U.S. Department of Justice
Office of Community Oriented Policing Services 

Image of United States Department of Justice seal
Community Oriented Policing Services logo

INNOVATIONS
Promising Strategies 
from the Field 

Spotlight on 
Sheriffs 
Image of a man talking on the phone

Acknowledgements 
Acknowledgments 
The COPS Innovations Promising Strategies from the Field series is a 
collaborative effort among the Institute for Law and Justice, local law 
enforcement agencies, and the Office of Community Oriented Policing 
Services (COPS Office). At the COPS Office, Amy Schapiro managed 
the project and Noah Teates and Kelly Tapp edited the document for 
publication. 
The project team also wishes to thank the following agencies for their 
participation in this project: Orange County Chiefs and Sheriffs' 
Association (CA), Leon County Sheriff's Office (FL), Rogers County 
Sheriff's Office (OK), Sacramento County Sheriff's Department (CA), 
Mohave County Sheriff's Office (AZ), and East Baton Rouge Sheriff's 
Office (LA). Without their time and cooperation we would not have 
been able to showcase their work. 

Promising Strategies from the Field: 
Spotlight on Sheriffs 

This project was supported through cooperative agreement #2001CK-WX-K092 by the U.S. Department of Justice Office of 
Community Oriented Policing Services. The opinions contained in 
this document are those of the author and do not necessarily 
represent the official position of the U.S. Department of Justice. 


Table of Contents 

Section Page 

Letter from the Director . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Innovative Uses of COPS Funding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Orange County Gangs Up on Gang Violence . . . . . . . . 3
Leon County Makes MORE Time for 
Community Policing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Rogers County Hauls Down Trailer Theft . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Sacramento Communicates MORE Effectively. . . . . . . 17
Mohave SROs Go Back to School . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
East Baton Rouge Takes It To The Streets. . . . . . . . . . 25
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
TellCOPS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Image of COPS Director, Carl R. Peed

The Office of Community Oriented Policing 
Services (the COPS Office) is pleased to 
continue this new COPS Innovations: 
Promising Strategies from the Field series 
featuring COPS grantees from around the 
country. As a former sheriff, I'm pleased to be 
able to give you this special edition of the 
new series that focuses specifically on how 
sheriffs across the nation are leveraging COPS 
grants to advance community policing and 
make their communities safer. 

COPS programs fund efforts to make communities safer by adding 
community policing officers and deputies to our streets and schools, 
investing in crime-fighting technologies, supporting innovative policing 
practices, and fostering strong problem-solving partnerships. This series 
highlights community policing practices among COPS grantees. COPS 
hopes that sharing these approaches will allow other jurisdictions to 
learn from, replicate, and improve upon these innovative community 
policing strategies. 

The sheriffs' offices represented in this edition of Promising Strategies 
from the Field are just a sampling of the 16,000 grants COPS has 
awarded to sheriffs' offices since 1994. COPS grants not only help 
reduce violent crime, they also help law enforcement address persistent 
quality of life issues. 

This COPS Innovations series is one more way in which the COPS 
Office reaches out to the field to provide information and resources that 
will benefit your agency. Please note that the Promising Strategies from 
the Field project is ongoing, and we welcome hearing from you about 
your agency's accomplishments. To do so, please email my staff at 
TellCOPS@usdoj.gov. All of us at COPS appreciate the opportunity to 
share our grantees' successes and help law enforcement keep every 
community in America safe. 
Carl R. Peed 
Director 
Office of Community Oriented Policing Services 


Promising Strategies From The Field 
Spotlight on Sheriffs 

Introduction 

The Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) has 
invested more than $9 billion to implement and enhance community 
policing efforts in tribal, state, and local jurisdictions since 1994. Over 
those eight years, COPS issued more than 35,500 grants to more than 
12,800 agencies across the United States. These grants tackle important 
and immediate needs of communities across America through 27 
innovative grant programs. COPS' Making Officer Redeployment 
Effective (MORE) grants help agencies increase the number of officers 
on the street who can engage in community policing activities. The 
COPS in Schools (CIS) grant program places law enforcement 
professionals in schools to work on a variety of issues and foster 
community partnerships. COPS has provided nearly $6 billion in 
assistance to tribal, state, and local law enforcement agencies through 
these three programs alone. 

Other COPS grant programs focus more narrowly on specific issues. 
For example, COPS funded agencies facing significant gang-related 
problems in their communities in 1996. COPS funds helped small 
communities retain COPS-funded officers through the Small 
Community Grant Program in 1998. COPS Tribal Resources Grant 
Program (TRGP) has helped tribal law enforcement agencies keep their 
communities safer since 1999. 

COPS funding has made a difference. By working to put more law 
enforcement officers on the street, the COPS Office increased the 
number of officers actively engaged in community policing activities. 
According to the Law Enforcement Management and Administrative 
Statistics Survey (LEMAS), about 22,000 officers practiced community 
policing in 1997. That number rose more than five-fold by 1999. Other 
research conducted by the University of Nebraska (2001) suggests that 
COPS hiring programs have helped to make a significant reduction in 
local crime rates in cities with populations greater than 10,000. 

