GRANTEE SUCCESS STORIES

The COPS Office would like to hear from you!

The COPS Office would like to hear from you! We would like to consider featuring your success story or successful community policing strategies and lessons learned on our website to share with other law enforcement agencies across the country.

Arizona - 2

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Phoenix Police Department: School-Based Policing

During the 2014 summer break period for schools in the city, the Phoenix Police Department's School Resource Officer program became actively involved in the Safe Summer Program. The Safe Summer Program is an educational and enforcement program where existing SROs are assigned to one of four details to focus on juvenile safety during the summer recess.

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Phoenix Police Department: Juvenile Relationship Violence

Officer at North Canyon High School is working with the school social workers to lead a selected group of students in an interventional cohort focusing on building healthy relationships and juvenile relationship violence awareness and prevention. Participants in the program come from a variety of life experiences, including some with a family history of domestic violence, some referred by school staff if they exhibit precursor behaviors of violence, and some who wish to learn more about preventing juvenile relationship violence.


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Arkansas - 1

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Fairfield Bay Police Department: Community Trust

Areas of the community were struggling to make ends meet and facing a large drug and alcohol problem. Trust of police was nonexistent. Community members felt that the police were there solely to arrest and charge people, not to help them. The FBPD established outreach programs and free resources to help struggling members of the community.

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California - 13

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City of Hayward: Problem Properties

Hayward's synchronized multi-agency safe housing (S.M.A.S.H.) program goes far beyond simply using community policing strategies to achieve law enforcement objectives. In fact, the program could best be described as a pure distillation of the community policing philosophy.

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City of McFarland: Building Trust

We need to build trust with the community. Our anonymous tip line has allowed us to reach out to the portion of the community that wants to stay anonymous due to a fear of retaliation. These citizens want to be able to take an active role in reporting gang and drug activity, but they wish to remain anonymous.

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Fresno Police Department: Diverting Youth from Criminal Justice

Seeking to have long term impacts on crime, the Fresno Police Department and its community partners sought to find ways to divert juvenile offenders from criminal justice and into restorative justice programs. Student and neighborhood resource officers (SNRO) are focused on intervention strategies on their campuses that will divert student offenders from the criminal justice system to restorative justice programs.

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Hayward Police Department: Neighborhood Blight

Explains how the Hayward Police Department reduced graffiti and improved response time for abatement relating to graffiti, garbage dumps, street light repair, and other issues related to neighborhood blight.

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Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles: Trust and Community Safety

In the more than five decades since the Watts Riots of 1965, the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles (HACLA) and other public sector agencies in Watts offered only partial solutions to the lack of safety in three gang-entrenched housing developments: Nickerson Gardens, Imperial Courts, and Jordan Downs. Similarly, a lack of investment and relationship building by law enforcement had compounded the issues of Ramona Gardens in East Los Angeles. The lack of violence within Ramona Gardens, also a HACLA housing development, masked the level of fear gripping residents, who were afraid to report crime because of gang intimidation and a lack of civic engagement. Over the years, the HACLA established numerous Community Safety Partnership (CSP) programs to improve residents' quality-of-life, improve police-resident relationships, and restore community members' trust.

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Redlands Police Department: Motor Vehicle Theft / Other Theft

At the end of 2010, the City of Redlands was experiencing a rash of vehicle burglaries especially at the LA Fitness parking lot where the officers were taking vehicle burglary reports at the location on a weekly basis. Redland Police Department (RPD) spoke with the Law Enforcement Division of 3SI security system and the company agreed to loan the RPD an ESO (Electronic Stakeout) tracker.

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Sacramento County Sheriff's Department: Gangs

Sacramento County Sheriff's Dept. created the IMPACT program which consists of three separate units working collaboratively to curb youth gang violence. As a result of the program many executives provided additional staff to work with grant-funded personnel which bolstered the Gang Suppression Unit into a 31-person task force comprised of four different teams.

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Sacramento County Sheriff's Department: Gangs

Gangs in the Sacramento region operated out of budget motels to avoid detection by law enforcement and continue illegal activities. The identified gang members were all wanted in connection with rival gang shootings within the region.

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Sacramento Police Department: Motor Vehicle Theft

Sacramento PD has partnered with local businesses to host free etching events where vehicle license plate numbers are etched onto catalytic converters. To date, SPD is not aware of any reported thefts of the marked converters and believe the program is a deterrent.

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Sacramento Police Department: Neighborhood Safety

After extensive research, our department decided that Nextdoor was the perfect social media platform to advance community communication and geographic policing. Nextdoor allows law enforcement agencies to target communication to geographically distinct areas of the city.

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San Jose Police Department: Other Violent Crime Problem

The patrol division started a creative, multifaceted approach to solving the issues that plague the city: e.g., homelessness, prostitution, quality of life concerns, and gang violence. During the first quarter of FY2012-2013, the gang suppression officers made 13 total arrest, including on-view and outstanding warrant arrests in addition to performing 16 parole and probation searches on gang members or on their residences.

