Grant Proposal
In today’s current economy in the United States due to cutbacks and lower budgets, any type of extra funding is always greatly appreciated by any group or organization especially police departments like ours. If we were given a grant of any amount, but especially $100,000 it would go far in helping our department to perform better and assist us in achieving our mission of protecting the citizens of our community more efficiently. Any department that would be lucky enough to receive that large amount of money through a grant would have to be prepared to allocate those funds properly and responsibly. We believe that we have come up with a plan that would allow us to do just that and to do it in an effective and timely manner. This proposal will outline our plan for the potential $100,000 grant that we would receive. It will describe how, when and where the grant money will be spent.
How the Grant Money Will be Spent
We will begin by explaining how we plan on spending the $100,000 grant money. We would divide the grant’s funds into four equal parts of $25,000.00 each. These four parts would be used to address various needs within the department. Those needs are:
• Technology upgrades
• Narcotics training and detection
• Equipment purchases (Specifically new weapons)
• Recruitment
Technology
The $25,000 that has been allocated to technology would be spent on automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) systems for some of our patrol vehicles. The ALPR system affords patrol officers the convenience of knowing if a vehicle is stolen while patrolling/driving and prior to stopping a vehicle. It also allows officers the ability to detect stolen vehicles that might be parked on the street or in parking lots. This type of system will help the keep the community and officers safer by identifying vehicles that have active wants and warrants associated with them. It also allows for easy identification of amber alert suspects and lastly it allows for more revenue for the city by allowing to easily identify vehicles with unpaid moving violations ("Genetec-Law Enforcement Solutions", 2016).
Narcotics Training and Detection
The $25,000 that we have allocated for narcotics training and detection would be spent on sending officers to narcotics courses such as undercover narcotic training and drug recognition courses. Along with sending officers to such courses, funds would also be allocated to purchase narcotic detection equipment such as NIK presumptive drug testing kits and training aids for those kits such as Narcotics Identification System training CD’s and wall and desk charts. By spending money on both the courses and the drug detection kits it helps officers be better prepared and equipped in both detecting and handling drugs in the community. By being better prepared and equipped, it makes the community and officers safer by combating drug crimes and getting those individuals off the streets ("Safariland-Nik Public Safety", 2015).
Equipment purchases
For the next $25,000 of the grant money we have allotted it for purchasing of new equipment, specifically new weapons. Due to the ever increasing threat of terrorist attacks and activities that are occurring not just all over the world but also here in the United States, new more powerful weapons are needed in order to be able to combat the types of weapons that are being used by terrorists. Terrorist tend to use higher caliber weapons that have higher capacity magazines and can fire at higher rates than other weapons. Terrorist also use body armor that is able to stop or slow down ammo that is fired by most weapons. By purchasing these higher caliber and more powerful weapons, officers will be able to effectively engage these threats that terrorist pose. Some of this money will also pay for ammunition and training for these weapons so officers can more effectively employ them when/if the time comes.
Recruitment
The final $25,000 of the grant money will be directed towards recruitment efforts for our department. It will allow the department to reach out to new sections and demographics of recruits that will help the department become more diverse and better reflect the community that we serve. Money will be used for new ad campaigns that will involve print, radio, television and billboards. They will be placed around the city and on all local channels and radio stations in order to maximize the exposure to those who might be interested in becoming police officers and serving their community. By making the department reflect the demographics of the city that we protect, it will help the community feel safer and trust in the department more when they look at it and are able to see themselves looking back. When the Grant Money Will be Spent We have identified how the grant money will be spent and the breakdown of the four areas where it will go. As far as when these funds will be spent, we will develop a spending plan which will show the breakdown of all the actual costs for each requirement and will also show a calendar for when the money will be spent. The actual dates will vary due to not knowing in such things as scheduling for training courses since the dates and availability can change and another would be the availability/bench stock of equipment items like weapons, ammunition and narcotics kits. All purchases and expenditures would be approved and vetted through the chain of command prior to any of the funds being spent in order to show transparency to anyone who might want to know that the money is being spent for what we planned and there is no perception of fraud, waste or abuse.
Where the Grant Money Will be Spent The next step is to outline where the grant money will be spent. We have already identified the general areas where we plan on spending the money so now we will break it down and give more detail as to what sections of the department the funds will help and impact. The technology aspect of our plan will benefit our operations/patrol section. The ALPR systems will be mounted/installed in our patrol vehicles in order to enhance the capabilities of our patrols. The narcotics training and detection aspect of the plan will benefit both our detective bureau and our operations/patrol section. The detective bureau will benefit from undercover narcotic training by giving them the knowledge on how to infiltrate drug rings that might be operating within the community. The operations/patrol section will benefit from the drug recognition courses by giving officers the ability to recognize and identify drugs and those under the influence of drugs. The drug recognition kits will also benefit both sections by allowing our officers to be able to make a more positive identification of various drugs and work in conjunction with their training. The equipment purchase aspect of our plan is centered on purchasing new weapons for our patrol officers and setting up training for these weapons. Like we mentioned before, this will enhance the capability of our officers to respond to high threat incidents, such as terrorist attacks, and afford them a better chance of stopping the incident and protecting themselves and the community. Lastly, the recruitment aspect of the plan will benefit the department as a whole, not just one section.
Conclusion
In closing and to summarize, we believe that we have come up with a great plan that would allow us to spend the $100,000 grant money in the most effective way and timely manner in order to benefit both the department and the community as a whole. We feel that our proposal has outlined and described our plan in detail along with giving enough information to answer any potential questions about how, when and where the funds from the grant will be spent.