Promising Strategies From The Field 
2 

In addition to these grant programs, COPS works hard to deliver 
community policing training and technical assistance to America's state, 
local, and tribal law enforcement professionals and the communities 
they serve. COPS funds a national network of Regional Community 
Policing Institutes, providing innovative community policing training to 
law enforcement officers, other government agencies, and community 
members. More than 216,000 people have taken advantage of this 
training. COPS also funds the Community Policing Consortium, which 
is made up of five of the leading police organizations in the U.S. and 
has provided technical assistance to more than 5,000 law enforcement 
agencies across the country. 

The stories that follow highlight the projects of six sheriffs' offices who 
found innovative uses for COPS funding. As more agencies report back 
on their progress in implementing COPS-funded community policing 
strategies, this series will showcase those efforts. The COPS Office 
hopes that in presenting them that others may benefit from these 
experiences, and that other agencies can learn from, replicate, and 
improve on these promising strategies. 

Innovative Uses of COPS Funding 

Image of police officers arresting a woman

Orange County Gangs Up on Gang Violence 

A 1996 COPS grant helped the Orange County Chiefs and Sheriffs' 
Association (OCCSA) assess its response to a surge in gang violence. 
Orange County, California became aware of an escalating gang problem 
in the early 1990s. The OCCSA established a countywide, multi-agency 
Gang Strategy Steering Committee to respond to this problem in 1992. 
This Committee's goal was to determine the extent, nature, and 
distribution of gang crime in Orange County. One key element of that 
project was the development of a centralized database known as the 
Gang Incident Tracking System (GITS) in 1993, to which county law 
enforcement agencies report all gang-related incidents. A 1996 COPS 
grant helped OCCSA partner with the University of California, Irvine 
(UCI) to assess this response by evaluating both the Committee's 
effectiveness and the GITS database's usefulness as a law enforcement 
management and research tool. The project began with a Memorandum 
of Understanding (MOU) that clearly identified the mutual goals and 
responsibilities of all participants. 


Promising Strategies From The Field 

Orange County's gang-related problems were far reaching and ranged 
from prosecutable crimes to analysis and monitoring difficulties. Gang-
related crime was increasing both in terms of 
frequency and violence, and law enforcement 
lacked sufficiently detailed information about 
the nature, extent, and location of gang crime 
throughout the county. It was also difficult to 
maintain consistent, uniform reporting of gang 
crime by 23 law enforcement agencies in 31 
cities and unincorporated areas, and even 
more difficult to track changes in gang crime 
over time and across jurisdictional boundaries. 
Perhaps the most significant issue was the 
lack of analytical resources and expertise to 
fully evaluate and monitor the effectiveness of 
new gang prevention and suppression 
programs. 

A COPS grant helped the OCCSA address the 
following key project objectives: 

Determine how completely, accurately, and 
reliably Orange County law enforcement 
agencies measure illegal gang activity 

Identify ways to improve collection of data 
on gangs and gang incidents 

Increase the usefulness of this information 
for community policing efforts 

Analyze GITS data to better understand the nature and distribution 
of gang incidents 

Use GITS data to test the effectiveness of various gang suppression 
and prevention efforts 
Increase the ability of law enforcement and community agencies to 
more effectively coordinate their work to control gang violence 
4 

Anti-Gang Initiative 
The Anti-Gang 
Initiative was created to 
help law enforcement 
agencies address gang-
related violence, drug 
problems, and fear in 
their cities and 
neighborhoods. COPS 
provided funding to 15 
jurisdictions in 1996 to 
help them develop 
innovative programs 
and strategies that 
included building 
partnerships between 
communities and 
schools, using 
geographic information 
systems to identify gang 
hotspots, and enforcing 
curfew and truancy 
regulations. 

Promising Strategies From The Field 
Spotlight on Sheriffs 

COPS funds helped UCI meet each of these goals. UCI's Focused 
Research Group on Gangs is a team of faculty and graduate student 
researchers that provided the skills and tools to analyze GITS data. UCI 
supplied the computer hardware and software needed to analyze the 
GITS data, performed that analysis, and helped OCCSA prepare reports 
of regional and individual agency data. It also advised OCCSA on the 
interpretation, analysis, and policy implications of GITS data and 
applied geographical information systems (GIS) analysis to GITS data. 

Approach/Methods 

UCI's Focused Research Group on Gangs began by assessing the 
accuracy and reliability of the GITS database. Every law enforcement 
agency in the county already reported information on gang incidents 
monthly to the centralized database. UCI researchers initially sought to 
ensure that definitions of gang membership, gang activity, gang-
relatedness of incidents, and other categories for reporting gang activity 
were being applied in the same way by all agencies. They conducted 
regular visits to all 23 county law enforcement agencies to ensure 
complete and accurate gang incident data collection and reviewed the 
process by which each law enforcement agency collected GITS data. 
Researchers also interviewed law enforcement supervisors and went on 
50 hours of ride-alongs with eight gang units to observe gang incident 
data collection in the field. These experiments resulted in a newly 
revised GITS data form that was adopted in 1996. 

UCI researchers then used GIS to translate GITS data into crime maps 
that showed the relationships between the social, demographic, 
ecological, and geographical correlates of gang activity. They used these 
maps to determine the location of "hot spots" of gang activity in Orange 
County. This information helped law enforcement agencies judge 
whether they were targeting the most volatile areas of their jurisdictions. 
Finally, the UCI researchers evaluated the usefulness of the GITS 
database for assessing the effectiveness of law enforcement responses to 
gang activity in Orange County. 


