COPS Hiring Program (CHP)—How Decisions 

were Made to Allocate $216 Million When 

More than $594 Million was Requested

The CHP solicitation for FY 2023 opened on March 8, 2023, and applications were accepted through May 

11, 2023. The COPS Office received 654 applications from law enforcement agencies requesting 

$594,377,385 in federal funding for 2,297 officer positions.

The COPS Office focused on several priority areas for 

additional consideration

Applicants who chose areas such as Building Legitimacy and Trust, Violent Crime, Combating Hate and 

Domestic Extremism, or Police-Based Response to Persons in Crisis as their problem focus area received 

additional consideration for CHP funding.

Additional consideration was also given to applicants that met any of the following criteria:

• Applicants in an area with persistent poverty

• Applicants seeking support for screening and counseling programs to identify and prevent the 

radicalization of applicants and personnel who endorse violent and hateful extremist movements

• Applicants that commit to recruiting officers from the community in which they will serve and/or 

commit to recruiting officers who are willing to relocate to areas of high crime or fragmented 

police-community relations

• Agencies that require evidence-based cultural sensitivity training for officers

• Applicants that experienced an unanticipated catastrophic event

• Applicants that commit to hiring at least one military veteran

• Applicants from rural areas

• Applicants that did not receive a CHP award in FY 2022 

The COPS Office developed a streamlined application to 

meet the requirements of the law

The COPS Office developed a streamlined application for CHP funding that met the requirements of

the statute and mission of the COPS Office. The application was designed to lessen the burden of applying 

while increasing the ability of law enforcement to implement community-policing strategies within the 

three primary elements of community policing: (1) problem solving, (2) partnerships, and

(3) organizational transformation.
FY 2023 COPS Hiring Program (CHP)—Methodology 2 

The COPS Office balanced scoring indicators

To measure and compare the necessary scoring indicators, the COPS Office consulted with experts in the 

fields of policing, criminology, and public finance to develop appropriate application questions. Applicants 

were asked to submit information on the following indicators:

• Reported crime for the previous two years

• Current commitment to community policing

• Planned community policing activities

• Poverty and unemployment rates

The COPS Office checked and double-checked, verifying 

the data applicants provided

COPS Office application systems contains numerous built-in validation and logic checks to help prevent

the submission of erroneous data. In addition, once applications were submitted, specialists in the COPS

Office reviewed the data for irregularities. The COPS Office reviewed more than 350 data points within 

each application. In some cases, the COPS Office contacted applicant agencies to verify information 

provided in their application. This data verification process, though time-consuming, was crucial to 

ensuring that all applicants were properly evaluated based on accurate economic, crime, and community 

policing data.

The COPS Office developed a uniform system of 

evaluating the information that applicants submitted

The COPS Office focused on balancing applicants’ need for federal assistance with crime rates and 

applicants’ current commitment to community policing and their proposed community policing strategy. 

Each of these areas accounted for one third of the overall score, prior to adding in the additional 

consideration factors. 

Statutory considerations

Two long-standing statutory requirements designed to ensure national distribution of COPS Office funding 

had an impact on which applications were ultimately funded. The COPS Office is statutorily required to 

distribute half of all hiring funds to agencies serving populations of more than 150,000 and half to those 

serving 150,000 or fewer. In addition, the COPS Office is statutorily required to ensure that at least onehalf of one percent of hiring funds are allocated to each state or territory with eligible applications.