Funding Opportunities for Your Community in 2024: Law Enforcement

Transcript also available as PDF.

DARYL FOX: Good afternoon everyone, and welcome to today's webinar, “Funding Opportunities For Your Community in 2024: Law Enforcement Programs.” At this time, it's my pleasure to introduce Michelle Garcia, Deputy Director for programs within BJA, to begin the presentation. Michelle.

MICHELLE GARCIA: Thank you so much, Daryl, and welcome everyone to today's presentation. As Daryl said, my name's Michelle Garcia and I am the Deputy Director for programs at BJA, and I'm joined by my colleague, Thurston Bryant, who you will meet shortly. 

Today we'll be providing an overview of the Office of Justice Programs and the Bureau of Justice Assistance, preview the solicitations that we have planned specifically for law enforcement in FY24, provide you with some resources to assist you as you're considering applying and to aid you in your applications, and then as Darryl mentioned, we've carved out time at the end to answer any questions that you may have. 

The Bureau of Justice Assistance is one of six offices within the Office of Justice Programs. The Office of Justice Programs, along with the Office on Violence Against Women and the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, constitute the grant-making components of the Department of Justice. While we'll be focusing today on funding opportunities through BJA, I encourage you to check out the other offices and components to see what funding opportunities they'll have available in FY24. And in just a moment, I'll show you where you can find additional information. 

This year, the Bureau of Justice Assistance is celebrating our 40th anniversary. We were established in 1984 to reduce violent crime, create safer communities, and reform our nation's criminal justice system. And we're led by our Director, Karhlton F. Moore. 

Our work focuses on three primary areas. First investments. We provide a large amount of grant funding to support efforts all across the country. We also work to share knowledge, bringing knowledge forward from our grantees, develop buyer training and technical assistance providers that can include guidance, documents, best practices, innovations, all to help move the field forward. And lastly, engagement. Engaging with organizations like yours, with stakeholders throughout the country to inform our work and ensure that our work is meeting the needs out in your communities. 

This year, we have over 80 planned solicitations. As I mentioned earlier, our focus today is on those solicitations for which law enforcement agencies are eligible, but we do also encourage you to look at other solicitations in which there may be an opportunity for a law enforcement to partner. I do want to note that all grant program plan and forecast data that we're providing today is subject to the availability of appropriations and potential legislative changes of statutory requirements. And the information provided today is based on our projected operational plans, but that might be updated including additions, substitutions, or cancellations of solicitations. 

So, if nothing else, here are two websites I strongly encourage you to bookmark. On the left is the website for BJA's available funding or current solicitations. So as we release solicitations, we will post them to our website and you'll be able to go there and see what funding is available. One of the features on the website is the ability to do a keyword search. So if you're looking for funding to support a specific type of service or activity, say you're looking for funding for body-worn cameras, or you're looking for funding for co-responder teams, you can put that term into the keyword search and it'll help you find solicitations for which you may be able to apply to support those types of activities. 

On the right is the DOJ grant program plan website. This is a site you can go to and you can find all the planned solicitations for all of the Office of Justice Programs, as well as the Office on Violence Against Women and the COPS office. Similarly, you can do a keyword search to try and find solicitations that will support the types of activities or programs that you're interested in. 

Now within BJA, we have two types of grants that we make, formula and discretionary. Our formula grants are typically awarded on a non-competitive basis, which means that every eligible applicant that submits an application will receive some funding. The amount of funding for a specific agency or jurisdiction can depend on a variety of factors, often which include population and crime data. Most formula grant programs are administered by a State Administering Agency or SAA, If you don't already know who your SAA is, or have an active relationship with your SAA, I encourage you to start one and I'll give you information in a moment to locate your SAA. Our discretionary grants are ones that you would apply directly to OJP or BJA for funding. These grants are typically competitive and awards are made on predetermined review processes and the availability of funds. I will note that for most programs, we receive more applications than we actually have funding for. So we try to fund the strongest proposals based on objective criteria. 

And I do want to note where we are in our cycle of releasing solicitations. So we have just started releasing solicitations. As we go through the ones we're highlighting today, I believe four of them are already open and accepting applications. But each day, each week, we continue to release solicitations. And so, definitely want you to look at perhaps prior year solicitations because in many cases, they're the same or very similar to get an idea of what might be allowable or fundable under those that have not yet been released. Because some of these solicitations haven't been released yet, there may be specific questions that you have that we can't answer at this time. But once the solicitations are released, you'll have additional opportunities to pose any questions you might have. 

