DOJ awards $370K to Northern Indiana District to hire officers

Funds amounting to $370,639 were granted to the Northern District of Indiana to help hire additional law enforcement officers in three cities, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Indiana Clifford D. Johnson announced Thursday.

The funds stem from the distribution of more than $139 million in grant funding through the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services COPS Hiring Program. The awards provide direct funding to 183 law enforcement agencies across the country for the hiring of 1,066 additional full-time law enforcement professionals.

Three cities and towns within the district received funding:

• City of Crown Point – $125,000
• Town of Cedar Lake – $125,000
• Town of LaPaz – $120,369

“The awards announced today will benefit residents of the Northern District by putting additional officers on the street,” Johnson said in a statement.

The Southern District of Indiana also received $375,000 in funding for the City of Muncie through the COPS program.

The COPS Hiring Program, an award initiative intended to reduce crime and advance public safety through community policing, provides funds directly to law enforcement agencies to hire new or rehire additional career law enforcement officers.

About half of the 183 agencies awarded grants will use the funding to focus on building legitimacy and trust between law enforcement and communities; 41 agencies will seek to address high rates of gun violence; 21 will focus on other areas of violence; and 19 will focus CHP resources on combating hate and domestic extremism or supporting police-based responses to persons in crisis, according to the DOJ.

More than $14 billion has been invested by COPS to advance community policing since 1994, including grants awarded to more than 13,000 state, local and tribal law enforcement agencies to fund the hiring and redeployment of more than 135,000 officers.