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Grant not enough for Illinois Q-C police

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By Dustin Lemmon | Monday, December 10, 2007 |

A state grant that three Quad-City police agencies hoped to use to improve communications won’t be enough to purchase new equipment, Moline Police Chief Gary Francque said Monday.

Moline, Milan, Ill., and East Moline received a $1 million grant last week, which was distributed by the state as part of $36.4 million the state received from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.

The communities were hoping for more than $5 million in funding to replace aging radio equipment with limited technology. Francque said the cities can’t afford the equipment they wanted with a smaller grant.

“That’s substantially less than we hoped,” he said. “There is no way the three municipalities can fund the remainder of the $4.5 million of the project.”

Francque said his office had not received official notification about the grant Monday. A news release was issued by Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s office.

Both Moline and East Moline need to replace their radio equipment soon. Improved technology would also eliminate some radio ban barriers between different departments, Francque said.

Under the current system there is some difficulty for officers from different departments to reach each other while in their cars.

Francque said the cities will have to review their plans and find out what can be done with the grant money. He said previously that the communities would pay $400,000 to $500,000 over three years to help complete the project.

“We’d have to go back to the drawing board and see how we would do that,” he said of using the grant.

Dustin Lemmon can be contacted at (563) 383-2493 or dlemmon@qctimes.com.