PORTLAND, Maine: United States Attorney Halsey B. Frank today announced that the Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office) has awarded the York County Sheriff’s Office with a grant of $111,603 for the office’s Peer Support Project.
The funding is part of $4.5 million in grants for the Law Enforcement Mental Health and Wellness Act Program across the nation. These program funds are used to improve the delivery of and access to mental health and wellness services for law enforcement through training and technical assistance, demonstration projects, implementation of promising practices related to peer mentoring mental health and wellness, and suicide prevention programs.
“I am very pleased to announce the federal funding for this very important initiative," Frank said. “Every day, our law enforcement officers are under an enormous amount of stress on the job in their heroic efforts to keep our communities safe. We simply cannot ignore the fact that these officers are human, too, and we must ensure that their mental health needs are being met."
Good mental and psychological health is just as essential as good physical health for law enforcement officers to be effective in keeping our communities safe from crime and violence. As part of the Law Enforcement Mental Health and Wellness Act of 2017, Congress authorized the COPS Office to establish peer mentoring mental health and wellness pilot programs within state, tribal, and local law enforcement agencies. The 41 awards announced today meet the goals of the 2017 Act and support the Department of Justice and the Administration’s commitment to law enforcement.:
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In addition to the grants announced today, the COPS Office recently published two reports regarding officer mental health and wellness.:
The COPS Office is the federal component of the Department of Justice responsible for advancing community policing nationwide. Since 1994, the COPS Office has invested more than $14 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 134,000 officers and provide a variety of knowledge resource products including publications, training and technical assistance.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the United States Attorneys
