House Debates the COPS Reauthorization Act
| Rep. Weiner: "My colleagues on that side of the aisle eliminated the hiring component. President Bush eliminated the hiring component. This is a visual about how many police officers were hired under the COPS program from 1995 to 2005... This, this is what has happened under President Bush and under our Republican leadership. This many police officers... zero, zero, zero in Virginia, zero in South Dakota, zero in California. The program was eliminated under my Republican friends." |
Facts on the COPS Reauthorization Act:
Created in 1994, the COPS hiring grants program was enormously successful -- helping local law enforcement agencies to hire 117,000 additional police officers. In 1994, Congress established the COPS hiring grants program, otherwise known as the 100,000 Cops-on-the-Beat Initiative. Between 1995 and 2005, COPS hiring grants provided $9 billion to help local law enforcement agencies hire 117,000 additional police officers, spread across every state in the union. Even GOP Attorney General John Ashcroft described COPS as a "miraculous sort of success."Under the COPS hiring grants program, our nation experienced a significant drop in crime rates -- and independent studies confirm that these grants helped contribute to the reduced crime rate. A large part of the COPS program's success was the nation's commitment to community-oriented policing, particularly the program's hiring component which helped get more officers on the beat. This approach was validated by a study by the nonpartisan General Accounting Office, which stated, "COPS-funded increases in sworn officers per capita were associated with declines in rates of total index crimes, violent crimes, and property crime." According to the GAO study, between 1998 and 2000, COPS hiring grants were responsible for reducing crimes by about 200,000 to 225,000 crimes -- one third of which were violent.
Unfortunately, over the last few years, the GOP-led Congress sharply reduced the funding for the COPS hiring grants -- eliminating them entirely in 2006. Under the Clinton Administration, during the late 1990s, COPS hiring grants were funded at over $1 billion a year. However, by 2003, the GOP-led Congress had scaled back COPS hiring grants to $198 million and by 2005, to $10 million. By 2006, the Congress had completely eliminated the COPS hiring grants program.
At the same time that the GOP-led Congress sharply reduced and then eliminated COPS hiring grants, crime rates began to rise again. In March, the Police Executive Research Forum released a report that found that violent crimes have risen by double digit percentages over the last two years. Among the cities surveyed, since 2005, 71 percent had an increase in homicides, 80 percent saw robberies rise, and 67 percent reported an increase in aggravated assaults with guns. The Fraternal Order of Police has stated, "Just as the decrease in crime was directly related to an increased focus on hiring law enforcement officers at the state and local level, the more recent increase in certain crimes can be directly related to the loss of federal funds supporting state and local law enforcement."
This bill reinvigorates the COPS program -- including authorizing $600 million per year for hiring grants, which could fund up to 50,000 new cops on the beat over the next 6 years. The bill authorizes $600 million per year to hire officers to engage in community policing, serve as School Resource Officers, or engage in counter-terrorism duties. Regarding counter-terrorism, the bill explicitly authorizes that COPS hiring grants can be used to hire and train officers to perform "intelligence, anti-terror, or homeland security duties."
The bill also authorizes $350 million per year for COPS technology grants. In addition to the hiring grants, the bill also authorizes $350 million a year for the next six years for technology grants. These grants will allow police agencies to purchase things like lap top computers for patrol cars, crime mapping software, and interoperable communications equipment. For example, in endorsing the bill, the National Sheriffs' Association states, "The technology grants that the bill supports will allow sheriffs to increase their interoperability with other agencies, and also provide sheriffs with the opportunity to obtain necessary state-of-the-art equipment for crime tracking and reporting.
In addition, the bill authorizes $200 million per year to help hire community prosecutors. The bill also authorizes funds for community prosecuting programs -- including programs that assign prosecutors to try cases in specific geographic areas.
The bill also contains "troops to cops" provisions providing for hiring police officers coming out of the military. Finally, the bill contains provisions to encourage state and local police agencies to hire former military members for some of the new law enforcement jobs under the bill.