Police officers in Trafalgar will have a more reliable method of communication due to a grant.
The Trafalgar Police Department has received a South Central Indiana Rural Electric Membership Corporation’s Operation RoundUp community grant.
The department’s $6,603 grant will go to replace two of the department’s seven hand-held radios, police chief Charles Roberts said.
Officers use the radios on every shift to communicate with other officers and the county’s dispatch center, he said.
The department’s current seven radios already are outdated, and by the end of the next year their technology will be outdated and any broken radios could not be repaired, he said.
“These radios will continue to work, but you will not be able to repair them by the end of 2018,” Roberts said.
Each radio costs $3,000 to $4,000, he said.
When the town applied for the grant, Roberts wasn’t sure whether he would use the money to replace the department’s K9 or start updating the department’s radios.
Replacing all seven of the radios would cost about $21,000 and a new K9 unit would cost $10,000 to $12,000, he said.
Radios were the more immediate need with the K9 dog still working at the schools and conducting vehicle sweeps when called, Roberts said.