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Vallejo Police Department: Violent Crime and a Critical Staffing Shortage

After emerging from bankruptcy, the City of Vallejo was eager to get back to providing proper levels of service to the community members of Vallejo and to stimulating economic activity and growth. Despite its limited resources, the Vallejo Police Department was on a mission to rebuild, reconnect, and look for ways to say yes to the community.

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Vallejo Police Department: High Crime Complicated by Adversarial Relationship with the Community We Serve

As Vallejo was the first city in California to file bankruptcy in 2008, the Vallejo Police Department (VPD) lacked resources and staffing to respond to, let alone prevent, crime. We had an adversarial relationship with residents; trust was lacking, residents didn't feel safe, and we didn't seek public input on how we enforced laws and promoted safety. Given low funding and staffing, we realized that our agency needed the community's help to combat crime and changed how we treated both residents and officers.

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Delaware - 1

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New Castle County Police Department: Decrease Crime and the Fear it Causes

With stagnant crime rates and a reduced workforce due to attrition and the economic downturn, a new method of policing was needed to better serve all community members.

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Florida - 3

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Key West Police Department: Expanding Community/School Involvement

We are very pleased to have reactivated our Police Explorer program in the high school. By re-establishing the Police Explorer program, the police department, through our school resource officers, has laid the foundation for enhancing this relationship.

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Miami-Dade Police Department: Drug Trafficking

Residents were participating in the illegal sale and distribution of narcotics. By building relationships with the community, COPS Office-funded officers began receiving information that directed them toward individuals who may have been involved in the illegal narcotics trade.

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West Palm Beach Police Department: Juvenile Offenders and their Involvement in Violent Crime

Juvenile offenders in low-income areas with higher rates of violent crime are too often failed by traditional juvenile diversion programs and soon progress to violent offenses and adult criminal records. Gangs have been growing in the immediate metropolitan area at an alarming rate. The pioneers of this project took best practices from a variety of successful departments to develop a new approach to prevent youth and gang-related violence, among other issues.

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Georgia - 1

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Conyers Police Department: School-based Policing

Increase of student body population and criminal activity at the schools became more than just one school resource officer (SRO) should have to handle. Increasing the staff by just one officer has allowed for the distribution of workload and given more time for the officers to get to know the students. Also, we chose to select one female and one male officer to have both genders represented at the schools, which allows students to feel more comfortable in building a trusting a relationship with the SRO of their choice.

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Illinois - 1

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Bellwood Police Department: Strained Relationship Between Police and Public

Many residents were reluctant to engage with or assist law enforcement because they felt that law enforcement agents were not sensitive or understanding when interacting and communicating with community members. The department realized that repairing the mistrust and misunderstanding between the public and police would require moving in a different direction, meeting with one another, and using methods outside the realm of tradition.

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Indiana - 1

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Auburn Police Department: Drug Manufacturing/Trafficking

The Indiana Multi Agency Group Enforcement (IMAGE) Drug Task Force was created in 1993 as a proactive, multi-jurisdictional law enforcement program for the sole purpose of investigation and enforcement of drug related crimes that serves a four county area (DeKalb, Noble, Steuben and LaGrange). Without the IMAGE program, the majority of drug cases, criminal charges, arrest and confiscated drugs would never occur.

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Massachusetts - 1

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Lawrence Police Department: Drug

The COPS Office funding has allowed the department to staff a number of officers in the special operations division. The division staffs a street narcotics enforcement unit (SNEU) and several community policing officers. Together, these officers and detectives gather information on the latest drug hot spots throughout the city and develop plans to address the drug activity in those targeted areas. View/Download

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Michigan - 1

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Detroit Police Department: Trust

During their visit at Osborn, Cody, and Denby High Schools, corporals met with a small group of students at each campus and interacted with students with an open communication strategy in an effort to identify with students' concerns on various subject matters. In doing so, corporals were able to reduce the polarization that often times exist between the police and community.

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Minnesota - 2

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Hopkins Police Department: School-Based Policing

Hopkins PD helped create "Operation Recess", an initiative unlike any in the nation, where officers play with youth at recess. As a result of the initiative, written disciplinary reports have significantly decreased in this time period, averaging from 15 a week to 5.

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St. Cloud Police Department: Drugs and Public Safety Concerns

The St. Cloud Police Department coordinated several activities in the community: clean up days, a job fair, and neighborhood barbecues. Improvements were made to the Hopkins Park community house and playground adjacent to the community. In addition, the LOCK IT UP safety campaign was launched by the police department, and we assisted in establishing a neighborhood crime watch program. Cooperative police-citizen efforts to eradicate open-air drug activity in the River Road neighborhood led to Operation "Rollin' on the River" targeting illegal narcotic activity.

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Missouri - 2

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Springfield Police Department: Quality of Life

Springfield Police Department's (SPD) Crime Prevention Unit began looking at the possibility of expanding the concepts of neighborhood watch to large apartment complexes. The end result was a program, titled Apartment Watch, which focused specifically on safety and security of the complexes.

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Springfield Police Department: Quality of Life

Springfield Police Department's (SPD) Crime Prevention Unit began looking at the possibility of expanding the concepts of neighborhood watch to area businesses. The end result was a program, titled Business Watch, which focused specifically on business-related criminal activity issues.