Image of a map of hotspots of 2000 violent gang incidents and census tracts with greater than 20% of population in poverty

Results 

UCI's assessment of GITS led to several revisions of the data reporting 
form that improved data quality and usefulness. Researchers found that 
reporting errors were infrequent overall, but when they did occur, they 
tended to under-report gang incidents rather than over-report them, as 
some critics had claimed. For example, contrary to concerns voiced by 
some activists at the start of the project, it did not appear that law 
enforcement professionals routinely labeled all young adult males who 
dressed in what seemed to be gang attire as gang members. Instead, the 
assessment concluded that officers and deputies were quite sophisticated 
in making gang determinations. With regard to serious violent gang 
crime, it appeared that GITS data generally were as reliable as the 
police reports from which they are derived. 

In addition, the GITS database appeared to have great potential for 
guiding gang control policies and tactics. Analyses of GITS data proved 
highly effective for determining hot spots of gang activity in Orange 
County, and for evaluating the impact of gang enforcement efforts. In 
contrast to traditional methods of gang enforcement assessment, such as 
examining records for changes in arrests, prosecutions, convictions, and 
sentencing, the GITS database makes several more sophisticated 
methods of analysis possible. A gang enforcement team's efforts against 
a particular gang, for example, can be examined. Gang enforcement 
6 


Promising Strategies From The Field 
Spotlight on Sheriffs 

teams can determine not only the annual numbers of incidents 
committed by specific gangs, but the nature and seriousness of those 
incidents as well. Finally, the countywide GITS data enables 
enforcement teams to track a particular gang's activities across 
jurisdictions. This is important because targeting a gang in one city may 
affect its level of activity in other areas. 

All partners continue to work together on gang enforcement issues long 
after COPS project funding ended in 1998. GITS data have been used to 
develop novel gang civil abatement approaches, analyze the 
effectiveness of curfews, and study how gang incidents should be 
defined and how best to predict where gang crime will occur. Team 
members integrated GITS into the Orange County node of the statewide 
CalGangs database in July of 2001. 

Since the activities of street gangs seldom conform to the abstract 
jurisdictional boundaries, effective measures to prevent or suppress 
gang crime often must involve many different agencies, each of which 
has its own goals, political imperatives, and ways of doing business. 
Orange County's Gang Incident Tracking System shows that a regional 
data-sharing system can be developed and maintained, but that doing so 
requires substantial forethought, commitment, and persistence on the 
part of all participants. COPS is pleased to support efforts like Orange 
County's that demonstrate so clearly the effectiveness of community 
policing strategies. 

Leon County Makes MORE Time for Community Policing 

Image of laptop computer in a patrol car

A 1998 COPS MORE grant gave the Leon County Sheriff's Office 
(LCSO) the resources to improve the efficiency of its deputies so that 
more time could be spent on community policing. Leon County is home 
to the city of Tallahassee, Florida's state capital. Tallahassee is also the 
county seat of Leon County and the county's only incorporated city. The 
population of Leon County's 702 square miles increased by almost 25 
percent to almost 240,000 during the 1990s. The large geographic area 
and increasing population encouraged the LCSO to seek ways to 
maximize the efficiency of its deputies. A COPS MORE grant helped 
the LCSO to do precisely that. 


Promising Strategies From The Field 
10 

LCSO staff determined that installing mobile 
data computers (MDCs) in patrol vehicles 
would save deputies time that could then be 
used to improve community policing efforts. 
The LCSO identified three primary objectives. 

The LCSO needed to: 
1) acquire a system that was sound, reliable, 
and expandable, 
2) deploy MDCs capable of connecting with 
local, state, and national databases, and 
3) effectively disseminate information to 
deputies in their vehicles so that they 
would no longer need to commute to and 
from daily roll calls at the main office. 

Making Officer 
Redeployment Effective 
(MORE) 
MORE grants cover up 
to 75 percent of the cost 
of technology 
acquisition, equipment 
purchases, or support 
personnel salaries. 
MORE grants give 
American law 
enforcement 
professionals tools that 
allow them to spend 
more time on 
community policing 
activities. COPS MORE 
grants have provided 
more than 4,500 law 
enforcement agencies in 
excess of one billion 
dollars to redeploy law 
enforcement 
professionals into 
community policing 
activities since 1995.

Approach/Methods 

The LCSO carefully researched the 
technology surrounding mobile data terminals 
by making site visits to law enforcement 
agencies throughout Florida, searching the 
Internet for relevant information, and 
reviewing technical periodicals. Researchers 
studied the pros and cons of existing 
operational systems to avoid making mistakes. 
The Sheriff's Office concluded that MDCs are 
a natural and beneficial progression of 
technology as applied to law enforcement 
communication. LCSO technologists selected 
the system best suited to their situation and prepared for 
implementation. 

LCSO staff then worked with information technology employees at the 
state and local levels to set up inquiry access to the Criminal Justice 
Information Services (CJIS), the Florida Crime Information Center 
(FCIC), and the National Crime Information Center (NCIC). The LCSO 
found that as with any large project, the emphasis and direction changed 

 

Promising Strategies From The Field 
Spotlight on Sheriffs 

several times before final implementation. Project team members found 
that the plan improved each time it was revisited, and credit much of the 
project's success to its flexibility and exhaustive research phase. 

