The Community Violence Intervention Center in Grand Forks has received $450,000 from the Department of Justice's Office on Violence Against Women.
The funds will be used to provide education and training for law enforcement officials on how best to handling cases of domestic abuse.
The grant, titled "Improving Criminal Justice Response," focuses on training to improve the criminal justice system's response to incidents of domestic violence, sexual assault and stalking.
One of the most innovative aspects of the grant is the lethality assessment program, which trains law enforcement officials to identify "the most high-risk cases and immediately link those victims to advocacy services through our 24-hour crisis phone line," said Laura Frisch, director of advocacy and empowerment at the CVIC.
The Grand Forks County sheriff's, Grand Forks and UND police departments are involved in the training.
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The DOJ grant is "critical to the CVIC in terms of identifying trends in response to domestic violence and sexual and assault, and then working with our partnership agencies to close loopholes that we see happening with different trends in the community," Frisch said.
