Hamilton County Sheriff Jim Hammond on Tuesday announced that his office will receive a $250,000 grant from the United States Department of Justice to hire two new crime analysts.
Hammond said he's wanted two such officers for years and their addition will allow the department to target resources more efficiently by identifying repeat offenders and crime trends, among other things.
"This is becoming a key to being able to forecast crime, to look at statistics, to be able to look at all the data that flows into various departments and take that and extrapolate from it things we can use to fight crime," Hammond said.
"More and more law enforcement agencies, like businesses, have to look at trends, they have to look at patterns, they have to look at data, and all of this is then incorporated and generated in terms of reports for the various divisions."
The grant, made possible through the community-oriented policing services hiring program, was offered to only one other Tennessee agency - the Blount County Sheriff's Office - which received $746,117. Rewards to agencies throughout the country ranged from $60,000 to more than $3 million.
"This is something that I have dreamed of - the day we could add these two positions. I would have been glad if we could have got one, but I think we're very fortunate," Hammond said.
"We always look internally first to see if we have someone who wants to step up to the plate, but with these two jobs becoming available, we may need to broaden the net a little bit to find people that we think are suited to this kind of talent."
Gino Bennett, director of support services for the sheriff's office, led the effort on requesting the grant which is only the latest in a string of awards.
"From the Department of Justice we have received a $1 million grant that put eight [school resource officers] into place, then three years after that we got a $750,000 grant just this past year to put six more into place," he said.
"Then through the same Department of Justice we have been awarded this 250,000 grant, so just from that one agency we've received $2 million in grants over the last three years. We feel very special to be able to do that."
Contact staff writer Emmett Gienapp at egienapp@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6731. Follow him on Twitter @emmettgienapp.