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New Jersey - 2

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Camden County Police Department: Gun Related Homicides

The Camden County Police Department (CCPD) has implemented some state-of-the-art technological advancements. This technology allows the department to coordinate with field units to detect and respond to observed conditions, increasing intelligence and information sharing.

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Paterson Police Department: Gun Violence

Explains how the Paterson Police Department reduced the number of homicides, nonfatal shootings, and gun-related violence and improved police-community partnerships.

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New York - 1

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Niagara Falls Police Department: Lack of Attendance at Public Meetings

Niagara Falls Police Department created a program called "Kickin' It With the Cops" where they invite the community to come out and meet with police officials to discuss issues in a safe and nonthreatening environment. They hold a meeting once a month during the summer and cook hot dogs and have a bounce house for children to play in while their parents talk to members of the police department. It has been successful thus far. The location changes each time to a part of the city where there is normally a lot of both foot and vehicle traffic.

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North Carolina - 1

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Buncombe County Sheriff's Office: Building and Sustaining Relationships with the Community

Our COPS teams consist of five members, a facilitator, and a supervisor from different divisions within our organization. They are given an ill structured community problem and are given 30 days to work full time on the assigned issue.

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Ohio - 3

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Ashtabula County Sheriff's Office: Drug Trafficking

Ashtabula County Sheriff's Office (ACSO) is proactive with traffic enforcement in high crime (drug) areas, resulting at times in mobile meth labs and users being discovered. As a result, 62 clandestine meth labs have been found and eradicated, and 154 felony arrests have been made for manufacturing and possessing chemicals to manufacture, thus preventing deaths, injuries, and other crimes related to these activities.

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Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority Police: Domestic Violence

The U.S. Department of Hetitleh and Human Services predicts that between 3.3 and 10 million children are exposed to domestic violence yearly in the United States. In 2013, CMHAPD recorded 2,543 crimes (UCR Part I & II) and responded to 33,702 calls for service.

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Toledo Police Department: Quality of Life

The Toledo Police Department and the City of Toledo devised a new T-Town program, which was designed to mirror the "Tidy Towns" program that is used in Ireland. The T-Town initiative gave the community service officers (CSO) the opportunity to get out in the field and work in partnership with other city departments to clean up neighborhoods that were in need.

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Oregon - 1

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Gresham Police Department: Quality of Life

Gresham Police Department's (GPD) Special Enforcement Team (SET) began reaching out to property owners in an effort to establish a coalition. As a result of this partnership, problem tenants have been evicted, landscaping and lighting were installed, and families are now letting their children play outside.

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Texas - 1

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El Paso County Sheriff's Office: Juvenile Delinquency

Juvenile delinquents from extreme poverty stricken areas of the county are often undersupervised, left to their own devices for hours on end; they lack titleernative extracurricular activities to prevent criminal mischief. The El Paso County Sheriff's Office is addressing this issue with our COPS Hiring Grant—SRO Program by piloting a summer teen and police service (TAPS) program with 26 at-risk juveniles.

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Tribal/Territorial - 1

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CTAS in Action: Nebraska and Kansas-based Native American police use DOJ grant to upgrade technology, improve public safety

Since 2010, the Department of Justice has awarded over 2,000 grants totaling more than $943 million in CTAS grant funds to hundreds of American Indian and Alaska Native communities. The tribes are using these funds to enhance law enforcement; combat domestic violence, dating violence, stalking and sex trafficking; bolster justice systems; prevent and control juvenile delinquency; strengthen the juvenile justice system; and serve sexual assault and elders.

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Utah - 1

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Salt Lake City Police Department: Homelessness

While Salt Lake County covers less than one percent of Utah's area, it represented more than 68 percent of Utah's annualized estimate of persons experiencing homelessness in Utah in 2014 (Comprehensive Report on Homelessness, State of Utah 2014).

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Virginia - 2

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Galax Police Department: Police Response to Specific Populations

The City of Galax is one of three localities in Virginia with a verified presence of organized drug cartels. The city was also identified in the 2000 census as experiencing the largest growth of Hispanic population (per capita) in Virginia. The COPS Office funded the hiring of one bi-lingual police office. This bi-lingual officer has enabled members of the GPD to better understand the cultural nuances that it had misinterpreted prior to his employment.

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Galax Police Department: Using Information and Intelligence in Policing

The Galax Police Department (GPD) by definition is a rural agency (24 sworn members) with limited resources to fund the increased demand for police services. The GPD implemented a SARA model of problem solving into field training to familiarize new hires with the process. As a result of the changes, in the first year of the project, the GPD reported a 14% decrease in crimes against a person.

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Wisconsin - 1

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Madison Police Department: Recidivism Among Violent Offenders

Special Investigation Unit (SIU) of the Madison Police Department (MPD) working with the community strives to change the offenders' behavior by specifically focusing on them through monitoring and support and establishing clear expectations with them. One and half years into the focused deterrence program, the SIU has seen a reduction in crime among the targeted offenders.

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