Results 

COPS MORE funding allowed the Leon County Sheriff's Office to 
purchase a base system for wireless communications that was sound, 
reliable, and expandable. The Sheriff's Office started with 81 MDCs and 
has successfully expanded the system in the following years. The MDCs 
have not only proven to be efficient, but also have made both deputies 
and their communities safer by giving deputies better access to criminal 
justice databases in the field. Information like that can help deputies 
respond most effectively to a given situation. MDCs also make it easier 
for deputies to track and respond to community problems. 

The LCSO tracked the hours saved by the MDCs with its computer-
aided dispatch (CAD) system. During the grant period the LCSO 
charted and reviewed this information on a monthly basis. MDCs 
allowed the LCSO to redeploy the equivalent of 15 full-time deputies 
per year into the communities they serve. Deputies spent their newfound 
time in the community in a variety of ways, including walking into 
businesses to visit with owners and patrons, talking with citizens in 
community parks, and attending community events to speak on crime 
prevention or to provide a law enforcement presence. The MDC system 
continues to grow well after the expiration of the COPS grant. The 
efficiency improvements MDCs offer allow deputies to spend much 
more time working directly in their communities. 

COPS MORE grants help law enforcement agencies purchase and 
implement the technologies they need to improve their communication 
abilities and better serve their communities. The Leon County Sheriff's 
Office was able to do just that as new technology allowed deputies to 
spend more time practicing community policing in the communities 
they serve. This kind of crime-fighting technology helps keep America 
safe as the challenges to law enforcement continue to evolve. 

Rogers County Hauls Down Trailer Theft 

Image of a tractor trailer

A 1997 Problem-Solving Partnership grant helped Oklahomas Rogers 
County Sheriff's Office reduce trailer thefts. Theft of general livestock, 
horse, utility, and flatbed trailers increased significantly in Rogers 
County during the mid-1990s. This problem adversely impacted the 
livelihood and recreation of area residents and businesses. Rogers 
County Sheriff's Office field deputies began to monitor the problem 
when they noticed unusually high numbers of trailer theft calls for 
service. Thieves claimed more than 37 trailers during the first eight 
months of 1996 and only three were ever recovered. These thefts 
resulted in average losses of $2,500, but losses were as high as $35,000. 


Promising Strategies From The Field 
14 

Approach/Methods 

The COPS Problem-Solving Partnerships grant allowed Rogers County 
deputies to review crime reports, conduct site visits to theft locations, 
speak with victims, and conduct a community survey. Theft reports 
from 1996 and 1997 indicated that thefts of privately-owned equipment 
usually occurred between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m., while thefts of 
commercially-owned equipment usually occurred during the early 
morning hoursbetween midnight and 4 a.m. In 95 percent of the cases, 
the theft locations were remote but easily accessible to one of the 
county's four major highways. 

Deputies discovered during site visits to theft locations and interviews 
with victims that most trailers were stolen from open areas not visible 
from residential dwellings. These locations proved to be tempting to 
thieves: they offered no means to secure a trailer, and little opportunity 
for natural surveillance. Stolen trailers had usually been chained and 
padlocked to the ground or a tree, which could be overcome with a 
common bolt-cutter. A random community survey of 200 Rogers 
County residents indicated that while most citizens had not been victims 
of trailer theft, they were interested in protecting their property and 
recovering it in the event of a theft. 

While trailers might not seem concealable, it is extremely difficult to 
determine legitimate ownership by their appearance. Stolen trailers are 
very difficult to find at a private sale or auction in large part due to lack 
of legislated licensing or registration requirements. The small number of 
trailers recovered led deputies to believe that they were being repainted 
and sold at regional auctions. 

Rogers County implemented a four-pronged response strategy in March 
1998. 

Educating the Community: Sheriff's deputies attended meetings 
with residents and members of organizations such as the 
Cattleman's Association to make the community aware of the 


Promising Strategies From The Field 
Spotlight on Sheriffs 
15 

increase in trailer theft, identify at-risk 
locations, and discuss how new tracking 
and monitoring equipment could help 
prevent thefts. 

Harnessing New Technologies: The 
Rogers County Sheriff's Office offers the 
installation of tracking and monitoring 
microchips into at-risk property for a low 
fee. Deputies install rice-grain-sized 
microchip tracking devices into trailers at 
public clinics for only $35 per vehicle. 
Once installed in a trailer, these microchip 
devices permanently identify the owner's 
name and a description of the property, 
which is then entered in a police database. 

Visually Archiving At-Risk Properties: 
Deputies also take photographs of 
microchip-equipped trailers and 
equipment. This allows deputies to 
visually confirm the identification of 
trailers registered in the database and 
immediately place pictures of stolen 
property onto the Internet when they are 
stolen. It also allows deputies to dispatch 
information quickly to neighboring law 
enforcement agencies, auction organizers, and community members. 

Publicizing the Project to Potential Offenders: The Sheriff's 
Office also warned trailer thieves and potential buyers of stolen 
goods through an extended media campaign. One press release 
stated, "if a trailer is found in the possession of a person other than 
the owner without the owner's permission, that person will be going 
to jail." This almost immediately detracted from the value of a 
potentially stolen trailers. 

Problem-Solving 
Partnership (PSP) 
PSP grants promote 
partnerships between 
law enforcement and 
other community-based 
groups to respond to 
persistent local crime 
and disorder problems. 
PSP grants employ 
problem-solving 
approaches along the 
SARA model, and have 
responded to auto theft, 
prostitution, vandalism, 
and others problems. 
COPS awarded 
approximately $37 
million in grant funds to 
454 jurisdictions in 47 
states to implement 
Problem-Solving 
Partnership projects in 
1996. 


