Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Safety first

Have you seen the old Lincoln Jr. High School building on Washington St. recently? It's completely demolished, an impressive heap of rubble.

The plan is to build a Safety Center at that location, a home for the City and University police, and maybe part of nationwide network of local intelligence centers described in the Washington Post recently:

". . . U.S. states and cities are building their own network of intelligence centers to pool and analyze information from local, state and federal law enforcement officials. The new "fusion centers" are now operating in 37 states, [and] have received $380 million in federal support since 2001."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Can you varify "maybe part of nationwide network of local intelligence centers?" I don't doubt you, just curious where you got your information. I'm a reporter and would like to look into this farther.

Thanks a lot,
Chris

Parentheticus said...

Chris, the link is to an article in the Washington Post... As far as I know, there are no current plans for Carbondale to join the nationwide network of local intelligence centers (which is why I said "maybe" ... hoping that an alert reporter would pick up on it). HOwever, it seems reasonable to infer that C'dale's new multi-million dollar "cop shop" would include local intelligence sharing. Probably a query of the Police Chief(s) or the Mayor might bring confirmation or denial... but since the "Safety Center" is still a year or two away from construction (I don't think it's even been funded yet) they may not have much info for you. The article said '37 states' are participating. So a query of Illinois State officials might give you a better indication of Carbondale's future in this regard.

here's another link.