Cranberry's receipt last week of a $100,000 federal grant will allow the township police department to "add a level of transparency" that will protect police officers and the community alike, said the department's top officer.

About $65,000 of the grant will be used to equip the department's 12 police cars with video-cameras that will record all scenes to which police cruisers are summoned.

"This will offer the officers another level of safety by clearly documenting what occurs on a traffic stop or at any event [to which a cruiser is sent.] It offers another level of transparency: This is the way we operate. We have nothing to hide," said Lt. Kevin Meyer, who authored the application for the competitive grant from the Community Oriented Police Services Technology Grant program.

Lt. Meyer intends to have the mobile cameras installed and in use before year's end.

The equipment will have a voice-recording system with a wireless microphone that can be used by police officers at will.

About $33,000 of the grant will be used to equip the fleet of cruisers with bar-code readers that will digitally scan people's drivers licenses and vehicle registration cards.

"This will be a huge time-saver for us," the lieutenant said.

Currently, police offices either hand-write or type into the computer all the information that appears on the cards any time they respond to a call or make a traffic stop. "It's manual data entry and that takes a lot of time and can involve errors and omissions. This will eliminate that," he said, noting that the bar-code readers won't be used solely for traffic stops, but also at any scene that involves documenting people's identities.

The dozen readers that are being purchased will cost about $6,000, with the balance of the money going toward the new records management software that will be used in conjunction with the readers.

The final $2,000 of the grant will be used for equipment that will allow Cranberry police to retrieve data from cellular telephones. This kind of computer forensics work currently is hired out to state police or other investigatory agencies. "Pulling data, images, content from mobile phones is needed more and more," Lt. Meyer said.

He said the grant is giving the township police department an opportunity to upgrade its technology without having to pull funds from the general operating budget. "We're very excited about it," he said.

At a public meeting last Thursday, Cranberry supervisors commended the lieutenant and public safety director Jeff Scheuler for initiating the advances.

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