Enhance Leadership

Enhance Leadership, Wellness and Training Within the NYPD

Studies document that enhancing police training and wellness improves policing outcomes for communities.

Our efforts include funding for PPE to keep officers healthy and providing access to free, confidential mental health services at one of the city’s leading medical institutions.

Project ABLE (Active Bystandership for Law Enforcement) trains first responders in intervening when necessary to prevent their colleagues from causing harm or making costly mistakes. ABLE aims to create a police culture in which officers routinely intervene to prevent misconduct, avoid police mistakes, and promote officer health and wellness.

During the Coronavirus pandemic, the Police Foundation provided PPE including more than 800,000 masks, 200,000 pairs of gloves, 180,000 containers of hand sanitizer, and 3,600 meals to officers, as well as more than 8,000 hotel room nights to officers needing to isolate.

Finest Care, a partnership between the NYPD and New York-Presbyterian Hospital to connect all uniformed service members with free, confidential counseling and other mental health services, was launched with the Foundation’s support in 2019. The program stemmed from the success of Project COPE, which provided free mental health services for all NYPD employees immediately following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The Foundation funded a groundbreaking video and training curriculum about depression and police suicides called “By Their Own Hand” in 1989, which remains relevant today. The video received national attention from law enforcement agencies. The research and evaluation was conducted by an independent investigator from Columbia University.

• The Police Foundation sponsors continuing education and scholarships for members of the NYPD through the Department’s Office of Professional Development, to enhance leadership and to provide opportunities for continued learning and professional growth.
• The Foundation launched an NYPD Families Hardship Fund in 2017 for the emergency benefit of family members of NYPD officers wounded in the line of duty.
• The Foundation established a Hurricane Sandy Hardship Fund to provide relief grants to NYPD personnel and for the benefit of the Department in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in 2012.
• When the NYPD established the Office of Equity and Inclusion, the Foundation hired a consultant to design a strategic action plan for the office to help its mission of promoting a fair, safe, inclusive, and accommodating work environment for all members of the Department.
• In an effort to enhance the NYPD’s proficiency and capacity to investigate sexual assault cases, the Foundation is funding a detailed assessment of the NYPD Special Victims Division‘s processes and procedures for investigating and prosecuting such cases.
• Since 2001, the Foundation has sponsored the annual NYPD Women in Policing Conference to offer information, along with keynote speakers, to enhance women’s professional and personal lives. The audience has grown over the years to more than 1,600 women.
• In 2019, the Police Foundation sponsored a mental health consultant to provide clinicians and crisis counselors at roll call training alongside the NYPD Employee Assistance Unit, Department Chaplains and Precinct Commanders.