San Antonio is still waiting to find out whether we'll be getting federal stimulus money to hire more police officers. There's a chance SAPD may have to settle for a smaller amount of money just for equipment.The News 4 WOAI Trouble Shooters continue to look into how local leaders are spending your stimulus dollars.
Police Chief Bill McManus says the new equipment will make a big difference. It will allow the department to respond better and faster to your emergencies, even if he doesn't get the new officers he's hoping for.
Over the years, Beatrice Aguilera has had to report a few crimes in her west side neighborhood. Every time she calls, she feels like it takes officers too long to respond.
Last year Aguilera says she called 9-1-1 to report a woman being beaten.
"She was screaming and screaming, and I went back inside and called the cops, and they took about two hours to respond," Beatrice Aguilera told us.
While many factors can effect response time, Chief McManus said one thing that will help improve service around the city is upgrading the laptop computers in their patrol cars.
He wants to use a stimulus grant of more than $2 million to buy 326 new lap tops.
Chief McManus explained, "Officers depend on these laptops for pretty much everything they do when they're in their cars. They run tags, their name checks for criminal warrants, all the information that they get while they're on the street comes primarily through these lap tops."
McManus also said the laptops will be compatible with the new computer aided dispatch system that's being built. Officers will no longer have to handwrite their reports, everything will be computerized.
There is another, larger grant available worth more than $20 million. That's enough to hire 100 new police officers. But San Antonio is having to compete with other cities for that money.
"The grant is highly competitive," stated Chief McManus. "We could get zero officers or we could get all 100 officers, or somewhere in between. Hopefully we get the lion share of that number."
SAPD hopes to get the stimulus money for the laptops later this summer. And by the end of July, they could find out whether they'll be getting that larger chunk of money to hire new officers.
For those of you who live outside San Antonio, Bexar County is getting the same amount of stimulus money as SAPD for computers and equipment. The police departments in Balcones Heights, Leon Valley, Live Oak and Universal City are all getting about $21 thousand each.
