The Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) helps make American communities safer by strengthening the nation’s criminal justice system. Its grants, training and technical assistance, and policy development services provide state, local, tribal, and territorial governments with the cutting-edge tools and best practices they need to reduce violent and drug-related crime, support law enforcement, and combat victimization.

BJA recently released a resource that highlights different law enforcement solicitations that it expects to offer in FY 2019, including opportunities that relate to body-worn cameras, human trafficking investigations, opioid abuse, school safety, and more.

With support from the Bureau of Justice Assistance, the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) conducted a multi-year project to assess homicide investigation practices in five cities: Baltimore, Cleveland, Houston, Miami and Pittsburgh. A recent report, Promising Strategies for Strengthening Homicide Investigations, summarizes the lessons learned from those studies and serves as a road map to effective homicide investigations, based on policies, practices, and strategies that police departments have found successful.

The Strategies for Policing Innovation (SPI) Program is a collaborative effort among the Bureau of Justice Assistance, CNA, state and local law enforcement agencies, and researchers. It is designed to assist agencies with identifying innovative and evidence-based solutions to effectively and efficiently tackle chronic crime problems in their jurisdictions.

The SPI Toolkit is a clearinghouse of resources created and used by SPI sites, such as survey instruments, assessment tools, protocols, community outreach materials, training resources, and more. This toolkit is intended to provide law enforcement and researchers with the practical tools and resources needed to implement innovative evidence-based strategies and practices. These resources can be downloaded and customized for your own agency.

The K-12 School Shooting Database research project is a widely inclusive database that documents each and every instance in which a gun is brandished or fired or a bullet hits school property for any reason, regardless of the number of victims, time, or day of the week (e.g., planned attack, accidental, domestic violence, gang-related). The database is available for download as a csv file. The School Shooting Database project is conducted as part of the Advanced Thinking in Homeland Security program at the Naval Postgraduate School’s Center for Homeland Defense and Security.

The database compiles information from more than 25 different sources, including peer-reviewed studies, government reports, mainstream media, nonprofits, private websites, blogs, and crowd-sourced lists that have been analyzed, filtered, deconflicted, and cross-referenced. All of the information is based on open-source information and third-party reporting.

The U.S. House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee recently released December’s Terror Threat Snapshot, a monthly assessment of the committee’s continuing effort to highlight the growing threat that America, the West, and the world face from ISIS and other Islamist terrorists.  The snapshot includes recent developments, plots, attacks, and operations.