By JONATHAN SNYDER
A federal grant program for county and city will see officers paid more for combatting drivers operating while under the influence.
The program, called the Comprehensive Hoosier Highway Injury Reduction Program, will allow officers to sign up for extra hours outside of normal shifts to focus on finding and stopping drivers under the influence, enforcing stop arm violations with school buses and reckless driving. On these extra shifts, officers will be paid double time for their work, which will then be reimbursed by the state.
“That’s the state’s incentive to get people to do it outside of the normal work dates,” Sheriff Scott Holliday said. “The state is dedicating funding for traffic safety and … to entice people to use these funds they are paying double time.”
Seatbelt violations and motorcycle visibility are also focuses of the program, but do not have extra paying shifts available. OWIs are one of the top reasons for arrests in Wells County, Holliday reports.
Holliday added that they can reapply for funding next year while changing the programs they prioritize.
“We’re getting started with this,” Holliday said. “We picked three that we thought were important for our county and the things that we’ve been seeing. And we may, when it comes to filing for the grant next year, we may say, ‘Hey … school buses were pretty good. We didn’t see many problems. Let’s focus on seat belts next year.’”
A similar program that was used in the past, called Operation Pull Over, shares many similarities with the CHIRP program. The language has been updated from drunk driving, which was one of OPO’s focuses, to operating while under the influence as a whole, which includes drug violations.
Officers will have specific time slots where they can sign up for the extra shifts, due to funding constraints. Detective Quinton Greer stated that the Sheriff’s Department will be receiving approximately $40,000-$48,000. The original ask was for $60,000, but the state received $11 million in requests for its $5.4 million budget for the program.
The grant program will start in October, with funds available for the whole year afterwards. Greer stated that these extra shifts will be more prevalent during areas of increased incidents. OWI-focused shifts will be prevalent on the holidays, while enforcement of stop-arm violations will be common at the start of the school year. Greer also said that these shifts will be split between county and city departments.
“We only have so much money that they (Indiana) gave us in the grant,” Holliday said. “He (Greer) calculates that out into approximate hours, and then he’ll post them.”
Greer stated that the Sheriff’s Department will send out notifications when they plan to focus on stop-arm incidents, as notice is required for grant funding. Greer also said that OWI focused shifts do not require any notice.
“It will be public notice that these blitzes will happen,” Greer said. “Not saying that it’s going to be all the time, OWI is not one that you have to put out, but around the holidays we’ll put out notice for bus driving and things like that. ICJI does a really good job of giving you the documentation for it, it’s just a matter of you sharing it and moving forward with it.”
jonathan@news-banner.com
