Federal grant to pay for 7 new officers, WPD chief says

One of Wichita’s main thoroughfares will soon be patrolled by a handful of new officers.

Police Chief Gordon Ramsay said Tuesday an $875,000 federal grant awarded to the department for community policing efforts will be used to hire seven officers.

The new officers’ focus will be on patrolling commercial stretches of North and South Broadway – longtime problem areas for human trafficking, illegal drug sales and other crimes – and on addressing homelessness and mental health issues, Ramsay said.

“It was a very competitive process, and you know, only a few departments get selected for this,” he said.

Community policing “is a big focus of the direction that I want to go, and we’re trying to bring the department back to more” of it.

The grant is part of $119 million given by the Justice Department’s Office of Community Policing Services to 184 law enforcement agencies across the country to create community policing jobs or sustain existing ones.

Six of the new positions in Wichita will be patrol officers, and one will be a sergeant.

The grant, which takes effect Jan. 1, will pay for three years of the officers’ salaries, and the city has agreed to pay for a fourth year under its terms. After that, “we hope to absorb the cost of the officers into our budget,” police spokeswoman Sgt. Nikki Woodrow said in an e-mailed response to questions.

Ramsay said most of the time the officers will be on foot or bicycles rather than in cars. That way, “they’ll be a very visible presence in that neighborhood,” he said.

“When we can assign officers to a specific area and have the proper staffing to do community policing, you’re going to see a difference,” he said. He added that enforcement will be data-driven, meaning the department will take periodic looks at crime trends and focus efforts where needed.

The upcoming efforts to tackle problems along Broadway aren’t the department’s first. Police also focused on the area in the 1990s.

“They had substantial gains made back then and also won some national awards for their efforts down there,” Ramsay said.

“But the problem is that the efforts weren’t sustained. So we’re going to take another bite at this apple.”

This story was originally published October 4, 2016 at 6:16 PM with the headline "Federal grant to pay for 7 new officers, WPD chief says."