Leon County Sheriff’s Office (LCSO) awarded a $349,635 grant to enhance de-escalation training. New funding builds on a previous $249,950 grant, totaling $599,585 for de-escalation initiatives. Funds will be used to expand training and strategies for effective crisis response.
The Leon County Sheriff’s office announced a new grant to help enhance its de-escalation training.
The grant was awarded from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office.
The Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) Office awarded LCSO a $349,635.00 grant to support its ongoing commitment to enhancing de-escalation training and crisis response for law enforcement personnel.
This new funding builds on the success of LCSO’s previous grant of $249,950.00, which was awarded in the Fiscal Year 2023/2024, for a total of $599,585.00.
The initial funds were used to fund part of the LCSO De-escalation Research Project and the new funding will be used for the enhancement of training and strategies and to further expand its efforts to implement effective de-escalation techniques.
This funding comes shortly after the release of LCSO’s De-escalation Tracking Project (DTP) report, which highlighted the effectiveness of the strategies employed by LCSO deputies.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
The DTP has documented over 109,000 citizen interactions with LCSO deputies in a year.
Calm Interactions: An impressive 97.26% of citizen interactions were characterized as calm and cooperative, reflecting our deputies’ efforts to engage respectfully with the community. Agitated Interactions: Only 2.69% of interactions were classified as agitated or uncooperative, with the majority of these successfully de-escalated without incident. Interactions that escalated to the use of force were extremely rare (0.05%). Safe Arrests: Only 1.76% of incidents resulted in arrest(s), and only 2.76% of those involved the application of force to affect the arrest(s).
RELATED STORY:
The success of the DTP was used to justify this additional grant, demonstrating the positive impact of LCSO’s ongoing de-escalation initiative.
For more information about the grant or LCSO’s de-escalation efforts, please visit our website at www.LeonCountySO.com.