Independent New Hampshire Journalism · Northfield, NHFederal award records show 35 grants under the Justice Department’s Technology and Equipment Program for fiscal 2022 through 2024. Congress picked every recipient and set every amount. The largest, $4.88 million, went to the state Department of Safety for its radio network.
Audio edition (11:51): a synthetic voice reads the article. The charts, tables and fact check are on this page.
The U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, known as the COPS Office, runs two very different kinds of grant programs. Its hiring program is competitive: police agencies apply, and the office chooses. Its Technology and Equipment Program, called TEP, is not. The office describes TEP as a noncompetitive, invitational program that funds the entities Congress names in the explanatory statement attached to each year’s spending law. Those are congressionally directed spending items, better known as earmarks.
Federal award records on USAspending.gov, the government’s public spending database, show 35 TEP grants to recipients in New Hampshire for fiscal 2022, 2023 and 2024, totaling $22,713,153. Over a much longer stretch, the awards made under the COPS Office’s hiring programs to New Hampshire recipients, from the 2009 round through the fiscal 2024 round, totaled $14,636,472 across 59 grants. In three budget years, earmarked technology money for New Hampshire outran 16 years of hiring grants by about $8.1 million.
Two ways federal police money arrives
The COPS Office’s program page for the hiring program, known as CHP, describes it as “a competitive award program designed to provide funding directly to law enforcement agencies to hire and/or rehire additional career law enforcement officers/deputies.” Agencies submit applications, and the office decides which ones to fund.
TEP works the other way around. The award records for New Hampshire’s TEP grants each carry the same instruction: the money “shall be used for the projects, and in the amounts, specified” under the heading for COPS technology and equipment community projects in the joint explanatory statement for that year’s appropriations law. The records cite Public Law 117-103 for fiscal 2022, Public Law 117-328 for fiscal 2023 and Public Law 118-42 for fiscal 2024. In other words, members of Congress requested the projects, Congress wrote them into the spending package, and the COPS Office then invited the named recipients to apply for the amounts already set.
In October 2026, the COPS Office’s program page described a fiscal 2026 round of TEP on the same terms, for entities designated in the explanatory statement incorporated into Public Law 119-74, with applications due Oct. 7, 2026. The award records searched for this article show no TEP grant to a New Hampshire recipient after the fiscal 2024 round.
COPS Office Grants to New Hampshire Recipients, by Program Type
Total award amounts in the federal record, in millions of dollars. Bars start at zero and are drawn to scale.
Granite State Report · Source: USAspending.gov award records for Assistance Listing 16.710, Public Safety Partnership and Community Policing Grants, recipients located in New Hampshire, actions dated Oct. 1, 2007, through Sept. 30, 2026, retrieved Oct. 16, 2026. Program types are Granite State Report groupings from each award’s identifier and description. Amounts are total obligations as recorded and can change.
Who got the earmarked money
The 35 TEP grants went to 30 recipients. Six were made for fiscal 2022, totaling $5.40 million; 13 for fiscal 2023, totaling $6.06 million; and 16 for fiscal 2024, totaling $11.26 million. The fiscal 2024 total nearly matched the two earlier years combined, $11.45 million.
Technology and Equipment Program Grants to New Hampshire, by Fiscal Year
Total award amounts, in millions of dollars. Bars start at zero and are drawn to scale.
Granite State Report · Source: USAspending.gov award records, as above. Fiscal years follow the program year in each award identifier.
The single largest grant, $4,878,000 for fiscal 2024, went to the New Hampshire Department of Safety. That was 43 percent of all TEP money for New Hampshire that year. U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen’s published list of her fiscal 2024 requests for the Commerce, Justice and Science spending bill names the recipient as the department’s emergency communications and 9-1-1 division and describes the project as an upgrade that would combine the two systems that provide the communication links for the statewide land mobile radio network.
Not every recipient was a police department. The second-largest TEP grant in the record, $2,310,249 for fiscal 2023, went to the Manchester School District. A fiscal 2023 grant of $152,755 went to the Newington Fire Department. County governments in Belknap, Cheshire, Grafton, Merrimack, Rockingham and Strafford received grants, as did the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office.
