FY23 Law Enforcement Agency De-Escalation Grants -Community Policing Development Solicitation

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.

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.

Law Enforcement Agency De-Escalation Grants

Multiple awards, up to $250,000 each

Law enforcement use of force has long been a topic of national and local discussion, especially when a high-profile case heightens community awareness. The concept of de-escalation has been a part of law enforcement use of force discussions for decades. De-escalation refers to the range of verbal and nonverbal skills used to slow down the sequence of events, enhance situational awareness, conduct proper threat assessments, and allow for better decision-making to reduce the likelihood that a situation will escalate into a physical confrontation or injury and to ensure the safest possible outcomes.

Law enforcement agencies should view de-escalation holistically. Ensuring police-community encounters are safe for everyone includes not only communication and physical tactics, but also community engagement, community policing, and procedural justice. The COPS Office encourages an agency-wide comprehensive approach to de-escalation—one that includes both individual-level de-escalation training and other organizational supports. These supports may include such practices as data analysis and after-action reviews of use of force incidents to develop agency knowledge and best practices and the development of community-informed policies and procedures for oversight and management of use of force incidents that encourage the use of de-escalation tactics.

For the purpose of this solicitation, the term ‘de-escalation’ refers to taking the necessary action to communicate, either verbally or non-verbally, during a sequence of heightened events in an attempt to stabilize the situation and reduce the immediacy of threat. De-escalation includes using available time, options, and resources, combined with proactive decision-making skills, to enhance situational awareness, perform proper threat assessment, and resolve the situation without the use of force to ensure the safest possible outcomes and to further public perceptions of fairness, legitimacy, and mutual respect.

Through this solicitation, the COPS Office will provide grant funding to support whole agency training efforts in de-escalation, implicit bias, and duty to intervene, including overtime to participate in training programs and support for training officers to attend nationally certified train-the-trainer programs in these topic areas. Funding can also be used to support use of force data analysis; after-action reviews; the development of internal marketing and promotional materials, policies, and procedures that encourage a de-escalation mindset; and other organizational change efforts that work toward the creation of a culture of de-escalation within an agency. Funded agencies will have the opportunity to participate in an ongoing community of practice with other COPS Office awardees.

Projects Out of Scope

Applicants that are not state, local, tribal, or territorial law enforcement agencies will not be considered.
Training programs that focus solely on hands-on tactical training, force-on-force skill building, or other topic areas that do not directly contribute to the implementation of a de-escalation mindset among officers will not be considered.
Applicants that exclusively seek to purchase technology without connecting it to a broader training program in de-escalation, implicit bias, or duty to intervene will not be considered.

Additional Requirements

The goal of this solicitation is to support whole agency training efforts in de-escalation, implicit bias, and duty to intervene, including overtime to participate in training programs and support for training officers to attend nationally certified train-the-trainer programs in these topic areas. For applications seeking funding to support third party trainers (either on-site or by sending training staff to train-the-trainer programs), the selected training provider or curricula will require post-award review and approval by the COPS Office prior to project implementation. NOTE: Approval of your grant application does not mean approval of your training provider. Approval from the COPS Office on the specific training provider or curriculum will be required after award acceptance and before funding is committed to the provider.

As the COPS Office provides no-cost, nationally certified de-escalation training to law enforcement through a network of regional de-escalation training centers, applicants may also seek support for the development of online training to support a portion of the COPS Office Online Training Portal, resources (roll-call videos, toolkits, etc.), conduct analysis of calls for service and after-action reviews of use of force incidents to inform internal training programs, undertake policy manual reviews, and implement other efforts that support broader inclusion of de-escalation efforts in agencies.

Grant funding may also be used to support investments in virtual reality/augmented reality (VR/AR) technology to support agencies' de-escalation training efforts and to promote continual learning and maintenance of skills; however, such investments must be part of the development or enhancement of a larger de-escalation training program and not solely for the procurement of equipment or solely for the use of tactical firearms training. If requesting a VR/AR system or the use of simunitions, applicants should specifically discuss how this system will contribute to their agency’s broader training efforts in de-escalation, implicit bias, and duty to intervene rather than only to its increase in training capacity on use of force decision-making.

Applicants should be able to address the following objectives:

Ability to establish or enhance training for officers in de-escalation, implicit bias, and duty to intervene
Ability to implement organizational improvements that create a culture of de-escalation

Deliverables

The project deliverable(s) (examples include training deliveries, curriculum development, online training development, policy development, roll-call videos, toolkits, analytic products, etc.) should be clearly identified in the application describing the proposed training and other areas of organizational improvement the agency intends to implement using grant funds.
Agencies should expect to report on the number of officers who completed training during the period of performance.
Deliverables developed specifically through grant funding will be shared with the COPS Office De-Escalation National Coordinator to support de-escalation training efforts nationwide. Proprietary training materials from other vendors or providers will not be shared.