Carbondale PD to receive more than $360K grant for technology improvements

CARBONDALE, Ill. (KFVS) - The Carbondale Police Department is improving its technology to fight crime.

The department will be awarded a $362,000 grant from the Illinois Attorney General’s Office to purchase cameras, license plate readers and digital forensic technology to combat organized retail crime. The Carbondale Police Department is one of only five departments in the state to receive the grant.

“I’ve been here over 21 years and I don’t remember ever having such a massive jump in technology,” said Carbondale Police Deputy Chief of Administration Anthony Williams.

Williams said the technology will have long-lasting impacts.

“Some of this is a little bit of catch up, but on the other hand, we’re actually--I think we have caught up to and hopefully getting ready to get ahead of some of these criminal enterprises” Williams said. “Because some of the criminal enterprises out there are pretty sophisticated.”

Police said the cameras will be used in areas of high crime, but also at other places around the city.

“Primarily the cameras, as we have it right now, they’ll be at specific intersections--high density intersections where we are going to have people coming and going to and from the city,” Williams said. “So we have that in a number of ways primarily just to track into and out of the city.”

Williams said since 2021 Carbondale police compiled reports on more than 400 retail theft incidents. He also said license plate readers are a game changer in solving crimes.

“It’s pretty inert for the average motorist who doesn’t have anything serious going on, but if we know of a license plate of a suspect in a serious crime, that might be something that we would be able to populate in there any time one of our squad cars--or they happen to drive by one of the stationary license plate readers--that there would be an alert that would let our officers know that they can go to that intersection and look for this vehicle,” Williams said.

According to the Attorney General’s Office, organized crime rings are often behind seemingly low-low level retail crimes.

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