the cops program after 4 years--national evaluation (rib)

U.S. Department of Justice

Office of Justice Programs

National Institute of Justice

R e s e a r c h i n B r i e f

National Institute of JusticeJulie E. Samuels, Acting Director

continued…

The COPS Program After 4 Years—National Evaluationby Jeffrey A. Roth and Joseph F. Ryan

August 2000

productivity and redeploying their savedtime to community policing. The thirdapproach was to award grants to agenciesfor innovative programs with special pur-poses, such as reducing youth gun vio-lence and domestic violence.

The hiring grants were limited to 75 per-cent of each hired officer’s salary andfringe benefits, normally up to a “3-yearcap” of $75,000. The grants for otherresources were not limited by the cap.Normally, grantees were required tomatch the grants with at least 25 percentof program costs, to submit acceptablestrategies for implementing communitypolicing in their jurisdictions, and toretain the COPS-funded officer positionsusing local funds after the 3-year grantsexpired. Funds were authorized to reim-burse up to $5,000 of training costs forformer military personnel hired underthe Act.

Further, the Act required simplifiedapplication procedures for jurisdictionswith populations of less than 50,000 andmandated an equal distribution of fundsbetween jurisdictions with populationsof more than and less than 150,000.As with␣ most Federal grant programs,COPS-funded resources were requiredto␣ supplement local expenditures, notsupplant or replace them.

Nearly $9 billion of the $30 billion ofexpenditures authorized by the ViolentCrime Control and Law Enforcement Actof 1994 (Crime Act) was allocated to thelaw’s Title I, the legislative basis of whatsoon became known as the CommunityOriented Policing Services (COPS) pro-gram. Title I listed four specific goalsintended to change both the level andpractice of policing in the United States:

1. To increase the number of officersdeployed in American communities.

2. To foster problem solving and inter-action with communities by policeofficers.

3. To encourage innovation in policing.

4. To develop new technologies for assist-ing officers in reducing crime and itsconsequences.

Over a 6-year period, the approximately$9 billion was to fund three primary ap-proaches to achieving the foregoing goals.The first approach involved the award of3-year grants to law enforcement agenciesfor hiring police officers to engage incommunity policing activities. The sec-ond was to award grants for acquiringtechnology, hiring civilians, and, initially,paying officer overtime—all with theintent of increasing existing officers’

Issues and FindingsDiscussed in this Brief: An inde-pendent process evaluation of theCommunity Oriented Policing Ser-vices (COPS) program, whose leg-islative basis is Title I of the ViolentCrime Control and Law Enforce-ment Act of 1994. Covering pri-marily the first 4 years of the COPSprogram but including some pro-jections up to 2003, the evalua-tion, sponsored by NIJ andconducted by the Urban Institute,is based on a series of nationwidetelephone surveys, site visits, andcase studies. The evaluation fo-cuses primarily on COPS grantsenabling law enforcement agen-cies (1) to hire police officers toengage in community policing ac-tivities, and (2) to redeploy existingofficers to community policing byincreasing officer productivitythrough the acquisition of technol-ogy or by freeing up officers forcommunity policing by filling someofficer-held positions with civilians.

Key issues: To what extent didthe COPS program succeed inputting more officers on the streetand, through its promotion ofcommunity policing, change thepractice of policing in the UnitedStates? Did the distribution ofCOPS mirror the disparity in crimelevels among jurisdictions? Howsatisfied were grantees with theCOPS application and administra-tion processes? Have granteesengaged in community policing

2


by building partnerships, solving prob-lems, and doing crime prevention?

Key findings: Among the principal find-ings of the evaluation are the following:

● By May 1999, 100,500 officers andequivalents had been funded. Of them,preliminary estimates indicate that be-tween 84,700 and 89,400 will have beendeployed by 2003. Because some officerswill have departed before others beginservice, the federally funded increase(based on awards through May 1999) inpolicing levels will peak in 2001 between69,000 and 84,600 before falling to62,700–83,900 in 2003. These estimateswill be revised as data collected in mid-2000 are analyzed. The COPS Office hascontinued to award grants since May1999.

● The program accelerated transitionsto locally defined versions of communitypolicing. COPS funds seem more likely tohave fueled movements toward adoption

To meet the requirements of Title I,eight initiatives were undertaken:

1. Within a month after the Crime Actwas signed into law, COPS Phase Igrants for hiring officers wereawarded to agencies that had previ-ously applied unsuccessfully forgrants under the previous PoliceHiring Supplement (PHS) program;together, COPS Phase I and PHSfunded nearly 4,700 officers.

2. Also within that month, theDepartment of Justice created anew agency, the COPS Office, toadminister the new grant program.

3. In November, the COPS Officeestablished two grant programs forhiring officers: Funding Acceler-

Issues and Findingscontinued…

of community policing that were alreadyaccelerating than to have caused theacceleration.

● An analysis found that the 1 percent ofCOPS grantees with the largest 1997 mur-der counts received 31 percent of all COPSfunds awarded through 1997. The 10 per-cent of grantees with the highest murdercounts received 50 percent of total COPSawards.

● COPS application procedures andcustomer service orientation resulted inmany smaller police agencies reportinghigh levels of satisfaction with theprogram’s application and administrativeprocesses. Larger agencies tended tofind administrative requirements no lessburdensome than those of other grantprograms.

● Building partnerships with communitiesby COPS grantees was commonplace inmany of the agencies visited but, all too

often, partnerships were in name onlyor simply standard, temporary workingarrangements. Most visited agencies didsome form of problem solving, but formand visibility varied widely from agency toagency. In observed sites, crime preventionefforts abounded, primarily manifested astraditional programs now subsumed underthe community policing label.

● The COPS program facilitated theefforts of agency chief executives whowere inclined toward innovation and rep-resented perhaps the largest effort tobolster development of law enforcementtechnology since the 1967 President’sCommission on Law Enforcement andAdministration of Justice. COPS-fundedtechnology is benefiting localities but notyet meeting productivity projections.

Target audience: State and local lawenforcement agencies, State and local gov-ernment administrators, Federal agenciesand congressional committees involved incriminal justice issues, and researchers.

ated for Small Towns (COPS FAST),with simplified application proce-dures for small agencies; and Ac-celerated Hiring, Education, andDeployment (COPS AHEAD), withmore stringent application proce-dures, for large agencies. Later,these two programs were succeededby the Universal Hiring Program(UHP) for all jurisdictions regard-less of size.

4. Within a few months, the COPSOffice created the Making OfficerRedeployment Effective (COPSMORE) program to fund technol-ogy, civilians, and overtime (theovertime option was eliminatedafter fiscal 1995).

5. To process training grants for hiredmilitary personnel, the COPS Officeestablished the Troops to COPSprogram.

6. To address local law enforcementneeds other than new officers andother resources, the COPS Officereceived authorization to administerthe existing Comprehensive Com-munities Program and created othergrant programs to launch the PoliceCorps and to help grantees addresssuch specific problems as domesticviolence, youth firearms violence,gangs, methamphetamine, andschool crime.

7. To encourage and assist the polic-ing field in its transition to commu-nity policing, the COPS Office

3


evaluators’ efforts. The PHS and COPSPhase I grants were awarded beforeall␣ grantmaking innovations wereadopted, and the award processes werefully completed before this evaluationbegan. Therefore, although UI countedthose program resources in its analy-ses, it did not single out those pro-grams for separate program evaluationpurposes. Finally, because the RCPIsemerged well after the evaluation wasunder way and project resources com-mitted, observations of their activitieswere limited to incidental findingsonsite rather than a systematicevaluation.

This Research in Brief presents UI’snational evaluation findings coveringroughly the first 4 years of COPS,with␣ primary focus on the COPSFAST, AHEAD, UHP, and MOREprograms. Our work was guided by thelogic model shown in exhibit 1, whichoutlines the COPS program and itsintended effects.

The model indicates that COPS pro-gram outcomes depend on local deci-sions and actions to a greater degreethan Federal block grant programs(in which formulas determine fundingallocations) or discretionary programs(in which Federal officials selectgrantees based on detailed plans forusing the funds). Starting from the up-per left of the exhibit, distribution ofCOPS resources depended on eligibleagencies’ responses to a proposed ex-change of Federal resources in returnfor local financial and programmaticcommitments. The financial commit-ments were to share the costs of the re-sources during the life of the grant andto retain the COPS-funded officer po-sitions thereafter. Grantees’ program-matic commitments were to policetheir jurisdictions following principlesof community policing.

funded four additional activities:the Community Policing Consor-tium to provide training and techni-cal assistance in communitypolicing; its own Program, PolicySupport, and Evaluation Division toconduct assessments and evalua-tions of community policing activi-ties; part of the policing researchprogram of the National Institute ofJustice (NIJ); and a network of Re-gional Community Policing Insti-tutes (RCPIs), where educators, lawenforcement agencies, and commu-nity organizations collaborated incommunity policing research, dem-onstration programs, training, andtechnical assistance.

