GREAT Program

The Gang Resistance Education and Training (G.R.E.A.T.) program is a life-skills competency program designed to provide students with the skills they need to avoid gang pressure and youth violence. G.R.E.A.T.'s violence prevention curriculum helps students develop values and practice behaviors that will assist them to avoid destructive activities. The G.R.E.A.T. program coordinates with federal, regional, state and local agencies, as well as individuals from community and civic groups. The goal of the G.R.E.A.T. program is to train law enforcement officers in a school-based curriculum in which the officers provide instruction to school-aged children in life skill competencies, gang awareness, and anti-violence techniques. Training in the core G.R.E.A.T. program is provided to officers from any state or local law enforcement agency.

The 2006 G.R.E.A.T funds will assist the Greeley Police Department in incorporating the concepts learned in the G.R.E.A.T. program to the youth and their families of the community and assist with its own deployment of departmental personnel, use of resources, problem-solving activities, and its approach to service delivery in general.

The specific tactics include:

1. Identifying neighborhoods that are experiencing increased criminal juvenile gang activity and those who may be students in the district who are affecting the decline in the quality of life in those neighborhoods. Since these neighborhoods are normally centered in an area which are economically disadvantaged and historically there has been a barrier of ethnicity and language, they have been isolated. The interaction of the officers in the schools and with the youth, will allow for the identification of problems and finding solutions. The current after school program involving flag football for the needier students in the neighborhoods has provided both a positive presence of the officers and a feeling of teamwork is developed among the students.

2. Conducting surveys, hosting meetings and sessions with students and their families to include the school district personnel, so as to address concerns about gangs, police and community issues, or other problems which may be resolved through intervention or mediation.

3. Coordinating efforts with the schools to provide an expanded full range of school resource and liaison services to the school-age youth through the G.R.E.A.T. program contacts. Besides drug and gang resistance education programs, the addition of specific instruction would include the role of law enforcement, civic issues, youth related traffic problems, underage drinking issues. This can be addressed and brought to a positive interaction and relationship between police officers and students.

These efforts with the schools will provide the officers an ability to address specific gang related issues of the school, neighborhoods and communities that may exist.

CA/NCF