Section 6

Enhancing Law Enforcement Initiatives

Overview

Community partnerships have contributed to the decline in violent crime in many U.S. cities. However, sections in some cities, as well as in some small towns and rural areas, continue to be plagued by high instances of violent crime. OJP will continue to work closely with state, local, and tribal law enforcement organizations, researchers, and other professionals to develop and implement strategies to address the needs of these locales.

In addition, OJP recognizes that the nation’s economic issues require close examination of federal, state, and local spending. Public leaders are reallocating resources to optimize the return on public investment. Due to budgetary constraints, law enforcement leaders need to examine and adopt evidence-based and data-driven strategies for crime reduction efforts.

The grant programs outlined in this chapter are intended to help state, local, and tribal law enforcement and other partners respond to constrained budgets and still ensure public safety.

Discretionary Programs

Program Name Adam Walsh Act (AWA) Implementation Grant Program
FY 2012 Funding $12,800,000
OJP Sponsor SMART Office
Web Link www.smart.gov
Program Contact Victoria Jolicoeur, (202) 514-4696, Victoria.Jolicoeur@usdoj.gov
Program Description
The Support for Adam Walsh Act (AWA) Implementation Grant Program assists jurisdictions with developing and/or enhancing programs designed to implement requirements of the Sex Offender Notification and Registration Act (SORNA) and to promote innovation and best practices in the field of sex offender management. In summary, SORNA requires that all states, the District of Columbia, the principal U.S. territories, and participating federally recognized Indian tribes maintain a sex offender registry; and that sex offenders register and maintain a current registration in each jurisdiction where the offender resides, is an employee, or is a student. SORNA also sets forth requirements for sex offender registries, which include specified required information; duration of registration; in-person verification of sex offender identity; and participation in the Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender Public Website, and the utilization of the SORNA Exchange Portal.

Activities supported by this program may include the following:

• developing or enhancing jurisdiction-wide SORNA implementation programs or functions;
• enhancing infrastructure to assist implementation of SORNA, such as for the collection, storage, submission or analysis of sex offender biometric data (finger and palm prints) and DNA;
• developing or enhancing law enforcement and other criminal justice agency information sharing at the jurisdiction level, as well as between jurisdiction level agencies and local level agencies as it relates to SORNA implementation;
• implementing records management projects, such as converting documents to digital format as required by SORNA;
• providing support for coordinated interagency efforts to enhance implementation of SORNA requirements;
• supporting efforts of local or state units of government (including P.L. 280 tribes) to develop or enhance their sex offender registration and notification functions with tribal nations as delegated to the state for the purpose of substantial implementation of SORNA; and
• developing and implementing training for law enforcement and other criminal justice agency personnel responsible for sex offender registration, notification, and monitoring as it relates to SORNA implementation in the jurisdiction.

Program Name Enhanced Collaborative Model to Combat Human Trafficking
FY 2012 Funding $3,727,327
OJP Sponsor BJA
Web Link www.bja.gov/funding.aspx
Program Contact Deborah Meader, (202) 305-2601, Deborah.Meader@usdoj.gov
Program Description
Human trafficking is reputed to be one of the most profitable and fastest growing endeavors of organized crime—an endeavor that enslaves thousands of people within the United States each year and perhaps millions internationally. The DOJ includes investigating human trafficking among its top priorities. To address this problem, BJA will continue to provide funds for state, local, and tribal law enforcement to proactively investigate human trafficking with the primary goal of identifying and rescuing victims of severe forms of trafficking. These are defined as: (1) sex trafficking in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such an act has not attained 18 years of age; or (2) the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery.

Program Name Bulletproof Vest Partnership (BVP)
Grantee Any recognized unit of general government recognized by the U.S. Census Bureau that employs law enforcement officers.
FY 2012 Funding $20,072,197
OJP Sponsor BJA
Web Link www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bvpbasi/
Program Contact Joe Husted, (202) 353-4411, Joseph.Husted@usdoj.gov
Program Description
This program reimburses states and local units of government up to 50 percent of the cost of a bulletproof vest for a law enforcement officer. The application opens once a year, but payments are made year round in monthly batches and are usable for a two-year period. Once a jurisdiction receives an award, it must request funds and provide vest receipts.

