Leon County Sheriff's Office (LCSO) awarded a $349,635 grant to enhance de-escalation training. New funding builds on a previous $249,950 grant, totaling $599,585 for de-escalation initiatives. Funds will be used to expand training and strategies for effective crisis response.The Leon County Sheriff's office announced a new grant to help enhance its de-escalation training.The grant was awarded from the U.S. Department of Justice's Office. The Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) Office awarded LCSO a $349,635.00 grant to support its ongoing commitment to enhancing de-escalation training and crisis response for law enforcement personnel.This new funding builds on the success of LCSO's previous grant of $249,950.00, which was awarded in the Fiscal Year 2023/2024, for a total of $599,585.00. The initial funds were used to fund part of the LCSO De-escalation Research Project and the new funding will be used for the enhancement of training and strategies and to further expand its efforts to implement effective de-escalation techniques.This funding comes shortly after the release of LCSO's De-escalation Tracking Project (DTP) report, which highlighted the effectiveness of the strategies employed by LCSO deputies.KEY TAKEAWAYS: The DTP has documented over 109,000 citizen interactions with LCSO deputies in a year.  Calm Interactions: An impressive 97.26% of citizen interactions were characterized as calm and cooperative, reflecting our deputies' efforts to engage respectfully with the community. Agitated Interactions: Only 2.69% of interactions were classified as agitated or uncooperative, with the majority of these successfully de-escalated without incident. Interactions that escalated to the use of force were extremely rare (0.05%). Safe Arrests: Only 1.76% of incidents resulted in arrest(s), and only 2.76% of those involved the application of force to affect the arrest(s).CLICK HERE FOR FULL REPORTRELATED STORY:Leon County Sheriff's Office releases data from initiative aimed at enhancing community safety and trust The success of the DTP was used to justify this additional grant, demonstrating the positive impact of LCSO's ongoing de-escalation initiative.For more information about the grant or LCSO's de-escalation efforts, please visit our website at www.LeonCountySO.com.