2014 COPS Hiring Program (CHP) Now Open

The Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office) is now accepting grant applications for the Fiscal Year (FY) 2014 COPS Hiring Program (CHP) for the hiring and rehiring of entry level career law enforcement officers in an effort to create and preserve jobs and increase their community policing capacity and crime prevention efforts. The deadline for applications is Monday, June 23 at 7:59 p.m. EDT.

The FY 2014 CHP grant program is an open solicitation. All state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies with primary law enforcement authority will be eligible to apply. FY 2014 CHP grants will provide up to 75 percent of the approved entry-level salaries and fringe benefits of full-time officers for a 36-month grant period, with a minimum 25 percent local cash match requirement and a maximum federal share of $125,000 per officer position. FY 2014 CHP grants may be used on or after the official grant award start date to: (1) hire new officers (including filling existing officer vacancies that are no longer funded in an agency’s budget); (2) rehire officers already laid off by any jurisdiction (at the time of application) as a result of state, local, or Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) budget reductions; or (3) rehire officers scheduled to be laid off by your jurisdiction (at the time of application) on a specific future date as a result of state, local, or BIA budget reductions.

Highlights for FY 2014 CHP

Under FY 2014 CHP additional consideration will be given to applicants who select one of the following community policing problem areas:

Homeland Security: To include protecting critical infrastructures, information/intelligence problems, and other homeland security problems.
Homicide/Gun Violence: The COPS Office supports the Attorney General’s priority goal of reducing violent crime, especially if it is gun related.
School-Based Policing through SROs: Applicants requesting officer position(s) in order to deploy SROs must deploy all their officer positions as SROs. Moreover, if awarded CHP funding, CHP grantees who chose this specific community policing problem area will not be allowed to change it post-award. CHP grantees who use CHP funding to deploy SROs will also be required to submit to the COPS Office the contact information for each school partner where they intend to deploy the SROs, and to provide a Memorandum of Understanding between the CHP grantee and the school partner.
Trust Problems: To include issues of fairness and impartiality, transparency problems, respect problems, and other trust-related problems.

Additional consideration may also be given for the following:

Applicants who have experienced an unanticipated catastrophic event. Applicants indicating that they have experienced an unanticipated catastrophic event will be required to submit an attachment documenting the event or incident as part of their application.
Applicants that have a neighborhood or other geographic area designated as a Promise Zone as part of the President’s Promise Zone Initiative.
The COPS Office supports the Attorney General’s commitment to hiring military veterans whenever possible. Applicants who commit to hiring or rehiring at least one military veteran under CHP will receive additional consideration for CHP funding. These military veterans may be in any of the three hiring categories; new hire, rehire, or rehire scheduled to be laid off. As in previous years, a military veteran hire must have served on active duty for a period of at least 180 days, any part of which occurred on or after September 11, 2001, and has been discharged or released from active duty in the armed forces under honorable conditions.

For more information about the COPS Hiring Program, please go to the COPS Office website and follow on the Grants and Funding tab.

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