Program Name Protecting Public Health, Safety, and the Economy from Counterfeit Goods and Product Piracy: The Intellectual Property Theft Enforcement Program
FY 2012 Funding $2,200,000
OJP Sponsor BJA
Web Link www.bja.gov/funding.aspx
Program Contact Kate McNamee, 202-514-9343, Catherine.McNamee@usdoj.gov
Program Description
The Intellectual Property Theft Enforcement Program is designed to provide national support and improve the capacity of state, local, and tribal criminal justice systems to address intellectual property criminal enforcement, including prosecution, prevention, training, and technical assistance.

Program Name Violent Gang and Gun Crime Reduction Program Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN) Grant Program
FY 2012 Funding $521,777
OJP Sponsor BJA
Web Link www.bja.gov/ProgramDetails.aspx?Program_ID=74
Program Contact James Chavis, 202-307-0688, James.Chavis@usdoj.gov 
Program Description
Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN) is designed to create safer neighborhoods through a sustained reduction in crime associated with gang and gun violence. The program’s effectiveness is based on the cooperation of local, state, and federal agencies engaged in a unified approach led by the U.S. Attorney (USA). The USA is responsible for establishing a collaborative PSN task force of federal, state, and local law enforcement and other community members to implement gang and gun crime enforcement, intervention and prevention initiatives within the district. Through the PSN task force, the USA will implement the five design features of PSN—partnerships, strategic planning, training, outreach, and accountability—to address specific gun and gang crime problems in that district.

Program Name National Criminal History Improvement Program (NCHIP)
FY 2012 Funding $6,000,000
OJP Sponsor BJS
Web Link bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/
Program Contact Devon B. Adams, (202) 514-9157, Devon.Adams@usdoj.gov
P rogram Description
The NCHIP program helps states, territories, and tribes to improve the quality, timeliness, and immediate accessibility of criminal history and related records for use by federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement. These records play a vital role in supporting criminal investigations, background checks, and efforts to enforce protective orders issued in response to stalking and domestic violence offenses. Funds awarded support the following goals: (1) Improving the completeness, accuracy, and timeliness of criminal history records and related records, including those that are related to protection orders, stalking, domestic violence, and prohibiting mental health records; (2) upgrading the technology and equipment supporting national and state criminal history records systems; and (3) assisting states in fully implementing the National Crime Prevention and Privacy Compact, which governs the interstate exchange of criminal records for non-criminal-justice purposes.

Program Name National Instant Criminal Background Check System(NICS) Act Record Improvement Program (NARIP)
FY 2012 Funding $5,000,000
OJP Sponsor BJS
Web Link bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/
Program Contact Devon B. Adams, (202) 514-9157, Devon.Adams@usdoj.gov
P rogram Description
The NICS Act Record Improvement Program is a product of the enactment of the NICS Improvement Amendments Act of 2007, which contains a number of provisions aimed at improving the NICS, established by the FBI pursuant to the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act to support conducting criminal background checks for regulated firearm purchases. The program helps states and tribal governments make records available to the NICS relating to persons who are disqualified from possessing or receiving a firearm. Among other objectives, grants can be used to establish or upgrade information and identification technologies for firearms eligibility determinations, and to improve the automation and transmittal of criminal history dispositions and records and mental health adjudications or commitments to federal and state record repositories.

Training and Technical Assistance

Program Name Anti-Human Trafficking Task Force Initiative Training and Technical Assistance
FY 2012 Funding $305,000
OJP Sponsor BJA
Web Link www.bja.gov/funding.aspx
Program Contact Deborah Meader, (202) 305-2601, Deborah.Meader@usdoj.gov
Program Description
BJA and OVC work collaboratively to utilize funds appropriated through the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) to implement a multidisciplinary anti-human trafficking task force model designed to combat human trafficking by identifying, rescuing, and restoring victims (with a focus on foreign national victims); investigating and prosecuting trafficking crimes; and raising awareness about trafficking in the surrounding community. TTA funds will be used to continue supporting comprehensive training and technical assistance to the BJA-funded task forces and OVC-funded victim service providers.

