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Repurposing Gun Violence Unit Money Works Out In Long Run

Mayor Kim Ecklund and Tim Jackson, city police chief and public safety director, announced last week the city is officially repurposing American Rescue Plan Act funding that had been set aside to form a gun violence unit inside the Jamestown Police Department to instead renovate the department’s long-neglected shooting range.

On its face the decision is a head-scratcher. Jamestown is seeing a resurgence in gun crimes that is reminiscent of the rash of shootings that led former Mayor Eddie Sundquist to announce the gun violence unit’s creation in the first place. As we’ve reported several times over the past few months, the number of shootings, shooting victims and shooting-related deaths are going up in Jamestown at the same time they are decreasing in other similar communities.

But more officers isn’t necessarily the answer.

The fact that gun crimes rose, fell and then are rising again with no change in the number of sworn Jamestown Police Department officers shows that shootings will happen whether or not there is a gun violence unit. The unit may help solve those crimes faster, but it isn’t going to prevent them. A gun violence unit wouldn’t prevent shootings from happening unless one of those officers brought with them a crystal ball. Gun violence is a problem in Jamestown, but drugs are at the root of that problem.

The city likely lucked out that it wasn’t able to create an ARPA-funded gun violence unit in 2022. The time would be coming quickly when the city, and not the federal government, would be paying the piper for the additional three officers. The city’s 2025 budget is going to be a tight one, and unless other grant funding was available to keep those officers the city would likely have ended up either laying officers off when the ARPA funding ran out or folding the ARPA-funded officers into the existing police force as officers retired.

Either way, changing the number of officers per shift and then taking them away would have likely opened the city up to another IMPACT arbitration proceeding. Lest anyone forget, the city and taxpayers wouldn’t come out ahead in that scenario.

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