Grants Available for Community Groups to Prevent Violence and Terrorism

WASHINGTON -- Community organizations and government agencies in the Washington, D.C., area will be eligible for a new round of federal funding soon for programs that seek to prevent violence.

The House Homeland Security subcommittee held a hearing this month to figure out how to improve the Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention Grant Program.

It’s funded at $20 million this year and is likely to get the same amount next fiscal year.

The grant program consists of a broad range of projects to equip local communities with the ability to prevent targeted violence and acts of terrorism. The Department of Homeland Security defines targeted violence as intentional acts by extremists against targets that offer the perpetrators an opportunity to intimidate or coerce an adversary or to generate publicity about a grievance.

Lawmakers said they wanted to keep their strategy of allowing local communities to decide how to use the grant money but to make the TVTP program more effective.

“Simply spending more taxpayer dollars will not fix the problem,” said Rep. Peter Meijer, R-Mich.

In general, programs that receive the grant money focus on assessing risks of violence, enhancing local prevention of extremism and monitoring online threats.

Kurt Braddock, an assistant professor of public communication at American University, used his grant of more than a half-million dollars to study extremism and strategies for confronting it. He is compiling the information for communities that want to figure out their own approach.

“We’ve developed reading lists for people so they can look at this information,” Braddock said.

He said the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the United States inspired him to understand “why people could engage in such evil.”

Last year, the District of Columbia Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency received $735,600 to train local law enforcement, faith-based institutions, schools and higher education institutions to recognize and report problematic behavior before it escalates to violence.

The Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services received $714,850 to develop community behavioral threat assessment management teams.

For more information, contact The Legal Forum (www.legal-forum.net) at email: [email protected] or phone: 202-479-7240.