Missouri City Awarded Bulletproof Vest Grant​

MISSOURI CITY, TX -- The Missouri City Police Department was awarded a grant from the Bureau of Justice Assistance under the Fiscal Year 2016 Bulletproof Vest Partnership solicitation.

The city has received this recurring grant for more than a decade, which reimburses the police department for 50 percent of actual costs for replacement of bullet proof vests.

“The Bulletproof Vest Program award is a critical resource for many state and local jurisdictions such as our own, and we are grateful to have once again received this award, which will again help our department offset the costs of essential programs,” Missouri City Chief of Police Mike Berezin said in a statement. “As Missouri City continues to grow, public safety initiatives must adapt to the demands of our increasing population. New technologies that assist our department have become crucial to our officers, so awards such as this allow us to utilize our budget resources in strategic ways.”

This is the latest in a series of law enforcement grants the city has received in 2016.

Earlier this year, the police department was awarded a $59,255 Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Formula Grant from the Criminal Justice Division of the Office of the Governor, through the Houston-Galveston Area Council to purchase automated license plate recognition equipment.

The new technology will be utilized toward auto-theft prevention, and could also be used to find missing persons during Amber Alerts and Silver Alerts.

Since 1999, the Bulletproof Vest Partnership program has awarded grants to more than 13,000 law enforcement agencies for an estimated $412 million in federal funds used for the purchase of more than 1 million vests.

The Fiscal Year 2016 Bulletproof Vest Program award is used for National Institute of Justice-compliant armored vests, which were available to be ordered after April 1.

A complete list of FY 2016 Bulletproof Vest Program awards is available on the Bureau’s website: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bvpbasi/.

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