Dobson officials recently applied for a federal grant to help fund the cost of two new police officers.

Well, the town tried to apply. Only problem was the Community Oriented Policing Services Hiring Recovery Program, administered by the U.S. Department of Justice, wasn’t very open to the town’s request.

The entire process is to be done online, with town officials registering, then utilizing an auto-generated password to complete the application process. Police Chief Shawn Meyers applied by March 23 — the application process didn’t open until March 16 — but never received confirmation of registration or a password to use in the application process.

An official with the COPS program said yesterday there was no record of Dobson registering, even though town officials made almost daily e-mails and telephone calls to find out why they did not receive a password.

The COPS official, who would only give her name as Marilyn, did admit that applying late in the month-long application process might have complicated things, even delaying the generation of a password.

It would stand to reason if such a problem could crop up in the latter days of the process, it could also happen at any point in the application period.

COPS officials Kathryn McQuay as good as admitted the agency knows there might have been some problems when she told town officials the agency was accepting letters from agencies which believe “the system failed.”

In this case it is clear the application system did fail Dobson officials. At this point the only fair and just action would be for COPS officials to go ahead and include the Dobson request, even if it officially enters the system after the deadline.