When you think of The Department of Homeland Security, you probably envision an entity with thousands of agents and an almost unlimited budget to fight terrorism and respond to other national crises.

But what’s true on the national scale isn’t true on the state level, a point Lora Hunter, executive director for the Mississippi Department of Homeland Security, emphasized during her visit to the Columbus Rotary Club luncheon Tuesday at Lion Hills Center.

With 240,000 employees and a $69.8 billion budget, the federal agency is, indeed, a massive organization.

But those resources don’t translate to the state level, Hunter noted.

“We only have two dozen employees, so that’s one of the stronger misconceptions about our department, that we can deploy thousands of agents at the time of an emergency,” said Hunter, who was appointed as permanent MSDHS director by Gov. Tate Reeves in April after serving in the role as interim director for the previous year. “What we actually do is coordinate and facilitate local law enforcement that we’ve equipped with training. Of those two dozens employees, the majority are civilians. We only have three sworn agents and they work in our analysis and information center.”

Hunter said MSDHS performs three basic functions: distributing grants to local and state law enforcement agencies; training; and collecting, processing and analyzing information from local law enforcement.

Upon her arrival as MSDHS director, Hunter discovered that the distribution of those federal grant dollars were misdirected.

“Eighty percent of the grants are required to go to local governments and 20 percent to the state,” she said. “What we discovered is that we are badly out of compliance there. Much of the money was going to the state, which was then directing that money to local governments, but that’s not the way the grants are supposed to operate. So we’re working to flip that script and turn it around, including here in Columbus.”

On the recommendation from Leroy Brooks, chairman of the community Crime Prevention Task Force, Homeland Security representatives met with the Columbus Police Department, Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office and state law enforcement agencies in March to discuss the recent uptick in violent crime.

Hunter acknowledged that meeting, but did not elaborate Thursday.

“What (Homeland Security) said was to submit a plan and tell us what we can do,” Brooks said. “They did mention there were some limited funds available. I think they are waiting to hear from (CPD Chief Fred Shelton) on that.”

Shelton previously told The Dispatch CPD will compile local crime data to send to Homeland Security, which can use that data to help identify crime issues specific to Columbus and Lowndes County. He said Homeland Security can then help provide better equipment or facilitate temporary multi-jurisdictional task forces to tackle particular issues in the area, in addition to possibly providing grants.

On Tuesday, Hunter said the grants are competitive, the funds limited.

“Because we are a smaller state, we don’t have the funding other states have,” she said. “Back in the early 2000s, when the department was founded, the grants were much larger, as high as $33 million for Mississippi. But as we have gotten farther away from the start, the funds have decreased. Right now, Mississippi’s grant program ranges from about $4.2 million to $5 million.”

The federal grants can be used for a variety of purposes, including equipment and training.

“They are competitive grants with no match requirements,” she said. “The grants go pretty fast, especially since COVID-19. Our grant requests have gone up by 480 percent.”

The deadline for local governments to apply for the grants is on June 1.

Outside of the grant funding, MSDHS provides free-of-charge risks analysis for both government and private facilities, trains hundreds of local law enforcement officers in skills not offered at law enforcement academies and analyzes information for local law enforcement who may not have the technology or expertise required.

“When it comes to operations, we have small, albeit, diverse capabilities,” said Hunter, noting that MSDHS has trained and equipped four bomb teams that are on-call 24/7 to aid local law enforcement.

“We can respond very quickly to those threats,” Hunter said.

Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].