Letter to Jeff Sessions, United States Attorney General - Oregon Delegation Urges DOJ to Release Law Enforcement and Public Safety Funding

Letter

Dear Attorney General Sessions,

We write to urge the Department of Justice (DOJ) to move forward with disbursing Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant (Byrne JAG) funds for Fiscal Year 2017 (FY17) to the state of Oregon and Multnomah County as soon as possible.

The Byrne JAG program enables state and local law enforcement to effectively protect the 4.1 million people who call Oregon home. These critical federal dollars fund community policing initiatives, drug treatment and mental health programs, indigent defense, and proactive crime prevention efforts. For more than a decade, Byrne JAG funds have supported essential programs to reduce crime and ensure the safety and health of our communities.

Threats to withhold these critical funds severely jeopardizes state and local efforts to adequately protect the citizens of Oregon. The state of Oregon and a number of local jurisdictions were scheduled to receive approximately $3 million in Byrne JAG funding for FY17.

We are deeply concerned about DOJ's threats to withhold Byrne JAG funding to the state of Oregon as a means of coercing sanctuary jurisdictions into changing their policies. Thus, this decision may constitute a violation of the federal court order passed down by U.S. District Judge Harry D. Leinenweber this September, which blocked the DOJ's implementation of such harmful and retaliatory tactics nationwide. Furthermore, the decision to withhold funding undermines your department's stated objective of curbing violent crime by crippling every level of state and local law enforcement. In delaying the disbursement of Byrne JAG funds, the DOJ is directly imperiling American families.

We urge you to release the aforementioned funds to the state of Oregon and its municipalities as soon as possible and hope to work cooperatively with your agency to properly serve and protect all of our communities in the future. Thank you for your consideration. We look forward to your response.

Sincerely,