ROGERS COUNTY, Okla. — The Rogers County Sheriff’s Office now has another way to track the activity of career and violent criminals.
It’s all thanks to a new grant awarded by the Oklahoma Attorney General’s office.
Brian Starns works for Flint Hills Underground in Tulsa.
He says the company was recently doing a natural gas job in Rogers County, when thieves decided to help themselves to thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment.
“It's very frustrating. You go buy a piece of equipment to have it stolen the next day and then you have to go re-buy that, and it's mentally and financially an anguish on the business,” said Starns.
The stolen equipment adds up to roughly $50,000.
We've had two gooseneck trailers, and enclosed trailer, fusion equipment that applies to our job and how we make our money and it's specific to what we do. We have to go rebuy all of that equipment and there's all of that downtime because the guys can't do their job without their equipment,” said Starns.
He says the equipment was held at a staging yard, and it was locked up including the trailers.
Rogers County Sheriff, Scott Walton says property crimes are usually the handiwork of repeat offenders.
That’s why the sheriff’s office is using a new $23,400 grant from the Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office to target violent and career criminals.
'This is people's livelihood and it's just more of a penalty to the hardworking man and woman that invest in equipment and trailers, tools and things that get stolen - for nothing to happen to that person,” said Walton.
Walton says the grant money will be dedicated to the tracking of career criminal activity.
"$23,000 will give us hours of a person that's already employed, and it will give us hours of his time to lead towards the tracking of these career criminals,” said Walton.
Starns says he’s grateful for the additional resource.
“If it's put to the right use, and the money goes to catching these guys it's a great idea,” said Starns.
The Attorney General’s Safe Oklahoma Grant Program began in 2012.
All local law enforcement agencies and sheriff’s offices are eligible to apply.
Grants are made for a one-year period.
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