8. To foster compliance with the pro-grammatic requirement to imple-ment community policing and withall administrative requirements, theCOPS Office undertook an exten-sive program of information dis-semination, training and technicalassistance, telephone contact withgrantees, legal reviews and opinionletters regarding grantees plans,and onsite monitoring by the COPSOffice, working in conjunction withthe Office of the Comptroller (OC),Office of Justice Programs, U.S.Department of Justice.

The national evaluation

Under its policing research program,NIJ was asked to administer an inde-pendent evaluation of the COPS pro-gram; NIJ selected the Urban Institute(UI) to conduct it. In addition, NIJawarded grants to various organiza-tions to evaluate several componentsof the COPS program other than thehiring and COPS MORE programs.With NIJ’s concurrence, the UI teamexcluded the innovative programs fromits scope to avoid duplicating other

As the COPS program was launched,neither the retention nor the commu-nity policing commitment was fullyspelled out at the Federal level. Theretention requirement was not pre-cisely defined until 1998. Consistentwith community policing principles,grant applicants were required to de-fine the concept locally by submittingtheir own strategies specifying howthey would meet four broad objec-tives—partnership building, problemsolving, prevention, and organizationalsupport of those objectives—using aplan tailored to local needs, resources,and context. Awards to applicants withinadequate community policing strate-gies were accompanied by a specialcondition requiring training and tech-nical assistance by the CommunityPolicing Consortium.

As shown in exhibit 1, successful ap-plicants were to implement three kindsof organizational transitions. First,recipients of hiring grants had to re-cruit, hire, train, and deploy an influxof new police officers. Second, COPSMORE grantees were obligated toacquire and implement technology, tohire civilians, or (under 1995 grantsonly) to manage officers’ overtime,thereby permitting the redeployment ofofficers or full-time equivalents (FTEs)to community policing. Third, to ac-commodate the demands of communitypolicing, most agencies needed tochange their organizations in variousways—an explicit objective of theCOPS program.

As shown in the center of exhibit 1,successful local implementation wasto include advancement of three pro-grammatic community policing objec-tives specified by the COPS Office:problem solving, building partner-ships with the community, and partici-pating in prevention programs. In turn,

4


grantees’ expanded pursuit of thoseobjectives affects local criminal justiceagencies and other units of localgovernment.

The processes described above are thesubjects of this Research in Brief. Asa␣ process evaluation, this study setsaside questions of community impact,represented in the shaded sector of theexhibit: how police and community ac-tions stimulated by the COPS programaffected levels of community satisfac-tion with police, fear of crime, socialand physical quality of life, levels ofserious crime, etc. More specifically,this report addresses the seven majorquestions noted in the accompanyingsidebar (see “Major Questions Ad-dressed by the National Evaluation”on page 7).

The answers to those questions wereshaped by the history of the COPSprogram and its roots in presidentialpolitics, academia, policing practice,and Federal assistance programs tolocal law enforcement and criminaljustice agencies. Therefore, beforethis report addresses those evaluationquestions, a review of the salient as-pects of COPS history and roots isappropriate.

The COPS program andits␣ roots

The COPS program can be viewed asthe confluence of two forces. First, the1992 presidential campaign occurredwhen public confidence in the abilityof government to control crime waslow, fear of crime was high, and resis-tance to Federal budget increases waseven higher. In such a climate, a pro-gram to “put 100,000 officers on thestreet” made sense, especially if donewith a display of Federal efficiency atminimal cost.

Second, over the preceding two de-cades, some students and practitionersof policing had begun to develop ideasthat collectively became known as“community policing.” The meaning ofthe term was fuzzy—as many believe itshould be because its essence involvestailoring program specifics to localneeds and resources. Nevertheless, aconsensus was emerging that commu-nity policing had five main ingredi-ents: solving underlying problems thatlinked seemingly unrelated incidentsof crime and disorder instead of re-sponding to them one by one; deem-phasizing routine patrol and rapidresponse as primary crimefightingtools; involving the communities beingpoliced as partners in identifyingproblems and planning or even execut-ing responses; preventing crimethrough strategies for socializing chil-dren and youth and for making high-crime places safer; and changingorganizations to support the other goals.

From the standpoint of many policeexecutives, a program that combinedcommunity policing with additionalofficers had both positive and negativeaspects. Community policing encour-aged police to share crime reductionresponsibilities with other segmentsof␣ their jurisdictions. Additional re-sources are generally seen as useful,but involving other partners in decid-ing how to use them can raise sensitiveissues. Similarly, while at the time“more technology and more civilianemployees” was hardly a politicallyviable Federal response to the Nation’sfear and outrage over crime, severalprominent police chiefs and mayorswere arguing that those resourceswould be more useful than additionalofficers.

For several years, beginning inthe␣ Bush administration, the U.S.

Department of Justice and other Fed-eral departments had begun to rethinkthe mechanisms for distributingFederal financial assistance. Grantprograms had begun inching towardbypassing States to deal directly withlocal governments, reducing adminis-trative burdens, and lowering categori-cal boundaries on how funds could beused. The difficult question was howto␣ support local priorities in less con-straining ways without giving up allFederal leverage for shaping thosepriorities. Early programmatic stepsin␣ this direction included the Bushadministration’s Operation Weed andSeed and the Clinton administration’searly Project PACT and Comprehen-sive Communities Program.

These factors challenged the COPSprogram with an extremely ambitiousgoal: encouraging law enforcementagencies across the Nation to hire100,000 officers and to adopt commu-nity policing as a guiding philoso-phy—without raising the Federalbudget deficit. These objectives com-pete, because burdensome measurestaken to monitor compliance with thecommunity policing requirement coulddiminish the attractiveness of thegrants. Yet failure to monitor compli-ance raises the danger that a programintended to increase the number ofagencies doing community policingmay reduce the quality of the commu-nity policing they do.

At the urging of several influentialpolice chiefs who placed higher prior-ity on acquiring technology and hiringcivilians than on hiring new officers,the COPS MORE program was createdto support these alternative resources.However, the statute obligated theCOPS Office to require applicants todemonstrate that the productivity gainsassociated with these resources would

5


Exhibit 1. Logic Model

permit the redeployment of existingofficers to the street at least as cost-effectively as hiring grants. Other ben-efits of civilians or technology wereirrelevant under the statute. Lackingan experience base for estimating the

productivity gains, most applicantssucceeded in projecting that redeploy-ment would occur cost-effectively.However, achieving the projectedredeployment became contingenton␣ grantees’ ability to implement

technologies that were sometimes un-familiar and, in the case of one keytechnology—wireless transmission offield reports—essentially unavailableat the start of the COPS program.

RESOURCES ANDREQUIREMENTS

Federal• COPS• Other programs

State/Local• Financial• Governmental• Community

Local Decisions• Apply?• Accept?• Resources• Community • policing plan

Hire officers

Acquiretechnology,civilians

Redeployofficers or FTEs

Reorient Organization• Community voice• Officer discretion• Interagency cooperation• Capacity for change

COPS IMPLEMENTATION

PROGRAMOUTPUTS

Arrests

Problem Solving• Analysis• Community input• Maintenance

Partnership Building• Surveys, meetings• Citizen councils• Joint projects• Community capacity• Cross-agency collaboration

Prevention• Prevention education• Code/truancy enforcement• Victim assistance

OUTCOMES INOTHER CJAs

Caseloads

Crime

Social/physicalquality of life

Informal socialcontrol

Fear of crime

Informationsharing

Police respect/satisfaction

COMMUNITY OUTCOMES

(+)

(+)

(+)

(+)

(+)

(–)

(+)

(+)

(+)

(+)

(+)

(+)

(–)

(+)

(+)

(+)

(+)

(+)

(+)

(–)

(–)

(–)

(?)

CONTEXT

CONTEXT

CO

NT

EX

T CO

NT

EX

T

Abbreviations and Symbols:FTEs: Full Time EquivalentsCJAs: Criminal Justice Agencies(+): Items listed in preceding box result in positive impact on, or increase in, items listed in the following box.(–): Items listed in preceding box result in negative impact on, or decrease in, items listed in the following box.

6


Senior Justice Department officialsconcluded that demonstrating effec-tiveness of the Federal Government inthis complex mission required a neworganization doing business in newways. Therefore, a new Office of Com-munity Oriented Policing Services wascreated within weeks after passage ofthe Crime Act and quickly becameknown as the COPS Office. The newagency undertook the heroic task ofstaffing up, announcing the COPS pro-gram to all eligible grantee agencies,assuring that applications compliedwith programmatic requirements, andmaking award decisions, all within afew months.

The COPS Office succeeded in pro-cessing more than 10,000 grant awardsin its first 4 months. While the earlyrounds of that work were completedbefore the national evaluation began,the design and implementation of theevaluation relied heavily on COPSOffice manual and automated records.During that work, evaluators foundthat grant files typically showed evi-dence of fairly thorough eligibility andprogrammatic review. The high accu-racy levels of COPS Office recordsgreatly facilitated our work.

