COPS Office Grant: Implementing Crisis Intervention Teams for Community Policing Development

To advance Executive Order 13929 Safe Policing for Safe Communities, as of October 28, 2020, the Attorney General determined that all state, local, and university or college law enforcement agencies must be certified by an approved independent credentialing body or have started the certification process to be allocated FY 2023 DOJ discretionary grant funding, either as a recipient or a subrecipient. For detailed information on this new certification requirement, please visit https://cops.usdoj.gov/SafePolicingEO.

Community Policing Development (CPD) funds are used to develop the capacity of law enforcement to implement community policing strategies by providing guidance on promising practices through the development and testing of innovative strategies; building knowledge about effective practices and outcomes; and supporting new, creative approaches to preventing crime and promoting safe communities.

The COPS Office is committed to advancing work that promotes civil rights and racial equity, increases access to justice, supports crime victims and individuals impacted by the justice system, strengthens community safety and protects the public from crime and evolving threats, and build trust between law enforcement and the community.

Statutory Authority

This program is authorized under the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, as amended, and the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, Title I, Part Q, Public Law 103-322, 34 U.S.C. § 10381 et seq.

All awards are subject to the availability of appropriated funds and any modifications or additional requirements that may be imposed by law.

Program-Specific Information

This program is authorized under the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, as amended, and the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, Title I, Part Q, Public Law 103-322, 34 U.S.C. § 10381 et seq.
All awards are subject to the availability of appropriated funds and any modifications or additional requirements that may be imposed by law.
For all identified deliverables, the applicant should adhere to the COPS Office Editorial and Style Manual. For projects that propose site-specific work, letters of support from the targeted agencies are strongly encouraged.

With any programmatic questions, please contact the COPS Office Response Center at 800-421-6770 or send questions via email to AskCopsRC@usdoj.gov. The COPS Office Response Center operates Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. ET, except on federal holidays.

Program Goals

Under this solicitation, the COPS Office seeks to support projects that allow for the identification and expansion of promising practices and produces knowledge products that follow the principles of good guidance:

Quality-driven, with an emphasis on action statements to drive promising practices and reduce variations in performance
Evidence-based, with recommendations that are consistent with the weight of the best available evidence identified through systematic review
Accessible, with clear language and manageable lengths that are appropriate and relevant for the law enforcement field
Memorable, to encourage immediate actions or aid for the complex situations law enforcement professionals face

To read an overview of the principles of community policing, please see the COPS Office publication Community Policing Defined.

Applicants should also consider the COPS Office performance measures when developing their own specific project goals and activities, which can be found in the “Performance Measures” section of this application.

Implementing Crisis Intervention Teams

Multiple awards, up to $400,000 each

Law enforcement has made significant improvements in its responses to people experiencing mental health crises through the development of various models of crisis intervention team (CIT) training, crisis triage centers, co-response teams, and embedded mental health and behavioral services. The evolution of these approaches has improved the safety of law enforcement and people in crisis. It has also resulted in the diversion of individuals with mental health needs away from the criminal justice system and toward the services and care they need.

The COPS Office will provide grants directly to state, local, tribal, and territorial law enforcement agencies for the creation or expansion of crisis intervention teams and to embed mental and behavioral health services with law enforcement agencies so they can better respond to individuals in crisis in the community. These projects may include overtime for sworn personnel, salaries and contracts for mental health professionals, purchase or lease of nonpatrol vehicles for crisis response programs, and costs associated with training for and equipping personnel. The COPS Office encourages small, rural, tribal, and regional agencies to apply for CIT funding to improve their crisis intervention efforts. For example, initiatives such as establishing a joint or regional shared CIT services program with a mental health service provider or conducting regional CIT training provides a valuable framework for small, rural, tribal, and regional agencies that desire improved crisis intervention programming for their agencies.

All applicants should budget for at least one person to attend a national conference addressing this issue. Funded agencies will have the opportunity to participate at no cost in an ongoing community of practice with other COPS Office awardees and receive training and technical assistance from the Crisis Intervention Training Provider.

Projects Out of Scope

Applicants that are not state, local, tribal, or territorial law enforcement agencies will not be considered.
Projects that do not create or expand the use of specialized teams, partnerships with mental and behavioral health services, or training in crisis intervention will not be considered for funding.
Projects related to the hiring of sworn law enforcement personnel will not be considered. If you are seeking this type of funding, please visit the COPS Office website for information on the COPS Hiring Program (CHP).

Additional Requirements

The goal of this program is to provide funding to support the implementation and expansion of programs that improve law enforcement responses to people experiencing mental health crises.

The project description (completed in the survey questions) should address the following:

Current scope and capacity of mental health response efforts including any formal agreements with service providers and prosecutors as well as challenges and unmet needs
Existing or proposed partnership between the law enforcement agency and the behavioral or mental health provider
Data and information demonstrating the demand and need for these services, such as number of calls, case referrals, civil commitments, and analysis of law enforcement burden or prior successes
Ways in which mental health services will be deployed and responses to individuals suffering from mental health issues will be improved by use of a CIT model
Planned service provider(s) or the process to select one or more service providers who will work with law enforcement and be compliant with local and state licensing of mental or behavioral service providers (the COPS Office strongly encourages memoranda of understanding or agreement [MOU/MOA] for efforts involving multiple agencies and service providers); applicants should consider the shortage of behavioral health providers and budget appropriately to hire in a competitive job market, adequately compensating for education, years of experience, certification, and the unique nature of the position
Résumés/CVs or job descriptions of key staff involved in this project
Ways to determine the effectiveness of the program, including identifying any data gathered throughout the award period to assist with evaluation of the program’s efficacy
Ways in which this project is not duplicative of work covered by existing local or other federal funding, including descriptions of how the agency will inform the communities it serves of this service and engage them with it
Travel to and attendance at a national conference on crisis intervention
Plans to maintain these efforts and programs after the grant period ends
A record of the agreement (MOU/MOA/contract, etc.) or a signed letter of intent detailing the partnership that will occur if awarded

Deliverables

The project deliverable(s) (e.g., training for sworn and nonsworn staff, co-response team services, and MOUs with outside mental health organizations) should be clearly identified and described in the application question responses. At the conclusion of funding, recipients will be required to develop a report that (1) summarizes their project, implementation, lessons learned, and ways the agency informed and engaged the communities they serve and (2) presents data such as number of calls, case referrals and outcomes, civil commitments, law enforcement time spent, time recovered, repeat calls for service, etc. This report should be formatted as a case study that can be shared with other law enforcement agencies around the country.

This report may be published by the COPS Office (which would include report development assistance, editing, design, and distribution) at no expense to the award recipient (see CIT ASSIST web page, Camden County Police Department: Crime Analysis, Technical Assistance, and Consultation, Salt Lake City Police Department Homeless Outreach Service Team (HOST) Program Overview, and Park Ridge’s Success Story on Going Beyond Crisis Intervention Team Training: Building Whole- Community Responses to Mental Health for examples).