Inglewood Police Department awarded COPS grant to hire more officers

Inglewood High School students protest the school’s administrators spending $40k to attend an educational retreat.  Inglewood Unified School District responds with multi-agency police strategy.

Inglewood, CA – City of Inglewood residents are well aware that our police force is understaffed.  In a huge public spectacle over the 2013 Thanksgiving holiday, the world watched as many of the police agencies in the South Bay region, assisted Inglewood Police Department apprehend a domestic violence suspect.  Today, we watched multiple police agencies stand guard over a student protest at Inglewood High School (IHS).

Inglewood Unified School District insiders confirmed to 2UrbanGirls that IHS students were protesting the schools principal for spending approx. $40k to attend an educational retreat.

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With staffing levels low at both the school and cities police force, officers were called in from neighboring cities of Gardena and Hawthorne to escort the children out.

Many on the ground whispered it appeared the police were looking for a suspect and not just answering a call of kids “throwing a couple of bottles”.  Why else would police be in full riot gear and have rifles out?

Inglewood od Police Department was awarded nearly $1 million in COPS grants back in September to hire more officers and ALL gang injunctions are in FULL effect, throughout the city of Inglewood, with an additional one to be filed according to Inglewood Mayor James T. Butts, Jr.

Related article:  Inglewood receives COPS funding to add additional police officers

It was announced in 2013 that California is receiving nearly $20 million in federal grants to help hire more than 100 new law enforcement officers across the state.

Oakland will get a $4.5 million grant, the highest amount awarded in the country. The money will be used to hire 10 officers over three years.

The violence-plagued, cash-strapped city has cut the size of its police force from 830 officers in 2009 to just over 600 now.

Other cities receiving COPS grant money include Inglewood and Modesto.

The Inglewood Police Department will receive a federal grant of more than $3 million to prevent police officers from being laid off, police said.

Eight officers were scheduled to lose their jobs Nov. 5 because of the city’s fiscal crisis, Inglewood police Lt. James Madia said.

City officials applied to the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services for a Hiring Recovery Program grant, which are funds set aside to help local law enforcement agencies hire additional police officers or save existing jobs.

Inglewood Mayor James T. Butts Jr. and Councilmen Eloy Morales and Ralph Franklin went to Washington, D.C., to lobby for the funding after the city’s initial application was rejected.

Police said the grant will avert the anticipated layoff of police officers and allow the department to maintain current staffing levels for three or four years.