For immediate Release
Wednesday, May 23, 2001, 1000 hours.Contact Person
Jim Denney, Sheriff-Coroner
Subject
Sheriff’s Department awarded ABC Grant
Text
Sheriff Jim Denney announced today that the Sutter County Sheriff’s
Department is the recipient of a $50,776 grant from the California
State Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC). He received
formal notification yesterday afternoon in a letter from ABC Interim
Director Manuel R. Espinoza.
The Sheriff’s Department is one of 21 grant recipients throughout the
California (see attached list) that received a portion of the $1.5
million distributed by ABC. Sutter County’s grant will fund half of
deputy sheriff’s position ($28,281), overtime ($19,000),
training/travel expenses ($1,000), and equipment ($2,495).
The Sheriff’s Department will use the grant to establish an ABC
Enforcement Unit within the Patrol Division. The assigned deputy will
work cohesively with ABC, allied agencies and community groups to
educate merchants and the public, train fellow officers in ABC
regulations and seek voluntary compliance from licensed premises via
LEAD (Licensee Education on Alcohol and Drugs) and IMPACT (Informed
Merchants Preventing Alcohol-Related Crime Tendencies) programs.
Projects will include community education, Shoulder Tap and Decoy
Sting operations, ROSTF (Retail Operating Standards Task Force) and
Cops in Shops. The focus is to reduce youth access to alcohol and
alcohol related calls for service utilizing increased community and
merchant awareness and compliance.
The Sheriff’s Department has actively enforced ABC violations since
1993 when the department began conducting Minor Decoy/Shoulder Tap
Programs in the area. To date, the Department has made 81 arrests for
selling and furnishing alcohol to minors. The Department was also a
recipient of a $5,500 Shoulder Tap Grant last October and continues to
conduct these operations on a frequent basis. They also conduct
frequent DUI checkpoints and are an active participant in the Every 15
Minutes program in the local high schools.
“I am extremely gratified to be the recipient of this grant,” Sheriff
Jim Denney stated. “It will go a long way towards enhancing our
enforcement efforts where alcohol is a contributing factor to problems
in the local area.”
Denney stated that alcohol was a contributing factor in 76 of the
domestic violence cases handled by the Sheriff’s Department in 2000.
Seventy-five percent of the aggravated assaults and every reported
battery case had alcohol as a contributing factor. Deputies arrested
56 minors for possession of alcohol in public places and arrested 212
individuals for public intoxication. In addition, DUI arrests in the
unincorporated area of Sutter County totaled 334, with 43 traffic
collisions determined to have DUI as the primary collision factor.
Denney credited Sheriff’s Sergeant Randy Pack in researching and
writing the grant for the Sheriff’s Department. The grant will be
formally submitted to the Sutter County Board of Supervisors for
acceptance in June and the program will officially begin July 1, 2001.
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