I want to highlight a few of our formula grant programs. The first is our Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program, or JAG. This is the largest and, really, the flagship grant program through BJA to fund criminal justice and related activities. As you can see, there's nine broad purpose areas, including number one being for law enforcement programs. JAG funds are distributed in two ways to the state, through the state administering agencies that we just talked about. And then the state will typically engage in their own solicitation or request for application process in which they make subawards to local jurisdictions and organizations, or there may be local units of government that are eligible to directly apply for JAG funds. That information is released each year when we release the solicitation. We anticipate for FY24 releasing that solicitation this summer. And to get a sense of the scope of JAG awards, you can see that in Fiscal Year '23, we made 56 state awards totaling over $209 million, and to date, 949 local awards totaling over $96 million. 

The second formula program I want to highlight is our Byrne State Crisis Intervention Program, which was created under the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act of 2022 that aims to reduce gun violence and save lives and make progress in keeping guns out of dangerous hands. Similarly, these funds are awarded to state administering agencies who then establish state crisis intervention advisory boards to determine how the funds will be directed within the state itself. There are five years' worth of funding that have been appropriated under Byrne SCIP, $150 million a year starting in FY22, and we anticipate the FY24 solicitation will be released this spring. 

And then the last formula program that I want to highlight is Project Safe Neighborhoods, or PSN. PSN is a nationwide initiative that brings together federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement officials, prosecutors, community-based partners, and other stakeholders to identify the most pressing violent crime problems a community is facing and develop comprehensive solutions to address them. Across all the federal districts, PSN follows four key design elements of successful violent crime reduction initiatives, which are, one, community engagement, two, prevention and intervention, three, focused and strategic enforcement, and four, accountability. Funds are awarded to a fiscal agent for the federal judicial districts. And in many states, this is the same state administering agency as for other BJA awards. 

You can find who the state administering agencies are for your state by going to the OJP website. And you'll see that not only does it include information about the SAA's for BJA-funded programs, but you'll also find the SAA information for the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention as well as for the Office for Victims of Crime. I'm now pleased to turn it over to my colleague, Thurston Bryant. Thurston.

THURSTON BRYANT: Great. Thank you very much, Michelle. Hello, everyone. My name's Thurston Bryant. I'm a Senior Policy Advisor within our law enforcement operations division. I'm very happy to be with you today. We have several programs to examine, a total of 23 number. So I'll provide some summary information that highlights these programs and then I'll also provide some examples of the activities that can be funded through these programs as well. The PowerPoint screen that you will see will provide you with other information that's available for you to read as I go through the programs. 

BJA's Body-Worn Camera Policy and Implementation Program to Support Law Enforcement Agencies. Body-worn cameras are increasingly seen as must-haves for many law enforcement agencies and communities. BJA funds the purchase of body-worn cameras that are implemented as part of the comprehensive Body-Worn Camera Program. BJA also has a body-worn camera toolkit and clearinghouse website for agencies interested in planning and implementing a body-worn camera program. Award amounts for this program range from $10,000 to $2 million depending upon the size of your agency. 

Small, Rural, Tribal Body-Worn Camera Program. This is another component of the overall Body-Worn Camera Program, but this program was implemented to assist those agencies that are smaller in size that might need some assistance with their application process. And so through this program, what BJA has done is to institute a micro-grant program to help those small, rural, and tribal agencies to be able to apply and receive funding assistance under the overall Body-Worn Camera Program. 

Next is our Collaborative Crisis Response and Intervention Training Program. Examples of the strategies and activities that can be funded under this program include creating, designing, and implementing a new or enhanced training program in line with BJA's Collaborative Crisis Response Intervention Training Program curriculum, analyzing existing training and employment policies and practices and collaboration with local stakeholders and agency staff, adopting and implementing new technology to track training implementation, and defining and tracking process measures, as well as short and long-term program outcomes. 

The next couple of programs that we'll examine, we try to kind like put those together. These are programs that will help law enforcement agencies to address any substance abuse issues. The first is our Comprehensive Opioid Stimulant and Substance Use Site-based Program, or COSSUP. The COSSUP program is designed to address the overdose crisis and the impacts of opioids, stimulants, and other substances. Examples of the strategies and activities that can be funded under this program include deflection and diversion, behavioral health professionals, access to recovery support services, community-based prevention and education, embedding social workers and justice agencies, transitional housing assistance, jail-based services, the exploration of new or promising practices, expansion of treatment services and harm reduction services. These are just some of the examples of the activities that can be funded under this program. 

