Clarksville, TN – Clarksville Mayor Kim McMillan is proud to announce that the City of Clarksville is receiving over $1.7 million dollars in grant funds from the U.S. Department of Justice’s COPS Hiring Program (CHP).
The grant funds may be used over a three-year period and will be used to hire 14 new police officers. Although the City was informed of the grant’s award on September 29th, the effective date was September 1st, 2014. It is anticipated that the 14 new officers will be hired by June 30th, 2015.
“Obviously, we are very excited with the grant award,” said Mayor Kim McMillan. “We are able to accomplish two important things with these funds. First, we are able to put more officers on the street more quickly than we probably would have otherwise. Secondly, we are going to save money because this grant award will allow us to add these fourteen officers without having to provide the budgetary funds for their salaries and benefits for the next three years. This is really good news for the CPD and for the citizens of Clarksville.”
Chief Ansley plans to use these officers effectively by placing an even greater emphasis on community policing and to enhance special units, such as gang intelligence. New officers hired through the grant funds will replace those that have already been assigned to the special units along with those who will be assigned in the near future.
These additional officers will help CPD continue its outstanding status as one of the best police forces in the nation. Clarksville currently boasts the lowest crime rate of any Tennessee city with a population of over 100,000 and compares very favorably with all police forces in the State regardless of population or agency size. CPD has a high closure rate, including the closure of all but one homicide that occurred in Clarksville in 2013 and 2014 by arrest.
The 2014 COPS program awarded a total of $123,882,021 to 215 law enforcement agencies across the nation. Agencies in 49 out of 50 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, and Puerto Rico received funds. Clarksville was one of three cities in Tennessee to receive funds (the Brownsville, TN Police Department received $183,867 and the Lexington Police Department received $123,065). It is believed that the Clarksville grant is the largest received by any City in the country with a similar population.
“This was a very highly competitive application process,” said Mayor Kim McMillan. “Apparently, there were so many applications filed that the DOJ servers had a hard time handling the data. I want to commend everyone on our team who was involved in preparing our application, especially Ron McClurg, Grants Analyst for the City of Clarksville, who shepherded the project. Because of our team’s preparation and teamwork, we received the exact amount we requested and the most we could receive under the grant’s parameters.”
