09.19.14

Hoeven Announces $450K in DOJ Funds to Grand Forks CVIC to Enhance Safety for Victims of Domestic Violence

WASHINGTON – Senator John Hoeven today announced that the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) has awarded $450,000 to the Community Violence Intervention Center (CVIC) in Grand Forks to provide supervised visitation, safe exchange services, safety planning and referrals for victims of domestic violence while also enhancing court and law enforcement response to domestic violence through training and protocol development. The funds are made available through the DOJ’s Justice for Families Program, which seeks to improve the response of all aspects of the civil and criminal justice systems to families with a history of domestic and sexual violence.

“It is vital that we work to provide victims of violence with the services and resources they need both in their time of crisis, and in moving past it,” Hoeven said. “Our private service providers play an important role in supplementing and enhancing the efforts of our state and local governments in preventing and mitigating the impacts of domestic violence, and this award will do just that for families in the Grand Forks area.”

Since the beginning of September, Senator Hoeven has announced over $3 million in funds to prevent violence against women and children, improve victim services and enhance resources and tools available to law enforcement at both the state and local level.

Senator Hoeven held a roundtable discussion in Williston earlier this month in a push to bring additional resources from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) into North Dakota to help state and local law enforcement officials with the growing number of crimes, including domestic and sexual violence, particularly in the Bakken region. In June, the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee, on which Hoeven serves, passed the Commerce, Justice and Science funding bill, which includes a directive to the DOJ to develop a plan to support law enforcement in North Dakota and the Bakken.