BY GAIL BINKLY

A $60,028 grant recently awarded to the Montezuma County Sheriff’s Department will enable the department to buy a surveillance camera, upgrade its mobile radios, and implement a Neighborhood Watch program among rural landowners, Undersheriff Sam Hager said Tuesday.

The one-time grant from the U.S. Department of Justice was for the full amount requested, Hager said, and will help the department and the community police certain areas.

"This is a one-time deal, but there will be enough stuff purchased through this grant to carry us for numerous years," he said.

The grant will provide funds for signs, brochures, stickers and training videos for the Neighborhood Watch program, Hager said. Deputy and former sheriff Sherman Kennell will organize the program, the first in the county’s rural areas.

"A lot of people out there informally look out for their neighbors, but this will be a more organized thing, for people that want to participate, of course," Hager said.

Training videos will show participants what suspicious activities to watch for, how to better secure their homes, what to do when they go on vacation, and so on, he said.

Hager said the award will also provide funds for the purchase of an all-weather, motion-activated surveillance camera that can be used "for problem areas in the Neighborhood Watch, where we can’t set an officer there 24 hours a day."

"We’ll be able to place this out there instead and hopefully get some pictures of somebody doing something," he said, adding that businesses with repeated break-ins or homes where prowlers have been observed would be likely locations for the camera.

In addition, the grant will pay for replacing all the mobile radios in the department’s patrol vehicles with upgraded versions. The old radios, which are not obsolete, will be distributed among divisions of the sheriff’s office such as the search and rescue and sheriff’s posse, Hager said.

The department will begin making its purchases and implementing the Neighborhood Watch program in the next few months, Hager said.