Horry County leaders continue discussions on a plan that began more than a year ago to cut down on crime county-wide. It includes creating a fusion ‘hub’ that allows data sharing and also creating new county positions.
The public safety committee has been talking about the plan for months, but Monday members got a better price tag on these projects. Financing is one of the committee’s final steps in carrying out its ‘5-prong approach’ to reduce crime.
The Horry County Police Department and Sheriff’s Office presented their final draft to the committee, and that plan will be included for discussion in county council’s upcoming budget retreat.
The fusion center would be similar to what the state uses in Columbia—so picture a giant hub where footage and digital data flow between different departments.
“This would be an automated way to get real-time information that’s critical to apprehending suspects very quickly,” HCPD Chief Joseph Hill said.
The police department and sheriff’s office will ask the county to look at ways to pay for the hundreds of thousands of dollars it would cost to do that.
“We’ve talked about it, but this is the first time we’ve put a price tag on what that would cost,” Hill said.
The plan calls for the creation of a ‘crime analyst’ position, where someone would keep track of the large amounts of information flowing in. The salary with fringes would be $112,000.
New software that would have facial recognition technology would cost $103,350 per year. The proposal notes that cost can be shared with different participating agencies.
“An officer would be able to take a picture on his cell phone of an individual,” HCSO Chief Deputy Tom Fox said, “and within 30 seconds know who that person is just by facial recognition alone.”
The plan includes 14 new license plate readers to be put up along the busiest roads in the county. That price tag is $210,000.
“You had the Conway incident, the bank robbery with the two homicides,” Fox said. “Had the LPRs be put in place and we had the tag number available we’d been able to track that person out of the state.”
To better organize communication, not only between county agencies but also between local task forces and coalitions, the two chiefs are calling for a new “community engagement” position.
“It’s an enormous amount of time that myself or Chief Fox has to spend in these meetings,” Hill said. “And some information gets lost because it’s just so much out there.”
Salary, benefits, and a new vehicle for that position would total $98,464.
Nothing was set in stone Monday, but the county council members who were at the meeting asked for it to be included in this year’s budget retreat. HCPD and HCSO are asking that the county look at different grants as a way to pay for the project. Fox said in December that he does not anticipate the project falling on taxpayers.
Chief Hill told News13 he is hopeful, but not sure, if the funding will get approved.