COPS grants were not exempt fromstandard Department of Justice budgetreview and administrative require-ments, which are administered by theOC. For the relatively simple hiringgrants, the combined COPS Office/OCprocess required about 7 months onaverage from application submissionto␣ signed acceptance of those awards.During startup, the COPS Office at-tempted to reduce this delay with an“accelerated” procedure that permit-ted agencies to hire officers afterreceiving an announcement letterbut before formal obligation of grant

awards; 50 percent of AHEAD grant-ees and 35 percent of FAST granteesreported using this procedure. In somejurisdictions, local rules preventedagencies from hiring new officersbefore the official award.

Formal review and approval of themore complex COPS MORE grantsrequired an average of 11 months,even under normal circumstances.For␣ many grantees, this delay wasprolonged between October 1995 andApril 1996 while a Federal budget dis-pute shut down OC grant reviews andleft the COPS budget in doubt. Conse-quently, an average of 16 monthselapsed for 1995 MORE applicantsbetween application submission andsigned acceptance of the awards.

During debates over the 1994 CrimeAct, a Local Law Enforcement BlockGrant (LLEBG) program had been pro-posed unsuccessfully by Republicansas an alternative to the COPS program.After the 1994 elections, the LLEBGinitiative resurfaced and COPS pro-gram authorizations were reduced byabout $500 million in the fiscal 1996and subsequent budgets, with the$500 million reprogrammed toLLEBG. This reprogramming raisedconcerns that LLEBG, with its lowermatch requirement of only 10 percentand fewer restrictions on how fundscould be spent, would reduce locali-ties’ interest in COPS grants.

Despite these difficulties, the COPSOffice “customer satisfaction” orienta-tion succeeded at the outset with smallagencies (i.e., those serving jurisdic-tions of less than 50,000). Amongsmall-agency Wave 1 survey respon-dents with prior Federal grant experi-ence, nearly 80 percent describedCOPS application and administration

as simpler than others, as of 1996.This compared with 40–50 percentamong large agencies, which facedmore elaborate application require-ments, especially among MOREgrantees, who had suffered the mostconsequences of the Federal budgetconfrontation and whose applicationsrequired more elaborate review.

As startup difficulties were sur-mounted, the COPS Office shifted itsfocus to program operations, whichwere intended to encourage implemen-tation of community policing and newtechnology and to foster compliancewith administrative regulations. Theoffice expanded the Community Polic-ing Consortium, which the Bureau ofJustice Assistance had created in1993 to advance community policing,and created Innovative CommunityOriented Policing programs. Some ofthose programs were intended to de-velop innovative approaches to suchproblems as gangs, domestic violence,and methamphetamine. Others wereintended to advance community polic-ing in special environments, such asschools and distressed neighborhoods,to advance problem-solving skills,and␣ to advance community policingthrough supportive organizational in-novations. Finally, the COPS-fundedRCPIs brought academic, practitioner,and community perspectives to bearon training and local innovation forcommunity policing.

To foster compliance with administra-tive regulations, five units wereinvolved. The COPS Office LegalDivision defined compliance by inter-preting Title I, writing regulations,and applying them to specific localcircumstances. The Grants Divisioninformed the field about requirements,reviewed applications for compliance,

7


Major Questions Addressed by the National Evaluation

How did local agencies re-spond to the exchange offered bythe COPS program? The evaluation ad-dressed this question primarily throughthree waves of national telephone sur-veys. Wave 1 interviewed a representativesample of law enforcement agencies ofall types and sizes, selected in May 1996and stratified to overrepresent COPS hir-ing grantees, MORE grantees, and thenongrantees that were serving jurisdic-tions of more than 50,000. Wave 2 inter-viewed a new sample of agencies whosefirst COPS award was a 1996 UHP grantand reinterviewed members of the Wave1 MORE subsample with grants for mo-bile computing technology. Wave 3reinterviewed the municipal and countypolice agencies that were interviewed inWave 1 and either (a) belonged to theWave 1 nongrantee or hiring granteesubsamples and served jurisdictions ofmore than 50,000, or ( b) belonged tothe Wave 1 MORE subsample regardlessof jurisdiction size. Under subcontract,the National Opinion Research Corpora-tion collected the Wave 1 data inOctober–November 1996, Wave 2 inSeptember–October 1997, and Wave 3 inJune–July 1998. During June–July 2000,Wave 4 reinterviewed all agencies inter-viewed in Wave 1. Additional informationcame to light during site visits to 30grantee agencies, conducted betweenearly 1996 and 1998 by teams of re-searchers and police practitioners.

2. What distribution of COPS fundsresulted from localities’ applicationdecisions through the end of 1997?Analyses of COPS Office grant manage-ment databases addressed that question.The analyses were updated several timesbetween February 1996 and March1998.

For a preliminary estimate of long-termincreases in policing levels due to COPShiring and MORE programs, the evalua-tion applied factors estimated from theWave 3 survey to COPS Office grantaward counts as of May 12, 1999, whenthe White House announced achieve-ment of the goal of funding 100,000police officers. We plan to update thisestimate based on the Wave 4 survey.

6. To what extent had the COPSprogram succeeded by mid-1998 inencouraging grantees to build part-nerships with communities, adoptproblem-solving strategies, and par-ticipate in prevention programs? Totrace this evolution on a national basis, allthree survey waves contained a checklistof tactics in support of these objectives.We compared grantee and nongranteeagencies’ official statements on the ex-tent to which these tactics were in placebefore 1995, were begun or expandedlater, and were supported by COPSfunds through mid-1998. Observing the“ground truth” behind the survey re-sponses was a primary purpose of pro-grammatic site assessments in 30 granteeagencies.

7. To what extent did grantees’organizations change through 1998to support and sustain communitypolicing? We obtained national profilesof organizational change using the surveymethodology we adopted for program-matic change and observed “groundtruth” during site visits. In addition, thequestion was addressed through 10 casestudies conducted under subcontract bythe Program in Criminal Justice Policy andManagement of the Kennedy School ofGovernment.

3. How did COPS hiring grantees ac-complish their hiring and deploymentobjectives through mid-1998, andwhat were their expectations for re-taining the COPS-funded officers? Weaddressed the hiring question primarilythrough the Wave 1 survey, the retentionquestion primarily in the Wave 3 survey,and gathered supplemental informationon both matters on site visits. The Wave4 survey updated information on bothissues.

4. How did COPS MORE grantees suc-ceed in acquiring and implementingtechnology, hiring civilians, andachieving the projected redeploy-ment targets through mid-1998? Ananalysis of a representative sample of 438grant files for 1995 MORE awards ascer-tained what types of technology wereawarded in the first year of the program.Implementation progress was the primaryfocus of the Wave 2 survey of all 1831995 MORE grantees that receivedMORE-funded mobile computers, themost commonly awarded type of tech-nology. For all types of technology, theWave 3 survey updated this informationby asking all respondents about all theirMORE grants, regardless of how theagency was selected at Wave 1 or whentheir MORE grants were awarded.

5. What increases in policing levelswere projected and achieved by localagencies using COPS resources? To es-timate increases through 1998 based ongrants awarded through 1997, survey-based estimates of hiring progress, tech-nology implementation, and retentionexpectations were applied to the projec-tions in COPS Office data. As a bench-mark, we performed time-series analysesof 1989–96 data on sworn force size re-ported in annual Uniform Crime Reports(UCR).

1.

8


and assigned grant advisors to main-tain regular telephone contact. TheMonitoring Division monitored compli-ance through site visits to 432 granteesin 1998, with a planned expansion to900 in 1999. The OC established aseparate branch to monitor compliancewith financial and administrative re-quirements and to monitor the ad-equacy of grantees’ accounting andadministrative controls. The Office ofthe Inspector General (OIG) auditedCOPS grantees onsite in search of pos-sible violations of the Title I statute.

Between 1996 and 1998, as the COPSOffice process of awarding grantsyielded some of the center stage tocompliance activities, the satisfactionof large local/county agencies withCOPS Office operations declinedsomewhat. The percentage of hiringgrantees describing COPS grants aseasier than others to administer de-clined from 63 to 47 between 1996and 1998. Although nearly 90 percentcontinued to describe their grant advi-sors as helpful, the percentage whofound them “easy to reach” droppedfrom 81 to 74 percent.

COPS application decisions

This section describes who partici-pated in local decisions to apply, whatconsiderations weighed in their deci-sions, and what their future applica-tion plans were as of 1998.

Who participated in agencies’application decisions?Law enforcement agencies’ decisionsto apply for Federal grants are typi-cally a fairly closed process, involvingthe chief law enforcement executive,elected officials or their staffs, and,in␣ larger agencies, the unit that willadminister the grant and the agencygrant manager, if one exists. Yet

many␣ believe that community policinginitiatives are more likely to succeedwith broad and deep participation inplanning throughout the agency.

