Description
The Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office) is the component of the U.S. Department of Justice responsible for advancing the practice of community policing by the nation’s state, local, territorial, and tribal law enforcement agencies through information and grant resources. The COPS Office has been appropriated more than $20 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 136,000 officers. COPS Office information resources, covering a wide range of community policing topics such as school and campus safety, violent crime, and officer safety and wellness, can be downloaded via the COPS Office’s home page, https://cops.usdoj.gov. Community policing is a philosophy that promotes organizational strategies that support the systematic use of partnerships and problem-solving techniques to proactively address the immediate conditions that give rise to public safety issues such as violent crime, nonviolent crime, and fear of crime. The Collaborative Reform Initiative Continuum of Services is designed to build trust between law enforcement agencies and the communities they serve; improve operational efficiencies and effectiveness; enhance officers safety and wellness; and develop and disseminate evidence-based, promising, and innovative public safety practices. Collaborative Reform Initiative Technical Assistance Center (CRI-TAC). In operation since 2017, CRI-TAC provides a wide array of technical assistance services, using a “by the field, for the field” approach. The CRI-TAC process is agency-driven and offers customizable, short-term technical assistance on more than 60 topics. The COPS Office is not seeking competitive proposals for FY24. Critical Response. The Critical Response program is designed to provide targeted TA to law enforcement agencies experiencing high profile events, major incidents, or sensitive issues of varying need. Critical Response is highly customizable and provides flexible assistance to law enforcement agencies in a variety of ways including after-action reviews; peer-to-peer exchanges; targeted in-depth review, analysis, and recommendations; and facilitated discussions with subject matter experts. Critical Response projects may vary in duration depending upon scope. Shorter-term executive consultations may take as little as two weeks, while in-depth reviews of specific incidents or issues will take between six and nine months. See FY24 Collaborative Reform Initiative: Critical Response solicitation for this funding opportunity. Organizational Assessment. The Organizational Assessment program offers the most intensive form of technical assistance on the continuum, involving in-depth assessments and long-term assistance on systemic issues that can challenge community trust and confidence. The ideal timeline for engagements will be a 12-month period after the intake process is completed, with the maximum time for engagements to be 18 months. During that period, it will be the responsibility of all involved parties to accomplish the mutual goal of police reform while acknowledging that sustaining these efforts ultimately must be the responsibility of local agencies and communities. The COPS Office is not seeking competitive proposals for FY24. These programs are meant to complement one another and provide a comprehensive continuum of services. For more information about these programs, visit https://cops.usdoj.gov/collaborativereform. The COPS Office is committed to advancing work that promotes civil rights and equity, increases access to justice, supports victims of crime and individuals impacted by the justice system, strengthens community safety, protects the public from crime and evolving threats, and builds trust between law enforcement and the communities that they serve.