Matching the awards to the requests
Shaheen’s published fiscal 2024 Commerce, Justice and Science request list, dated April 5, 2023, opens with her certification that neither she nor her immediate family has a financial interest in any item on it. The list includes requests that match, by recipient and amount, 11 of the 16 TEP grants New Hampshire recipients received for that year, and a 12th, Grafton County, within $1,400. Together the 12 were worth $9.96 million of the $11.26 million. The four fiscal 2024 grants that do not appear on her list went to Rockingham County, $750,000; Salem, $414,000; Laconia, $77,000; and Lee, $57,000. This article did not trace who requested those four. Her list also includes police requests, among them body camera programs, that do not appear among the TEP awards; this article did not trace what became of them.
Fiscal 2024 TEP Grants to New Hampshire Recipients
Award amounts from the federal record, with the project purpose given in Sen. Jeanne Shaheen’s fiscal 2024 request list where a request matches
| Recipient | Award | Purpose stated in the request |
|---|---|---|
| N.H. Department of Safety (emergency communications and 9-1-1) | $4,878,000 | Upgrade and combine the systems linking the statewide land mobile radio network |
| City of Claremont | $1,300,000 | Communications and record-keeping technology for the police department, part of a $2.3 million project |
| Rockingham County | $750,000 | Not on the Shaheen list |
| Strafford County | $715,000 | Sheriff’s office two-way radios meeting P25 and SAFECOM standards |
| Grafton County | $518,646 | Sheriff’s office portable radio equipment ($520,000 requested) |
| City of Dover | $438,000 | Replace the aging dispatch console for police and fire |
| Town of Merrimack | $420,000 | Body-worn and cruiser cameras for all uniformed officers and marked cruisers |
| Town of Windham | $419,000 | Replace components of the police two-way radio system |
| Town of Salem | $414,000 | Not on the Shaheen list |
| Town of Newmarket | $358,000 | Replace computer-aided dispatch and records management systems |
| City of Berlin | $355,000 | Operational coordination for police, fire, ambulance and other public safety departments |
| Merrimack County | $261,000 | Mobile data terminals in sheriff’s cruisers |
| Town of Newport | $218,000 | Replace dispatch radio consoles serving agencies across Sullivan County |
| Cheshire County | $80,000 | Virtual reality training simulator for the sheriff’s office |
| City of Laconia | $77,000 | Not on the Shaheen list |
| Town of Lee | $57,000 | Not on the Shaheen list |
Granite State Report · Sources: USAspending.gov award records for the fiscal 2024 COPS Technology and Equipment Program, retrieved Oct. 16, 2026; Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, Commerce, Justice and Science congressionally directed spending requests, fiscal 2024, dated April 5, 2023. Purposes are paraphrased from the request list. A match means the same recipient and the same amount, in thousands of dollars, as requested, except Grafton County, whose $518,646 award was $1,354 below its $520,000 request.
For fiscal 2022, Shaheen announced in an Oct. 6, 2022, press release that she had secured five of the six New Hampshire TEP grants through the fiscal 2022 spending law: $1.224 million for the State Police for statewide digital equipment and technology training, $1.472 million for Merrimack radio infrastructure, $900,000 for Durham radio communications, $750,000 for the Cheshire County Sheriff’s Office radio system and $752,000 for Strafford County radio infrastructure. The sixth fiscal 2022 grant, $297,417 to the City of Manchester, is not in that release. Shaheen chaired the Senate appropriations subcommittee that funds the Justice Department, the release said.
For fiscal 2023, U.S. Rep. Chris Pappas’s Dec. 23, 2022, release on the community project funding he secured listed $75,000 for new police dispatch workstations in Londonderry, the same amount as that town’s fiscal 2023 TEP grant, and $1,376,000 for new radio equipment in Hampton. Hampton’s award record shows $1,283,439. This article did not trace the other fiscal 2023 requests.
What the hiring grants bought
Current hiring grants pay part of the cost of officer positions. The COPS Office’s fiscal 2026 program description says each award covers up to 75 percent of entry-level salaries and fringe benefits for three years, with a maximum federal share of $125,000 per position. In New Hampshire, the record shows hiring grants in 14 of the 16 program years from 2009 through fiscal 2024, spread across 39 recipients. The largest single hiring grant was $2,196,341 to the City of Manchester in the 2009 Recovery Act round, and Manchester received more hiring money than any other New Hampshire recipient. Nineteen of the 59 hiring grants were for exactly $125,000. Five carry a total of $0 in the record.
