Feds awarding millions to fight crime

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that grant awards to Public Safety Partnership member sites as part of $10 million in funding to support state, local and tribal law enforcement departments and agencies and their partners who are fighting violent crime in jurisdictions across the United States.

The Office of Justice Programs’ Bureau of Justice Assistance, in partnership with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, is awarding $5 million under the Local Law Enforcement Crime Gun Intelligence Center Integration Initiative to encourage local jurisdictions to use intelligence, technology and community engagement to identify unlawfully used firearms and to prosecute those who commit violent crimes.

Several jurisdictions will use these awards to hire personnel to utilize the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN), to purchase technology required to operate a Crime Gun Intelligence Center and ammunition for ballistic tests of recovered weapons.

Last week, the attorney general also announced awards for Bureau of Justice Assistance’s Technology Innovation for Public Safety: Addressing Precipitous Increases in Crime program.

This program supports the Department’s priorities of reducing violent crime and supporting law enforcement officers, including prosecutors.

While many jurisdictions are making significant progress implementing justice information sharing solutions to address critical gaps in crime prevention and response activities across organizations and jurisdictions, there remain challenges for the criminal justice system to respond to threats to public safety, the Justice Department said.

This is especially true for efforts addressing significant increases in crime, the department added.

Justice information sharing technology refers to any hardware and software, hosted residentially or remotely, that plays a role in the collection, storage, sharing and analysis of criminal justice data. Funding under this program is provided to help state, local, territorial, and tribal jurisdictions use innovative technological solutions to enhance their justice information-sharing capacity.

Additional information on the grant awards can be found at www.bja.gov

Attorney General Jeff Sessions made the announcement during the National Public Safety Partnership Symposium on Violent Crime in Birmingham, Alabama.

The National Public Safety Partnership is a Department of Justice-wide initiative that enables cities to consult with and receive a coordinated array of resources from the department’s programmatic and law enforcement components.

They include the Bureau of Justice Assistance; United States Attorneys’ Offices; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; the Federal Bureau of Investigation; the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration; the U.S. Marshals Service; the Office on Violence Against Women; the Office of Justice Programs; the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services; and other federal agencies in order to improve local violence reduction strategies.