Small town police department?

Question

I'm affiliated with a small town police department and they are pretty lacking on some important things. I've thought of taking a grant writing class to see if I could help them out the only problem is the City Manager would reject anything because he doesn't like our police department. Is there any way i could avoid going through him to get grants for the pd?

Answer 1

I tried to get grants for a state's dept of Corrections for 3 years. Lack of support by my fellow employees killed that option.

Most grants are a competitive competition. And you have to say what you will do with the money and how your effectiveness in spending the money can be measured. Many burecrats do not like being measured or monitored.

I would be told "just get us the money, don't worry how we will spend it". So how do you translate that into telling the federal government how you will spend their money to solve a local problem?

In Virginia (and your state should be similar), there is a state agency - Department of Criminal Justice Service (DCJS). The feds like to provide a single bucket of money to a state agency. And let that state agency deal with the politics of subdividing that money for towns, counties, and cities. Contact them and see what you can learn - they also track how much money goes to each local police/sheriff department.

Start going to the usdept of Justivce website and see what you can learn. From what I have seen, there is a federal website for each view of public safety/law enforcement - and each has its own stream of funding opportunities.

For example, for corrections and jails, the National Institute of Corrections (www.nicic.org). NIC surveys the cities, towns, counties and states to learn issues in corrections/jail. Then NIC pays for research to document "best practices". Copies of the findings are made available to these organizations for free. And NIC will arrange to get trainers to travel the country training the local staff. And then may provide grants to cover the cost of making changes.

Same approach is used with law enforcement.

Answer 2

Actually you can't do anything, the police chief has to submmit any and all grants as per thier rules. And most funding has to be approved, ( and grant request) will have to be approved by the city counsel.

So of course you can get a city council person to make a motion and pass a rule to submit one ( or something like that)

But a perosn merely "afflated with" a small department has not authority to do anything besides give it to the chief.

Of course if the lacking of, causes violations in state laws, federal mandates and the such, the officers can sue the department for not supplying the needed items as per some federal ruling or the such. Then the court would order the department to do certain things, ( this is often how county jails end up getting improvements from law suites) Then the city or county just has to find a way to pay.

And of course working to elect a new mayor comes to mind also.

Answer 3

Bypass him and go to the mayor.
If the town manager has a beef against the PD (for whatever reason), and not be interested in it's well-being, maybe he ought not be the town manager.

Answer 4

How about talking to some of the City Council Members. They may be able to present it to him with a better response. Good luck.

Answer 5

Most cities have service clubs lions rotery etc. contact them...