Program Name Missing Alzheimer’s Program
FY 2012 Funding $893,842
OJP Sponsor BJA
Web Link www.bja.gov/funding.aspx
Program Contact Linda Hammond-Deckard, (202) 514-6015, Linda.Hammond-Deckard@usdoj.gov
Program Description
The Missing Alzheimer’s Program provides funds for projects that aid in the protection and location of missing persons living with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, and other missing elderly individuals.

Research and Statistical Programs

Program Name National Use of Force Data Collection Design
FY 2012 Funding $75,000
OJP Sponsor BJS
Web Link bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/
Program Contact Joel Garner, (202) 305-2682, Joel.Garner@usdoj.gov
Program Description
This program seeks proposals for the design of a statistical program that will generate estimates of the nature and extent of the use of lethal and nonlethal force by law enforcement officers in the United States. This design program will systematically assess the strengths and weaknesses of measurement strategies, sampling frames, and analytical approaches used in prior research and statistical programs on uses of force. This assessment will identify promising approaches for inclusion in a BJS use-of-force program, and test the extent to which it is feasible to implement these promising strategies, frames, and approaches in an efficient and cost effective manner.

Program Name Census of Law Enforcement Training Academies, 2012
FY 2012 Funding $318,500
OJP Sponsor BJS
Web Link bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/
Program Contact Joel Garner, (202) 305-2682, Joel.Garner@usdoj.gov
P rogram Description
This program seeks proposals for a census of law enforcement training academies. Such academies are designed to provide new law enforcement recruits with the knowledge, skills, and values essential to successfully implementing contemporary laws, policies, and procedures into police work. The structure, personnel and curriculum of these academies vary greatly in response to local preferences, state laws, liability suits, and emerging trends in police practices. In addition to organizational characteristics of the training academies, this census will collect information on the number and types of officers trained; content and length of the training program; hours of instruction on each topic in the training curriculum; number and type of instructors; requirements for instructors; on-site and off-site training facilities; operating budget; and retention rates by race and gender.

Program Name Research on Policing
FY 2012 Funding $1,000,000
OJP Sponsor NIJ
Web Link www.nij.gov/funding/welcome.htm
Program Contact Brett Chapman, (202) 514-2187, Brett.Chapman@usdoj.gov or Eric D. Martin, (202) 514-9588, Eric.D.Martin@usdoj.gov
Program Description
NIJ seeks proposals to conduct research on policing to improve criminal investigative processes and promote police integrity in law enforcement agencies at the state and local levels. NIJ intends to extend the previous line of research with a study on the criminal investigation process, with an emphasis on changes and/or improvements in the investigative processes over the past thirty years. Additionally, NIJ is interested in changes in investigative processes that have resulted in different models of investigations, and changes in detectives’ investigative practices in the direction of crime control and prevention.

Program Name Census of State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies
FY 2012 Funding $700,000
OJP Sponsor BJS
Web Link bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/
Program Contact Joel Garner, (202) 305-2682, Joel.Garner@usdoj.gov
Program Description
This program seeks proposals to implement a census of law enforcement agencies in the United States. The census will provide national data on the number of state and local law enforcement agencies and employees for local police departments, sheriffs’ offices, state law enforcement agencies, and special jurisdiction agencies, such as campus, housing, natural resources, and other specialized agencies. This census serves as the sampling frame for other surveys of law enforcement agencies conducted by BJS and other agencies.

Program Name Criminal, Civil, and Regulatory Responses to White Collar Crime Program
FY 2012 Funding $1,200,000
OJP Sponsor BJS
Web Link bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/
Program Contact Howard Snyder, (202) 616-8305, Howard.Snyder@usdoj.gov
Program Description
The federal response to white-collar violations is divided among criminal, civil, and regulatory justice agencies. Administrative data exist, but are currently not linked in a fashion that would provide counts of reported white-collar violations across federal agencies; the sanctions imposed (civil forfeiture, injunctions, cease-and-desist orders, fines, imprisonment), and the business sectors most vulnerable to financial crimes. The proposed project would draw on the recommendations made by Reiss and Biderman (1980) to reconcile differences in classification, definition, and counting from existing criminal, civil, and regulatory justice agencies (SEC, FTC, FDA, EPA, etc.) to provide a comprehensive and standardized reporting system of financial/economic crimes.

