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Advancing Community Policing Program
COPS designed the Advancing Community Policing (ACP) program to help law
enforcement agencies further develop an infrastructure to institutionalize and
sustain community policing. COPS announced two categories of ACP grants in 1997:
Organizational Change and Community Policing Demonstration Centers.
Organizational Change grants helped local law enforcement agencies reexamine
their business practices to align them better with community policing
philosophies. These grants then helped agencies overcome organizational-level
obstacles to create an atmosphere in which community policing thrives.
Applicants were required to have a solid background in community policing, and
to focus their ACP grant proposals on changing one of the following elements of
their organizations:
- Leadership and Management
- Organizational Culture
- Modifying Organizational Structures
- Research and Planning
- Reengineering Other Components of the Organization
A few agencies across the country have taken the lead in implementing the
philosophies of community policing throughout their organizations. They are
active community policing laboratories, testing and retesting community policing
strategies. Part of COPS mission to advance community policing is to help those
agencies disseminate information and assistance to other organizations. These
agencies served as Community Policing Demonstration Centers. A Community
Policing Demonstration Center works through internal and external efforts to
perfect accepted community policing strategies and experiment with new ideas to
map the future of community policing. Applicants were required to have a
multi-year strategic community policing plan already in place.
Both categories of ACP grant required applicants to submit detailed Project
Narratives that addressed specific aspects of the proposed plan.
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