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April 26, 2025 The important role of the federal government in supporting policing
PERF members, When PERF was created almost 50 years ago, our founding chiefs sought to establish an organization that would develop best practices for police departments to better serve their communities. We’ve done this by applying research and, at times, challenging conventional thinking. In recent decades, we’ve provided the field with information about eyewitness identification, electronic control weapons, body-worn cameras, reducing gun violence, responding to the COVID pandemic, and much more. Many of these projects enjoyed support from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), under both Democratic and Republican administrations. This week, DOJ’s Office of Justice Programs (OJP), which includes the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) and the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), announced that it is cancelling at least 365 grants. On Tuesday evening, PERF was notified that some of our grants were among those cut. We are appealing those cuts, but for now, those projects cannot continue. While PERF receives private funding, we also rely on support from the federal government for many of our most important projects. And I’m concerned about the impact these cuts will have on the field at large. Other cuts include grants to organizations that provide services to victims of elder abuse and financial exploitation in California and Colorado Springs, help human trafficking victims in Austin and Detroit, and provide training and technical assistance on child victimization and juvenile justice prosecution. Over the years, OJP has funded important PERF projects that have had a widespread influence on policing. In 2004, we shared lessons learned from the multijurisdictional investigation into the October 2002 sniper attacks in the D.C. area. In 2009, we published a BJA-supported survey of agencies’ use of body armor. We followed that up with a 2012 NIJ-supported study of officers’ use of body armor in real-world conditions. These surveys advanced the field’s understanding of how agencies were instructing their officers to use body armor and how body armor was actually being used. As part of another BJA-funded project, PERF provided training and technical assistance on homicide investigation policies and practices to five police departments. The findings and recommendations were summarized and disseminated to the field in a 2018 publication. Just this week, one of the five sites—the Chicago Police Department (CPD)—published a report summarizing the progress they’ve made in the years since. “Without the support of the BJA and the technical assistance of PERF, the Department and Bureau of Detectives could not have advanced as rapidly and successfully in implementing these reforms to homicide investigations,” the CPD wrote. “To all who were involved with this endeavor, the City and Department are indebted for these significant measures of public safety.” Other OJP-funded projects have studied the role of police in public health emergencies and how police chiefs and sheriffs can assist victims of mass violence. These projects enhance the safety and security of police officers and the communities they serve—goals that should transcend politics. As I wrote when Attorney General Pam Bondi first took office, “PERF and its membership stand ready to support her and the DOJ in their efforts to keep our communities safe.” PERF’s police chiefs and sheriffs rely on federal support to sustain their operations and improve officer and community safety. I have been fortunate to work closely with many DOJ employees over the years to address the challenges facing our profession and the country. I greatly value those relationships, and they are essential to our work. Best, Chuck |