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Tulsa-Area Agencies Get $405,000 in AG's Safe Oklahoma Grants

Matt Trotter
/
KWGS

Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter awarded $404,980 to four Tulsa-area law enforcement agencies Tuesday.

The money comes from the Safe Oklahoma Grant Program, which is intended to help agencies combat violent crime. The Tulsa Police Department got $296,500. Deputy Chief Dennis Larsen said last year, TPD seized 335 illegal guns, largely thanks to the same grant program.

"That's 173 percent more than we took off the streets in 2012, just five years ago," Larsen said. "This year, 2017, the first of September, we're at 300 firearms seized."

Hunter complimented TPD’s use of Safe Oklahoma funding last year in another operation seizing several pounds of drugs and making dozens of related arrests.

"If you sell poison to somebody and they end up in the emergency room or, worse yet, dead, you've committed a violent crime," Hunter said.

Besides looking for illegal guns and heroin dealers, TPD will put this year's grant toward work to find human traffickers. TPD’s vice squad arrested eight last year. One of their victims was a 13-year-old girl.

The Wagoner County Sheriff’s Office got $32,925 from Hunter's office. Sheriff Chris Elliott said that money will go toward in-car video cameras to increase deputies’ safety.

"Secondly, I believe to the constituents of Wagoner County we have a duty and an obligation to be transparent, and the best way to be transparent in this day and age is videos," Elliott said.

Owasso Police received $36,232 in Safe Oklahoma funding, which they will spend on equipment for in-house computer forensic investigations and supplemental overtime.

Broken Arrow police were awarded $39,323, which they will use to help a crime analyst direct manpower to crime hotspots and areas of the city that are falling through the cracks.

Matt Trotter joined KWGS as a reporter in 2013. Before coming to Public Radio Tulsa, he was the investigative producer at KJRH. His freelance work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times and on MSNBC and CNN.