Promising Strategies From The Field 

The Rogers County Sheriff's Office worked closely during this project 
with members of the Cattleman's Association, Professional Rodeo 
Cowboy Association, Quarter Horse Association, and the Farm Bureau, 
which serves as an insurance underwriter in many rural areas, to learn 
more about the financial and emotional costs of trailer theft. Sheriff's 
deputies also worked with the members of these organizations to spread 
the word of the Office's response to the problem and to seek their 
participation in the microchip program. National Microchip Horse 
Registry technicians installed the microchips in the trailers, and the 
mass media helped publicize the program throughout the state of 
Oklahoma. 

Results 

Trailer theft dropped 69 percent during the first year of the response 
program. Trailer theft was virtually eliminated in Rogers County shortly 
thereafter. Only one trailer was stolen in 2000 and 2001, and the owner 
of the stolen trailer had not participated in the Rogers County theft 
reduction program. The program has saved residents and the insurance 
companies serving Rogers County an estimated $300,000 since 1998. 

Community participation in the program is strongthere is currently a 
list of over 100 trailers waiting to be registered and tagged. The success 
of the trailer program has led the Rogers County Sheriff's Office to 
expand the installation of microchips to include tractors, recreational 
vehicles, and all-terrain vehicles. Demand for the program is so high 
that the Sheriff's Office is working to purchase a mobile microchip 
installation unit so that owners will no longer need to transport their 
equipment to central locations for tagging. This mobile installation unit 
will greatly increase the number of participants in the program and the 
types of property it can protect. 

Collaborative partnerships and problem-solving projects are two core 
elements of community policing. The Rogers County Sheriff's Office 
proved once again how effective community policing strategies can be 
Rogers County deputies essentially eliminated the targeted crime 
problem in a single year. COPS is pleased to support agencies like the 
Rogers County Sheriff's Office as they work to keep their communities 
safer through community policing. 


Sacramento Communicates MORE Effectively 

Image of female police officer working on the computer

A series of COPS MORE grants enables the Sacramento County 
Sheriff's Department (SSD) to acquire and deploy several new 
technologies. The SSD serves a population of 1.2 million residents in 
northern California. As the county's population and calls for service 
grew steadily over the past two decades, the SSD did not keep pace 
with technologies to evaluate service needs and help deputies perform 
their duties. The department expanded its community policing program 
in 2000 by decentralizing the patrol division to six district station 
houses, each located in the community it serves. Deputies were trained 
to work with neighborhoods to solve recurring problems, but they often 
did not have the necessary resources. 


Promising Strategies From The Field 
18 

The department's aging computer-aided 
dispatch (CAD) system required considerable 
time and funding to maintain. Even worse, 
data entry and retrieval for CAD and the 
record management system (RMS) were 
independent and not user-friendly. District 
deputies found it difficult to access crime and 
calls for service (CFS) information. Crime 
analysis was available, but not in a timely 
manner. It could take days for district deputies 
to receive feedback from a written request for 
information, making it difficult for them to 
identify recurring neighborhood problems. 
Older mobile terminals had limited 
capabilities. The SSD believed that better 
integrated information systems would greatly 
improve its service to citizens. 

The SSD determined to improve the efficiency 
and effectiveness of the department by 
integrating new technologies. The SSD 
selected crime-fighting and time-saving 
technologies to give deputies more time to 
partner with residents to resolve neighborhood 
problems. The new technologies enabled the 
SSD to: 

Upgrade information technology and 
booking systems 

Reduce response times to calls for service 
Analyze the deployment of personnel within geographic boundaries 
of patrol districts 

Provide deputies immediate access to CAD, DMV, and criminal 
databases 

Offer Supervisors more effective tools to manage patrol personnel 
and calls for service 

Making Officer 
Redeployment Effective 
(MORE) 
MORE grants cover up 
to 75 percent of the cost 
of technology 
acquisition, equipment 
purchases, or support 
personnel salaries. 
MORE grants give 
American law 
enforcement 
professionals tools that 
allow them to spend 
more time on 
community policing 
activities. COPS MORE 
grants have provided 
more than 4,500 law 
enforcement agencies in 
excess of one billion 
dollars to redeploy law 
enforcement 
professionals into 
community policing 
activities since 1995. 


Promising Strategies From The Field 
Spotlight on Sheriffs 

Improve access to crime analysis information for deputies 

Deploy integrated portable information technologies 

Approaches/Methods 

COPS MORE grants in 1995, 1996, 1998, and 2001 enables the SSD to 
acquire and deploy several new technologies. The SSD used 1995 
COPS MORE funding to purchase off-the-shelf resource optimization 
software. This software helped the SSD reevaluate the boundaries of its 
six patrol districts and the number of personnel assigned to each district 
station house. Station houses are full-service facilities that house 
representatives from a variety of public safety organizations, including a 
District Attorney for Community Prosecution and the California 
Highway Patrol. These agencies work together with residents to resolve 
neighborhood problems. 

The SSD partnered with several organizations to implement its grants. 
The Institute of Social Research at California State University, 
Sacramento conducted a community survey to evaluate public 
perceptions of such issues as crime, fear of crime, and the SSD's 
performance. The Remote Access Network Board for Sacramento 
County (RAN Board), authorized by the California Penal Code, 
contributed more than $850,000 toward the matching funds portions of 
the SSD's COPS MORE projects. 

