New programs to help Baltimore police, youth

ANNAPOLIS – Gov. Larry Hogan announced Tuesday $250,000 in funding for four new programs designed to encourage improved relationships and dialogue between Baltimore City youth and local law enforcement. These programs are designed to encourage positive interactions between young people and police officers, and create overall safer communities.

The programs begin July 1.

“Finding new ways to improve police-community relations across the state and in our largest city is a top priority for our administration,” Hogan said. “Now more than ever, it is important to provide new and promising opportunities for both children and families, and for the brave police officers who work tirelessly to protect and serve.”

“We are grateful that Gov. Hogan is providing these important opportunities for our officers and the families they serve,” said Baltimore Police Commissioner Kevin Davis. “Programs like these are vital to the safety and security of our state’s flagship city as we move forward.”

The programs being funded are:

• Badges for Baseball – $20,000 for two, 13-week programs for 60 children, ages 10-15, from the Upton/Druid Heights Community, run through The Y in Central Maryland Group Mentoring Project.
• Baltimore Police Youth Challenge — $131,830 for 1,470 youth, ages 11-18, who are paired with officers to complete an outdoor challenge course.
• Policing the Teen Brain — $94,219 for a customized program to assess police/youth interactions and develop a training curriculum course, to be used in trainings for officers and youth, administered through the Baltimore Chesapeake Bay Outward Bound School Inc.
• Junior State’s Attorney Program — $3,951 for a six-week program that exposes 30 rising eighth-grade students from schools in disadvantaged neighborhoods to careers in criminal justice and law enforcement fields, administered through the Office of the State’s Attorney for Baltimore City.

The grants are the latest in a series of grants awarded to the Baltimore Police Department over the past year. In February, Hogan announced $225,000 in funding for programs to help assist the Baltimore Police Department provide services to the families of victims of homicides and fight violent crime. The grants went toward hiring three victim service coordinators to work with family and friends of homicide victims, as well as installing additional stationary license plate readers throughout the city, to ensure that suspected perpetrators do not travel undetected before or after committing a crime.

In addition, in the fall of 2015, the Governor’s Office of Crime Control & Prevention awarded more than $1.6 million in federal funds to the Baltimore Police Department to improve the city’s ability to respond to critical incidents and protect citizens. The $1.6 million included a $1,011,443 grant to the department to help respond to the substantial increase in crime experienced in Baltimore City after the civil unrest and violence that occurred last spring; $368,130 to establish an automated gunshot detection system integrated with Baltimore’s vast network of closed-circuit television cameras; and $292,523 to acquire updated software and hardware for the department’s Aviation Unit and to add two new antenna towers in the eastern and western neighborhoods. The funding will be used to improve the quality of the video downlink from the helicopter to the command center.