Highlighting Projects from the COPS Office Micro-Grant Initiative

BPD officers accepting a award for MET In the coming weeks, the 2014 Community Policing Development (CPD) program will be open for applications (read more), and like the previous two years, the COPS Office will also be providing an opportunity for law enforcement agencies to apply under the Micro-Grants for Law Enforcement Initiative. The COPS Office strongly supports the work that is being conducted under these awards, and will continue this Initiative under the 2014 CPD program.

Each micro-grant award is focused on a different issue that is affecting individual communities. Read below for some highlighted projects from the 2013 CPD Micro-Grants Initiative:

City of Charleston Community-Based Violence Prevention Initiative

The Charleston (North Carolina) Police Department is implementing a program that will engage youth in the principles of community policing. The Charleston PD project has School Resource Officers partnering with youth from community programs and schools to form work groups to address one of the problems/challenges that youth in the target area have to surmount to be successful. This initiative is creating a police-youth collaboration to combat the challenges that may lead youth to commit crimes. The program teaches youth problem-solving skills that can be transferred to other areas of their lives, with the goal to also teach youth a variety of team-building and decision-making skills.

The Tacoma IF Project

The Tacoma (Washington) Police Department (TPD) is incorporating and increasing the community policing philosophy in their department. The TPD Juvenile Detectives are beginning an innovative program where they become involved in mentoring, referrals, and check-ins of at-risk youth referred to them. This program has the power to bring together community service providers, mental health providers, ex-offenders, youth, and families in a partnership with the TPD with the goal of mentoring and serving the youth before they become involved with—and part of—the juvenile justice system.

Phoenix Business and Economic Stability Project

Phoenix (Arizona) Police Department will utilize concepts from “economic based policing” to focus on commercial crimes with an emphasis on finding Market Re-Entry Points (MRP) that are selling stolen and counterfeit goods, in order to determine the level of harm the local “shadow economy” has on revenues and local businesses. A professor from a local university will simultaneously develop a protocol to research the effectiveness of this model of policing, and the project will support an outside audit firm to evaluate the financial impact of these crimes and the economic damaging that results from them.

Valley View Elementary Community Policing Study

The Las Cruces (New Mexico) Police Department (LCPD) is identifying efficient and valid methods of engaging with the local citizens in a targeted high-crime area to reduce property crimes, illegal firearms, and illegal narcotics. To date, the focus on police officer deployment has assisted in identifying and maintaining community connections. This focus has clarified police officer responsiveness to issues brought forth by community stakeholders, including narcotic violations, pedestrian and vehicle traffic atypical compared to other locations within the reporting area, landlord/tenant disputes, and transient traffic entering the reporting area at odd hours, as well as enhancing the relationships between business owners/managers and police.

For more highlights from the Micro-Grants, please refer to the “COPS Office Micro-Grants: Small Investments, Big Results” article in the March 2013 Dispatch.

Nazmia Alqadi
COPS Office

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