Community Outreach - Home

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California dedicates significant resources to collaborating with the community to prevent crime, enhance public safety, and improve the quality of life.  United States Attorney Adam Gordon feels strongly that our office must continually connect with stakeholders to better understand and respond to community needs.  Our prosecutors and engagement team members often work directly with local police officers, agency officials, residents, schools, nonprofit organizations, and others to develop comprehensive solutions to emerging public safety problems.  The office is committed to taking on leadership roles in prevention organizations, building bonds of trust in the community, investing time in mentoring programs, and enhancing public safety through increased awareness and education. 

Upcoming Events: 

• Spring 2025: Annual Excellence in the Pursuit of Justice Awards

The U.S. Attorney’s Office is actively involved in raising awareness about the growing opioid and stimulant epidemic, which is taking too many lives and devastating the families left behind.  Our fentanyl and methamphetamine prosecutions have increased exponentially over the past five years, [KC1] as have our cases against those dealers whose actions result in overdoses.  In addition to partnering with law enforcement partners on the Fentanyl Abatement and Suppression Team, and working closely with DEA’s Team 10—an overdose response unit—the U.S. Attorney’s Office is also a member of the San Diego County Substance Abuse and Overdose Prevention Task Force (SUOPT), a multi-disciplinary taskforce committed to reducing the harms of substance use through collaboration and coordination among community partners.

But we recognize that we cannot prosecute our way out of this challenge. Members of the U.S. Attorney’s Office are also out in the community providing educational presentations, creating awareness messages, and harnessing the voices of local youth athletes, like in the collaborative Block Fentanyl Campaign and Team Up Campaign with San Diego State University athletes. 

Our office has also been involved in several Western Region Overdose Prevention Summits, which convened regional and national leaders to share emerging trends and best practices.  These summits focus on effective law enforcement investigations; reducing stigma; reaching diverse communities; connecting public health, public safety, and prevention; facilitating treatment; and implementing harm reduction strategies. These events, which featured individuals with lived experience, have spurred an increased dialogue and new collaborations, like the creation of the fentanyl toolkit—a valuable awareness and “train the trainer” resource.

The Southern District of California is home to 18 Native American Tribes. Working in partnership with Bureau of Indian Affairs, Office of Justice Services, the California Attorney General’s Office of Native American Affairs, local Sheriffs’ Departments, and our two District Attorneys’ Offices, the U.S. Attorney’s Office conducts outreach and engagement to enhance relations with tribal leaders and create opportunities for improved communications and training.

Signed into law in October 2020, Savanna’s Act was a bipartisan effort to improve the federal response to missing or murdered indigenous persons (MMIP), including by increasing coordination among Federal, State, Tribal, and local law enforcement agencies. The Department of Justice is committed to fully implementing this legislation to improve reporting and coordination among law enforcement. Given the unique make-up of tribal population in our district, the U.S. Attorney’s Office is actively collaborating with law enforcement and tribal communities to create protocols that improve the law enforcement response and communication whenever our community learns of a missing Native American.

In addition to fulfilling the objectives of Savanna’s Act, the Attorney General launched a national strategy to address Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons, including the MMIP Regional Outreach Program. This program places regional attorneys and coordinators at U.S. Attorneys’ Offices across the United States to help prevent and respond to cases of missing or murdered Indigenous people, and who work closely with the Native American Outreach Services Liaison to improve the Justice Department’s response to the MMIP crisis.  The Department’s strategy also includes the creation of a Task Force on Missing and Murdered American Indians and Alaska Natives, known as "Operation Lady Justice," that has broadened the federal government's response to MMIP issues. 

Project LEAD—short for “Legal Enrichment and Decision-Making”—serves as an informal mentoring program where students are guided through a series of lessons by volunteer instructors from the Department of Justice and local law enforcement agencies.  Project LEAD has reached more than 5,000 students at 15 local elementary schools and has had more than 400 volunteers from different law enforcement agencies.

Student Enrichment

The primary focus of Project LEAD is to provide 5th grade students with skills that will be helpful as they enter middle and high school. The program focuses on developing students’ public speaking skills, decision-making, and sense of personal values.

Conflict Resolution

Volunteers help students practice conflict resolution in the context of preventing bullying, teasing, and online safety.

Navigating Peer Pressure

During the six-week program, students develop a “toolkit” of ways to respond to negative peer pressure in the context of activities that contradict their personal values or may result in negative consequences. Volunteers encourage students to critically think about what they value and teach students a refusal skill called “FINAL.”

Officers from the San Diego Police Department lead a discussion with 5th graders as part of Project LEAD. 

Every year the U.S. Attorney’s Office Southern District of California participates in community events to build trust in law enforcement and engage with the community we serve. Below are highlights from a few of the community events we participated in during 2024. 

Members of the U.S. Attorney’s Office attend National Night Out 2024.

For the past several years, the U.S. Attorney’s Office has participated in southeast San Diego’s Community Assistant Support Team (CAST). The CAST team conducts monthly Knock and Walks in different southeast San Diego neighborhoods to listen to the community’s concerns and build positive relationships between the community and local law enforcement.