COPS awarded the SSD its largest MORE grant in 1998 for the 
purchase of 230 Mobile Data Computers (MDC'S). These MDC's 
provided deputies access to all CAD information and instantaneous 
responses from the National Crime Information Center (NCIC), the 
Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), and criminal justice database 
inquires. This grant also funded the CAD and Records systems and an 
upgraded wireless network. 

A 2001 grant is currently funding the SSD's deployment of 170 personal 
digital assistants (PDAs) and the development of a super query that will 
gather information from multiple county systems. The PDAs will be 
capable of transferring communications and data-sharing to deputies to 
MDC's in their vehicles. CDMA technology will link MDCs with the 
agency's local area network (LAN), providing deputies access to email, 


Promising Strategies From The Field 
20 

training calendars, departmental policies and procedures, and other 
departmental resources. 

Results 

COPS MORE funding led the SSD into the 21st century technologically 
and greatly improved its community policing and problem-solving 
capabilities. The resource optimization software helped redesign patrol's 
geographic boundaries and the number of personnel assigned to each of 
the six districts at a time when the department was expanding its 
community policing program. 

The SSD staff reports a high level of satisfaction: deputies appreciated 
how much easier new technologies made their jobs. MDC technology 
helped reduce response time and redeploy a great deal of time to 
community policing activities Access to CAD and crime analysis gives 
deputies and other agencies working at community resource centers the 
information and tools they need to partner with neighborhood residents 
to solve problems. The SSD estimates that the MDC inquiries alone 
save an estimated equivalent of more than 14 full time deputies 
annually. Investigators also report saving time by using laptop 
computers at crime scenes. Improved crime analysis and CAD data 
gives deputies more accurate information to educate community 
members at the monthly community policing meetings. 
These overall time-savings allows the department to increase the 
number of the SSD's sworn staff deployed into community policing 
activities, such as working with high school students and implementing 
problem-oriented policing projects. The SSD reports that its efforts to 
improve its services to the community are evidenced in the research 
conducted by the Institute of Social Research at California State 
University, Sacramento. Current research shows the department enjoys 
high public approval ratings. 

The SSD shows how COPS MORE grants can help American law 
enforcement agencies improve their communication capabilities and 
more effectively engage the communities they serve. As local law 
enforcement faces new challenges, quick and effective communication 
is imperative. Crime-fighting technologies help agencies like the SSD 
better serve their jurisdictions through community policing. 

Mohave SROs Go Back to School 

Image of police officer talking to students

A 1999 COPS in Schools grant helped Arizona's Mohave County 
Sheriff's Office (MCSO) bring two school resource officers (SROs) to 
its two local high schools. Mohave County consists of 13,500 square 
miles of essentially rural areas that include ranches, farms, and tribal 
lands, and 90 full-time sworn members of the MCSO serve more than 
60,000 citizens. 

The tragedy at Columbine prompted the MCSO to assign patrol officers 
to each of the two high schools within its jurisdiction, Kingman and 
River Valley. The students' positive response to the officers led the 
school districts and individual high schools to request that the 
arrangement be made permanent. SROs were the most effective 
response to persistent problems of school code violations, disorderly 
conduct, criminal activity, unauthorized individuals on campus, and 
bomb threats. 


Promising Strategies From The Field 
22 

SROs were given considerable flexibility in 
this project. Mohave SROs focus on 
identifying and addressing emerging trends 
before they become problems. By fostering a 
better understanding of the SRO role as both 
educator and law enforcement professional, 
the SROs built strong working relationships 
with both students and staff that enabled them 
to more quickly resolve problems. Patrol 
officers now refer all school-related calls for 
service to SROs. SROs are solely responsible 
for incidents that occur on campus, on buses, 
at bus stops, and in areas traveled between 
home and school. 

Responses 

SROs needed to focus first on increasing 
school safety. Each officer developed a safety 
plan with his respective site council, which 
consists of teachers, students, parents, and 
school administrators. The safety plan 
assessed both the school climate and the entire 
campus, using such tools as Crime Prevention 
Through Environmental Design (CPTED), aerial photography, and 
interviews. The SROs developed safety products like crisis kits and 
emergency procedure pocket cards, which offer guidance in case of 
evacuation. 

The SRO at Kingman High School created and monitors a "Silent 
Witness" telephone hotline program. This hotline has helped resolve 
criminal acts including several bomb threats. Kingman's SRO also 
worked to place metal detectors at the school entrance, require students 
and staff to wear visible identification cards, change the school 
crosswalks to create one main entryway onto school grounds, and 
construct a student checkpoint. All students must enter through the main 
gate and present proper identification before proceeding to the front 
doors. Backpacks, coats, and persons are examined with metal detectors 
when special situationssuch as bomb threats or reports of 
weaponswarrant. 

COPS in Schools (CIS) 
CIS grants enable law 
enforcement agencies to 
hire law enforcement 
professionals to work in 
and around primary 
and secondary schools. 
CIS has helped to hire 
and train nearly 6,000 
School Resource 
Officers (SROs) since 
1999. COPS has 
allocated a total of $672 
million to help hire 
SROs and an additional 
$21 million to train 
SROs and the school 
administrators with 
whom they work. 