The Connect and Protect: Law Enforcement Behavioral Health Response Program. Under this program, all applicants are required to demonstrate a partnership through an MOU or a Memorandum of Understanding between a justice entity and a mental health partner. Some examples of the strategies and activities that can be funded under this program include cross-system collaboration programs, such as case management, crisis intervention teams, co-responder teams, and mobile crisis teams, training and coordination for police mental health collaboration, collect data to inform practices and develop policies, engage residents via outreach and education to improve public health and safety, and enhancing officer skills in responding to community members with mental health disorders. Under this program, we plan to award approximately about up to 30 applications under this program. 

The Harold Rogers Prescription Drug Monitoring Program, or PDMP, is a program that's designed to assist jurisdictions including law enforcement agencies with addressing the different types of drug intervention issues that come up in their communities. Some examples of these activities that can be funded include providing training for system users, supporting collaboration among law enforcement agencies, prosecutors, public health officials, treatment providers, and drug courts. Facilitating electronic information sharing among states in compliance with the prescription monitoring information exchange national architecture, developing different methods for collecting information, identifying differences in the various PDMP procedures, rules, state regulations, capabilities, and policies, bringing together stakeholders with different perspectives, sets of information and methodologies to examine the impact of various policies and procedures on patients and their communities, and implementing proven practices on a larger scale. 

The Justice and Mental Health Collaboration Program, or JMHCP, supports innovative cross-system collaboration to improve responses to outcomes for individuals with mental health disorders or co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders who are in the justice system or reentering the community. The JMHCP program also supports courts, prosecutors, and community supervision with training, clinical assistance, and tools for the early identification of people with mental health disorders who may need behavioral health system interventions. Some examples of the strategies and activities that can be funded under this program include clinical treatment, case management, crisis debilitation units, mental health peer support specialists, capacity expansion, building and expanding existing justice and mental health collaboration programs, pre-arrest diversion programs, creating and expanding mental health course, and cross-system training. 

The Coordinated Tribal Assistance Solicitation, or CTAS. For this one we'll play close attention because these deadlines are quickly approaching as you'll see at the bottom of the screen. The Grants.gov deadline, that is March the 5th, and for the JustGrants deadline, that is March the 12th. Some examples of the strategies and activities that can be funded through the CTAS program are hiring additional personnel; risk and needs assessments; diversion and alternatives to incarceration, prevention, treatment and recovery; training; new and enhanced travel and peacemaking courts; and assessing travel justice system gaps and needs. 

BJA's Crime Gun Intelligence Center Integration Initiative, or CGICs. This program is an important tool for communities that experience high gun-related violent crimes. The purpose of the program is to encourage local jurisdictions to work with their ATF partners to identify firearms that are used unlawfully and their sources with the ultimate goal of prosecuting perpetrators engaged in violent crimes. The program utilizes the National Integrated Ballistics Imaging Network, which many of you are probably familiar with. Some examples of the activities that can be funded under this program include prosecution efforts, staff training, policy development, testing innovative approaches, new tools or technology, a collaborative working group, lead development and access to eTrace. 

The next couple of programs that I'm going to talk about, these are programs that are related to our forensic unit located within our policy office. The first one is the DNA Capacity Enhancement for Backlog Reduction Program. If your jurisdiction has existing crime laboratories that conduct DNA analysis of samples for entry into the FBI's Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, this is the program that you might want to examine. Some examples of the strategies and activities that can be funded under this program include increasing laboratory capacity and efficiency to process CODIS-eligible crime scene samples, purchasing and implementing new and more efficient instruments and robotics to automate routine laboratory processing steps, evaluating, validating, and implementing improved workflows. Funding can also be used for salaries, benefits over time and limited training and travel for laboratory staff. And also funding can be used to purchase and upgrade software to more efficiently managed DNA laboratory operations. 

The Emmett Till Cold Case Investigation Program supports state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies and prosecution agencies to investigate and prosecute unsolved homicide cold case murders suspected of having been racially motivated. It also includes support for victims, families, and stakeholders impacted by these crimes. Funds are limited to violation of civil rights statutes resulting in death that occurred no later than December 31st, 1979. BJA collaborates with DOJ's Community Relations Service to support reconciliation and support services for families of victims and other stakeholders. Some of the examples of the strategies and activities that can be funded under this program include enhancing the capacity of state, local, and tribal law enforcement and prosecutions or prosecutors to identify, investigate, and prosecute cold cases, increasing the number of state, local, and tribal investigations and prosecutions of civil right cold case murders, supporting victims' families, stakeholders, and entire communities, bringing justice reconciliations and support to families and stakeholders impacted by these murders, thereby building trust within the communities and providing information-sharing, training, and tools to assist the field to identify, investigate, and prosecute additional cases as well. 

