Salinas Announces Federal Grant to Salem Police Department

Today, U.S. House Representative Andrea Salinas (OR-06) announced that the Department of Justice (DOJ) has awarded $99,759 to the City of Salem Police Department. This federal funding will be used to help support the City’s community service officer (CSO) program and reduce wait times for emergency services. 

“Police officers work tirelessly to keep our community safe. But they shouldn’t have to do it all, especially when it comes to calls that don’t involve life-or-death situations,” said Rep. Salinas. “I’m glad to see this funding will go toward supporting the City of Salem’s community service officer program. Putting more trained CSOs on the ground will help reduce response wait times and ensure law enforcement is on the scene when they’re needed.”

“The Salem Police Department is grateful for the continued support of the community service officer (CSO) program,” said Salem Police Chief Trevor Womack. “The grant opportunities through the Bureau of Justice Assistance have been essential in supplementing the capacity of our field operations. Our CSOs balance the work done by our patrol officers by handling requests for public assistance which do not require a police officer, which in turn, frees our sworn personnel to handle higher priority calls. Moreover, the CSO program is essential to our efforts to achieve efficiency and effectiveness within our field operations given our limited resources.”

The City of Salem’s CSO program was created to help relieve sworn police officers of their duties where enforcement action and arrest powers are not required. CSOs are trained to process crime scenes for physical evidence and typically respond to non-emergency calls for service, including non-injury accidents, traffic control, cold burglaries, stolen vehicles, animal complaints, noise complaints, found property, and other events of a similar low priority.

This grant was awarded as part of the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant (JAG) program, which provides law enforcement with critical funding needed to support a wide range of programs—from mental health to crisis intervention and victim assistance.

Click here to read more about the JAG program.

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