For COPS applications, agencies’ chiefexecutives were reportedly involved invirtually all decisions and elected offi-cials in more than 80 percent. Accord-ing to the Wave 1 survey, about halfthe agencies brought sergeants into theapplication decisions, nearly 40 per-cent involved patrol officers, and vari-ous segments of the community werebrought into 20 to 45 percent of deci-sions. Less than 25 percent involvedunion representatives. Despite COPSOffice success in simplifying applica-tion procedures, some 40 percent ofapplicants nevertheless involved con-sultants in the application process.

Which agencies becamegrantees, and why?An estimated 19,175 law enforcementagencies were eligible for COPSgrants. This estimate was obtained bymerging law enforcement agency listsmaintained by the Bureau of JusticeStatistics, the FBI’s National CrimeInformation Center, the UCR Section,and the COPS Office. Duplicate re-cords were removed and agencies thatappeared to be ineligible deleted. Ofthese agencies, 10,537 (55 percent)requested and received at least oneCOPS grant by the end of 1997. Ofgrant recipients, 761, or about 7 per-cent, had withdrawn by March 1998.

After the COPS startup period, whenshort application deadlines and relatedlocal logistical problems discouragedsome agencies from applying immedi-ately, financial considerations becamethe primary influence on agencies’decisions not to apply. Financial con-cerns during the grant period—theexplicit 25 percent match requirement

and the implicit match needed to coverannual salary and fringe benefits ex-ceeding $33,333 and collateral costsof an officer, such as training andequipment—were the most commonlymentioned reasons given in 1996 byagencies for their decisions not toapply in 1995. By mid-1998, concernover the cost of retaining the officersafter grant expiration was the primaryinfluence on decisions not to apply,and this concern also led to an esti-mated 40 percent of the agency with-drawals. At that time, the nature of theretention requirement was unclear: theU.S. Department of Justice had notannounced the length of the requiredretention period (one complete budgetcycle after grant expiration), and webelieve the prevailing assumption wasa much longer and more costly period.

Resistance to community policing wasnot a significant deterrent to applyingfor COPS grants. Objections to com-munity policing or to Federal grantsin general were mentioned by only8 percent of respondents. Moreover,88 percent of the largest agencies inour sample that had received LLEBGfunds reported that they were usingthem to support community policingeven though there was no requirementto do so. It appears that by coveringcollateral costs not covered by COPSgrants, the advent of LLEBG may haveencouraged participation in the COPSprogram.

What are agencies’ futureapplication plans?In June–July 1998, the programremained popular among grantees:74␣ percent of local/county granteesstated they were planning to apply forat least one additional COPS grant in1998 or 1999, as were 66 percent ofsmall agencies (jurisdictions of lessthan 50,000), 78 percent of medium-

9


size agencies (50,001–150,000), and89 percent of large agencies (150,001or␣ more). Among the prospectiveapplicants, MORE technology grantswere resoundingly popular: 20 percentplanned to apply for that type only,and an additional 41 percent plannedto request MORE-funded technologyin combination with officer hiring,civilians, or both. The most popularcombination was technology plussworn officers (25 percent of prospec-tive applicants). Six percent plannedto apply for hiring grants only, and3␣ percent for civilians only.

As with prior application decisions,financial considerations strongly influ-ence future intentions. Of the largelocal/county agencies surveyed inWave 3, the local match requirementwas described as “very important” by55 percent of the agencies, restrictionson allowable purposes for which grantfunds could be spent by 48 percent,restrictions on allowable types of re-sources by 43 percent, and uncoveredcollateral costs by 40 percent.

Distribution of COPS funds

This section summarizes the numberand dollar amounts of COPS grantawards and their distribution pattern.

What is the total value of COPSgrants for increasing the␣ level ofpolicing?By the end of 1997, according toCOPS Office records, awards had beenannounced of 18,138 grants worth$3.47 billion. Of those, 754 were forinnovative programs. The remaining17,384 grants were intended to in-crease the level of policing. They car-ried a total of␣ $3.388 billion in awards:about 16 percent under COPS MORE,and 84 percent under hiring grant pro-grams including PHS and COPS Phase

I. These programs, plus FAST, AHEAD,and UHP supported the hiring ofapproximately 41,000 officers. COPSMORE supported the acquisition ofother resources (primarily technologyand civilians) whose productivity wasprojected to yield the FTE of approxi-mately 22,400 additional officers for atleast 3 years, for a total of 63,400 of-ficers and equivalents.

By May 12, 1999, according to COPSOffice press releases, another $1.9billion had been awarded, about 74percent under hiring grants and theremainder under MORE. At a cer-emony that day, the White Houseannounced that the goal of funding100,000 police officers had beenreached. By then, the COPS Officeand␣ its predecessors had awarded anestimated $4.27 billion in hiringgrants and another $1.017 billion inMORE grants, for a total of $5.387 bil-lion, exclusive of innovative programsupport. These funds supported thehiring of 60,900 officers and the ac-quisition of other resources projectedto yield 39,600 FTEs of officer timethrough productivity gains.

How were COPS fundsdistributed?Eligible agencies’ application deci-sions led to significant variation byregion, but regional patterns differeddepending on how they were mea-sured. The Pacific region ranked firstin terms of the percentage of eligibleagencies receiving grants but third interms of COPS dollars awarded percapita and sixth in terms of COPSdollars per crime. The Mid-Atlanticregion ranked eighth in terms ofagency participation but first on boththe per capita and per crime measures.

Of all agencies selected for awards bythe end of 1997, 4 percent served core

city jurisdictions (i.e., central cities ofCensus Bureau Metropolitan Statisti-cal Areas), which are home to 27 per-cent of the U.S. population. Theyreceived 40 percent of COPS dollarawards for all programs combined, and62 percent of all COPS MORE funds.On average nationwide, core cities re-ceived substantially larger awards per10,000 residents ($151,631) than didthe rest of the country ($86,504). How-ever, their average award per 1,000index crimes ($184,980) was less thantwo-thirds the average for the rest ofthe country ($299,963).

Which types of agencies receivedthe most COPS grants?Some 75 percent of hiring and MOREfunds went to municipal or countypolice agencies, 15 percent to sheriffsand State police agencies, and the re-mainder to a variety of special juris-dictions. As required by Title I, dollarsawarded were about evenly split be-tween jurisdictions with populations ofmore than 150,000 and smaller ones.

The growth in awards during 1996 and1997 was driven largely by repeatawards to existing grantees rather thanby first awards to new grantees. By theend of 1997, $1.42 billion, or 47 per-cent of all funds designated for award,had been allocated to agencies withfour or more grants. As a result, thedistribution of COPS funds becameskewed, so that through 1998 the1␣ percent of grantee agencies with thelargest grants had received 41 percentof grant funds.

Did COPS funds go where thecrime was?Awards to repeat grantees helped tofocus cumulative COPS awards onjurisdictions that suffer disproportion-ately from serious crime. Of the 8,062UCR contributors that had received

10


at least one hiring grant by December1997 or one MORE grant by June1998, the 1 percent with the largest1997 murder counts received 31 per-cent of all funds awarded through theend of 1997. They reported 54 percentof all U.S. murders. The 10 percentwith the highest murder counts re-ceived 50␣ percent of total COPSawards. A nearly identical patternoccurred with respect to robbery.

Officer hiring, deployment,and retention planning

After the COPS Office announcedawards, OC reviewed and approvedthe␣ budget and obligated the Federalfunds. Following OC approval and ob-ligation of the funds, the COPS Officemailed a formal award package in-forming grantees of all conditions.Grantees were allowed to draw downfunds only after they had returned asigned acceptance of the award andconditions to the COPS Office. For thehiring grants, in which conditions werefairly standard and most OC reviewissues involved merely calculation ofsalary and fringe benefits, these pro-cesses moved fairly smoothly, eventhrough the Federal budget disputeand Government shutdown in 1995–96. During those years, the meanelapsed time between COPS Officereceipt of the application and mailingthe award package to the grantee was149–154 days for hiring programs, andgrantees who had returned their signedacceptances by mid-1997 did so in anaverage of 70–75 days, for a totalelapsed time of about 224 days.

How did officer hiring anddeployment proceed?Once funds became obligated andavailable to spend, hiring of COPS-funded officers proceeded smoothlythroughout the entire 1996–98

observation period. In 1996, more than95 percent of agencies reported hiringtheir officers within 10–12 months ofaward obligation. As of June 1998, 83 percent of medium and large local/county grantees reported they hadhired all their officers funded throughthe end of 1997. Nearly 70 percent ofthem reported that all of their officershad finished training and begun work-ing in their first regular assignments.All the agencies reported that theyexpected to have 100 percent of theirofficers awarded through 1997 on thestreet by June 2000.

As of the 1996 Wave 1 survey, half ofall small-agency (COPS FAST) grant-ees reported deploying their new offic-ers directly to community policing and38 percent assigned them to “backfill”in routine patrol assignments for moreexperienced officers redeployed tocommunity policing. About 68 percentof medium- and large-agency (COPSAHEAD) grantees reported using thebackfill strategy, which the COPSOffice recommended.

