Police department receives funds for much-needed equipment

By Riley Funk

The St. Joseph City Council approved more than $50,000 in American Rescue Plan Act funds on Monday to better equip city police vehicles.

The council voted to approve funding to transfer $51,878 in American Rescue Plan Act funds to purchase firearms that will be placed in 37 police vehicles.

There will be two different firearms in the vehicles: a police rifle and a less lethal shotgun.

Police Chief Paul Luster spoke after the council meeting and said the approved funding is a huge relief for the department.

“It’s very important for the men and women that are protecting our city, that they have top-of-the-line equipment,” Luster said.

Luster said in a previous interview with News-Press NOW that the funding for the firearms is another advancement of the department’s take-home program.

The next step will be installing and outfitting the equipment to the purchased vehicles.

“Getting the vehicles is half the battle. It’s really a lot of coordination to get those vehicles and it takes obviously time to get them outfitted,” Luster said.

He said the hope is the vehicles and equipment will begin getting to officers in the near future. Once the process starts, Luster said it should be a quicker process to get the cars outfitted and equipment installed.

“We’re shooting for early summertime to get those to the outfitter,” Luster said.

An emergency bill was passed to purchase a new 2024 Chevy Tahoe to be used for the school resource officer program for the St. Joseph Police Department. The total amount of funding for the purchase will sit at $66,872.37, according to city documents.

Luster said having this bill passed will equip school resource officers in the same way as their other peers at the department. He credits this to the partnership shared between the department and the St. Joseph School District.

“It’s just very important to the community having those school resource officers,” Luster said.”In case there is an emergency at one of our schools, we want to make sure that they can get there and they have the best equipment to do that.”

Both bills passed with a 7-0-0 unanimous vote.