Promising Strategies From The Field 
Spotlight on Sheriffs 

The Kingman SRO works with the Robotics Club, which took third 
place in a national competition two years in a row. He also helped 
create a tobacco cessation programthe first of its kind in Arizona. 
According to the program, the SRO must once a year teach a class 
during the school day to inform students about the dangers of smoking 
tobacco. Students caught smoking while on school grounds can 
participate in a five-week diversion program to avoid the normal three-
day suspension. The University of Arizona partnered with Kingman to 
develop and mail out a tobacco awareness and education package once 
a week for five weeks to the student's home. The students must review 
and complete a test covering the materials. The SRO monitors the 
program, and students who do not complete the program receive the 
three-day suspension. 

River Valley's SRO is also one of the schools football coach. He 
developed and chaperones a "Safe and Sober Night" graduation 
ceremony. As part of Safe and Sober Night, the SRO receives donations 
from local businesses, such as a used car, dinners, manicures, and 
tuxedo rentals, which are raffled off before the event. 

The SROs also teach classes in the high schools on subjects like 
Drivers Education, Criminal Justice, and Careers in Law Enforcement, 
and they address community groups through presentations and safety 
programs. The officers have completed training from the National 
Association of School Resource Officers (Basic, Advanced, and 
Supervision certification), the National Center for Missing and 
Exploited Children, and are state certified law enforcement trainers. 
Outside of the school calendar year, the SROs assist in patrol in 
addition to addressing youth problems. 


Promising Strategies From The Field 
24 

Results 

Interviews with students show a reduction of the fear of crime on school 
campuses. The SROs have freed up time for patrol officers, since SROs 
handle all calls on campus, can make arrests, and follow up school 
related incidents initially handled by patrol. At first, patrol officers were 
reluctant to rely on SROs, but the difference they make with the youth 
and the community earns them increasing levels of acceptance and trust. 
The two officers chosen for SRO detail were graduates of the high 
schools they now serve. Their sergeant suggests that the officers have a 
deep sense of commitment and pride in part because of this. 

Staff, students, parents, and other community members also increasingly 
trust the police thanks to the SROs' work. The SROs have also helped 
forge a stronger working relationship with Juvenile Probation. This has 
led to better case management and an ability to more effectively 
identify and intervene with students who are on probation or have been 
on probation and are still struggling to comply with school rules and 
policies. 

Innovative policing programs like the smoking cessation program and 
the Safe and Sober night show how community policing can make a 
difference in the lives of America's youth. Mohave's SROsand 
thousands of others like them around the countrydemonstrate one way 
community policing efforts reduce crime and the fear of crime 
nationwide. 

East Baton Rouge Takes It To The Streets 

Image of Sheriff and his patrol car

A COPS hiring grant enabled the East Baton Rouge Sheriff's Office to 
expand its forces to meet the needs of its rapidly growing population in 
1997. After the first COPS hiring grant helped the Sheriff's Office add 
25 deputies in 1997, a 1998 COPS MORE grant provided funding to 
arm them with new mobile laptop computers, making them even more 
effective. 


Promising Strategies From The Field 
26 

The new COPS-funded personnel faced tough 
challenges. The growth of major businesses 
and subdivisions outside the city limits had a 
negative effect on the Parish's economic 
viability and, ultimately, on the city's crime 
rate and overall quality of life. Increasing 
calls for service kept existing supervisors 
from devoting full attention to their roles as 
supervisors and trainers. 

Making matters worse, the volume of calls 
soon overburdened the existing dispatch 
system. Call overflows frequently required 
supervisors to answer non-emergency 
requests for service. New line personnel 
worked to deploy community policing teams 
to saturate problem areas, dismantle illegal 
activities, and establish Neighborhood Watch 
programs in the community. These teams 
faced persistent crime problems including drug 
trafficking and the illegal manufacturing of controlled substances in 
public housing. 

The East Baton Rouge Sheriff's Office partnered with community 
members and civic and business associations to help launch community 
policing strategies. New COPS-funded personnel gave the Office the 
resources to significantly expand its participation in these activities in 
an effort to achieve their goals. 

Reduce crime and enhance the safety of the community 

Make the 911 dispatch system more effective 

Decrease overall response time and increase staffing allocation in 
patrol 

Free supervisors' time to supervise and train 

Improve the community's quality of life 

Hiring Grants 
Various COPS 
programs help law 
enforcement agencies 
hire officers to 
implement or expand 
community policing 
efforts. COPS hiring 
grants have helped 
12,800 American law 
enforcement agencies 
hire more than 116,500 
new community policing 
officers by distributing 
close to $7.1 billion 
dollars since 1994. 


Promising Strategies From The Field 
Spotlight on Sheriffs 
27 

Develop partnerships between law 
enforcement and the community 

Approach/Methods 

The East Baton Rouge Sheriff's Office 
conducted a work force analysis of the 
dispatch system to determine peak call 
periods, and adjusted schedules to best 
support those hours. The study also found that 
the 911 system's efficiency was impeded by a 
high number of non-emergency calls and lack 
of an automated system. The office addressed 
these problems by pulling two new 
communications positions from existing 
clerical positions and reclassifying them as 
criminal deputies. These deputies serve as the 
initial contact point for all 911 calls and either 
provide the information requested or forward 
the calls to the dispatcher on duty after 
gathering preliminary information. The system 
was made even more efficient by the addition 
of a computer-aided dispatch system with 
geographic capabilities. 

