BRIDGEPORT, W.Va. — Eighteen months after the City of Bridgeport began seeking partners in bringing a Tactical Diversion Squad to North Central West Virginia, Bridgeport City Council voted 4-3 this week in favor of providing joint-funding to increase federal law enforcement presence in North Central West Virginia.
“All of North Central West Virginia were named by the Department of Justice, last year or maybe the year before, as a high intensity drug trafficking area,” Bridgeport Mayor Bob Greer said on Friday morning’s edition of Morgantown-AM on WAJR.
The resolution teams Bridgeport with the City of Clarksburg and the Harrison County Sheriff’s Department to fund the hiring and transfer of a Sheriff’s Deputy to the D.E.A.’s Tactical Diversion Squad.
“We’re confronted with a problem that needs to be addressed, but we don’t necessarily have personnel to assign to this new tactical diversion squad,” Greer said. “So, the next best thing in our mind was to grant money to them.”
West Virginia currently has one Tactical Diversion Squad in Charleston. The squads primarily focus on prescription pain killer and opioid abuse.
“We only have so many police officers on our forces,” Greer said. “In some instances we don’t have a full compliment of those based on what we need to enforce the existing laws of our own communities.”
Greer is hopeful that the D.E.A. will approve the decision, which comes using an outside-the-box funding mechanism.
“Irrespective of any of the labeling that anybody does, there is no socioeconomic lines,” he said. “We’re not just dealing with a certain group of people. It cuts across the whole community.”
Greer said Bridgeport Police Chief John Walker would have preferred adding an additional officer to the city’s department.
“That was a greater need, from his perspective, than this task force by itself,” Greer said. “Which covers not only Harrison County, but all of North Central West Virginia and could potentially reach out to other areas.”
Although the vote was split, Greer said the dissenting votes were related to the funding mechanism. He said everyone on Bridgeport City Council was in agreement about addressing the epidemic, both locally and regionally.
“We have grandparents raising grandchildren because mom and dad can’t find their way out of the drug induced haze to be parents,” he said.
Per the agreement, Bridgeport and Clarksburg will provide $40,000 of joint-funding.