The two programs also differ in who chooses the recipient. A hiring grant goes to an agency that won a national competition. A TEP grant goes to a recipient a member of Congress asked for, in an amount Congress set before any application was filed. That makes the request lists and the explanatory statements the records to read. The Merrimack body and cruiser camera grant shows the scale: at $420,000 it was larger than all five grants the Justice Department’s separate Body-Worn Camera Policy and Implementation Program made to New Hampshire recipients in the federal record, which totaled $319,624. One of those five went to the state Department of Corrections. Granite State Report covered the state’s body camera law in “New Hampshire Still Doesn’t Require Police Body Cameras”.
What the record does not show
The federal award records list who received money, how much and under which law. They do not show what each recipient bought, whether a project came in on budget, or whether money was returned at the end of a grant. Amounts in the database are obligations, and they can change as grants close out. The records also cover only the COPS Office’s community policing grants; other Justice Department money to New Hampshire police, such as the formula grants of the Byrne Justice Assistance Grant program and the forfeiture shares Granite State Report traced in “The Justice Department Paid New Hampshire Law Enforcement Agencies $5.6 Million in Forfeiture Shares in Six Years”, is not counted here.
For any single project, the grant’s recipient holds the details: the application, the budget and the purchase records. Those are records of a town, city, county, school district or state agency, and New Hampshire’s Right-to-Know law, at RSA 91-A:4, gives every citizen the right to inspect and copy governmental records, unless RSA 91-A:5 or another statute bars it. Many of the recipients are small departments; Granite State Report counted how small in “More Than Two of Every Three New Hampshire Police Agencies Reported 10 or Fewer Full-Time Officers”.
— Granite State Report
Your Turn
Tell us: did your town, city or county receive one of these grants, and do you know what it bought? Is a radio system or a camera program a fair use of an earmark, or should police equipment money go through competition? Write to granitestatereport@gmail.com. No person or agency named in this article was asked to comment for it. Any of them may write to the same address; a response will be added here with its date.
A narrated summary of this article (1:24), read by a synthetic voice. Photograph of New Hampshire State Police cruisers: Jason Lawrence, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0; darkened for the title card. Charts: Granite State Report from USAspending.gov figures. No video footage is used.
Fact check
| # | Claim | Status | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The COPS Office describes CHP as “a competitive award program designed to provide funding directly to law enforcement agencies to hire and/or rehire additional career law enforcement officers/deputies”; each FY2026 award covers up to 75 percent of entry-level salary and fringe benefits for three years, maximum federal share $125,000 per position. | ATTRIBUTED | COPS Office, COPS Hiring Program page (fiscal 2026 program description), read Oct. 16, 2026. |
| 2 | The COPS Office describes TEP as a noncompetitive, invitational funding opportunity for entities designated in the congressional joint explanatory statement; the fiscal 2026 round cites Public Law 119-74 with applications due Oct. 7, 2026. | ATTRIBUTED | COPS Office, Technology and Equipment Program page, read Oct. 16, 2026 (paraphrased). |
| 3 | New Hampshire TEP award records state the money “shall be used for the projects, and in the amounts, specified” in the joint explanatory statement, citing P.L. 117-103 (FY2022), 117-328 (FY2023) and 118-42 (FY2024). | VERIFIED | USAspending.gov award records 15JCOPS22GG01453TECP, 15JCOPS23GG01798TECP, 15JCOPS24GG02473TECP. |
| 4 | 35 TEP grants to New Hampshire recipients for FY2022–2024, $22,713,153, to 30 recipients; 6 for $5.40 million, 13 for $6.06 million, 16 for $11.26 million; FY2022 and FY2023 combined $11.45 million; Department of Safety total $6.10 million (FY2022 and FY2024), the most of any recipient. | VERIFIED | USAspending.gov, Assistance Listing 16.710, recipient state NH, retrieved Oct. 16, 2026; Granite State Report sums. |
