Medford Police Department Awarded COPS Grant
Published on December 06, 2022
One of only five cities in Oregon to be awarded a Community Oriented Police Services (COPS) grant from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the Medford Police Department will receive $375,000 to assist with a portion of the cost to hire three new Livability Team Officers.
The Livability Team focuses on addressing livability issues throughout Medford. The team does this by building relationships with unhoused individuals and chronic nuisance criminal offenders and connecting them to local service providers as well as opportunities for shelter and housing.
“The addition of three more officers to our Livability Team will improve our ability to engage with the community and continue our efforts with local service providers to connect individuals to services and resources they need,” said Deputy Chief of Police, Trevor Arnold.
The funding from this grant will help cover a portion of the cost for the initial three years of employment for three new officers. The remaining three-year cost will be funded through American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds, which was approved by the Medford City Council earlier this year.
“Using police officers in this capacity has proven to be effective for our community. Not being restricted to reactive police work provides an avenue for real change in the lives of our vulnerable, chronically homeless community,” said Arnold.
The 2022 COPS Community Hiring Program is a competitive grant program designed to provide funding directly to law enforcement agencies to hire and/or rehire additional career law enforcement officers in an effort to increase their community policing capacity and crime prevention efforts. Anticipated outcomes of the CHP program awards include engagement in planned community partnerships, implementation of projects to analyze and assess problems, implementation of changes to personnel and agency management in support of community policing, and increased capacity of agency to engage in community policing activities.
To learn more about CHP, visit https://cops.usdoj.gov/chp-award. For additional information about the COPS Office, visit https://cops.usdoj.gov/.