INDIANAPOLIS -- Starting Friday, the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department will use two wagons from the Marion County Sheriff's office to help transport prisoners to the Marion County Jail.
The change is being made because the sheriff's office said last week that they couldn't fully staff the transport wagons because of a personnel shortage.
Because of that shortage, some IMPD officers were being forced to leave their assigned patrol beat to take an arrestee downtown, which the police union says isn't effective for stopping crime.
To help the sheriff's office and keep officers in their assigned beat areas, IMPD says they will staff two transport wagons with officers from 7 p.m. to 3 a.m. seven days a week.
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So, who will pay for this change?
"That will come out of the police department's operational budget for the additional staffing for those wagons. We need those prisoner transport wagons. We want to make sure regardless of what their staffing is that so we can have those wagons and get the officers back in service," said Dep. Chief Chad Knecht, Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department.
Col. Louis Dezelan of the Marion County Sheriff's Office says they are down almost 90 people right now.
The sheriff's office says it is starting a hiring campaign to get more people on board.
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