Staff Writer

If the grants are approved, the Troy Police Department will have three new officers.

Monday night, the Troy City Council gave the police department permission to apply for two Community Oriented Policing Services grants administered through the Department of Justice.

The Universal Hiring Program grant is a grant with the city paying 25 percent to match the federal agency’s 75 percent funding.

"It will provide two additional patrol officers to increase our force," said Benny Scarbrough, public information officer for the department.

He said the department plans to dedicate one of those officers to traffic enforcement if the grant is awarded.

The second grant application is a COPS in Schools grant, which would allow the department to hire a school resource officer.

Scarbrough said having a SRO would be beneficial to the community as a whole by bringing law enforcement and the school system together.

The SRO would be more than an uniformed officer on campus, the individual would serve the purpose of policing the schools and for education, such as drug awareness, benefits.

"It would establish good report with administrators, teachers and students," Scarbrough said of adding an SRO to the department’s force.

Hank Jones, superintendent of the Troy City School System, has voiced his support of putting an SRO in the schools.

The Troy Police Department will not likely find out whether they got the grant until the summer ­ at the earliest ­ because of the grant application process, Scarbrough said.