Program Name Research on Illegal Prescription Drug Market Interventions
FY 2012 Funding up to $1,000,000
OJP Sponsor NIJ
Web Link www.nij.gov/funding/welcome.htm
Program Contacts Linda Truitt, (202) 353-9081, Linda.Truitt@usdoj.gov; Alan Spanbauer, (202) 305-2436, Alan.Spanbuer@usdoj.gov, and William Ford, (202) 353-9768, William.Ford@usdoj.gov.
Program Description
Up to $2 million may become available for multiple research grants on illegal prescription drug markets to examine the utility of policies, practices, and resources available to law enforcement for major crime deterrence, prosecution, and other market intervention measures. This solicitation has two objectives: policy analysis of criminal diversion of prescription medication laws; and Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP) optimization for law enforcement. It seeks to determine the effectiveness of federal and state criminal diversion of prescription medication laws that establish definitions and punishments intended to target "rogue pain clinics," illegal Internet pharmacies, drug theft, illicit prescribing by physicians, and doctor shopping; to establish the utility of PDMP information to law enforcement, including prosecutors and task forces; and to discover how states can optimize the quality and flow of this sensitive information.

Program Name The Impact of Different Safety Equipment Modalities on Reducing Correctional Officer Injuries
FY 2012 Funding $400,000
OJP Sponsor NIJ
Web Link www.nij.gov/funding/welcome.htm
Program Contact Jack Harne, (202) 616-2911, Jack.Harne@usdoj.gov
Program Description
With this solicitation, NIJ seeks proposals to conduct comparative evaluations of safety equipment modalities: policies and practices among correctional agencies regarding what safety equipment staff may use, when and how staff use it, and how those modalities affect officers’ physical safety. This solicitation defines safety equipment as equipment used by correctional officers to de-escalate and stop violent and disruptive activities by inmates and to protect officers from assaults.

Program Name Evaluability Assessment of Law Enforcement Agencies Using the Data-Driven Approaches to Crime and Traffic Safety
FY 2012 Funding $300,000 (from Department of Transportation)
OJP Sponsor NIJ
Web Link www.nij.gov/nij/funding/forthcoming.htm
Program Contact Brett Chapman, (202) 514-2187, Brett.Chapman@usdoj.gov, Joel Hunt, 202-616-8111, Joel.Hunt@usdoj.gov, or Eric D. Martin, (202) 514-9588, Eric.D.Martin@usdoj.gov
Program Description
NIJ, through an Interagency Agreement with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is interested in determining the feasibility of conducting a rigorous evaluation of the DDACTS process. NIJ seeks to fund an evaluability assessment of up to 15 law enforcement agencies currently employing the DDACTS model. Approximately 250 law enforcement agencies have been encouraged to adopt the guiding principles of the DDACTS model in their law enforcement strategies.

Program Name Research and Evaluation on Metropolitan Crime
FY 2012 Funding $750,000
OJP Sponsor NIJ
Web Link www.nij.gov/nij/funding/forthcoming.htm
Program Contact Brett Chapman, (202) 514-2187, Brett.Chapman@usdoj.gov, Joel Hunt, 202-616-8111, Joel.Hunt@usdoj.gov, or Eric D. Martin, (202) 514-9588, Eric.D.Martin@usdoj.gov
Program Description
NIJ is interested in funding criminal justice research that leverages municipal operation datasets both within and across jurisdictions. NIJ is interested in the feasibility of combining multiple datasets from various agencies to conduct research on criminal justice issues in urban and suburban environments. This research is critical in enhancing public safety by giving law enforcement the tools to understand the changing nature of crime in metropolitan areas.

Program Name: "NIJ Body Armor Challenge"
FY2012 Funding: $100,000
OJP Sponsor NIJ
Web Link www.nij.gov
Program Contact Mark Greene, (202) 307-3384, mark.greene@ojp.usdoj.gov
Program Description
NIJ seeks viable solutions to determine the ballistic performance of individual in-service body armor at any point in time to a high degree of accuracy, and in a manner that does not render the armor unfit for continued use. To be released as a technology challenge on www.challenge.gov.