How are COPS-funded officersspending their time?Two of the three prime componentsof␣ community policing articulated bythe COPS Office—partnership build-ing and problem solving—were themost commonly expected uses ofCOPS-funded officers’ time; eachwas␣ mentioned by about 40 percent ofthe medium and large local/countyagencies in the Wave 3 sample. About26 percent of those agencies reportedtheir COPS-funded officers wouldspend substantial amounts of time on“quality of life” policing, a style somebelieve requires strong control by thecommunity if it is not to underminecommunity partnership building. Rou-tine patrol and “squeezing in proactivework” were both mentioned by around

30 percent of agencies. The COPS-funded officers were expected to spendsubstantial time on routine patrolby␣ 40 percent of the agencies withagencywide community policing andby 24 percent of agencies with special-ized community policing units. Some23 percent of the agencies reportedtheir COPS-funded officers wouldspend at least some of their time onundercover and tactical assignments,and 35 percent expected them tospend at least some time on adminis-trative or technical assignments.

As an indirect measure of COPS-funded officers’ activities, we askedhow those activities were affectingother agencies. Among the large local/county grantees, 83 percent reportedgreater demands on code enforcementand sanitation agencies; 83 percent re-ported greater demands on communityorganizations and businesses; and 66percent reported greater demands onagencies that deal with violence in thehome. These impacts are consistentwith direct reports of strong emphasison problem solving and partnershipbuilding, along with referrals of do-mestic violence cases.

How were agencies planning to retain the COPS-fundedofficers as of 1998?Through the 3-year hiring grant peri-ods, 98 percent of respondents re-ported they had either kept theirCOPS-funded officers on staff or re-placed departed officers expeditiously.At the time of the Wave 3 survey in1998, our sample contained few agen-cies with expired grants. Therefore,findings are limited to plans andexpectations regarding retention, notactual retention experience.

The Wave 3 survey was conductedbefore the COPS Office announced the

11


length of grantees’ retention commit-ment: compliance with the retentionrequirement requires keeping grant-funded officer positions filled using lo-cal funds for at least one budget cyclebeyond grant expiration. Despite theuncertainty, approximately 66 percentof Wave 3 respondents reported theywere “certain” their agencies wouldretain the COPS-funded officers whentheir grants expired. Another 24 per-cent indicated they were “almost posi-tive” they would retain the officers;6␣ percent were “pretty sure”; only 4percent stated they were “not sure atall.”

Next, respondents were asked whetherthey agreed or disagreed with a seriesof statements intended to describe inmore detail their expectations abouthow their agencies would retain theCOPS-funded officers. About 95 per-cent reported that the COPS-fundedofficers either were or would be part ofthe agency’s base budget by the timethe grant expired. About 52 percentstated they were uncertain about long-term retention plans. Only 10 percentof the respondents reported that de-spite the “good faith effort” requiredas a grant condition, unforeseen condi-tions were likely to keep their agenciesfrom retaining all of the positions.

Other common responses are difficultto interpret and suggest that despiteextensive COPS Office efforts to edu-cate agencies about the retention re-quirement, the persons authorized tospeak to our interviewers on behalf ofthe agencies may have been uncertainabout what the requirement entailed.About 37 percent reported expectingthat the COPS-funded officers wouldbe retained by “using positions thatopen up” (i.e., through attrition, indi-cating an intention to retain the COPS-funded officers but not the positions).

About 20 percent reported expectingthat the COPS-funded officers wouldbe retained by cutting back positionselsewhere, a plan that would constitutesupplanting under many commonconditions; 5 percent agreed that theCOPS-funded officers were likely to beretained both through attrition and bycutbacks elsewhere. Now that the re-tention requirement has been spelledout in more detail, we are reexamininglong-term retention plans in the Wave4 survey.

MORE awards and projectedproductivity gains

COPS MORE was a pivotal componentof the COPS program. From theadministration’s perspective, MOREwas key because it accounted for 39percent of the 100,000-officer total butonly 19 percent of the COPS budget.From the grantees’ perspective,MORE-funded resources, especiallytechnology, were extremely attractivebecause they promised a variety oflocal benefits without the burden ofpostgrant retention costs that new of-ficers carried. This section describeswhat is being acquired with COPSMORE awards, how implementationof␣ MORE-funded technology andachievement of productivity gains isproceeding, and how MORE-fundedcivilians are being integrated intograntee agencies.

How are COPS MORE fundsbeing allocated and used?COPS MORE has been especiallypopular with large jurisdictions, andawards have been more heavily con-centrated than hiring grant awards inrelatively few agencies. Of the 17agencies serving populations of morethan 1 million, 53 percent had re-ceived at least one COPS MORE grantby the end of 1998, compared with just

5 percent of agencies serving popula-tions less than 25,000. By the end of1997, the 1 percent of grantees withthe largest MORE grants had received48 percent of the $528 million award-ed to that point, compared with 37 per-cent for the largest hiring grantees.The concentration of large MOREgrants was even greater among local/county police agencies, and it in-creased slightly during 1998.

In 1996, the General Accounting Of-fice reported that technology absorbedjust over half of 1995 COPS MOREresources, civilians somewhat less,and overtime less than 10 percent.Overtime was not supported by COPSMORE after that year. By 1998, 38percent of MORE grantees had beenfunded exclusively for technology,another 44 percent for both technologyand civilians, and 5 percent for tech-nology, civilians, and overtime.

What is the relationship betweenCOPS MORE grants and counts ofofficers?To receive a MORE grant, an appli-cant had to produce a credible projec-tion that the funded resources wouldyield at least four FTEs in increasedproductivity per $100,000 of grantfunds—the rate at which FederalCOPS funds supported officer hiring.On average, in a random sample of1995 MORE grant applications, civil-ians were projected to yield 4.54 FTEsper $100,000, largely through replace-ment of officers on a one-for-one basis.Technology projections averaged 6.12FTEs per $100,000

Starting in 1996, the COPS Officebegan converting dollars fromMORE␣ technology grants to projectedFTEs at␣ the four-per-$100,000 mini-mum needed to demonstrate cost-effectiveness—a more conservative

12


assumption than applicants’ projec-tions. The conservative projectionswere used in COPS Office estimates oftotal FTEs funded and were the stan-dard of accountability imposed ongrantees. Even under the conservativeassumption, technology accounts for64 percent of total productivity gainsprojected for COPS MORE.

Implementation of MORE-fundedtechnologyStarting with the budget review andfunding obligation process, COPSMORE technology implementation wasproblematic. Because of the additionalcomplexity of COPS MORE plans andbudgets, Federal processing of appli-cations required at least 4 monthslonger than hiring grants. For 1996applicants, the average time betweenreceiving a MORE application at theCOPS Office and mailing the awardpackage to the grantee was 269 days,compared with 149 days for hiringprograms.

Between October 1995 and April1996, the MORE award process wasstretched out even further by a Federalbudget confrontation. A Governmentshutdown halted OC review of 1995applications in the pipeline. Also, un-certainty over the fiscal 1996 COPSOffice budget delayed award decisionson applications received just beforethe September 30 end of fiscal 1995,which had pushed the total requestsfor fiscal 1995 beyond availableMORE resources. As a result, success-ful 1995 MORE applicants waited anaverage of 16 months between submit-ting their applications and receivingauthority to draw down funds.

What types of technology wereacquired and what redeploymentwas projected? At the time of ourWave 1 survey in 1996, few agencies

had received more than one MOREgrant, and so most local/county MOREtechnology grantees were pursuingonly one type of technology. By far themost common was mobile computers,being implemented by an estimated 60percent of these agencies, followed bymanagement/administrative computers(23 percent) and booking/arraignmenttechnology (10 percent). Some agen-cies were pursuing telephone reportingsystems (2 percent), Computer AidedDispatch (CAD) systems (1 percent),and other technologies such as geo-mapping and reverse 911 systems.

By 1998, many MORE agencies wereimplementing more than one type oftechnology. Therefore, the percentageof agencies implementing each tech-nology type had grown to 79 percentfor mobile computers, to 45 percent formanagement/administrative comput-ers, to 12 percent for CAD systemsand booking/arraignment technology,and to 6 percent for telephone report-ing systems. The 1996–98 changesmake clear that most CAD and tele-phone reporting system projects werebegun more recently than most mobileand management/administrative com-puter projects.

Although automated COPS Officerecords do not allow one to attributeprojected FTEs to specific technolo-gies, it was possible to compute thenumber of FTEs for categories ofMORE technology grantees based ontheir combinations of funded technolo-gies. These computations suggest thatthe mobile computers were projectedto play an important role in increasingproductivity. Of 16,870 projectedFTEs funded through June 1998,34␣ percent were generated by agencieswith mobile computers only, and29␣ percent by agencies with a combi-nation of mobile computers, manage-

ment/administrative computers, andother technologies. Only 24 percentwere projected to come from agencieswithout mobile computers.

