriented Policing Services "COPS" Grant for $300,000 from the Department of Justice.
Deputy Chief Joshua Stuenkel said that they will use the money to expand the reach of FUSUS, their real-time crime center.
Currently, is is fully virtual, but the COPS rant will allow them to hire people to aid the officers when in the line of duty.
"While the officers are responding and they’re not able to pull up the video that the FUSUS program gets them to access, someone in the center would be able to locate and provide the information to make the officer more efficient when the responding.“ said Stuenkel.
Springfield City Council will also move to authorize a supplemental appropriation of $300,558.23 from left over funds. It will be used to replenish the Connect and Protect Law Enforcement Behavioral Health Response Grant, which Stuenkel said SPD will use to pay more social workers. He said as of right now, they are only able to work with 2 social workers, who work 70 hours a week aiding officers with crisis intervention.
“Beyond the social worker riding with the officer, officers have availability to mobile crisis response. Or even if there is no social worker in the car with them, they can call and there’s a phone number, and they can get in touch with the social worker." explained Stuenkel. There’s a lot of options in law-enforcement right now to get help to people who need it.”
Council will move to authorize acceptance of the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority Grant for $2,888,405 to improve their co-responder programs.
“City of Springfield is using those funds to really build a capacity for our service providers in the area, so that when officers encounter someone who is in need of assistance or someone for them to connect to, they have someone for those those individuals to get help from.” said Stuenkel.
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