Crime Subcommittee Schedules Oversight Hearing on Administration's COPS Program.What: Oversight Hearing on COPS Program (Community Oriented Policing Services This article is about Community Oriented Policing Services. For other uses of COPS or cops, see Cops. The Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) is an agency within the United States Department of Justice. program)
House Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Crime
When: 9:30 a.m., Thursday, October 28, 1999
Where: 2141 Rayburn House Office Building
Community policing programs are successfully reducing crime in communities across the nation. The Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program, a centerpiece of the Clinton Administration's anti-crime effort, is unaffordable for poorer communities, riff with management problems, and subject to fraud. Need for the hearing: * Despite spending more than $6 billion since 1994, only about 60,000 police officers have been hired, far short of the Administration's goal of 100,000 new cops by the year 2000. Currently, the COPS program has more $250 million in unspent funds left over from previous fiscal years. * A report by the U.S. Office of the Inspector General Office of the Inspector General (or OIG) is a common sub-agency within cabinet-level agencies of the United States federal government and serves as auditing and investigative arm of the agency's programs focused on identifying waste, fraud and abuse. concluded that almost 60 percent of police agencies that have accepted the four-year COPS grants have not developed plans to retain officers once the program ends. * More than 7000 law enforcement agencies have chosen not to apply, and more than 650 agencies have turned down funds awarded to them primarily because they could not afford them. Typically, a COPS grant may not exceed more than 75 percent of a localities three-year cost of a police officer's salary and benefits. After three years, localities must pick up the full tab. * An investigation by the Chicago Tribune found numerous management problems including inaccuracy of the actual number of police hired under the program, diversion of funds meant to hire police, and poor oversight by the Department of Justice to ensure the appropriate use of the COPS grants. This hearing will... * Showcase legislative efforts to transform the current COPS program into a block grant program, that will leave the issue of policing priorities to local and state governments. Scheduled Witnesses: Thomas C. Frazier, Director, COPS Program, DOJ; Robert L. Ashbaugh, Acting Inspector General, DOJ; Richard Stana, Associate Director, GAO; Joseph M. Newport, Chief of Police, Terre Haute Police Department, Terre Haute, IN; Lawrence W. Sherman and Albert M. Greenfield, University of Pennsylvania (body, education) University of Pennsylvania - The home of ENIAC and Machiavelli. http://upenn.edu/. Address: Philadelphia, PA, USA. ; Edward F. Davis, III, Police Superintendent, Lowell, MA; Martin L. Pfeifer, Metropolitan Police Department, Washington, DC, Fraternal Order of Police The Fraternal Order of Police is a US-based organization of sworn law enforcement officers. It is the world's largest organization of rank and file sworn officers, with over 2100 local lodges and over 325,000 members. . CONTACT: Sam Stratman or Michael Connolly, 202-225-2492, for the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary Committee on the Judiciary may mean:
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