The Missing and Unidentified Human Remains Program, or the MUHR Program. This is the third year that BJA has operated this program. Every year, over 600,000 people go missing. So this program attempts to assist families and their communities. Funds can be used to improve the reporting, transportation, forensic testing, and identification of missing persons and unidentified human remains, including migrants, utilizing various forensic disciplines. The MUHR Program works in partnership with NIJ's NamUs program, but provides funding directly to jurisdictions. Examples of some of the activities that can be funded under this program include inventorying all missing persons and unidentified human remains and entering them into the Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, reporting information to NamUs, the FBI's National Crime Information Center, and the FBI's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, or ViCAP, determining cases to undergo identification efforts, returning human remains to relatives and loved ones, and developing a multidisciplinary approach and plan to prioritize cases that may be associated with a threat to public safety. 

BJA's Sexual Assault Kit Initiative. The Sexual Assault Kit Initiative is critical to enhancing the criminal justice response to sexual assaults and ensuring justice for victims. Funding not only helps links victims to advocates and needed services, but also helps jurisdictions implement best practices and comprehensive reform to help bring perpetrators to justice and increase safety in communities by preventing future sexual assaults. Currently the program has administered 90 awards with over 203 kits inventoried that has resulted in almost 18,000 CODIS hits. SAKI provides funding to support the following: multidisciplinary community response teams to inventory, track, and test previously unsubmitted sexual assault kits; collect and test lawfully-owned DNA from individuals such as arrestees and defenders; produce necessary protocols and policies to improve collaboration among laboratories, police, prosecutors, and victim service providers; provide resources to address the sexual assault, investigations, and prosecutions that result from evidence, and CODIS has produced by tested sexual assault kits; and optimizing victim notification protocols and services. 

Under this program, the Prosecuting Cold Cases Using DNA Initiative, grantees can provide and receive service support for prosecution of violent crime cold cases where DNA from a suspect has been identified, where the suspect may be known or the suspect may be unknown. The program also provides support for DNA from a suspect who has been identified, and funding will support investigative activities and crime and forensic analysis that could lead to prosecution. The program provides funding to prosecute violent crime cold cases, and also to decrease the number of violent crime cold cases awaiting prosecution. 

BJA's Field Initiated: Encouraging Innovation Program. This is a unique solicitation that BJA typically releases every year for topics that may not be funded through existing programs or congressional budget line items. So this program allows for innovative projects focused on various criminal justice topics. Some examples of the strategies and activities that can be funded under this program include responding to precipitous increases in crime, including violent crime, and improving system capacity to track and respond to increases in these types of crimes; addressing substance use disorders or efforts to prevent or respond to drug overdoses and fatalities; improving outcomes for justice system involved individuals, including those who are currently or formerly incarcerated; and responding to an increase in hate crimes and/or increased access to justice and supportive services. 

The Intellectual Property Enforcement Program: Protecting Public Health, Safety, and the Economy from Counterfeit Goods and Product Piracy. This program assists jurisdictions and preventing and reducing intellectual property theft and related crimes, as well as supporting law enforcement in investigating and prosecuting IP crimes and reducing violent crime associated with intellectual property cases and investigations. Some examples of the strategies and activities that can be funded under this program include establishing and enhancing intellectual property enforcement task forces and improving the coordination among authorities; investigating and prosecuting intellectual property crimes, but they focus on public health and safety, economic espionage, and commercial counterfeit and piracy; to show the possible intellectual property links to organized crime, criminal gangs, and drug trafficking; assisting task force member agencies with enforcing criminal laws related to IP crimes; providing an overview of intellectual property cases and investigations, highlighting successes, and ones that showed promise but did not result in arrest; and conducting meetings to update, discuss, and collaborate on intellectual property investigations, prosecutions, training, and public awareness. 

The Kevin and Avonte Program: Reducing Injury and Death of Missing Individuals with Dementia and Developmental Disabilities. This program provides funding for comprehensive approaches to prevent the wandering of individuals with forms of dementia or children with developmental disabilities. Some of the activities that can be funded under this program include a locally-based proactive program, tracking technology, public awareness of missing persons, prevention and response information, community partnerships, and providing funding assistance related to alerting and notification systems for communities. Hate crimes or bias-motivated crimes are criminal offenses motivated by some form of bias toward a victim on the basis of their perceived or actual race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability. 

