The Model Cities Initiative Picked Four Cities Before Any Had a Final Plan

Jackson’s application for federal public safety money described a forensic center whose work had narrowed to a single task. The city wrote that its “current capability is limited to testing green leafy substances,” and it asked the Justice Department for $22 million to rebuild the center so it could handle rapid DNA, ballistic and trace evidence testing instead. The application, obtained by Mississippi Today through a public records request, put Jackson’s total request at $125 million over three years, for a gun crimes unit, a bigger camera network, a victim advocate unit and a reentry council alongside the laboratory. It argued that the city’s violent crime problem was, in its own words, “fundamentally a lack of system capacity.”

On Friday, the Justice Department named Jackson as one of four places selected under the Model Cities Initiative, alongside Jacksonville, Florida, East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana, and St. Louis, Missouri, for nearly $300 million in federal funding. The department’s announcement gave no amount for any city and no detail of any city’s plan. Mississippi leaders put Jackson’s share at $100 million. The department itself has not confirmed that figure, and the city’s own release called the award only “a substantive federal investment.” Attorney General Todd Blanche said the four cities were “setting an example of proactive law enforcement.” The department said he would visit them next month to present the awards. Fox News, citing details it obtained, reported the visits would happen over the next 10 days and the individual amounts would be revealed then.

The paper the four cities applied under was published on June 3, and it reads less like a grant announcement than like a set of conditions for a negotiation that is still open. The notice of funding opportunity gave applicants 90 days, to September 1, to submit a narrative of no more than 20 pages. It said the department expected to award approximately $300 million to between two and four cities through 36-month cooperative agreements, with no local match required. Eligibility was limited to local governments serving at least 100,000 people. The applications were to show why the applicant needed the money and why it was best suited to become a model city. They also had to show how the public and the department would be able to measure its success, with a budget estimate, a timeline and a list of partners attached.

Applying meant signing. The mayor or senior official of each applicant government had to certify under penalty of perjury that the jurisdiction would comply with 8 U.S.C. sections 1373 and 1644, the federal provisions barring state and local governments from restricting the sharing of citizenship and immigration status information. The certification covered every subrecipient at any tier as well. A second signature page committed the applicant to working closely with the department and, “as appropriate, receiving direction from DOJ” on planning and implementation. A third required the signatures of the mayor, the city manager, the prosecutor, the sheriff, the local governing body, the director of health and human services and the community supervision executive, as evidence of the whole-of-city partnership the program demanded. Applicants also had to agree to submit any subrecipient or partnering entity for department pre-review and approval, and to comply with the attorney general’s July 29, 2025 guidance on unlawful discrimination in federally funded programs.

The notice also set the policy ground the money would stand on. Applicants had to show their initiatives aligned with nine department priorities. The first was directly supporting law enforcement operations, “including immigration law enforcement operations.” Others included enforcing prohibitions on open illicit drug use, urban camping and loitering, and urban squatting. Another covered enforcing and where necessary adopting standards for people who are a danger to themselves or others and suffer from serious mental illness or substance use disorder, through assisted outpatient treatment or civil commitment. Activities that impeded federal immigration enforcement were outside the program’s scope. That included failing to give access to Homeland Security agents, honor their requests or provide requested notice to them. Money could not be used, with two stated exceptions, to provide legal services to a removable alien or an alien otherwise unlawfully present in the United States.

What happens after selection is spelled out in the same document, and it is the part of the story Friday’s announcement left out. Recipients are to be chosen by senior department leadership on the application, the presentation and overall alignment. The department will then work with each jurisdiction on implementation. That work includes “review and approval of a detailed action or implementation plan” and “review and approval of final budget.” It also includes “release of funds as milestones are completed.” Because the awards are cooperative agreements, the department expects substantial involvement in carrying out each project for the duration of the award, a collaborative effort rather than a check handed over on selection day. The budget each applicant submitted was an estimate and a starting point, the notice said, and the department expected budgets to evolve.

Jackson shows what that evolution can look like before a dollar moves. Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch wrote in support of the application on August 13. She said the city offered “an opportunity that no other city can replicate” to demonstrate what a surge of personnel and resources, in partnership across federal, state and local levels, could do in a high-crime jurisdiction. Police Chief RaShall Brackney briefed federal officials on the proposal on October 1, and Mississippi Today reported on October 26 that Jackson was one of a handful of finalists. The city council had given Brackney authority to apply earlier in the year, with no discussion, according to the same report. By Friday the reported award was $100 million, $25 million less than the city asked for, a cut of 20 percent that is $3 million larger than the entire forensic rebuild line in the application. The three line items Mississippi Today named, $22 million for the laboratory, $10 million for victim advocates and $10 million for the reentry council, total $42 million. Held whole, they would leave $58 million for everything else the city asked for, against $83 million in the original request. Spread over Jackson’s 141,196 residents, the Census Bureau’s July 2025 estimate, the reported award comes to about $708 a person over three years. Mayor John Horhn said in a statement on Friday that the initiative “pivots the city toward a proactive and intelligence-led safety model” rather than expanding a traditional policing footprint. Brackney wrote: “We must take a comprehensive approach that addresses the conditions that allow crime to exist while strengthening prevention, intervention, and accountability.”

