COPS Office Anti-Heroin Task Force (AHTF)

Program—How Decisions were Made to Allocate 

Approximately $27.7 Million in AHTF Awards

The COPS Office received applications from 20 eligible state law enforcement agencies requesting 

$31,451,722 in federal funding for the FY 2019 COPS Office Anti-Heroin Task Force (AHTF) program. 

The COPS Office developed an application to meet the 

requirements of the law

This is the fifth fiscal year that the COPS Office has received funding for AHTF. However, this fiscal year, 

AHTF expanded its focus to advance public safety by providing funds to investigate illicit activities 

related to the distribution of heroin, fentanyl, or carfentanil; the unlawful distribution of prescription 

opioids; or unlawful heroin and prescription opioid traffickers through statewide collaboration. Only 

state law enforcement agencies authorized by law or by a state agency to engage in or supervise antiheroin investigative activities were eligible to apply for funding. 

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 drug control policy to develop appropriate application questions. 

Applicants were asked to submit information regarding their jurisdiction’s heroin or opioid problem on 

such indicators as

• reported primary treatment admission rates for heroin, fentanyl, carfentanil, and other opioids for 

the previous three years; 

• current anti-heroin investigative activities; 

• planned or current involvement in an anti-heroin task force. 

The community policing philosophy engages in a proactive and systematic examination of identified 

problems that can be countered with effective responses. Community policing relies heavily on 

partnerships and relationships between law enforcement and the community it serves. Narrative 

questions were designed to examine an agency’s formation of collaborations with federal, state, local, 

or tribal partners such as other law enforcement and public agencies, private organizations, or 

participation in multijurisdictional task forces. Agencies were asked to identify and describe the types of 

partnerships they intended to initiate or enhance in order to address their identified heroin problem.
The COPS Office verified the data submitted

The application system contains numerous built-in logic checks to help prevent the submission of 

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

immediately reviewed the data contained therein. The COPS Office verified information provided in 

applications using data from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). 

This data verification process was crucial to ensuring that all applicants were properly evaluated based 

on accurately and consistently reported primary treatment admissions data. 

The COPS Office developed a uniform system of 

evaluating the information that applicants submitted

Comprehensive review

The 20 eligible applications underwent an exhaustive and comprehensive review process. 

The peer reviewers evaluated the following criteria in the Project Narrative and Budget Narrative 

sections of the application to determine the quality of each application. The reviewers looked at the 

following:

• Problem identification

• Current heroin and other opioid investigative activities

• Anti-heroin task force participation

• Collaboration and partnerships

• High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area threat assessment with regard to heroin and other opioids

• Strategy to achieve program goals

• Applicable and allowable budget items requested

The peer reviewers then developed recommendations based on a rating of “Highly Recommended,” 

“Recommended,” or “Not Recommended” for each proposal. From the recommendations, three

agencies ranked within the “Highly Recommended” rating, and the remaining 17 agencies ranked within 

the “Recommended” rating. 

Data Scoring

The focus for funding was on state-level law enforcement agencies in states with high rates of identified 

heroin, fentanyl, carfentanil, and other opioid problems using the most recent available data, as 

indicated through the following sources of statewide data:

• Primary treatment admissions rates (per 100,000 population) for heroin, fentanyl, or carfentanil

• Primary treatment admissions rates (per 100,000 population) for other opioids
A methodology for primary treatment admission rates for heroin, fentanyl, carfentanil, and other 

opioids was established to analyze and rank the admissions data provided in each application (and 

verified through SAMHSA). A median, using the data for the states in which applications were received, 

was determined using the per capita rate of the state’s primary treatment admission data for heroin, 

fentanyl, carfentanil, and other opioids. Applications were then ranked using the following criteria:

1. Applications that received a “Highly Recommended” rating and had a per capita primary 

treatment admissions rate for heroin, fentanyl, carfentanil, and other opioids at or above the 

median per capita rate for all applicants meeting the basic minimum requirements.

2. Applicants that received a “Recommended” rating and had a per capita primary treatment 

admissions rate for heroin, fentanyl, carfentanil, and other opioids at or above the median per 

capita rate for all applicants meeting the basic minimum requirements.

3. Applicants that received a “Highly Recommended” rating and had a per capita primary 

treatment admissions rate for heroin, fentanyl, carfentanil, and other opioids below the median 

per capita rate for all applicants meeting the basic minimum requirements.

4. Applicants that received a “Recommended” rating and had a per capita primary treatment 

admissions rate for heroin, fentanyl, carfentanil, and other opioids below the median per capita 

rate for all applicants meeting the basic minimum requirements.