Police Officer Safety Enhancement Program (P.O.S.E.)

The Edward Byrne Memorial Discretionary Grants Program, administered by the Office of Justice Programs' (OJP's) Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), furthers the Department's mission by assisting state and local jurisdictions in improving the criminal justice system and assisting communities in preventing drug abuse and crime. In fiscal year 2007, the Edward Byrne Memorial Discretionary Grants Program will focus on funding local, regional, and national efforts within six major categories: 1) targeting violent crime; 2) preventing crime and drug abuse; 3) enhancing local law enforcement; 4) enhancing local courts; 5) enhancing local corrections and offender reentry; and 6) facilitating justice information sharing. All categories combat, address, or otherwise respond to precipitous or extraordinary increases in crime, or in a type or types of crime.

The Sanilac County Sheriff's Department will use the grant funds to hire a program coordinator for the Police Officer Safety Enhancement (P.O.S.E.) Program. The P.O.S.E. Program is aimed at assessing the police officer's current level of proficiency in two primary areas, weapons and tactics. The program will begin and end with the patrol officer assessment and evaluation process. Once the level of proficiency is determined in the areas of weapons and tactics, an individual profile will be developed for each participating police officer. The profile will be used in gauging the progress for each officer as they are trained in each area. Each officer will receive 80 hours of instruction targeting the specific areas of instruction they were evaluated on. The training program will be administrated and coordinated by the program coordinator, who will facilitate the training and maintain reporting guidelines. Following the training process, a follow-up assessment will be completed on each officer to determine that a successful enhancement of the above target training areas has been achieved.

CA/NCF