Five East Bay police departments are set to receive federal grants to help reduce gun violence, improve community involvement with police and beef up youth outreach.
The grants come under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services Hiring Program, which gives grants every year to hundreds of law enforcement agencies across the United States to hire new officers. This year, departments shared in a $113 million DOJ grant pool for fiscal year 2015 to hire officers to help with a variety of missions, from improving department “transparency” to reducing specific types of burglaries, improving departments’ diversity or “impartiality,” and addressing the catchall “improving quality of life.”
The COPS Hiring Program, said DOJ spokeswoman Mary Brandenberger, is designed to provide money directly to law enforcement agencies to hire (or rehire) officers to further these various community policing needs, especially for agencies facing money cutbacks or constraints. The DOJ grant money can be used to fill existing unfunded vacancies — for example, to rehire laid-off officers — or to hire new, additional officers, but it can’t be used simply to pay for officers already on the force.
In Pittsburg, a $375,000 grant will help officers better focus on youth safety and security issues.
“We as a community realize it is important to focus on our youth and help them to be involved in their community — after all, they are the future,” said Pittsburg police Capt. Ron Raman, adding that he hopes the officers are on board by the end of the year. “We have a good relationship with the (Pittsburg Unified) school district, and we want to build on that.”
Raman said the new officers could become school resource officers, and/or take part in youth mentoring, such as what already occurs with the Foot Pursuit Club, in which officers share running and conditioning time with high school students and discuss making healthy choices of all kinds.
Oakland will receive a total of $1.875 million, to help with the hiring of 15 officers designated as helping with “community engagement” efforts; Richmond, Vallejo and Berkeley will also receive significant grants to hire anywhere from one to six officers.
Richmond police Lt. Felix Tan said the hirings will allow his department to add five officers.
“Staffing has been a real issue for us, but if we have enough staff, we would expand our gang- and gun-violence work,” said Tan, who said there’s no immediate timetable to get the new officers hired.
The grant program funds up to 75 percent of the entry-level salary and benefits package for each officer for 36 months, with a local match of at least 25 percent. The departments must agree to retain those positions for at least one year after the three-year grant money runs out.
All recipients are required to retain all grant-funded positions for at least 12 months after the three-year federal funding period ends.
The DOJ grants to Pittsburg and Richmond are expected to pay approximately one-third of the overall costs of those departments’ new officers.
Contact Sam Richards at 925-943-8241. Follow him at Twitter.com/samrichardsWC
Community Oriented Policing Services Hiring Program — Bay Area 2015
CityGrant amountNo. of new officersCategory
Berkeley$125,0001School-based policing
Oakland$1,875,00015Community engagement
Pittsburg$375,0003School-based policing
Richmond$625,0005Gun violence
Vallejo$2,538,9046Gun violence
