Colorado FY 2023 Project Safe Neighborhoods Formula Grant Program

The District of Colorado’s Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN) program originates from the U.S. Attorney Office’s (USAO) work with its federal, state, and local law enforcement partners to address violent crime in different communities across Colorado. The goals of the District of Colorado’s PSN Program include focused and strategic enforcement, community engagement, and violence prevention and intervention efforts. Based on the current data concerning violent crime in the Target Enforcement Areas (TEAs), the USAO has determined that focused and strategic enforcement is the most direct manner in which the Colorado PSN Program can contribute to community safety. COVID necessitated pauses in community engagement and prevention efforts in the last few years, the USAO is continuing to re-build collaborative relationships with organizations involved in this area.

The USAO will seek to address the increase in violence through priorities of investigation and prosecution, and increased collaboration, tailored to each TEA, which are outlined as follows: the Denver Metro area, Colorado Springs, Northern Colorado (Greeley, Fort Collins, and Loveland) and Southern Colorado (Pueblo, a city that historically has an unusually high per capita incidence of violence).   Key characteristics of the plan include enhancing the capability of task forces within TEAs to identify and prosecute individuals perpetrating the most violent acts: 1) Reduce violent crime through enhanced targeting of the most violent offenders for prosecution, including utilizing proactive investigative techniques and technologies to target the most violent offenders in each TEA; 2) Increase capabilities of task forces within each TEA to identify the most violent offenders in their jurisdiction; and 3) Enhance likelihood of federal case acceptance in each TEA, with special emphasis on the Denver Metro TEA, which currently is experiencing the greatest amount of violent crime; and enhancing prevention resources and community engagement efforts, especially in TEAs.