Chautauqua County is receiving $172,413 from the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Grant Program.
Funds allocated through this program are aimed at enhancing the State’s nation leading efforts to prevent domestic terrorism and targeted violence across the State.
The county will use the funds to offset the costs of developing Threat Assessment and Management teams and update their Domestic Terrorism Prevention Plan.
This is the second year that grants have been available through this program. In the days after the May 14, 2022 attack in Buffalo, Governor Kathy Hochul issued Executive Order 18 requiring each county and New York City to develop plans to confront and prevent domestic terrorism and establishing New York’s first-ever Domestic Terrorism Prevention Unit (DTPU) within the State’s Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services (DHSES) to oversee this critical initiative.
In addition to the creation of the new Unit, the Executive Order also included $10 million in state funding that was made available to all New York State counties and NYC to support their domestic terrorism prevention initiatives which included the development of local multi-disciplinary Threat Assessment and Management (TAM) teams.
Since Executive Order 18 was signed, 44 counties plus New York City now field TAM teams, which have collectively reviewed over 2,000 cases. Members of these teams can include law enforcement, mental health professionals, school officials, large employers, healthcare systems, and other government and non-profit service providers. Since 2023, DTPU has held 53 trainings attended by nearly 1,400 New Yorkers on threat evaluation and reporting, which teaches participants how to identify and manage threats of targeted violence and domestic terrorism. To continue building on this important work, more than 250 TAM Team members met this week in Albany to share best practices and discuss common challenges and solutions.
[…] Story continues […]