Bipartisan bill would help law enforcement agencies | Columnists | elkodaily.com - Elko Daily Free Press
Rural law enforcement departments in Elko County and throughout Nevada could benefit from bipartisan legislation that U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., and Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, introduced on March 17 for small agencies nationwide.
The bill would provide $250 million over the next five years to law enforcement agencies with fewer than 200 full-time officers.
“Our local law enforcement agencies need more funding and support to keep Nevadans safe,” Cortez Masto said. “My bipartisan bill would ensure that small agencies can easily access resources to provide training and mental health care for their officers and to invest in recruitment and retention to help keep great officers on the street.”
The announcement states that more than 90% of all police departments in the nation have fewer than 200 officers, and these small departments often struggle to compete with larger ones for access to critical resources.
Elko Police Chief Ty Trouten said in an email that the Elko Police Department is treated well, “but I suspect really small entities in small cities and low populated counties do struggle” in recruitment, retention and training.
The Invest to Protect Act would establish a grant through the Community Oriented Policing Services program to provide $50 million a year for five years specifically to help local law enforcement agencies, Cortez Masto’s office reported.
The bill requires a grant application process that can be completed within 30 minutes so that small agencies without dedicated grant-writing staff can access the funding, according to the bill summary, which also states that the bill has the endorsement of the Fraternal Order of Police and the National Sheriff’s Association.
Cortez Masto has heard from a lot of small agencies in Nevada that struggle to compete when applying for grants because of their limited resources, according to the senator’s office.
Sen. Grassley said in the March 17 announcement that “during my 99 county meetings, I’ve heard from local police departments about the difficulty they’ve had recruiting folks to be on the police force. We need to ensure our law enforcement agencies have the resources needed to recruit, train and retain police – especially as crime rates continue soaring across the country."
Trouten said that COVID-19 “shut down much of our travel for recruitment and only just resumed last November,” but on the retention side the loss of officers nationwide isn’t as related to money so much as to poor treatment of officers, and departments are having trouble recruiting even with bonuses.
“As far as training, there is always need for more training, especially as law enforcement is tasked with areas such as mental health that are not really in the law enforcement realm but no one else either wants or is able to address such issues,” he said.
Trouten also said that unfunded mandates for equipment and mandatory trainings have been “thrust upon us in response to the last years of anti-police narratives.”
The bill summary says that grant funding could be used for such purposes as officer safety, de-escalation and domestic violence training, offsetting overtime pay when officers are in training, purchasing body-worn cameras, data storage and security for the camera footage, efforts to recruit new officers, and to retain existing officers.
The legislation also would pay officers’ tuition for graduate studies in mental health, public health and social work up to $10,000 and pay for evidence-based mental health services and resources for officers.
Companion legislation was introduced in the U.S. House by Congressmen Josh Gotteimer, D-N.J., and John Rutherford, R-Fla., and the Senate version was co-sponsored by Senators Bill Cassidy, R-La., and Rev. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga.
Cortez Masto, who is part of the Senate Law Enforcement Caucus in the Senate, will continue to work with local departments across Nevada to ensure they have the resources and information they need to apply and compete for all available funds, according to her office.
source: https://elkodaily.com/opinion/columnists/bipartisan-bill-would-help-law-enforcement-agencies/article_95fd534c-abf5-5f6e-9022-b6ecc97f562b.html
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