The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Program support state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies and prosecution agencies, and their outreach to education of the public, victims, and their staff and partners about hate crimes overall. This program also reimburses expenses associated with the investigation and prosecution of hate crimes. Some of the examples of the activities and strategies that can be funded under this program include building strong collaboration between law enforcement, prosecution, and community-based organizations, establishing state and regional-wide coordinated efforts to prevent, identify, investigate, and healing communities from hate crimes; creating comprehensive approaches that expand strategies to increase the reporting, identification, and charging of hate crimes; enhancing the capacity of law enforcement and prosecutors to prevent and address hate crimes; increasing the trust and confidence in state, local, and tribal justice partners to be able to identify, investigate, and prosecute hate crimes; and lastly, another example, that the funding can be used for is implementing an action plan resulting in the prosecution and resolution of cases. 

Jurisdictions that employ eligible law enforcement officers are eligible to apply for the Patrick Leahy Bulletproof Vest Partnership Program. By statute, funds are first allocated to qualifying units of local government with fewer than 100,000 residents. Any remaining funds are then awarded to other qualifying applicants. Body armor vest purchased through the BVP funds must have been tested through the National Institute of Justice's Compliance Testing Program, or the CTP Program, and found to comply with the most current NIJ body armor standards. Please note that the Bulletproof Vest Program uses a different application system than the rest of the BJA solicitations that you're going to hear about today. 

Several years ago, BJA, in partnership with the Major Cities Chiefs Association, developed and released the Violent Crime Reduction Operations Guide to assist jurisdictions in their efforts to combat violent crime. The Violent Crime Reduction Operations Guide outlines actions and activities that can that can be adapted to any agency. BJA later partnered with AEquitas to develop a companion tool, the Prosecutor's Guide to Reducing Violence and Building Safer Communities, which also outlines critical crime reduction strategic principles for prosecutors' offices through a continual of crime reduction capacities. 

This program, the Rural and Small Department Violent Crime Reduction Program will provide funding to small and/or rural agencies, and also to prosecutors who are interested in implementing or improving the capacity of their organization around one of the more critical elements found in the Violent Crime Reductions Operations Guide or the Prosecutor's Guide to Reducing Violence and Building Safer Communities. 

The Smart Policing Initiative provides funding to support or test promising initiatives and practices aimed at a community's pressing crime problems. The idea behind SPI is to promote creativity to enhance best practices, and also to discover the next practices that will help policing evolve and become more effective. Some of the examples that funding can be utilized for include testing and implementing innovative approaches to common law enforcement challenges; developing and testing new approaches for engaging law enforcement and community violence intervention; developing, implementing, and testing new information sharing technologies; engaging a research partner to document implementation, measure outcomes and contribute to the development of toolkits and guidance for the field; and also to foster collaboration to increase public safety. 

The STOP School Violence program provides funding to support threat assessments, mental health training, anti-bullying, training technology, and solutions, such as anonymous reporting systems. The ultimate goal of this program is to provide students and teachers with resources to recognize and prevent school violence. 

The COPS Office administered the companion program that is focused on doors, locks, cameras, and other target hardening measures. Please note that the funding under this program is to prevent violence in K through 12 school settings. Some examples of the activities that can be funded on this program include developing and operating technology solutions, developing and implementing a multidisciplinary behavioral threat assessment, training school personnel on preventing school violence, educating students on how to prevent school violence, providing training for law enforcement personnel working in the schools, and also, funding can be used to hire school support personnel to prevent school violence. 

Upholding the Rule of Law and Preventing Wrongful Convictions program. This program provides funding to support case reviews and post-conviction claims of innocence. They focus on those cases at a greater risk for error. This is a very important program which helps to identify any systematic issues that may lead to wrongful convictions, and most of all, to help ensure that innocent persons are exonerated. The program helps to protect the integrity of the criminal justice system by supporting efforts to provide high quality and efficient representation for defendants and post-conviction claims of the innocent, and also to identify, whenever possible, the actual perpetrator of those crimes. It also supports conviction integrity efforts to prevent future error. Some of the examples that funding can be used for under this program are reviewing cases post-conviction and appealing claims of innocence with a focus on those greatest at risk, evaluating whether any systematic issues exist that may compromise the rule of law, collecting and analyzing data to support the prevention of error and enhancing effort to review and manage claims of innocence, and recommending practices for mitigating systematic issues and preventing wrongful convictions. 

The last program that I'm going to summarize is the Virtual Reality De-escalation Training program. Some of the examples that funding can be used for under this program include reporting on existing technology platforms on how integrating virtual reality tools will add value, creating or enhancing agency-wide strategies for integration of immersive virtual reality scenario-based training, developing evidence-based course content and scenarios utilizing virtual reality technology, working with training and technical assistance providers to share policy and practices among the agencies participating in the program, and improving the responses to individuals in crisis and the de-escalation skills of participants. At this time, that concludes a summary of the 23 programs that I had mentioned before. And at this time, I'm going to turn it back over to Michelle. Thank you.