The knowledge base from which MOREapplicants could develop their projec-tions of FTEs saved through productiv-ity gains was sparse. For most of thetechnologies, projections clusteredaround 2.4 hours per officer per shift,slightly more than the 2 hours used bythe COPS Office as an example in theMORE application kit.

How rapidly is implementationproceeding? Technology implemen-tation was far from complete as ofsummer 1998, even by agencies whosefirst COPS MORE grant was awardedunder the 1995 program. Amongthose agencies, 61 percent reportedthat management/administrative com-puters were fully operational, as did47 percent for telephone reportingsystems, 45 percent for booking/ar-raignment systems, 44 percent formobile computers, 39 percent for CADsystems, and 65 percent for other tech-nologies. For computing technologies,implementation has proceeded mostrapidly among small agencies: 50 per-cent of agencies serving jurisdictionsof less than 50,000 have all mobilecomputers operational, compared with23 percent of agencies with jurisdic-tions of more than 150,000. For man-agement/administrative computers, the comparable percentages are78 percent and 53 percent.

Some management/administrative andmobile computers were not operationalsimply because they were purchasednot long before the Wave 3 survey.Nevertheless, for two reasons these fig-ures probably understate the adverseeffect of delays in mobile computerimplementation on achievement of

13


projected productivity increases.First, CAD and telephone systemprojects began, on average, undermore recent grants than computerimplementation. Second, the one avail-able time study indicates that any pro-jected mobile computer productivityincreases will be due to wireless fieldreporting, which eliminates trips tostations to write reports—not fromwireless inquiry functions applicableto driver’s license, vehicle registration,and other files. The inquiry capabilityproduces benefits such as improvedofficer safety, elimination of waits forclear voice-radio channels, and pro-tection from scanners but are unlikelyto save measurable officer time thatcan be redeployed to community polic-ing. Yet, to our knowledge, as of June1999, no major police department hasachieved departmentwide implementa-tion of wireless field reporting, al-though three are reportedly in the finalphases of testing. Therefore, all theagencies that reported they had opera-tional mobile computers were referringto inquiry capability, not wireless fieldreporting.

What productivity gains arebeing achieved and reallocatedto community policing?Because of the delays in technologyimplementation, the 1998 Wave 3 sur-vey offers only a fragmentary basis forcomparing actual productivity gainswith those projected in MORE grantapplications. As of June 1998, MOREgrantees from 1995 expected to ach-ieve only about 49 percent of the pro-jected FTEs, but the Wave 3 samplewas not designed to produce a defini-tive national estimate. The estimate ofproductivity gains will be updated in afuture report based on the Wave 4 sur-vey in 2000, when more grantees areexpected to have experience with fullyoperational technology.

What other benefits and costs␣ oftechnology are local agenciesexperiencing?Although prospects for achieving 100percent of the projected productivitygains are not encouraging at this time,agencies report expecting or achievinga variety of other benefits from theirmobile computers, even without wire-less transmission capability. Theseinclude:

● Automated field reporting: morecomplete, accurate, and recentreal-time information and perma-nent records; improved crime/dataanalysis capability; more accurate/complete/timely records; improvedspelling/grammar/legibility; morereport writing; easier retrieval ofinformation; shorter review process;and reduced time for records staff.

● Wireless query and responsefunctions: improved officer safetydue to␣ faster, more secure responsesto queries regarding license plates,vehicle registrations, and persons;secure car-to-car communication;and fewer demands on dispatchers.

● Increased effectiveness: higherclearance and conviction rates dueto improved reports; better recoveryof␣ stolen property; positive responsefrom the community (though somereport adverse reactions from vic-tims and witnesses); more informa-tion sharing across shifts; bettercommunications with neighboringagencies; better tracking of commu-nity events; easier provision of in-formation to the public; and betterpreparation for court.

● Agency benefits: opportunity forstaff to learn computers; officermorale booster (sometimes after abreak-in period); and expectedfinancial savings in the long run.

Agencies also experienced extra costsdue to the new technology. The mostcommon were computer staff time, sys-tem installation time, and time to trainpersonnel in the use of the technolo-gies. Time incurred by computer staffand/or vendors was an especially com-mon expense in agencies with ongoingtechnology projects that MORE-funded technology had to fit. Someagencies that anticipated the costsincluded them in their initial grantbudgets without sacrificing the cost-effectiveness of their MORE programs.Depending on technology type, 23 to27 percent of MORE technology grant-ees implementing the five most com-mon technology categories reportedthat unexpected implementation costsincreased the local cost of their MOREgrants by at least 10 percent over thematch they had originally planned.

Not surprisingly, the likelihood of anagency experiencing unexpected costsincreased as implementation pro-gressed. The percentage reportingunexpected costs rose from 21 percentof agencies with mobile computers notfully implemented to 31 percent ofagencies that had completed imple-mentation. The percentage reportingunexpected costs rose from 22 percentto 29 percent for agencies implement-ing desktop computers, from 26 per-cent to 43 percent for CAD systems,from 3 percent to 60 percent forautomated booking systems, and from12 percent to 32 percent for tele-phone-reporting systems.

Three categories of cost have beenespecially problematic for agenciesfunded for mobile computers, espe-cially those pursuing wireless fieldreporting. These are upgraded tele-communications capacity; integrationof field reporting with existing (ordeveloping) records management

14


systems; and vehicle mounts, whichwere frequently designed from scratch.

Use of MORE-funded civiliansThis section describes the functionsbeing performed by MORE-fundedcivilians, civilian hiring and retention,and deployment of the officers re-placed by the new civilians.

How did hiring, deployment, andretention of civilians proceed?During 1995, the first year of COPSMORE, the program awarded $145million to fund civilians to create6,506 FTEs of sworn officer time.By June 1998, this amount had risento $287.2 million to support 12,975FTEs. At that time, more than 80 per-cent of grantee agencies reported hav-ing completed their civilian hiring,and all expected to complete their ci-vilian hiring by the end of 1999. Sixty-four percent of grantees reported thatall their civilian hires were still onstaff, and 80 percent of the remainderreported that they had replaced allwho had left. An estimated 96 percentreported that the civilians were savingofficer time, and, for the four mostcommon civilian positions, 73 to 80percent of agencies reported that theirnew civilians had been used either tocreate a new position or to increase thetotal number of people in each position.

The MORE civilian program appearsto have provided modest encourage-ment to an ongoing trend towardcivilianization. Approximately 45 per-cent of MORE civilian grant recipientsclaimed to be already in the processof␣ civilianization when they receivedtheir grants. The annual average in-crease in civilians between 1993 and1997 (which span the early COPSyears) was 4 percent, up from 3 per-cent annually over the preceding3␣ years.

What functions are the MORE-funded civilians performing?MORE-funded civilians were hired toincrease resources for community po-licing in four ways:

1. Shedding routine tasks from swornofficers to civilians, such as cleri-cal/administrative positions (e.g.,typing, filing, scheduling duty ros-ters, taking phone messages) andrecord maintenance.

2. Replacing sworn personnel in exist-ing specialist positions, such asdesk/duty officers, dispatchers,telephone reporting unit staff, andevidence technicians.

3. Filling new or existing specialistpositions that are expected to im-prove officer productivity, such ascomputer technicians.

4. Staffing new community policingpositions, such as community coor-dinators/organizers, domestic vio-lence specialists, or CPTED (CrimePrevention Through EnvironmentalDesign) planners.

The most common assignments ofMORE-funded civilians were to cleri-cal/administrative positions (43 per-cent of agencies assigned at least somecivilians to such positions), dispatch-ers (34 percent), and telephone re-sponse unit members (26 percent).

COPS effects on policing levels

The effect of the COPS program onpolicing levels is the total of the twocomponents discussed in the preced-ing sections. The first is sworn officershired through COPS grants and re-tained after the grants expire. The sec-ond is productivity gains, measured inofficer FTEs yielded by MORE-fundedresources. This report contains pre-liminary estimates of both effects,

which should be treated with cautionfor several reasons. First, anticipatingthe Wave 4 survey, we did not designWave 3 to survey a representativesample of small local/county agenciesor, indeed, any samples of other typesof agencies. Second, Wave 3 data werecollected at a time when grantees hadlittle actual experience on which tobase estimates of two key factors in theprojections: the percentage of hiredofficers that will be retained followingthe required period and the actualnumber of FTEs generated from re-sources acquired with COPS MOREgrants. The Wave 4 survey and otherdata will be used to produce updated,more valid, estimates.

With these cautions in mind, we reportestimates of COPS program impactsas␣ of two points in time: the impact,through the end of 1998, of grantsawarded through 1997; and the long-term impact of grants awarded throughMay 12, 1999, the date the WhiteHouse announced that the goal of fund-ing 100,000 officers had been met.

