Memphis, TN - Attorney General Jeff Sessions today announced grant awards to Public Safety Partnership member sites as part of $10 million in funding to support state, local, tribal law enforcement departments, agencies, and their partners who are fighting violent crime in jurisdictions across the United States.
The Office of Justice Programs’ Bureau of Justice Assistance, in partnership with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, is awarding $5 million under the Local Law Enforcement Crime Gun Intelligence Center Integration Initiative to encourage local jurisdictions to use intelligence, technology and community engagement to identify unlawfully used firearms and to prosecute those who commit violent crimes.
Grant recipients include the PSP cities of Indianapolis, Indiana, $798, 866; Memphis, Tennessee, $714,055; Tulsa, Oklahoma, $800,000 and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, $634,971. Other locations include Detroit, Michigan, $800,000; the Albuquerque, New Mexico, Police Department, $452,108, and the City/County of San Francisco, California, $800,000. The jurisdictions will use these awards to hire personnel to utilize the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN), to purchase technology required to operate a Crime Gun Intelligence Center and ammunition for ballistic tests of recovered weapons.
U.S. Attorney D. Michael Dunavant said, "The Department of Justice is committed to providing meaningful resources to strategically combat violent crime and firearms offenses. We are pleased that Memphis has been selected as a Public Safety Partnership site and we appreciate the commitment of Attorney General Sessions, the Bureau of Justice Assistance, and ATF in providing over $1.1 million in grant funding to equip law enforcement and prosecutors to more effectively deal with violent crime committed with firearms. PSP’s technical and strategic support has already contributed to the reduced violent crime rates that we have experienced. The enhanced financial support from this grant announcement is greatly needed to efficiently combat violent crime in the Memphis community, which will impact the entire Western District of Tennessee as a whole. We applaud our local law enforcement partners at the Memphis Police Department, the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office, and the Shelby County District Attorney General, for their commitment to this partnership and continued utilization of these resources. We look forward to using the NIBIN technology and the Crime Gun Intelligence Center to respond to and solve shooting incidents, and to remove violent offenders from the streets of Memphis."
The Attorney General also announced awards for BJA’s Technology Innovation for Public Safety (TIPS): Addressing Precipitous Increases in Crime program.
This program supports the Department’s priorities of reducing violent crime and supporting law enforcement officers, including prosecutors. While many jurisdictions are making significant progress implementing justice information sharing solutions to address critical gaps in crime prevention and response activities across organizations and jurisdictions, there remain challenges for the criminal justice system to respond to threats to public safety. This is especially true for efforts addressing significant increases in crime.
Justice information sharing technology refers to any hardware and software, hosted residentially or remotely, that plays a role in the collection, storage, sharing and analysis of criminal justice data. Funding under this program is provided to help state, local, territorial, and tribal jurisdictions use innovative technological solutions to enhance their justice information-sharing capacity.
Grant recipients include the PSP cities of Memphis, Tennessee, $417,224; Toledo, Ohio, $492,553; Flint, Michigan, $499,694 and Houston, Texas, $500,000. Other locations include Arizona Criminal Justice Commission, $317,834; City of Boynton Beach, Florida, $465,860; Clark County Social Service, Nevada, $500,000; New Mexico Second Judicial District Attorney, $500,000; State of Connecticut Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection; $419,804; Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office, New Jersey, $500,000; and Georgia Bureau of Investigation, $499,339. Additional information on the grant awards can be found at www.bja.gov.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions made the announcement during today’s National Public Safety Partnership Symposium on Violent Crime in Birmingham, Alabama. The National Public Safety Partnership is a DOJ-wide initiative that enables cities to consult with and receive a coordinated array of resources from DOJ’s programmatic and law enforcement components: the Bureau of Justice Assistance; United States Attorneys’ Offices; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; the Federal Bureau of Investigation; the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration; the U.S. Marshals Service; the Office on Violence Against Women; the Office of Justice Programs; the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services; and other federal agencies in order to improve local violence reduction strategies.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the United States Attorneys
