Sheriff's office gets fed grant to bolster crime fight

Source: Standard-Examiner, Ogden, UtahAug.mini storage 01--OGDEN -- The Weber County Sheriff's Office has received funds from a federal grant meant for providing assistance to local law enforcement.This potentially beneficial financial boost arrives amid a changing investigative environment and disagreement over whether the funds should even be given out at all.The FY13 Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant -- or JAG -- is given out annually to applicable states, and each state gives local law enforcement a certain share of the money. Utah was given more than $2 million for 2013, and $54,064 of that will be given to the Ogden City Police Department. Also, the Weber County Commission just approved $6,000 to be given to the Weber County Sheriff's Office."What we are using it for is to obtain some software and hardware to fulfill a new requirement that the FBI has placed upon the Utah criminal justice system. It's called Advance Authorization, and with it you have to have, along with a login and password information, another token of some kind, like a thumb drive, that identifies who the individual is," said Steffani Ebert, an administrative assistant with the sheriff's office.This comes from increased attempts by individuals to access information they are not legally authorized to obtain through online means, something that has come as a result of some criminal background histories being available on the Internet. Consequently, the Weber County Sheriff's Office will use the funds to upgrade a two-factor authentication for management of background check information and the Utah Criminal Justice Information System."People like to look atself storagecriminal records of their neighbors, friends, relatives, etc., and it's subject to a lot of abuse. We're happy to get whatever funds we can, and they have decreased over time. We would like more, so we can take steps to prevent hacking like that," Undersheriff Kevin McLeod said.Commissioner Matthew Bell respects the work that can be accomplished with the grant, but feels that the decrease in grant money is an indication that crime is going down, because each grant award is measured by the magnitude of criminal activity going on in each respective state."They are great grants, but we wish we didn't get them for this purpose. We don't want the grant to decrease and go to nothing," Bell said.According to the report of the allocated funds given to each state in the JAG program, Utah was ranked No. 36 for the amount of funds given out, from greatest to least, meaning it is one of the states in least need of criminal justice funding. The state's overall award of $2,335,766 has decreased slightly from 2012's award of $2,465,608.Less crime may be a factor in the decreasing funds, but Ebert and McLeod believe there simply might not be enough money available for local improvements."The amount has been decreasing over the last several years because of federal government cutbacks. Obviously, we wish it were more, but we'll take what we can get at this point," Ebert said.More information about the JAG grant can be obtained from the Bureau of Justice Assistance website, .bja.gov.Copyright: ___ (c)2013 the Standard-Examiner (Ogden, Utah) Visit the Standard-Examiner (Ogden, Utah) at .standard.net Distributed by MCT Information Services迷你倉