MICHELLE GARCIA: Thank you so much, Thurston. So as you can see, we have many opportunities to support law enforcement planned for FY '24. I also want to talk about some of the resources that we have available to both grantees and non-grantees, including training and technical assistance. 

BJA supports over a hundred training and technical assistance providers. And the entry point to our technical assistance is through the BJA National Training and Technical Assistance Center, or NTTAC. You can contact NTTAC because they work to support programs to meet the unique needs of grantees and other criminal justice practitioners and agencies. The objectives of our TTA services are to provide information to grantees and criminal justice professionals to replicate model programs and approaches, increase knowledge and the use of best practices, emerging technologies, and new models, and support agencies and jurisdictions to identify and address operational and programmatic needs. Again, it's a one-stop shop for all of BJA's justice-related training and technical assistance, and many of the opportunities available through NTTAC are available whether you're a grantee or not. 

The second one that I wanted to mention is the Officer Robert Wilson III Preventing Violence Against Law Enforcement Officers and Ensuring Officer Resilience and Survivability, or VALOR Initiative, which is an effort to improve the immediate and long-term safety, wellness, and resilience of our nation's law enforcement officers through a multifaceted approach that includes delivering no-cost training, professional education, conducting research, developing and providing resources, and establishing partnerships that benefit law enforcement officers. The VALOR Initiative seeks to provide law enforcement with innovative, useful, and valuable tools, resources, and skills. I mentioned when we started, I wanted to give you some additional resources to assist you in determining whether to apply and also aid you in your application. For every solicitation that we release, there will be a webpage that contains the information about that solicitation, a brief summary of the most relevant information where you can download the solicitation. But before doing that, I recommend that you take a look at the Solicitation Overview, which is a resource that is available for most of our solicitations, which really provides you with some of the key information, including who is eligible to apply, why might you want to apply for this funding, how much funding is available per award, if there are any priority areas, as well as some examples of strategies or activities that can be funded under this particular solicitation. The solicitation itself will flesh each of these sections out in more detail. And so if in looking at this, it seems like this is a good fit for what you're looking to fund, then recommend that you read through the entire solicitation. 

For almost every solicitation that we post, we're also going to hold a solicitation webinar. And so, that information will be listed on the solicitation website, as well in the solicitation itself, or you could go to our Funding Webinars page where you will see the list of upcoming solicitation webinars. You can also see webinars that have been previously held. We typically post the recordings and the materials from our webinars about seven to 10 days after they have been held. And I also want to note that today's webinar is the final in a series that we have done, highlighting our FY '24 plan funding opportunities in a number of different areas. And so, they're a crossover in many of these areas. But if you're interested, please check out any of the other webinars that we held. 

One thing that can be useful as you're considering applying for funding is to see what has been funded under a solicitation previously. And so you can go to the OJP Prior Awards page and you can see data for the past three fiscal years of awards that we've made under different types of solicitations. So, for instance, if you were interested in applying under Connect and Protect, you could do a search for Connect and Protect, and then you could see who received funding under that solicitation in prior years, the information about the name of the program, the city and the state, and the dollar amount. And if you hover over the dollar amount, you can see a description of what they were funded to do. You can also search by map. So, you could see, for instance, all of the awards that were made in your state in a given fiscal year, to get a sense of what other funding might be available in your jurisdiction or near your jurisdiction. 

We also heard frequently from applicants who were not successful in receiving grant funding, and asking, could they see an example of a successful application. So for the past several years, we have been working along with successful applicants to make available those applications. So, another resource may be for you to see what a prior awardee grantee submitted and was successful in receiving funding. We continue to add examples of these applications routinely. So check back. 

And then, a resource that I use frequently when I was actually on the side of applying for federal funding and OJP funding is the OJP Grant Application Resource Guide. This is really the A to Z guide that walks through all the steps of the application process. And it's one that I highly recommend starting with for any application question you might have. And as you saw and as Thurston pointed out, when you see the deadlines for our solicitations, you'll see two deadlines, Grants.gov and JustGrants. So our applications are a two-step process. You start with Grants.gov, where you'll enter some minimal information, and then you'll be directed to JustGrants, where you'll submit the bulk of your application. JustGrants is not only how we receive applications, but if you're successful and you receive an award, it is in JustGrants that you'll manage that award. If you go to the JustGrants website, you can find numerous resources to help you navigate the system, including user guides, training videos, frequently asked questions, and the ability to access one-on-one user support. If as you're working on an application, you find that you need assistance either in Grants.gov or JustGrants, that support is available both by phone and by email. 

