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There's an old saying that "the proof of the pudding is in the eating." The meaning of this phrase can be summed up as "results are what count." The same can be said for grant writing - you can write a thousand grants, but if you have no results, then your efforts have been wasted. In the following text, law enforcement professionals share their successes and in their stories the proof is clearly in the pudding.

Emmaus (Pennsylvania) Police Department
Sgt. Karl Geschwindt wrote a grant application in May 2005 for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Commercial Equipment Direct Assistance Program (CEDAP), a DHS program designed to provide smaller law enforcement and emergency responder agencies with equipment to enhance and support regional response, mutual aid and interoperability of equipment. In September, Geschwindt was notified his department would receive a thermal imager through the program.

"One of my job responsibilities is to search out and write grants, and this was my first attempt at writing a grant application," he says. "I started doing Internet research and found information about CEDAP. I had a two-week window to put my application together. [When writing grants] you have to be ready to spend time, be very thorough and answer questions in an appropriate manner."

Geschwindt's application focused on protecting a major Norfolk Southern railroad along with other infrastructure, including the local gas company, a water distribution site and a telecommunications facility. He also incorporated a plan for sharing the thermal imager with local first responders, as well as deploying the unit in incidents involving the Pennsylvania Northeast Counter-Terrorism Task Force. In his narrative, he mentioned several applications for the technology, including using thermal imaging to detect persons who have fled from the scene of a crime as well as finding missing persons, identifying suspicious vehicles and investigating suspected arson incidents.

Augusta County (Virginia) Sheriff's Office
Investigator Tom Heflin has been writing grants for the department for four years. Through his efforts, the department has acquired funding for a new crime analysis lab, a mobile command unit and equipment to improve surveillance operations. Most recently, Heflin coordinated an appeal in 2005 for federal funding through the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS) to buy four thermal imagers and several security cameras, as well as outdoor power and lighting equipment.

"All of the products on our list for the DCJS grant were there because they were determined to be necessary based on our 2004 county needs assessment," Heflin says. "My best recommendation is if a needs assessment has not been done, one needs to be done. You should always have a prioritized list of equipment needs so that when grants become available, it'll be a whole lot easier to get them done on time. It's also helpful to prepare your justification for the equipment and what its intended purpose is."

In his application, Heflin explained that thermal imagers will support a variety of law enforcement operations at the local level, including searching for missing persons and tracking suspects. He noted that though the sheriff's department has been able to borrow thermal imagers from the county fire department in the past, law enforcement leaders were concerned about the wait time that might be involved to access those thermal imagers during a critical incident.

Related:

• Grant Proposals: Take the Confusion Out and Put Logic In