Insights
Funding Investigative Technology with FY26 COPS TEP
If your agency holds FY26 COPS TEP funding with a technology title, here is how evidence-analysis software fits, and what to know before the July 23 deadline.
If your agency holds FY26 COPS TEP funding with a technology title, here is how evidence-analysis software fits, and what to know before the July 23 deadline.
The COPS Office FY26 Technology and Equipment Program (TEP) directs funding to law enforcement agencies for the technology and equipment that help them respond to and prevent crime. For agencies with a technology or investigative project title, that funding can go toward one of the most stubborn problems in modern casework: the sheer volume of digital evidence.
We have entered an era of Big Evidence. A single case can carry hundreds of hours of jail calls, phone extractions that run tens of thousands of pages, and warrant returns no human can read end to end. Most of it never gets looked at, not because investigators do not care, but because there are only so many hours in a shift. A detective opens the files that load fastest instead of the ones that matter most.
That is the work funded technology should attack, because it is the work that quietly stalls cases.
Software is an allowable cost under TEP. Evidence-analysis tools map cleanly to project titles like technology upgrades, investigative technology, software upgrades, and digital evidence. So if your agency holds one of those, an analysis platform is squarely inside what the funding is meant for.
Longeye is one option built for exactly this. Investigators drop in the whole case, calls, messages, photos, video, documents, and device extractions, and ask plain-language questions. Longeye does the grunt work of going through all of it and answers with source-linked findings. An Oklahoma City detective cut jail-call review from more than 20 hours a week to under five.
One rule shapes how software should be purchased here. A multi-year or subscription contract is allowable only if the full term is paid inside the 24-month award period. So the clean way to buy is a fixed, two-year prepaid term, billed once and paid within the window. A two-year software line item usually stays under the $350,000 threshold that triggers sole-source review, which keeps the path simple.
Agencies are right to scrutinize AI, and TEP draws a clear line: facial recognition is unallowable, and biometric technology is rarely approved. Evidence analysis sits on the other side of that line. Longeye only works through evidence an agency already lawfully holds, and every finding is one click from its source, because you cannot put an algorithm on the witness stand. It is SOC 2 Type II, self-hosted, and never trains on case data.
Two practical steps. First, tie the purchase to your specific project title, the scope your agency was designated for in the FY26 Joint Explanatory Statement, so the budget line maps to what the award was meant for. Second, make sure both of your Authorized Representatives have logged into JustGrants and that your SAM.gov registration is active, since that is a common last-minute blocker. The Grants.gov first step is due July 16, the final application July 23, and awards are announced on or after October 1.
Longeye is an AI evidence-analysis platform for law enforcement, used by agencies across the country and covered by the Washington Post, KING 5, and ABC7. Software is an allowable TEP cost, and we structure terms to be paid in full within the award period.
See Longeye run on the kind of case your unit works, then we will help you fit it to your project scope before July 23.
Request a demo