WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office) is pleased to feature the Santa Clara City (CA) Police Department (SCPD) as its “Community Policing in Action” Photo Contest winner for May 2022.

The SCPD services a city of approximately 130,000 residents, and SCPD officers regularly respond to mental health disturbances. In 2020, SCPD created a Crisis Intervention Specialist (CIS) team to implement a comprehensive, preventative program to support community members suffering from mental health issues.

In the winning photo, two SCPD officers, who are also CIS specialists, respond to an individual experiencing a mental health crisis. During these calls, CIS officers offer on-the-spot assistance in the form of social services and mental health resources that can prevent a recurrence of the incident. CIS specialists may also transport individuals to a hospital or detention facility, if needed, for further mental health evaluation and assistance.

Said SCPD Sergeant Greg Deger, “After doing an analysis of mental health incidents, I saw that the number handled by patrol officers in 2021 was lower than in 2020, even though our population has grown since then. We are also seeing a reduction in detentions and transfers to emergency psychiatric services, while there’s an increase in people being connected to resources and services.”

View the winning photo on the COPS Office website, as well as on the COPS Office’s official Twitter profile and Facebook page. SCPD’s commitment to community policing and its dedication to protecting members of the Santa Clara City community are also chronicled in the May 2022 edition of the COPS Office e-newsletter, the Community Policing Dispatch.

The COPS Office is the federal component of the Department of Justice responsible for advancing community policing nationwide. The only Department of Justice agency with policing in its name, the COPS Office was established in 1994 and has been the cornerstone of the nation’s crime fighting strategy with grants, a variety of knowledge resource products, and training and technical assistance. Through the years, the COPS Office has become the go-to agency for law enforcement agencies across the country and continues to listen to the field and provide the resources that are needed to reduce crime and build trust between law enforcement and the communities served. The COPS Office has invested more than $14 billion to advance community policing, including grants awarded to more than 13,000 state, local and tribal law enforcement agencies to fund the hiring and redeployment of more than 135,000 officers.

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