And I think it can also be helpful to get a sense of what would be required of you if you do receive an award, and particularly, if you've never had a federal award or an award from the Bureau of Justice Assistance or OJP previously. If you go to the Award Recipient Resources, you can find information on requirements and resources to support grantees. A great one to look at is the DOJ Grants Financial Guide, which gives you a sense of the financial controls and requirements that grantees will have to ensure that they have in place. 

And as I said, we're at very much at the beginning of our solicitation cycle. We've released some solicitations already. We have more coming out each week. How do when these have been released? Well, one way is you can subscribe to get a notification. If you go to ojp.gov/subscribe, you can sign up to receive the funding news alert, which is a weekly notice of new grant opportunities and application tips. You can also text us your email address to 468-311 to be subscribed to these alerts. 

You can also follow us on social media. As we're releasing solicitations, we're posting them on social media. So you can find us on Facebook as well as X. And as I said, we will post all of our solicitations on our website at bja.ojp.gov.

Finally, if there's questions that you still have that you cannot find an answer to anyplace else, please contact the OJP Response Center. Again, available both by phone and by email. 

With that, we are going to spend the last 13 minutes going through any questions that you might have. So, please use the Q&A feature to put any questions you might have and we will review those that we've received. Some of these, we've already been able to answer, but I do want to go through them so everybody has an opportunity to hear. 

So, first question, "Will we be able to get copies of today's presentation?" Yes. The recording of the webinar and presentation materials will be posted on the BJA website in about seven to ten days, and registrants will receive an email when they are available. 

"What happened to the Byrne Criminal Justice Innovation Program?" I believe that funds have not been appropriated for BCJI recently. However, many of the activities supported under BCJI may be funded under other programs, including the Community Based Violence Intervention and Prevention Initiative. We did not specifically talk about that solicitation or program in today's webinar. However, if you go to the BJA website and you search for CVIPI, you'll be able to find information about that program. 

"Could a helicopter camera system be funded under COSSUP?" Again, please see the solicitation when released to see if this might be allowable. Because many of our solicitations have not yet been released, very specific questions we're unfortunately not able to answer today. If the solicitation doesn't specifically address that, I recommend attending the webinar for that particular solicitation to ask that question. 

"Are for-profit opioid treatment programs accepted under COSSUP?" 

So, eligible applicants from COSSUP have historically been governmental entities. And I'll mention that even if you see a solicitation for which your organization is not eligible as a primary applicant, we do encourage partnerships. And so you may be able to enter into a partnership so that you would be able to receive a subaward under a particular program. I do want to note that for for-profit organizations, whether they're the primary recipient or a subawardee, they must forego any profit or management fees. 

"For the Connect and Protect Program, if we already have a program but are seeking funding to keep the program going, is that allowable or is it only to enhance or do something new to the program?" So again, because the solicitation actually has been released, so I first would direct you to the solicitation to see if it specifically addresses that question. If it doesn't, there should be information in the solicitation as to where to go for any questions that you cannot find the answer to in the solicitation. And then lastly, again, I believe we're holding an information webinar for the Connect and Protect solicitation, encourage you to attend that webinar as an opportunity to ask that question there. 

"Will the National Cold Case Initiative purpose area be included in the SAKI solicitation this year?" Again, this is one of those specific questions. Because the solicitation hasn't been released, we can't specifically speak to. But if you look at prior year solicitations, you might get a sense of what will be allowable. No guarantees that they'll be exactly the same as prior years, but the solicitation we anticipate will be released in the near future.

THURSTON BRYANT: Michelle, also just to kind of piggyback on what you just said, for example, the SAKI solicitation, the other thing that we typically do, Michelle mentioned that we have a successful applications that we actually post online. We also typically have a frequently asked questions document that we also post online together with the solicitation once it's released. So that'll have a lot of information in it as well. And so for those solicitations that have been released, take a look at that. As Michelle indicated, if there are some that have not been released thus far, such as SAKI, we suggest you go back and look at last year's solicitation. But also, there's probably going to be a accompanying frequently asked question document with the SAKI solicitation as well. So take a look at that.

MICHELLE GARCIA: Thanks, Thurston. Question about, "Did not see the link for, I believe, the Kevin and Avonte Dimension Developmental Disability Program." Daryl, if you could see if you could find a link for that and post it in the chat, that would be great. 

"Body cams have dramatically increased our time to manage and evaluate evidence. Can the grant be used to management and evaluation of digital data from body cams?" Thurston, do the answer to that?

