The homestead police department proposes to implement an enhanced violence intervention initiative

The City of Homestead, Florida has been awarded a $299,999 Project Grant from the U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance through the Rural Violent Crime Initiative (CFDA 16.039) to implement an Enhanced Violence Intervention Initiative. The purpose of this 3-year project is to utilize crime data, trends, and offender profiles to develop a strategic, coordinated response to address violent crime in the Homestead area. Key activities include enhanced crime analysis, implementation of a project administrator/analyst to integrate the city's various current crime reduction initiatives, and deployment of evidence-based policing and intervention strategies. The expected outcome is a reduction in violent crime as determined by pre- and post-implementation analysis. This federal grant award will enable the Homestead Police Department to enhance their capabilities in combating violent crime through improved data-driven decision making and coordination of their public safety and social services resources.

The purpose of this project is to utilize crime data, crime trends and offenders profile in order to develop a strategic response to crime that is occurring and going unaddressed. This response will coordinate all the homestead police departments current crime reduction initiatives and resources together to develop a seamless system of law enforcement and social services response. The department currently has a gun violence initiative to address violent crime, shots fired technology, an in-house social service response team, and community-based family/youth coordinated support services. The current projects are successful in addressing crimes and individuals committing those crimes as well as their families and friends, but due to program constraints, these projects do not address all crimes or all factors influencing crime. There are programmatic constraints to each initiative allowing a GAP in the response which allows for the crime to continue or relocate. This project will fill that GAP. Activities will include enhanced crime analysis, the implementation of a project administrator/analysis who will bring together all initiatives to identify the current methods of response and the identification of those responses that are needed and not being deployed. The activities will include evidence-based policing and evidence-based responses to the criminal element. Expected outcomes will be a reduction in crime as determined by the analysis of pre and post strategic responses in the identified area.