The Overton County Sheriff’s Department hopes a proposed grant will help purchase computer equipment for patrol cars.
Chief Deputy Tim Poore said the grant request includes laptops, document scanners and card readers for each patrol car. Poore said the new equipment will enable the officers to speed up the documentation process of each incident.
“The way it used to be, he would have to come in, back into the office and do his accident report,” Poore said. “With this, we can actually do the reports right there in the car. All this right there at their fingertips.”
Poore said he is still in the early stages of putting the application together. Right now, Poore said he expects to the total grant request to be close to $300,000. Poore said the grant does not require any type of matching funds.
“This is money from the federal government,” Poore said. “I mean, in a sense we the taxpayers are funding it in some way, you know, around about. But the county itself will not be taxed the have to do this. What we’re looking at is the money will not have to come out of the county budget or anything that the county has.”
Poore said if the department receives this grant, they will have the appropriate computer equipment to install E-citation to the patrol cars.
“If we stop a car, we can issue a citation right there on the side of the road and give them a copy,” Poore said. “And it takes away from the paper copy of a ticket. We can do everything electronically there from the car.”
Poore said the grant is funded by the Panasonic Company.
