OFFICIALS: GRANTS VITAL

Say Money Necessary To Continue Drug Fight

Cuts proposed in federal money to help fight methamphetamine will
make it more difficult to punch a hole in the drug-cycle system,
Grundy County State's Attorney Sheldon Sobol said.

"The fact of the matter is, we've got a real drug problem, not only
in Grundy County, but in this country," he said Monday, during a
press conference in Morris in which Congress was urged to reinstate
funds to fight methamphetamine producers and dealers.

"Without the Byrne-Justice Assistance grants, your ability to be as
effective in stopping that, or preventing that, or having some
ability to punch a hole in the system's cycle, just won't be there."

"Our local law enforcement officers in Morris, Coal City, and
Minooka, and the county, are very effective in getting the people
who have drugs on the street," he added. "But the suppliers of those
people, that's a MANS job."

MANS is the acronym for Metropolitan Area Narcotics Squad, an area
cooperative of police agencies formed to battle drug use and abuse.

State Representative Careen Gordon sponsored the press conference,
and is supporting House Resolution 998, which urges the federal
government to fully fund both the Byrne-Justice and Community
Oriented Policing Services grants. Both programs help fight meth.

Sobol is a firm believer in the COPS grants, which give local law
enforcement departments the money to put additional officers on the
street, both on the county and municipal level. The city of Morris
and village of Coal City have utilized COPS grants in the past.

"There's a correlation between the more officers you have on the
street and their ability to suppress crime and be effective in crime
prevention," Sobol noted.

He said the Byrne-Justice grants are an even more important
component because they are targeted toward interdiction in the area
of drug offenses with establishment of drug courts.

"What hits home here is, we have a number of officers through MANS
who come from different municipalities, but they are reimbursed for
their salary through serving in the MANS unit, which does a vast
majority of interdiction efforts with the drug suppliers."

Coal City Police Chief Dennis Neary noted the village hired four new
police officers for three years with the funds received by way of
COPS grants in 1997-1998.

"Which worked out really well. We got our manpower up, and they were
doing a good job," he said. "Now things are starting to look like
federal funding cuts for the Byrne-Justice grants, more so than the
COPS grants."

Neary said he can no longer apply for the federal grants to get more
officers on the force.

"I'm going to have to go through the city and try to boost our
budget to hire more people," he added.

Grundy County Sheriff Terry Marketti pointed out that if funding is
cut in the way it's proposed, a number of smaller police agencies in
Grundy County will not be able to afford having patrolmen away from
their own agencies to take part in agencies such as MANS.

"They're not only losing the manpower because they're working in an
undercover capacity, but they're also losing the funding they depend
on to operate their normal police operations," he said.

"And that's a big part of it. If we can't get the agencies to
contribute the manpower because their funding has been cut, our
undercover units will go down the tubes. Some of the larger agencies
can afford to do that, but the smaller ones that are part of the
MANS unit cannot."

Marketti said it is hard for law enforcement agencies to operate
without having enough people to do the work.

Meth accounts for nearly 90 percent of the drug cases in the
Midwest, Gordon noted.

"It doesn't make sense to stop funding programs that are helping law
enforcement officials catch meth dealers," she added. " We must
remain diligent in our efforts to fight meth in our local communities."

La Salle County Sheriff Tom Templeton, Morris Police Chief Doug
Hayse, and Mazon Police Chief Jeff Marques were invited to take part
in the press conference, but were not present.