Senator Joseph R. Biden (D-DE) has
introduced a bill (S. 924) to reauthorize the Community Oriented
Policing Services (COPS) program and expand it to put an additional
50,000 officers on America's streets in order to reduce crime. As
various studies by the U.S. government and independent groups have
shown, however, the massive amount of tax dollars spent thus far on
COPS--$8.5 billion--has neither reduced violent crime nor succeeded
in putting the promised 100,000 new officers on the beat. Rather
than further funding a program that has yet to demonstrate its
effectiveness, policymakers should promote policing activities that
are known to reduce crime, such as targeting high-crime "hot spots"
and the illegal possession of firearms by criminals.
Less Than 100,000 New COPS
Officers
Despite recent claims, the COPS program has not put 100,000
additional officers on America's streets since it began in 1994.
Even in 1999, the U.S. Department of Justice's own Office of
Inspector General doubted that the goal could be reached; it
estimated that, at most, only 59,765 additional officers would be
added by the end of FY 2000. In its 2000 National Evaluation of
the COPS Program, a report funded by the COPS Office and
published by the Justice Department, the Urban Institute estimated
that at the end of 1998, the program had increased the number of
new officers nationwide by a net total of between 36,288 and
37,523; using an optimistic scenario, it further estimated that the
number of officers added to the street by COPS would peak at 57,175
by 2001.
Moreover, a study by The Heritage
Foundation found that by 1998, only 39,617 officers had been added
to the streets above the historical hiring trend from 1975 to 1993.
Similarly, the Justice Department's Office of Inspector General
found in 1999 that the program had counted officers as COPS-funded
even when the law enforcement agencies receiving the grants had
rejected the grants or had failed to hire all of the officers
funded. For example, COPS officials claim that the Spokane Police
Department had hired 56 new officers based on three COPS grants
worth $4.2 million, but the Spokane Police Department said that it
had hired only 25 officers. Nevertheless, COPS officials counted
the 31 "missing" officers in the total number of additional
officers it supposedly put on the streets.
Failure to Reduce Violent Crime
When Senator Biden introduced his bill, he claimed that "The
COPS program is a proven success. Crime has declined every year
since the COPS program has been in existence and violent crime is
at its lowest level in a generation." This is simply incorrect. The
nation's violent crime rate began to decline in 1991--three years
before the program was created. Not only did COPS not start the
national drop in crime, but research now indicates that since its
inception, it has not helped to reduce crime.
Analysts in The Heritage Foundation's
Center for Data Analysis (CDA) found this to be the case after
examining the effects of COPS grants on violent crime rates in 752
counties from 1995 to 1998. After accounting for socioeconomic
factors, the COPS hiring and redeployment grants--its primary
components--failed to show a statistically measurable effect in
reducing violent crime rates at the county level. The CDA analysis
suggests that simply bolstering funding for the COPS program will
be ineffective in reducing violent crime. Based on experience,
there are two reasons for this:
- The actual number of officers funded by
these grants and added to the street will be substantially less
than the funding level would indicate, and
- Merely paying for the operational expenses
of law enforcement agencies without a clear crime-fighting
objective will continue to be ineffective in reducing violent
crime.
Failure to Promote Effective
Crime-Fighting Strategies
The CDA analysis also found that COPS grants targeted toward
reducing specific activities--like domestic violence, youth firearm
violence, and gangs--are more effective than hiring and
redeployment grants in reducing violent crime. Narrowly focused
COPS grants are intended to help law enforcement agencies tackle
specific problems, while COPS hiring and redeployment grants are
intended simply to pay for operational costs and thus are less
likely to target specific problems.
According to a 1997 Justice Department
review of crime-fighting programs entitled Preventing Crime:
What Works, What Doesn't, What's Promising, community policing
with no clear strategy for targeting crime-risk factors--such as
high-crime "hot spots" and illegal firearms possession--has been
ineffective in reducing crime. "While the COPS Program language has
stressed a community policing approach," the report states, "there
is no evidence that community policing per se reduces crime
without a clear focus on a crime risk factor objective." The
legislative efforts to continue funding the program fail to promote
policing activities that are known to reduce crime, such as
targeting hot spots and illegal firearms possession by criminals,
as well as proactively targeting repeat offenders, which increases
the likelihood of the arrest and incarceration of dangerous
criminals.
Conclusion
Senator Biden's S. 924 would authorize spending an additional
$6.9 billion over six years to fund an expanded COPS program. It
also would eliminate the current provision in law that recipients
of COPS grants continue to employ COPS officers after federal
funding is expended, paying them out of their own resources, and
require that up to 50 percent of the federal funds reserved for
officer salaries be directed to agencies whose original grants have
expired.
In
essence, this change in the law would create a new federal
obligation to fund local officers' salaries--tantamount to
establishing a new federal entitlement for localities. Such
measures should clearly be avoided. Policymakers should promote
effective policing activities, not merely increase funding for a
program that has failed to achieve its goals.
David B. Muhlhausen is a senior policy
analyst in the Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage
Foundation.