The Kansas City, Kansas, Police Department will receive a $1.3 million federal grant for hiring police officers under the Justice Department’s Operation Relentless Pursuit initiative, U.S. Attorney Stephen McAllister said.
The grant is part of more than $61 million the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office) and the Office of Justice Programs’ Bureau of Justice Assistance have awarded to support the Relentless Pursuit initiative.
“This award will fund five new positions on the police department in Kansas City, Kan.,” U.S. Attorney Stephen McAllister said in a news release. “That additional manpower is part of our plan to make metro Kansas City safer.”
Launched on Dec. 18, 2019, ORP aims to intensify federal law enforcement resources into seven American cities with violent crime levels several times the national average – Albuquerque, Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, Kansas City, Memphis, and Milwaukee.
“While violent crime is down across the country as a whole, some communities remain caught in the grips of violent actors,” Attorney General William P. Barr said in the news release. “That’s why I launched Operation Relentless Pursuit last December – an initiative to combat violent crime in seven cities where it remains stubbornly high. Today’s grant awards are critical to our mission. We cannot succeed in eradicating crime without resources – the most vital of which are the brave men and women who serve and protect our communities each day. These funds will boost the forces that need them most.”
The COPS Office, through its COPS Hiring Program (CHP), awarded a total of $51 million to be used to hire 214 sworn law enforcement officers for state and local law enforcement task forces. The recipients of the funding will deploy existing veteran officers to task force duties and use the CHP funding to hire new recruits to backfill those positions, as practical. Officers deployed to Operation Relentless Pursuit task forces as a result of CHP funding must be sworn, career law enforcement officers of the awarded agency, and their work on the task force must benefit their jurisdiction. In addition, they are required to work with their respective U.S. Attorney’s Office (USAO) and rel¬evant federal agencies to investigate and prosecute suspects involved in gangs, drug trafficking, and other violent crime– related issues.
“Successful strategies to target and reduce violent crime are extremely resource intensive,” COPS Office Director Phil Keith said. “There is no greater resource than additional men and women on the front lines of relentless fight against gangs, drug traffickers and those that mean harm to our nation’s communities. The funding announced today is greatly needed for the Operation Relentless Pursuit jurisdictions and the COPS Office is honored to dedicate resources for this effort.”
The Office of Justice Programs’ Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) is making $10 million available to support Operation Relentless Pursuit. BJA funds will support efforts such as the hiring of additional prosecutors, overtime expenses for task force members, multi-agency investigations, mobile data terminals and modern technological platforms, and development of strategic plans to address gaps in combating violent crime.
“The responsibility for fighting crime and violence belongs to agencies at every level of government, and winning that fight turns on our ability to deploy our collective resources wisely and effectively,” Office of Justice Programs Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Katharine T. Sullivan said. “We are eager to make these funds available so that our federal, state and local partners can continue the vital and noble work of protecting America’s most dangerous communities.”