“Getting these grants is a team effort.”

MAPLE HEIGHTS — Wayne Smith and his wife settled in Maple Heights in the 90s. He said there are few problems in his area now, but that wasn’t the case years ago.

“We’ve had loud people and some incidents where police were here all the time,” Smith said.

Smith enjoys seeing officers on patrol and interacting with residents and said he would like to see more.

“If they have more police officers, they can go into neighborhoods more, you know… up and down more. The alleys too,” Smith said.

More officers arrive. This month, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that Maple Heights received a $250,000 grant from its Office of Public Interest Police Services (COPS) hiring program.

“Getting these grants done is a team effort,” said Maple Heights Police Chief Todd Hansen.

The grant will cover 75% of entry-level salaries and additional benefits for three years. The city covers the rest. The program requires agencies to retain each funded position for 12 months after three years.

He said the grant will allow the department to add two police officers.

“I think anyone would take a quarter of a million dollars to pad their budget, right?” – said Hansen. “So that’s great. This is just another insertion into the personnel matrix so that there can be more officers on the roads at any given time.”

Hansen said this will help the department cut overtime, provide more services to residents and provide officers with a better work-life balance.

Hansen said officers are doing a lot more with less. He said the department responds to about 30,000 calls for service each year and that the nature of those calls has become more intense over the years. Hansen said there were 48 officers when he joined the force in the late ’90s and he wants to get closer to that number again.

“It’s a huge inner-ring suburb, but it’s home to over 20,000 people and they have a lot of needs,” Mayor Annette Blackwell said.

Blackwell said that while officers deal with misdemeanors and more serious crimes, they also act as family counselors and intervene before situations change.

“Probably a third of my households are a single female head of household—one of two children—and so sometimes having police presence to deal with the little issues of our youth and our families is critical,” Blackwell said. “They are here to help. They are here to make a difference. These are the officers they know. These are the officers they trust.”

Blackwell said that as the city emerges from its financial crisis in 2020, she and other leaders will continue to actively seek grants and other opportunities.

“We continue to look for partners to help us fill holes in our budget… our overall fund balance. I want to keep it,” Blackwell said.

The city’s goal is to hire two new police officers by the end of the year, train them and have them on the streets by spring 2025.

“The culture that we create and cultivate is important to me,” Blackwell said. “And this is important in the areas of recruitment, retention and attraction.”

Smith likes the direction the city is heading.

“Sometimes you have to take baby steps—crawl before you can walk,” Smith said.

Other institutions in our area also received grants. Details in the photo below.

US Department of Justice