Our Constitution protects our right to worship freely. We are working to ensure that all houses of worship are adequately protected so their congregants can worship in peace. The U.S. Attorney’s Office has cosponsored workshops to make religious leaders aware of critical government and community resources, including infrastructure grants and security assessments, including the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services’ Nonprofits Security Grant Program. Many of our district’s religious institutions successfully applied for these funds in the past and they are safer today as result.  

Each year, the U.S. Attorney hosts an “Excellence in the Pursuit of Justice” Awards Ceremony to recognize the federal, state, and local law enforcement officers who made extraordinary contributions to the mission of our office — to do justice. Each day, our law enforcement partners leave their families, not knowing what dangers lurk ahead, because they are committed to making our community safer. At the Excellence in the Pursuit of Justice Awards Ceremony, we celebrate their achievements and recognize the sacrifices that they and their families make.

Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN) is a nationwide federal initiative that brings together federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement officials, prosecutors, and community leaders to identify the most pressing violent crime problems in a community and develop comprehensive solutions to address them.  In the Southern District of California, the cases prosecuted under the PSN banner include: firearms offenses, bank robberies, Hobbs Act robberies, narcotics distribution, and other federal offenses when the defendant has gang affiliations or a documented violent history.

But our work does not end with enforcement. The U.S. Attorney’s Office’s PSN Task Force has facilitated more than $1 million in grant funding to local nonprofit agencies to help reduce violence, foster safer neighborhoods, and provide real reentry pathways.  The PSN Task Force has representatives from a number of agencies that take part in executing the grant strategy, including: the San Diego City Attorney’s Office; Imperial Valley Law Enforcement Coordination Center; Imperial County District Attorney’s Office; San Diego Police Department; SANDAG; United States Probation Department; Social Advocates for Youth; and the San Diego County Probation Department.  Recipients of PSN grants include:

• Boys & Girls Club of Oceanside
• Education COMPACT
• El Centro Pal
• Imperial County Gang Intelligence Coalition
• Inner City Athletics
• Open Heart Leaders
• Reality Changers
• Rise Up Industries
• San Diego City Attorney's Office
• Star Pal
• UPAC
• Vista Community Clinic
• Youth Empowerment

The Department of Justice, through the Office of Justice Programs, provides a wide variety of grant opportunities for law enforcement agencies, non-profits and other organizations working on criminal justice issues including re-reentry, youth violence, crime prevention, and deterrence. Make sure to visit the individual websites listed below to find grant opportunities:

• Office of Justice Programs
• Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA)
• Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJS)
• National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS)
• Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering, and Tracking (SMART)
• Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP)
• National Institute of Justice (NIJ)
• Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office)
• Office for Victims of Crime (OVC)

To find tips for writing grants, see the Office of Justice Programs’ Grants 101 materials at https://ojp.gov/grants101/index.htm

The U.S. Attorney’s Office offers training and presentations on a variety of topics. If you would like to schedule a presentation on a criminal justice-related topic, please reach out to Executive Assistant United States Attorney Cindy Cipriani at cindy.cipriani@usdoj.gov.

• Anti-bullying/Cyber-bullying
• Civil Rights and United States Constitution
• Community Awareness Briefing: Terrorism Prevention
• Federal Criminal Justice System
• Hate Crimes & Hate Incidents
• Human Trafficking
• Immigration Consequences
• Internet Crimes Against Children & Online Safety
• Legal Careers in Criminal Justice
• Sex Trafficking/Child Exploitation
• Elder Abuse/Exploitation of Adults’

Along the Southwest Border, cartels cavalierly recruit youth to smuggle hard narcotics, using a potent combination of cash inducements, false promises and lies that obscure future consequences. These juvenile recruiting tactics have increased in recent years significantly. The drugs involved carry real dangers: in addition to cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine, several high school students were caught attempting to smuggle deadly fentanyl across the border.  In collaboration with DEA, HSI, CBP and the District Attorney’s Office, Juvenile Branch the U.S. Attorney’s Office created a multi-faceted program to educate youth about smuggling dangers and provide real resources and streamlined reporting avenues.  The community partnership team, which included federal and local law enforcement, community activists, and social service providers, worked closely with school district officials.  The team continues to address the rise in juvenile smuggling crime and the public safety threat with innovative and effective prevention strategies.  The resulting program included a powerful school assembly presented to thousands of students, community meetings with parents, and diverse stakeholders.  The assemblies have had a compelling impact: the program emphasizes fentanyl dangers and includes a young smuggler’s dramatic post-arrest call to his mom. It fully outlines collateral consequences, and the testimony of a lived experience youth.  The program has reached more than 14,000 students, parents, and teachers. The vast majority of the surveyed students agreed it improved their knowledge of risks, convinced them smuggling is not worth it, and enabled them to make smart choices to protect their future. To learn more of this ongoing issue or schedule your school presentation please email Cindy Cipriani at cindy.cipriani@usdoj.gov