The Bush Administration's budget for fiscal year 2004 recommends major changes at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). Among the Administration's proposals is the elimination of the FY 2004 hiring grants that are administered by the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS).[i] This is the second year in a row that the Administration has made the request.[ii]

Congress should support the President's recommendation regarding COPS funding because it is supported by well-founded observations.

• The COPS program did not significantly advance the community policing movement, which began several years before the creation of COPS.
• The COPS program misused taxpayer dollars by producing a self-serving evaluation of its effectiveness and presenting the study as independent research.
• The COPS program did not measured up to its goal adding 100,000 additional officers to the street as promised.
• The COPS program failed to be an effective crime-reduction policy.

In a letter introducing the Administration's FY 2004 budget, President Bush wrote that "We will continue to focus on getting results from federal spending.A federal program's measure of success is not its size, but the value it delivers…If federal programs cannot show results, they should be overhauled, or retired."[iii]

The use of performance measures is vital to the Administration's efforts to determine which federal programs are successful and which are not. Despite a sizeable monetary investment of over $10 billion in funding,[iv] thorough and independent evaluations of the COPS program found that it failed to achieve its primary goals of placing an additional 100,000 officers on the streets[v] and reducing crime.[vi]

In 2001, the Heritage Foundation Center for Data Analysis conducted an independent analysis of the COPS program's effectiveness.[vii] After accounting for yearly state and local law enforcement expenditures and other socioeconomic factors, the analysis found that COPS grants both for the hiring of additional police officers and for redeployment (MORE, grants) had no statistically significant effect on reducing the rates of violent crime. The Administration's budget recommendation to cut funding for this ineffective program is consistent with its goal of funding only those federal programs that pass the evaluation test recommended by President Bush. Further, COPS provides functions at the federal level that rightfully lie within the jurisdiction of states and localities.