If you want to improve the technology and effectiveness of your community policing developing program, you need money in order to pay for these upgrades. Resourceful police organizations may be able to find funding from a number of sources, but one source that definitely pays to look into is the U.S. Department of Justice. You can grow community policing efforts with DOJ grants. Here is a look at how your community can take advantage of Department of Justice local police grants.
U.S. Department of Justice Grants for COPS
The Department of Justice offers grants and funding through its COPS, or Community Organized Police Services, program. COPS offers funding to several law-enforcement organizations for a variety of programs, such as the Anti-Heroin Task Force program, Anti-Methamphetamine program and the Community Policing Development program. You can apply for grants and funding for programs such as these through the COPS website.
How to Earn Grants and Funding Through the DOJ and COPS
To receive a DOJ COPS grant or other Department of Justice funding, you will have to apply, providing information about your law-enforcement organization and your need. There are a few things to keep in mind when applying for grants or funding from the Department of Justice.
First, be sure and fill out the application completely and correctly. The managers responsible for administering these grants are extremely busy and receive many requests for proposals. An application with missing information or one that is improperly filled out could end up at the bottom of the pile or be discarded entirely, even if the error seems minor to you.
Be honest about what your needs are and what you expect to accomplish. Follow the old maxim of “underpromise and overdeliver.” When it comes to future funding requests, having a modest goal that you dramatically exceed looks much better than proposing a lofty goal and falling just a little bit short.
Make sure your numbers add up. Be sure that the goal you are setting is possible to achieve with the amount you are requesting. By the same token, asking for much more money than a goal should require could hurt you as well. Better to ask for two grants than to ask for too much money in the hope of having some left over for another project.
Make sure you have facts and figures to support your proposal. You should have statistics to back up why you need what you need and be able to present a compelling argument for why funding your project will be the solution. It’s important that you believe in your project in order to receive your funding request, but it is more important that you can get others to believe in it with concrete facts you can point to.
Make sure someone has edited your funding proposal before you send it out. You may not have the right perspective to catch problems, like failing to convey the level of need in your proposal or missing typos. This is your one chance to get this grant, so you need to put your best foot forward.
The Collaborative Reform Initiative for Technical Assistance
If you’re interested in technical assistance for your law-enforcement organization without having to chase down funding, you may want to look into the Collaborative Reform Initiative for Technical Assistance, or CRI-TA, also sponsored by COPS.
The Collaborative Reform Initiative for Technical Assistance is a program that allows the Department of Justice to provide a wide range of technical resources for law-enforcement agencies in need at no cost. The goal is to improve community policing effectiveness and enhance crime reduction and public safety.
CRI-TA assistance is tailored to the specific agency that requests it and includes training, coaching, analysis, consultation and strategic planning. Specific areas of assistance you may receive can include active shooter response, school safety, gang violence, crisis intervention, drug crime, mass demonstration response, modern police performance management and many others. You can learn more about CRI-TA, your eligibility and how you can benefit the program by emailing TechnicalAssistance@usdoj.gov.
Taking Advantage of Community Policing Development Opportunities
You have identified a need in your police department. For some, that is the hardest part. The resources you need are out there. All you have to do is make a commitment to finding and going after them for the benefit of your fellow law officers and your community.
Feel free to contact us and learn how to obtain improvements to your departments computing technology with funding from the Department of Justice.