THURSTON BRYANT: I do not know the answer to that offhand, but that's one of the programs where there's usually a lot of information that's posted online about that. So I would take a look at our body-worn camera website to see if they specifically address that question, which they probably might. The other thing to keep in mind too is that for the majority of the programs that we discussed today, those 23 that provide a high summary of, we also pretty much have, TTA providers for those programs as well. So those providers have a lot of distance learning tools that not only support the grantees, but also the field at large. And so for the Body-Worn Camera Program, we highly suggest you take a look at that. Daryl, if we have not already, could you post a link to the Body-Worn Camera Program within the chat box? You…

DARYL FOX: I will.

THURSTON BRYANT: Yeah. I think you did already. Okay. Thank you.

MICHELLE GARCIA: Thank you. And I see Daryl did post a response with a link to the Kevin and Avonte Program: Reducing Injury and Death of Missing Individuals with Dementia and Developmental Disabilities. Thank you, Daryl. 

"Will the COPS Hiring Program be offered again this year?" I do not know. BJA is not certain what COPS will be doing this year. I recommend reaching out to the COPS office to get that question answered.

THURSTON BRYANT: And then also, as Michelle indicated earlier, a wonderful resource tool is that DOJ Program Plan. And so, the great thing about the DOJ Program Plan is that you could not only search for any particular funding opportunities under this fiscal year throughout OJP, so the six funding bureaus or agencies within OJP. But that also allows you to search for any funding opportunities with the other two major grant components of the Justice Department, COPS Office and Office on Violence Against Women. So we suggest you take a look at that. And then that will provide you with some information on that. And then also check out the COPS website because they'll have information on their hiring program for this year as well.

MICHELLE GARCIA: A couple other same questions about Connect and Protect, if folks have had previous grants. Again, recommend looking at this year's solicitation, which is currently available. And if it's not specifically addressed in the solicitation, it should include information about where to reach out to have questions answered. 

"Does the Virtual Reality grant include virtual reality equipment technology for law enforcement training?"

Again, can't speak specifically to the FY '24 solicitation since that hasn't been released yet, but do encourage you to look at the FY '23 solicitation to get a sense of what was previously allowable. And as I said, in many cases, our solicitations are very similar, if not the same, from year to year. 

"Are there funding programs that a non-profit can apply to directly for police sensitivity training?" That is a good question. And, Thurston, do you have an answer to this off the top of your head?

THURSTON BRYANT: The best mechanism for you to kind of figure that out maybe is to check out the program plan. Because when you go to that DOJ Program Plan, you can actually search by eligibility. And so if you search, you can, select, non-profit organization, and then it'll pull up the ones where the non-profit can apply directly. And so, if that's the case, then it'll provide a search result for those programs where the non-profit can apply directly for funding. And then once you kind of get those search results back, you should be able to look at that list to see which ones pertain to actual law enforcement-related solicitations or programs.

MICHELLE GARCIA: Thanks, Thurston. There's a question about whether funding will be available for accreditation accrediting agencies. If you're asking about a specific program, if you could put in some additional information, then we can try and answer that. 

Someone was asking about the FY '24 SCAAP solicitation. That has not yet been released. So you're having trouble finding it because it is not yet out, but it should be out in the near future. So, someone wrote that they're trying to work with their mental health advocate team and looking at Connect and Protect. Any advice on successful work in this? I do not have a specific advice to offer. What I would say is definitely attend the webinar for Connect and Protect, which may be able to provide some additional guidance and also check out our successful applicant's webpage to see if there's examples of prior year successful applications under Connect and Protect. 

The question is, "Is the actual application from a specific law enforcement agency who have applied for a grant considered a public record and can a member of the public obtain a copy to review, to ensure the agency is within compliance of the grant requirements? If so, where are those posted or how do we obtain a copy?" 

So, I would want to double-check with our general counsel. But my understanding is successful applications are public record. However, applications that were not awarded are not public record. And that we do post basic information about all of the successful applications on our website. I mentioned earlier, you can go to the OJP site and see information about any awards that we've made over the past three years, including basic information about that. I believe if there's any more detailed information that you're looking for, you could submit a FOIA request to OJP. Again, I would want to double-check that with our general counsel. But I think that is what is available. All right. I think those were all the questions. Daryl, were there any in the chat that we did not get to?

DARYL FOX: No. There was several, but they put them in the Q&A after all. So I think you addressed most of what was in there.

MICHELLE GARCIA: Great. All right. And we did that with one minute to spare. So, I want to thank everyone again for your participation. We hope that this information will prove useful to you and provide some opportunities for you to apply for funding to support the really important and critical work that you are all doing. So, thank you for your time and best of luck in your applications. Daryl?

DARYL FOX: Great. So on behalf of the Bureau of Justice Assistance and our panelists, we want to thank you for joining today's webinar. This will end today's presentation.