President Joe Biden, with a bipartisan group of senators speaks June 24, 2021, outside the White House in Washington. Biden officials have released details of the new Safer America Plan ahead of his visit to Wilkes University later today. (AP file photo)

President Joe Biden, with a bipartisan group of senators speaks June 24, 2021, outside the White House in Washington. Biden officials have released details of the new Safer America Plan ahead of his visit to Wilkes University later today. (AP file photo)

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In an effort to make communities safer and to curtail gun violence, President Joe Biden unveiled his plan to build on the bipartisan Safer Communities Act and further invest in community policing and crime prevention.

Ahead of the president’s stop at the Marts Center on the campus of Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre later this afternoon, senior officials from the Biden administration released to reporters the new Safer America Plan — an investment of $37 billion requested by the president to support law enforcement and crime prevention.

The request, $35 billion on top of a $2 billion discretionary request made by the president for the same purposes, are part of Biden’s fiscal year 2023 budget.

“The President believes we can and do more to reduce crime and save lives,” reads a press release issued by senior White House officials to members of the media. “The plan he is releasing today outlines, for the first time, how this $37 billion will be used to save lives and make communities safer.”

Released to the media, the Safer America Plan was broken down into three parts in regard to the specific measures it will take.

The first point deals with funding the police, and promoting effective prosecution of crimes affecting families today. The plan will help communities by providing them with the resources to hire and train 100,000 additional police officers for accountable community policing with an investment of nearly $13 billion over the next five years through the COPS Hiring Program.

This plan will also invest nearly $3 billion to help communities clear up backlogs in their court systems and to help solve murders in an effort to take violent criminals off the street. It will also aim to crack down on other serious crimes including tougher penalties for fentanyl trafficking, legislation aimed at tackling organized retail theft and imposing liability on online marketplaces for the sale of stolen goods on their platforms.

Investments in crime prevention and a fairer criminal justice system under the Safer America Plan include:

• a new $15 billion grant program, titled Accelerating Justice System Reform, to be used to prevent violent crime and/or ease the burden on police officers by identifying non-violent situations that may merit a different type of response;

• an additional $5 billion in evidence-based community violence intervention programs.

The final bullet point of the Safer America Plan deals with additional steps to keep “dangerous firearms out of dangerous hands.”

This point mentioned a proposal made by the president to increase funding to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives by 13%, and also reads that the President will continue to call on Congress to take additional actions on guns following the passage of the Safer Communities Act.

This act, signed into law with bipartisan support by the president last month, was touted on a press briefing with Biden administration officials as one of the steps the president has already taken to combat gun violence and make communities around the country safer.

Also touted were the $10 billion in American Rescue Plan funds already committed to policing and various public safety strategies (officials from the Biden administration acknowledged that the $10 billion number has likely increased since it was first announced by the White House in May), and an executive order signed by Biden to advance “effective, accountable policing that will build public trust and strengthen public safety.”

It’ll be these points that President Biden lays out when he speaks today in Wilkes-Barre, just a few miles down the road from where Biden was born in Scranton.

It was this tie to the area that officials pointed out when asked why the president chose to unveil his plan in Wilkes-Barre, as opposed to Philadelphia or any other city impacted by gun violence.

“You want your home to be safe, a place of comfort,” said one administration official. “There’s no better place for President Biden to talk about public safety than the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre area.”