The Palmerton Police Department received a nearly $140,000 grant to update and replace its body-worn cameras and vehicle dash cameras.

The award came from the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency, which recently announced $80 million in grants across the state for improved crime reporting, upgrade equipment and crime victim support services.

“We’ve been having little bit of issues with our current body cameras, some software and hardware issues, so we applied for a grant to purchase AXON, the leading producer in the industry for body cameras and dash cameras,” Palmerton patrolman Trevin Green said. “Also with the dash cameras, we included the function for them to serve as a license plate reader as well, so that will be something new for our department to have and utilize.”

Green noted that he and borough police Chief Tim Kromer worked together on the grant.

“Chief Kromer and I had worked pretty hard on it in order to hopefully get some better equipment for the department to help bring us along into the 21st century,” he said. “We were pretty pleased, this was the first grant that I had worked on, so it was a nice grant to do it to help save the taxpayers here and help the borough out.

“It’s definitely in today’s age of policing, it’s a good thing to have this type of equipment to have available to us for our protection and for our community’s. Any time we can help save some money as well, that’s a good thing.”

Green said that the borough received a grant in the amount of $137,193.

It’s a two-year project, spanning Oct. 1, 2024 through Sept. 30, 2026, and the department plans to use the money granted from PCCD to purchase the equipment that it requested and utilize it over that time period.

The Coaldale Police Department was recently granted $69,535 in state grant money that it will use to modernize an outdated reporting system. Winners were announced last week, with Coaldale being the only department in Schuylkill County to receive an award.

The grant will allow them to implement the cloud-based reporting system called “CODY,” which helps to gather and analyze crime statistics, as well as ensure full compliance with the National Incident-Based Reporting System.

As of Jan. 1, 2021, NIBRS became the national standard for law enforcement crime data reporting in the U.S. The data collected through NIBRS provides the ability to capture details on criminal incidents, including information on victims, known offenders, relationships between victims and offenders, arrestees and property involved in crimes.

The PCCD noted that Pennsylvania is well behind other states in fully utilizing NIBRS, making it challenging to accurately capture statewide and jurisdiction-specific crime trends.

It reported that less than half of Pennsylvania’s population is covered by a police department that is utilizing NIBRS and only 10% of local law enforcement agencies are reporting criminal statistics to the FBI through NIBRS. The grants will help law enforcement change that trend.