Enhanced Criminal Justice Response Team

The Hampton Police Department serves a community of 16,000 residents during the fall-spring months which swells to a population of up to 130,000 people in the summer. Our department responds to approximately 23,000 calls for service per year and processes approximately 1,200 arrests, conducts approximately 5,500 motor vehicle stops, file approximately 1100 incident reports, and respond to an average of 300 domestic violence related calls, per year. Presently, our prosecutor is a police officer with no law degree. We do not have a victim witness advocate and are confident that there is significant a lack of support for crime victims. Additionally, we have been working to strengthen our response to community members with behavioral health needs and to properly address those issues as they relate to criminal conduct and crime prevention. We believe that we under-serve the needs of the community and have fallen short on achieving modern, accepted approaches to criminal justice in some critical areas. These funds will be used to create an enhanced criminal justice prosecution program for the Hampton Police Department. It will create a 3-person team consisting of a prosecuting attorney, victim witness advocate, and behavioral health response liaison.