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KEOKUK, IOWA -- A grant from the U.S. Department of Justice is going to help create a full time computer crimes investigator in Lee County Iowa.

Keokuk Assistant Police Chief Dave Hinton applied for the $15,000 grant.

Now a memorandum of understanding between the Keokuk Police Department, the Fort Madison Police Department and the Lee County Sheriff's Department will allow one officer from each department to get training and start investigating computer and internet crimes in Southeast Iowa.

Hinton said the Keokuk Police Department used to have to send their computer crime cases to either the state lab in Des Moines or to the Davenport Iowa Police Department.

Now they'll be able to do their own investigations and get timely reports back on the cases.

"The major emphasis will be on child pornography, possession, manufacturing and dissemination and distribution and those types of cases. There may also be a use for it in missing or abducted children or person's. Not sure yet, but we'll find that out when we get the training process and what all we'll be able to do," said Hinton.

Hinton said the training will take about 12 months.

He hopes to have the team up and active about a year from now.