Ranked third in the sate for unrestrained occupants injured in collisions, Clay County Commissioners accepted a grant for traffic safety at the beginning of June.
Sheriff Brison Swearingen discussed the Sheriff’s Department’s previous participation in enforcement grants through the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute (ICJI). “It’s probably been more than five years since we participated, and we’re looking to reapply to get back into the grant,” described Sheriff Swearingen.
ICJI awards federal and state grants to help local governments and law enforcement agencies prevent and reduce crime, enforce traffic laws, improve the criminal justice system, and assist crime victims.
“We provide funding to local agencies to help reduce crashes and resulting deaths and injuries that come from it. That is our goal. We want to provide a safer environment for the members of our community and our state,” said Chuck Parsons, Law Enforcement Liaison for the West Central Region.
Annually, the traffic safety research team at the Indiana University Public Policy Institute prepares a report for ICJI summarizing detailed crash characteristics for each of Indiana’s 92 counties. In the most recent study completed in 2022, Clay County was ranked third in the state for unrestrained occupants injured in collisions.
CHIRP, or Comprehensive Hoosier Highway Injury Reduction Program, is a matching (80/20) reimbursement grant providing federal funding for traffic safety projects. The five grant projects include Click It to Live It, Driving Under the Influence Tastforce, Stop Arm Violation Enforcement Project, High Visibility Motorcycle Project and PEDBIKE Project.
“It does require a matching fund, however, the funds are going to be met through use of reimbursement of mileage and salary,” presented Parsons. “These funds are tax dollars you’re going to be spending already, it’d be a good idea to get them back to your community to try and make a difference.”
One project, the Stop Arm Violation Enforcement, or SAVE project, would be highly useful in Clay County, as Swearingen already has officers patrolling this increasing issue.
“We will fund for an officer or officers to either ride the bus and have a follow car that will enforce it if someone violates it, or if you happen to have stop-arm cameras installed on buses at the school system, we can pay for an officer to review the cameras if violations occured and do the research to track down the driver and take action if it’s appropriate,” said Parsons.
Commissioner Paul Sinders asked Swearingen if there were many compaints about this issue, to which Swearingen took no time to reply with a yes.
“This last school year, we had authorized several days of overtime and that’s out of the county’s pocket, to basically watch the actions and following school buses. We worked with the school police to where they were riding the bus and we were following the bus,” said Swearingen. “The way I look at it is, whenever I saw this as one of the grant opportunities, we were already doing that ourselves. We might as well get reimbursed for it.”
The commissioners approved the $25,000 CHIRP grant, with a 20% match if awarded.