One more term in the notice went unmentioned in Friday’s announcements. Awards under the program “will include a condition,” it said, “related to the future reimbursement of the costs associated with federal law enforcement intervention or assistance provided in the event of a surge in violent crime or public disorder.” Recipients would generally be required to fulfill any such future reimbursement obligation under the terms attached to their awards. The notice published no estimate of what such an intervention could cost. Interactive News noted in August that the department had published no specific cost estimate in the materials it examined, leaving cities unable to quantify the possible exposure before applying. That uncertainty was already on the table in Charlotte, North Carolina, where officials discussed a potential award of up to $150 million. Several council members opposed proceeding over surveillance, federal oversight and the effect on immigrant and refugee communities, according to Axios reporting summarized by Interactive News in August. Mississippi Today reported that Charlotte and New Orleans declined to apply, and the Shreveport-Bossier Advocate reported that Houston refused the money, fearing the strings attached would include supporting administration policies such as immigration deportation policies. The American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi asked Jackson to be transparent with residents about the grant before any agreement was finalized. Its advocacy manager, Lydia Grizzell, said: “Jackson deserves investments in public safety that build trust, address the root causes of violence, and protect the rights of all residents.” Horhn told Mississippi Today before the selection that he had not heard from any constituents who were concerned the grant could result in a federal takeover of the Jackson Police Department.

The case for the program in the notice rested on two surges the department presented as successes, and the numbers arrived without the material a reader needs to test them. Since September 29, 2025, the notice said, overall violent crime in Memphis had fallen 42 percent, with murders down 40 percent, robberies down 50 percent, sexual assaults down 35 percent and motor vehicle thefts down 65 percent. In Washington, it put homicide down 54 percent, robbery down 40 percent, burglary down 26 percent and motor vehicle theft down 55 percent. The notice gave no end date for either set of figures, no counts, no comparison window and no source. Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward’s statement in Friday’s announcement put the national picture in similar terms. It cited “nonfatal violent crime declining 25 percent from 2024 to 2025.” The figure comes from the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ preliminary victimization estimates from the National Crime Victimization Survey, published October 26. The survey put serious violent victimization, excluding simple assault, at 7.4 per 1,000 people aged 12 or older in 2025, down from 9.9 in 2024, or 2,164,640 victimizations against 2,833,960. The survey interviews living victims and does not measure homicide. Its broader violent crime rate, including simple assault, moved from 28.7 to 25.7 per 1,000, while simple assault itself was almost unchanged, at 18.3 against 18.8. The bureau called the 2025 estimates preliminary, with final figures due in 2027. It said it had fully moved to a redesigned survey instrument in January 2025 whose estimates “are not comparable to legacy” estimates. Its weights were adjusted after interviews were missed in October and November 2025 during a lapse in federal appropriations.

The other three cities start from different places, and the notice’s machinery will meet each of them there. In East Baton Rouge Parish, the police department was roughly 150 officers short earlier this year. Officials approved a starting salary increase from $40,000 to $58,000, the largest in the department’s history, with 50 to 60 new officers expected in the new year. The parish coroner’s office reported 86 homicides as of October 26. Senator Bill Cassidy, who said he had helped parish leaders through the application process, said: “I look forward to this money helping Baton Rouge, but also as a model to other communities as well.” In Jacksonville, Sheriff T.K. Waters said: “This is a tremendous honor for Jacksonville and a testament to the progress we have made together in public safety.” The sheriff’s office has more than 3,600 employees and an annual budget of roughly $674 million. The office said the funding would help investigators, expand forensic testing and buy new technology. The whole $300 million pot, spread over three years with no local match, equals about twice St. Louis’s $147 million police budget for fiscal 2026 and about 45 percent of one year of Jacksonville’s sheriff’s office budget, before any split between the four cities is known.

St. Louis adds a question the notice’s signature pages do not answer on their face. The department said the city’s proposal called for expanding law enforcement personnel by more than 300, and the funded entity in its announcement was the City of St. Louis Police Department. Since March 2025, under Missouri House Bill 495, that department has been overseen by a state-established Board of Police Commissioners, with members appointed by the governor serving alongside the mayor, after more than a decade of local control. Mayor Cara Spencer, who opposes state control, set out a four-part policing strategy on October 28 calling on the board to concentrate on recruitment, operational oversight, violence prevention and transparency. The name on the program is older than any of this. “Model Cities” first belonged to a 1966 federal program, authorized by the Demonstration Cities and Metropolitan Development Act. It ran more than 150 five-year experiments coordinating housing, health, education and jobs in poor neighborhoods, with citizen participation built into the plans. It ended in 1974, and its work was folded into Community Development Block Grants. The 2026 Model Cities Initiative keeps the coordination and the model-city ambition, and its required signatures belong to officials: a mayor, a prosecutor, a sheriff, a council, a health director and a supervision executive, with no seat named for residents.

Every application, including all attachments, is subject to the federal Freedom of Information Act and the Privacy Act. Jackson’s application reached the public through a public records request four days before the department named the four cities.