Harris sheriff: Stimulus needed for chopper, machine guns Sheriff would like $7 million in stimulus funds

Harris County Sheriff Adrian Garcia wants to spend about $7 million in federal stimulus money to lease and staff a helicopter, buy a covert surveillance van and add machine guns to boats that patrol the Houston Ship Channel.

Commissioners Court is scheduled to vote today on whether to submit those ideas to a U.S. Justice Department grant program that was allocated $2 billion in stimulus funding to make neighborhoods safer.

If approved, all the equipment would be used by the sheriff’s homeland security bureau, which Maj. Robert Doguim said was essentially a division in name only when Garcia took office in January.

Helicopter tops wish list

According to the grant proposal submitted to the court, most of the money would be spent leasing and staffing a helicopter to augment law enforcement activities on the ground. The vendor would provide, maintain and fuel the aircraft, along with three contract pilots. Four deputies would serve as tactical flight officers.

The county already operates a single-engine, four-seat plane donated last year by a talk radio host’s anti-illegal immigration group. Court members and representatives from the sheriff’s office said at the time that they would rather have a helicopter, but could not afford one.

Just last week, the plane helped deputies track a man during a foot chase, Doguim said. But helicopters can hover, have a shorter turning radius and can be outfitted with video and thermal imaging equipment too heavy to be installed on the plane, he added.

About $113,000 would be spent on a surveillance van. Another $175,000 would be spent on eight machine guns to be mounted on the marine division’s four patrol boats.

The sheriff’s gang unit also would get $200,000 for body armor and other gear.

Commissioners Steve Radack and El Franco Lee said they had some questions about the spending decisions in light of long-term staffing issues in the jail and the patrol division. The money also could be used to fix the problems that caused the jail to recently fail its state inspection for the fourth time in six years, Radack said.

Conservative groups also have questioned whether it was appropriate for Congress to allocate stimulus funding to law enforcement projects.

While President Obama said injecting cash into the existing grant program would create jobs while helping prevent crime, David B. Muhlhausen, a senior policy analyst with the Heritage Foundation, said any jobs gained from the new programs would be offset by jobs cut by businesses facing higher taxes.

liz.peterson@chron.com