How will COPS hiring grantsaffect the number of lawenforcement officers in theUnited States?Wave 3 survey data were first used toestimate the number of COPS-fundedofficers hired as of June 1998.Through 1997, the COPS Office hadawarded hiring grants for 41,000 offic-ers; survey results indicate that about39,000 of them had been hired. Thedifference reflects grantee delays inaccepting awards, recruiting candi-dates, and hiring officers.

This gross increase is partially offsetby delays in filling vacancies for non-COPS positions, and cross-hiringbetween agencies. Allowing for thesefactors, we estimate that the 41,000

15


officers awarded by the COPS Officeas of the end of 1997 resulted in a na-tional net increase of between 36,300and 37,500 officers by the end of1998.

In the longer term, offsetting factorsinclude certain federally approvedcuts in sworn force size and less-than-complete retention of COPS-fundedpositions beyond the 3-year grant pe-riod. Given the uncertainty surround-ing these factors, a best case scenariowould have grantees retain 91 percentof their new hires indefinitely, and aworst case scenario would result in a64 percent retention rate.

By May 1999, the COPS Office hadawarded agencies approximately60,900 officers through hiring grants.Under the best case scenario, theseawards will produce an estimated peakeffect of 57,200 officers by the year2001 and, after postgrant attrition, thepermanent effect of the grants will sta-bilize at an estimated 55,400 officersby 2003. The minimum retentionscenario, in contrast, suggests that thenet impact of these awards will peak at48,900 officers in 2000 but decline toa permanent level of 39,000 by 2003.

How will COPS MORE grantsaffect the number of FTEofficers␣ redeployed throughincreased productivity?Estimates of time savings from MOREgrants were based on the Wave 3 sur-vey, which contained a representativesample of 1995 municipal and countyMORE grantees. To develop prelimi-nary national estimates, we extrapo-lated the results of these agencies toother types of agencies and later co-horts of MORE grantees.

By the summer of 1998, the COPSOffice had awarded agencies 22,400

FTEs through MORE grants for civil-ians and technology, and surveyresults indicate that grantees hadredeployed 6,400 FTEs with thesegrants. At that time, however, only23 to 78 percent of MORE technologygrantees (depending on agency popu-lation category and type of technology)described some or all components oftheir technology as fully operational.Therefore, grantees were also asked toestimate future productivity increasesthey expected to achieve once allgrants were fully implemented.

Agencies that had progressed the fur-thest in making their technology op-erational projected productivity gainsthat were smaller (60 percent of theoriginal projections) than those ex-pected by MORE grantees as a whole(72 percent of the original projections),suggesting that agencies adjust theirexpected productivity gains downwardas they gain more experience with op-erational technology.

We used those figures to compute bestcase and worst case interim estimatesbut recognize the worst case estimatesare based on only a partial subsamplethat has substantial implementationexperience. This subsample is growingand becoming more representativeover time, and so revisions of esti-mates of MORE-supported productiv-ity increases are planned in 2000using Wave 4 survey data.

Using these assumptions and an esti-mated 3-year timeframe for full imple-mentation by grantees, we estimatethat by the end of 1998, between9,100 and 10,900 officers were rede-ployed from resources funded byMORE grants awarded by the end of1997. If these implementation patternshold for post-1998 MORE grants, the39,600 FTEs awarded as of May 1999

will result in the redeployment ofbetween 23,800 and 28,500 FTEsby 2002.

What will be the combinedeffect␣ of hiring and MOREgrants␣ awarded by May 1999on␣ the level of policing?By May 1999, the COPS Office hadawarded approximately 100,500 offic-ers and officer equivalents throughhiring grants and MORE grants. Ourestimates for the two types of grantsare combined in exhibit 2. Upperbound projections based on June 1998survey estimates of maximum officerretention and maximum officer rede-ployment suggest that these awardswill result in a peak national netincrease of 84,600 officers and equiva-lents by the year 2001, before declin-ing somewhat and stabilizing at apermanent level of 83,900 by 2003.Lower bound projections based on es-timates of minimum officer retentionand minimum officer redeploymentsuggest that the COPS-supported in-crease in the number of officers andFTEs deployed at any point in timewill peak at 69,000 officers in the year2001 and decline to a permanent levelof 62,700 by 2003.

Total COPS-funded FTEs added topolice agencies throughout this periodwill be greater than the number avail-able during any particular year, espe-cially if our lower bound projectionsprove more accurate. In this regard,the COPS program might be comparedwith an “open house” event, in whichthe total number of visitors to theevent is larger than the numberpresent at any given point in time.Using this open house concept, weestimate that COPS awards madethrough May 1999 will result in thetemporary or permanent hiring of60,900 officers and the deployment

16


Exhibit 2. Estimates of COPS Impact on Level of U.S. Policing

Awards Through December 31, 1997 Awards Through May 12, 1999

Officers Hired and Estimated Net HiredFTEs Redeployed or Redeployed

Funded (12/97) Gross (6/98) Net (12/98) Funded ProjectionProgram (1) (2) (3) (4) Year (5)

Hiring 41,000 39,000 36,300–37,500 60,900 High(PHS, COPS 2001 : 57,200Phase I, FAST, 2003+ : 55,400AHEAD, UHP)

Low2000 : 48,9002003+ : 39,000

MORE 22,400† ‡ 6,400 9,100–10,900 39,600 High2002+ : 28,500

Low2002+ : 23,800

Total 63,400 45,400 45,400–48,400 100,500 High2001 : 84,6002003+ : 83,900

Low2001 : 69,0002003+ : 62,700

† Net of 3,600 second- and third-year supplements for retaining civilians, which are included in COPS Office records of 26,000 FTEs funded.

‡ As of June 1998.

+ Indicates “steady rate” projection, e.g., 2003+ indicates “for year 2003 and beyond.”

of between 23,800 and 28,500 FTEs,thereby adding between 84,700 and89,400 FTEs to the Nation’s policeagencies at some point between 1994and 2003, though not all these FTEswill be simultaneously in service atany single point in time.

Whether the program will ever in-crease the number of officers andequivalents to 100,000 on the street ata single point in time is not clear. TheCOPS Office has continued to awardCOPS grants since May 1999. If theagency continues to award hiring andMORE grants in the same proportionsand our upper bound projections arecorrect, roughly 19,000 additional

officers and equivalents awarded couldbe enough to eventually produce anindefinite increase of 100,000 officerson the street. If the lower bound as-sumptions are more accurate, the pro-gram may require an additional 59,000officers and equivalents awarded tocreate a lasting increase of 100,000 of-ficers. More definitive answers to thesequestions will be available followingcompletion of the Wave 4 survey in2000.

COPS and the style ofAmerican policing

The COPS Office listed four principalgoals of community policing: building

police-community partnerships, prob-lem solving, crime prevention, andorganizational support for these pro-grammatic objectives. The evaluationused three approaches to observe howthe COPS program affected law en-forcement agencies’ pursuit of thesegoals. First, at three points in time, thenational survey of agencies measuredagency representatives’ official state-ments about the implementation statusin COPS grantee and nongrantee agen-cies of 47 tactics for pursuing theseobjectives, as well as the role of COPSfunds in grantees’ implementation ofthose tactics. Second, teams of policepractitioners and researchers visited30 sites, many twice, for programmatic

17


site assessments of the “ground truth”underlying agencies’ statements aboutthe tactics in use. Third, to explore theroles of local leadership and COPSresources in facilitating communitypolicing innovations, 10 case studieswere conducted by a Kennedy Schoolof Government team.

Has the COPS programadvanced the adoption ofcommunity policing in theUnited␣ States?The answer is “yes,” but it must bequickly qualified. “Adoption of com-munity policing” has very differentmeanings in different jurisdictions,and COPS funds seem more likely tohave fueled movements that were al-ready accelerating than to have causedthe acceleration.

Between 1995 and 1998, the use of anumber of tactics commonly labeled ascommunity policing swept the countryamong grantees and nongrantees.Among those that reportedly spreadthe fastest were citizen police acad-emies; cooperative truancy programswith schools; structured problemsolving along the lines of SARA(Scanning, Analysis, Response, As-sessment); and patrolling on foot, bike,or other transportation modes that of-fered more potential than patrol carsfor interacting with citizens. Granteesand nongrantees alike reported revis-ing their employee evaluation mea-sures and their mission, vision, andvalues statements to codify their ver-sions of community policing. Packagedprevention programs became almostuniversal by 1998, such as Neighbor-hood Watch and drug resistance edu-cation in schools, which in 1995 werealready among the most widespreadtactics commonly described as com-munity policing.

We have no measure of the extent towhich the COPS program played vari-ous roles that may have indirectly en-couraged nongrantees to adopt thesetactics. Possible mechanisms includedtraining and technical assistanceprograms and materials, publicizinggrantees’ community policing suc-cesses, and acting as a catalyst thatencouraged grantees to demand morecommunity policing training from re-gional and State academies.

The advancement of community polic-ing among nongrantees offers someweak evidence that the COPS programprovided fuel but not the launch padfor the nationwide proliferation ofcommunity policing tactics between1995 and 1998.

