Agenda Notes:
In September 2007, the City (CMPD) was awarded a $7.4 million regional data sharing grant from the COPS Office of the U.S. Department of Justice. The grant was designed to fund data collection and analysis capacity for police, other emergency response agencies and some non-government data sources. The ability to collect, link, and analyze this data is critical in preventing, detecting, and effectively addressing criminal activity and criminal enterprises as well as identifying criminal activity that is indicative of terrorist activity.
The grant application was presented to Council at its November 26 dinner meeting. At that time, Council members expressed concerns regarding the size of the City match and the ongoing costs that would continue after the three-year life of the grant. There were also concerns regarding the potential financial commitment of partner agencies.
Based on those concerns, CMPD asked the Department of Justice for an extension in accepting the grant and has redesigned the project to accomplish most of the original goals, but at a lower cost. The redesign of the project results in a lower grant amount, thus reducing the size of the City match. The ongoing costs have also been reduced and a formula has been developed for cost sharing with other participating agencies in the region.
Throughout this process, CMPD has worked with the City Manager and Budget and Evaluation to ensure that the financial aspects of the grant were more in line with the City's expectations.
CMPD plans to use a product called CopLink for data collection, criminal intelligence software and comprehensive link analysis tools for officers and crime analysts. CopLink is an off-the-shelf application that is the most comprehensive in its price range and will result in substantial savings in terms of project development costs. Reduction in overall project costs will reduce the scope of the project, primarily through loss of connectivity with state data bases in South Carolina and Tennessee as well as the ability to link private sector agencies into the data base.
The overall project costs have been reduced from $7.4 million to $3,845,560. Of that amount, $2,884,170 is federal funds; the City match of $961,390 will be covered through police assets forfeiture funds which will be appropriated in equal increments over the three-year life of the grant.
After the three years of grant funding concludes, the City will incur annual costs related to maintenance and support of this project. Ongoing costs will be for license fees, maintenance and support; hardware refresh, and one position to support the computer hardware and software associated with the project. These ongoing costs are projected at $424,373 per year. CMPD has developed a formula under which all participating agencies in the region would share these ongoing costs. The total annual project costs would be divided by the total number of sworn officers in the participating agencies to arrive at a cost per sworn officer allocation. The cost per sworn officer allocation is then multiplied by each agency's number of sworn officers to arrive at the cost per agency: the greater the number of participating agencies, the lower the per sworn officer allocation cost. The cost per sworn officer allocation is currently projected at $100.81. Under that formula, CMPD's share of the ongoing costs would be $165,127 annually, assuming all the law enforcement agencies in the region choose to participate.
If Council approves moving forward with the project, CMPD would obtain commitment letters from participating agencies and then initiate formal agreements with those agencies. Preliminary discussions have been held with some of the potential partnering agencies and they have responded favorably to the project and its potential to address crime in this region.