| 5 | Hiring-program grants, 2009 round through FY2024: 59 grants, $14,636,472, to 39 recipients (Rochester appears under two names); awards in 14 program years; 19 at $125,000; five recorded at $0; largest $2,196,341 to Manchester (2009); Manchester the largest hiring recipient. TEP total exceeds it by about $8.1 million. | VERIFIED | USAspending.gov, as above; Granite State Report grouping by award identifier and sums. |
| 6 | Other COPS grants to New Hampshire recipients, 2009–2024: 23 grants, $6.76 million. | VERIFIED | USAspending.gov, as above; Granite State Report grouping. |
| 7 | No TEP grant to a New Hampshire recipient after the FY2024 round in the records searched. | VERIFIED | USAspending.gov search, actions through Sept. 30, 2026. |
| 8 | Largest grant $4,878,000 to the N.H. Department of Safety for FY2024, 43 percent of that year’s total; Shaheen’s list names the emergency communications and 9-1-1 division and the radio-network upgrade. | VERIFIED | USAspending.gov award 15JCOPS24GG02473TECP; Shaheen FY2024 CJS request list; Granite State Report arithmetic. |
| 9 | Manchester School District $2,310,249 (FY2023), the second-largest TEP grant; Newington Fire Department $152,755 (FY2023); county and sheriff recipients as listed. | VERIFIED | USAspending.gov award records. |
| 10 | Shaheen’s FY2024 list, dated April 5, 2023, carries a no-financial-interest certification and matches 11 of 16 FY2024 grants exactly and Grafton County within $1,354, together $9.96 million of $11.26 million; the four unmatched grants and their amounts; the purposes in the table. | VERIFIED | Shaheen, CJS congressionally directed spending requests, FY2024; USAspending.gov; Granite State Report comparison. |
| 11 | Shaheen’s Oct. 6, 2022, release: five FY2022 TEP awards she secured, with amounts and purposes; she chaired the Senate appropriations subcommittee that funds the Justice Department. | ATTRIBUTED | Shaheen press release, Oct. 6, 2022. |
| 12 | Pappas’s Dec. 23, 2022, release lists $75,000 for Londonderry police dispatch workstations and $1,376,000 for Hampton radio equipment; Londonderry’s FY2023 TEP award is $75,000 and Hampton’s $1,283,438.98. | VERIFIED | Rep. Chris Pappas press release, Dec. 23, 2022; USAspending.gov award records. |
| 13 | Five Body-Worn Camera Policy and Implementation Program grants to New Hampshire recipients totaling $319,624, one to the Department of Corrections. | VERIFIED | USAspending.gov, Assistance Listing 16.835, recipient state NH. |
| 14 | RSA 91-A:4 gives every citizen the right to inspect and copy governmental records, unless RSA 91-A:5 or another statute bars it. | ATTRIBUTED | RSA 91-A:4, I, at gc.nh.gov (paraphrased; exemptions at RSA 91-A:5). |
| 15 | Earlier Granite State Report articles on the body camera law, equitable sharing and agency size. | VERIFIED | Granite State Report, July 24, Oct. 14 and Oct. 11, 2026. |
| 16 | The photograph shows New Hampshire State Police cruisers, by Jason Lawrence, licensed CC BY 2.0. | VERIFIED | Wikimedia Commons file page and license, read Oct. 16, 2026. |
Grant applications, budgets and purchase records are what build the record. Confidentiality respected where possible. granitestatereport@gmail.com · (603) 931-9264.
Editor’s note. Award counts and amounts are drawn from USAspending.gov records for COPS Office and Body-Worn Camera program grants to New Hampshire recipients. Program descriptions are drawn from the COPS Office’s program pages. Request purposes and the fiscal 2022 awards attributed to Sen. Shaheen are drawn from her published fiscal 2024 request list and her Oct. 6, 2022, press release; the fiscal 2023 requests attributed to Rep. Pappas are drawn from his Dec. 23, 2022, press release. Program groupings, sums, percentages and the matching of awards to requests are Granite State Report arithmetic from those records.
Corrections: Granite State Report corrects verified errors promptly and appends a dated note identifying what changed and when. The corrections policy and the corrections register are public, and correction notes are never removed.
