$4 MILLION IN AVAILABLE GRANTS FOR LOCAL CRIME FIGHTING AND PREVENTION EFFORTS

Governor announces federal grants before Maryland Chiefs of Police Association

QUEENSTOWN, MD (June 16, 2010) – Governor Martin O’Malley today announced that $4 million will be available in Maryland for efforts to fight crime. These federal investments are available through the Governor’s Office of Crime Control and Prevention to state or local law-enforcement agencies, public and private groups, faith-based and community organizations, institutions of higher education and for-profit and non-profit organizations.

“These funds have been a key element in our historic crime reductions in Maryland,” said Governor O’Malley. “These investments provide security integration, allowing many groups to form partnerships and law enforcement agencies to collaborate on shared challenges. The result is a safer and more secure Maryland.”

Maryland has awarded a total of $28,694,995 under this program since 2007 and the funds have been used for a wide variety of purposes, including:

· Supervise and contain the state’s most violent offenders
· Serve arrest warrants on violent offenders
· Combat gang violence and gather valuable intelligence information on gang activity
· Provide crime analysts and crime mapping services to police departments
· Reduce DNA backlogs
· Provide state-of-the-art technology to law enforcement agencies throughout Maryland
· Support drug courts and other problem solving courts throughout Maryland
· Offer a variety of support services to crime victims
· Support data-driven prevention strategies based on techniques that have been proven to work.

The funds will be awarded based on applications made by eligible agencies and organizations. Information on applying is on the GOCCP web site: http://www.goccp.maryland.gov. The deadline for applications is August 12

The BJAG program is just one part of state support to law enforcement in Maryland. Since January 1, 2007, the state has awarded a total of $69,910,335.20 to police departments, sheriffs’ offices and other agencies and organizations involved in crime fighting and crime prevention efforts.

Since 2007, the O’Malley-Brown Administration has provided nearly $45 million in discretionary grants to local law enforcement, many funded through federal programs, representing a 27.5 percent increase over a comparable period four years prior.

Together, we’ve driven violent crime to its lowest rate in recorded history. Homicides are at their lowest level since 1975, driven down 12 percent since last year. Total crime in Maryland has been driven to its lowest level since modern crime tracking began in 1975.

Through unprecedented cross-border collaborations, Governor O’Malley created the Violence Prevention Initiative to target the most dangerous offenders, as well as cross-border warrant teams to crack down on safe havens criminals once relied on. Upon taking office, Governor O’Malley dedicated the necessary resources to clear more than 24,000 inherited DNA samples, previously uncollected and unanalyzed, leading to 245 arrests of murderers, burglars, rapists, and other criminals. In addition, Governor O’Malley created the Public Safety Dashboard, an interactive web portal through which public safety officers access information in one place from literally dozens of different databases throughout the region. The system currently receives up to 40,000 queries per day from local and state law enforcement, keeping Maryland neighborhoods safer.