The Sheriff's Office organized the additional 
deputies into eight- and twelve-person 
planning teams based at each of three 
substations. The planning teams maintained 
high visibility in troubled areas so that both 
the citizens and criminal elements noticed a 
constant police presence. They also moved quickly from one trouble 
spot to another and saturated any areas where problems arose. The 
teams implemented community policing programs and strategies to 
reduce drug demand at the neighborhood level in both urban and rural 
areas. The planning teams maintained a communications network with 
residents to help exchange information and monitor progress. 

Making Officer 
Redeployment Effective 
(MORE) 
MORE grants cover up 
to 75 percent of the cost 
of technology 
acquisition, equipment 
purchases, or support 
personnel salaries. 
MORE grants give 
American law 
enforcement 
professionals tools that 
allow them to spend 
more time on 
community policing 
activities. COPS MORE 
grants have provided 
more than 4,500 law 
enforcement agencies in 
excess of one billion 
dollars to redeploy law 
enforcement 
professionals into 
community policing 
activities since 1995. 


Promising Strategies From The Field 
28 

The deputies delivered 100 Neighborhood Watch presentations to 
approximately 4,900 individuals, and interacted with civic groups, 
parents, and children. Neighborhood Watch meetings currently involve 
the presidents, secretaries, and council members of more than 200 civic 
associations. Each problem-solving project is chosen by a needs 
assessment, developed using the SARA method, and followed up with 
an evaluation. 

Results 

Last year, the Sheriff's Office effectively managed 80,000 calls for 
service. The automated dispatch system decreased dispatch time by 
almost four minutes. The new sworn communications personnel have 
relieved the supervisors from answering non-emergency calls, and are 
able to devote full attention to delivering quality information in 
response to citizen calls. 

The addition of 22 deputies has freed the supervisors to supervise and 
support a better trained team of deputies. Supervisors use new laptop 
computersmade possible thanks to a COPS MORE 98 grantto train 
deputies in the field and provide training for all new deputies on the 
streets. The Sheriff's Office receives additional community policing 
training at the Louisiana Community Policing Institute in Shreveport. 

The improved ability to be highly mobile and saturate problem areas 
has helped to assure that high-crime areas, such as open-air drug 
markets, are a very undesirable place for criminals to enter, thereby 
eliminating them. The success of this strategy is obvious on several 
levels: not only are property values beginning to rise, but children once 
again play in their yards. Input from both the general public and law 
enforcement professionals in the field suggests an increase in residents' 
trust of law enforcement and a reduction in their fear of crimeall of 
which contributes to an improved quality of life for the whole 
community. 


Promising Strategies From The Field 
Spotlight on Sheriffs 

Improved communications between deputies and residents has not only 
helped to educate the community about crime, it has also increased the 
flow of intelligence from the public to the Sheriff's Office. The 
community policing planning teams work successfully with residents to 
identify criminal activity and quality of life issues and then develop 
responses to eliminate the problems based on the principles of 
community policing. Businesses and private organizations such as 
nursing homes and utility companies now increasingly request 
presentations by the Sheriff's Office on subjects such as theft. 

For example, the Gardere Area was so overrun with crime in 1997 that 
the bus system stopped transporting to the area and pizza businesses 
stopped delivery for fear of robbery. Many residents moved out of the 
area and property values dropped. A community policing team of 12 
deputies responded by saturating the area on foot and in vehicles and 
making initial contacts with residents to begin documenting the 
problems. In addition to enforcement and arrests, the community 
policing team coordinated block parties to demonstrate that residents 
were taking back their neighborhood. This strategy succeeded in driving 
out much of the criminal element. Citizens moved into the area and 
services such as pizza delivery and bus service were restored. 

The renewal of the Gardere Area is a testament to the effective problem-
oriented policing and community policing strategies of the East Baton 
Rouge Sheriff's Office. By providing funding for agencies to hire more 
law enforcement professionals and providing them with crime-fighting 
technology, COPS helps keep America safe, one community at a time. 


Promising Strategies From The Field 
Spotlight on Sheriffs 

Conclusion 

COPS programs have advanced community policing across the country 
by putting more than 116,000 officers and deputies on the street, placing 
innovative crime-fighting technologies in the hands of law enforcement 
professionals, providing training to law enforcement and community 
members alike, and spending more than $50 million on law enforcement 
research since 1994. COPS has also produced a wide variety of 
publications for training, technical assistance, and research purposes. 
COPS continues to fund state, local, and tribal implementation of 
innovative and effective community policing strategies. COPS looks 
forward to continuing to work with local law enforcement in 2003 and 
beyond. 


Tell Us About It!
COPS values feedback from law
enforcement practitioners, and we
want to hear from you! Please send 
us an email letting us know about
your successful community
policing efforts to reduce crime.
You can send us an email at 
TellCOPS@usdoj.gov - we look 
forward to hearing from you.


Image of United States Department of Justice seal
FOR MORE INFORMATION 

U.S. Department of Justice 
Office of Community Oriented Policing Services 
1100 Vermont Avenue, NW 
Washington D.C. 20530 

To obtain details on COPS programs, call the 
U.S. Department of Justice Response Center at 800.421.6770 
or visit COPS Online at the address listed below. 


Created March 14, 2003 e02031878