Spokane COPS will continue to receive city funding – but much less

Spokane’s Community Oriented Policing Services, or COPS, expects to enter into a much smaller contract with the city after a contentious review of the program’s services late last year – and it will receive even less than it could have after declining to work to “enhance engagement with historically marginalized communities.”

Founded in 1992 after two girls were abducted in Spokane’s West Central neighborhood, COPS has been almost entirely reliant on city funding for decades, with the city in recent years giving as much as $500,000 per year.

The organization will receive $200,000 over the next two years to continue some of its programming. Executive Director Jeff Johnson said the funding will pay for two services: “cocooning,” which involves patrolling a neighborhood after a crime occurred to prevent repeats nearby, and the Business Safety Coalition, which entails engaging businesses about how to improve safety through environmental design such as the location of lighting.

The contract still needs to be finalized and approved by the Spokane City Council.

The mostly volunteer organization operates out of eight neighborhood hubs – down from a high of 12 – and has hosted programs that focus on community building, safety and, in some cases, assisting with nonemergency police duties like taking latent fingerprints for crimes like car thefts.

The organization’s contract was up for renewal at the end of 2024. Mayor Lisa Brown and police Chief Kevin Hall wanted to review the contract, as well as the effectiveness of the program and its use of city resources, but there were sharp disagreements over how transparent the organization was during that process.

Rather than renew the contract for another five years, Brown’s end-of-year budget proposal offered $450,000 over two years for a community policing program, for which COPS would have to compete with other organizations. Brown attributed the lower amount to the city’s budget difficulties.

The city rolled out a competitive application in February for even less money, $320,000, for an organization that could provide “police and community safety partnership services.”

COPS was the top scoring applicant, but according to city officials, did not respond to a question about how it would “enhance engagement with historically marginalized communities to improve trust, legitimacy, and public safety.”

In an interview, Johnson said the organization did respond to that portion of the application, and argued COPS engaged with those communities by having shops in historically marginalized neighborhoods, but acknowledged that the nonprofit was not inclined to fill an advocacy role.

As a result, COPS only received partial funding. The remaining $120,000 will go out to bid again for an organization to do that advocacy work.

Johnson noted that the sharp decrease in funding will be difficult for COPS, but that it could be an opportunity for better community partnerships, including sponsorships.

“Historically, we’ve never had to fundraise; the city and police helped create Spokane COPS, so now we’ll have to fundraise,” Johnson said. “We’ll have to look for strategic partners. It’s still super fluid, but I’m kind of excited about it.”

Johnson also noted that the organization saw a boost in volunteers, whose ranks greatly decreased during the COVID-19 pandemic, as a result of the recent focus on the COPS program.

In an interview, Mayor Brown emphasized that her prior concerns were not with the quality of the volunteers or the organization’s mission.

“I wanted to make sure we were doing our due diligence on how the organization is being led,” Brown said. “I do think that the process that we went through was important, and also the due diligence we are putting into monitoring the contract is important for accountability for taxpayers, and those things are in place now.”