MYRTLE BEACH, SC (WBTW) – The Myrtle Beach Police Department plans to apply for a $1,458,495 million grant to hire 10 new officers to carry out a new way of policing.
“We’re going to use difference strategies we’ve never used before so those offenders stop being a nuisance to our community,” Captain Joey Crosby with the Myrtle Beach Police Department said.
The department would hire 10 new officers with the grant money, then use crime data to determine where to place them in the city. The officers would patrol high crime areas, called hot spots, to identify repeat offenders and ultimately help stop the most common kinds of crime in the city. The department calls the technique intelligence-led policing.
“As you’ve seen through the implementation of our cameras and our crime analysis, we’re using a lot of data to address crimes, so we’re asking for these officers to be used in conjunction with that data,” Captain Crosby said.
Captain Crosby says intelligence-led policing would help the department tackle the crimes it sees the most, like theft. According to recent police data, the amount of thefts in the city rose 17 percent last year.
“We would use those officers to address that crime and also other crimes we’re seeing,” Captain Crosby said.
The department plans to apply for the grant by the end of this week and hopes to receive notification by the end of summer 2020.
The grant would help cover the costs of the city’s 10 year plan, which aims to hire 10 new police officers every year for 10 years. The grant requires a $486,165 local match. Myrtle Beach would include the match in the 2020-21 fiscal budget.
