Posted on 04/12/2005 11:23:58 AM PDT by Ramonan
It was a signature plan of Bill Clinton's presidency: Attack the rising crime rates of the early 1990s by putting 100,000 more cops on America's streets.
Ten years later, the grant program known as COPS (for Community Oriented Policing Services) has given $10 billion to help more than 12,000 police agencies hire and reassign officers. Politicians and police chiefs across the nation have said that COPS is a big reason for the sharp decline in crime rates that began in the late 1990s.
But now, with the largest buildup of local law enforcement in U.S. history winding down, a lessflattering view of the COPS program is emerging: Federal audits of just 3% of all COPS grants have alleged that $277 million was misspent. Tens of thousands of jobs funded by the grants were never filled, or weren't filled for long, auditors found. And there's little evidence that COPS was a big factor in reducing crime.
The audits, conducted by the Justice Department's inspector general and reviewed by USA TODAY, allege that some police agencies wrongly used the hiring grants to cover routine expenses at a time when local budgets were tightening.
(Excerpt) Read more at 6.lexisnexis.com ...
Surprising to see this in USA Today.
Today's word is pork. P-O-R-K.
Nothing to see here. Just move along.
Change the name of the program to Homeland Security and send it to the same people.
Imagine what would have happened if Tom Delay had pocketted any of this money!
Hmmm... If that rate holds up, then an audit of all grants would show 100 * 277 million / 3 = $9233 million was misspent.
Out of $10 billion, 92% was misspent.
Not that there's amything WRONG with that...
For a federal program, actually, pretty cost efficient. /sarcasm
By the time they're done spinning it, they'll have the public believeing that he paid it all out to his family.
So an audit of 3% of the program shows that almost 2.77% of the total budget was misspent? That extrapolates to 90% of all the money for the program being misspent, or 9 billion out of 10 billion.
Not exactly a feather in the Clintonistas cap, eh?
Crap, I should have read the whole line of posts before breaking out my calculator.
Here's the REAL problem - why is it drawing scrutiny NOW?
Why weren't there auditors before now?
Why doesn't Bush or Congress or DoJ or somebody watch this stuff AS IT'S GOING ON, and stop it WHILE IT'S HAPPENING, instead of waiting ten freakin' years????
And remove the partisan blinders? Perish the thought!
No harm done. You got the same answer I did.
Actually, the fine print in COPS allowed money to be spent on things other than hiring policemen. All of a sudden we're shocked when it wasn't ?
A good math check. We don't know if the audits were random or targeted (for cause), and if the 3% is the biggest 3% on size or dollar value, which would skew the statistics, but it still doesn't look good for the program.
Agreed - I don't put that much stock in the absolute 92% number, but if it's even one tenth that, it's incredibly blatant.
The COPS program was a slick willie con job from the start. 100,000 new cops on the streets in a country with the vastness of the US was like a pin prick to an brontosaurus. Ditto for any program proposing 100,000 teachers, or EMS personel. 1 new person on the force in a big city can't make that much difference, especially when that person often was a dispatcher.
The COPS program was a slick willie con job from the start. 100,000 new cops on the streets in a country with the vastness of the US was like a pin prick to an brontosaurus. Ditto for any program proposing 100,000 teachers, or EMS personel. 1 new person on the force in a big city can't make that much difference, especially when that person often was a dispatcher.
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