With a few exceptions, COPS grantees’reported use of community policingtactics grew more rapidly than didnongrantees’. However, the differencein reported adoption rates was statisti-cally significant for relatively few.They include joint crime preventionprojects with businesses, citizen sur-veys, techniques for bringing thecommunity more fully into problemsolving, and bringing probation offic-ers into problem-solving initiatives.Grantees were␣ significantly morelikely than nongrantees to reportadopting late-night recreation pro-grams and victim assistance programs.Finally, grantees were significantlymore likely than nongrantees toreport instituting three organizationalchanges in support of community po-licing: new dispatch rules to increaseofficers’ time in their beats, new rulesto increase beat officers’ discretion,and revised employee evaluationmeasures.

In this information age, the communitypolicing vocabulary is well known.

Federal funding rewards departmentsthat profess the successful implemen-tation of community policing prin-ciples. In that context, survey findingsthat agencies’ use of community polic-ing tactics grew between 1995 and1998 could merely reflect socially de-sirable responses, at least for COPSgrantees. Our site visits were intendedto learn the ground truth behind thesurvey reports and to shed light on thedifferent meanings that law enforce-ment agencies assign to strategies andtactics that are commonly labeled ascommunity policing. Given the limitedtime on site, one might expect it to bedifficult to separate the rhetoric ofcommunity policing from the realityof␣ what law enforcement agencies ac-tually do. Indeed, it often was. There-fore, the enormous variation detectedacross sites in the operational mean-ings of key community policingconcepts is especially telling.This␣ variation is described next.

How are COPS granteesbuilding partnerships withcommunities?Problem-solving partnerships for coor-dinating the appropriate application ofa variety of resources are common-place in many of the agencies visited.Yet all too often, partnerships are inname only, or simply standard, tempo-rary working arrangements. Partner-ships with other law enforcement unitsand agencies merely to launch short-term crackdowns are not in the spiritof problem solving or partnerships norare partnerships in which citizens andbusiness representatives are merely“involved,” serving primarily as extraeyes and ears as before. True commu-nity partnerships, involving sharingpower and decisionmaking, are rare atthis time, found in only a few of theflagship departments. Other jurisdic-tions have begun to lay foundations for

18


true partnerships, however, and asproblem-solving partnerships matureand evolve, the trust needed for powersharing and joint decisionmaking mayemerge.

How are COPS granteesimplementing problem solving?Certainly, it appeared onsite that themajority of agencies visited are en-gaged in problem solving, although itsform and visibility vary widely fromagency to agency. Some of the stron-gest features of problem solving thatevaluators observed included: the evo-lution of problem solving from “specialoperations” to more complex activitiesthat attack disorder and fear and re-quire police to search for interventionsother than arrest; administrative sys-tems that recognize problem solvingat␣ multiple scales and multiplelevels␣ within the organizations;broadly distributed authority to initiateproblem-solving “projects”; systems toassess the impact of particular projectsand to learn from them; and the abilityof the law enforcement agency to en-gage other government agencies in de-fining and solving communityproblems.

In some jurisdictions, traditional en-forcement and investigative activitiesare called problem solving under thecommunity policing umbrella whenthese activities are directed towardproblems the community has identifiedas concerns. Problem-solving projectsdominated by enforcement actions,however, rarely advance the objectivesof community policing, in that theyare␣ unlikely to either fix underlyingcauses or attract the community sup-port needed to maintain solutions.Therefore, enforcement-based solu-tions to stubborn problems are likelyto be short term, although when suc-

cessful, they sometimes encourageresidents to reenter public spaces andbegin developing more permanentsolutions.

A visible sign of enforcement-basedproblem solving is the recent andgrowing trend toward zero-tolerancepolicing, a term also lacking consen-sual definition. In the sites visited,zero tolerance policies take differentforms. Some are manifested as zerotolerance efforts of short duration (e.g.,operated for a few days each quarter oronce a year) with a narrow focus (e.g.,street drug dealing or public drinkingon the July 4) and within a circum-scribed area (e.g., high-trafficking areaor downtown). In other jurisdictions,zero tolerance is less focused. Whatmight have been called a crackdown5 years ago is now implemented underzero tolerance or order maintenancepolicies and classified as part of com-munity policing.

Zero tolerance policies have beenincluded by some agencies undercommunity policing, since they oftenfocus on quality of life crimes and in-civilities, and primarily because “thecommunity wants it.” Zero tolerancepolicies may help achieve some goalsof community policing within a frame-work that uses community input in set-ting priorities and delegates discretionto officers working under missionstatements that value the dignity ofcitizens, even suspected offenders.However, there are dangers that with-out adequate mechanisms for thediverse communities within most juris-dictions to register their demand for oropposition to zero tolerance tactics,those tactics may directly undercut theobjective of partnership building byalienating potential community part-ners.

How are COPS granteesimplementing crime prevention?Prevention efforts abounded in ob-served sites, primarily manifested astraditional prevention programs nowsubsumed under the communitypolicing label. Neighborhood Watch,D.A.R.E.®, and a wide variety of youthprograms remain the mainstays of pre-vention efforts. Beyond the standard-ized programs, examples were rare ofsystemic prevention efforts based onthe resolution of the underlying causesof crime.

What legacy will remain fromcommunity policing initiativesstimulated or facilitated withCOPS funds?There are shining stars among theCOPS grantees that provide examplesof what most observers would classifyas “the best of community policing.”There are far more agencies striving tochange their organizations to pursuecommunity policing objectives and aresomewhere on the long and tortuousroad. A few want nothing to do with it.

The national survey and site visit re-sults indicate that COPS funding hashelped to accelerate the adoption andbroaden the definition of “communitypolicing.” The effects of this massivesupport for community policing hasboth positive and negative aspects.Certainly, COPS funding has enableda great number of law enforcementagencies to move ahead in their imple-mentation of community policing aslocally defined. Funding conditionedexpressly on community policingimplementation, coupled with peerpressure to embrace this model of po-licing, has also led a substantial num-ber of law enforcement agencies tostretch the definition of communitypolicing to include under its semantic

19


umbrella traditional quick-fix enforce-ment, draconian varieties of zero toler-ance, long-established preventionprograms, and citizen advisory coun-cils that are only advisory.

Our supplemental study of multiplefunding streams in large grantee agen-cies hinted at the power of local deci-sions to determine the course of thecommunity policing movement. Of the100 largest grantee agencies in the na-tional sample, 88 reported using theirLLEBG funds to augment COPS andlocal funding of community policing,despite the absence of any require-ment to do so. However, 82 of the 100agreed or strongly agreed that their“agency has a clear vision and is ableto interpret grant requirements to sup-port that view.”

Given the power of local decision-makers, the COPS program will almostcertainly wind up affecting the natureof policing in three ways. In some ju-risdictions, the forces fueled by COPSgrants will achieve the communitypolicing objectives articulated by theCOPS Office. In others, local forceswill transform the objectives intosomething unrecognizable by forebearsand creators of the program. In stillothers the forces will fizzle out for rea-sons that have to do with leadership,implementation strategies, turnoverat␣ top levels, organizational processeswithin grantee agencies, and commu-nities’ capacities and willingness tojoin the enterprise.

Precisely where each of these out-comes occurs will not be known forsome years. However, change seemsmost likely to be institutionalized andsustained when: planning for changeis␣ broad based; the commitment tochange is rooted throughout the seniorleadership of the agency and the po-

litical leadership of the jurisdiction;changes are organizationwide ratherthan limited to a special unit; organi-zational changes become embodied innew physical plant or technology; thenew programmatic objectives are re-flected in administrative systems (e.g.,for personnel administration or perfor-mance measurement); and the changeredefines the culture of a department,or at least of an entire age or rankcohort within the department.

Measures of success

Readers of an evaluation report areentitled to the clearest possible answerto␣ the question “Did the program suc-ceed?” In the case of COPS, the clarityof the answer depends on the criterionfor success. At least the following suc-cess criteria warrant attention:

● Client satisfaction.

● Effect on the quantity or level ofpolicing in the United States.

● Effect on agencies’ transitions tocommunity policing.

● Effectiveness in stimulatingtechnological and organizationalinnovation.

● Effect on crime.

Client satisfactionIf one considers grantees the clients of a Federal grant program, the COPSOffice one-page application and cus-tomer service orientation largely suc-ceeded with law enforcement agenciesserving small jurisdictions (i.e., thoseserving populations of less than50,000). For many of those agencies,COPS was their first Federal grant ex-perience and they reported high levelsof satisfaction with the applicationand␣ administration processes; smallagencies with prior Federal grant

experience found COPS grants easierthan others to request and administer.Larger agencies tended to find admin-istrative burdens no less burdensomethan other grant programs, but a num-ber of innovative departments com-bined COPS funds with other fundingstreams to support their communitypolicing initiatives.

Simplification had one unfortunateconsequence. By avoiding tediousexplanations, the grant application kitsfailed to resolve ambiguity in two keyadministrative requirements: retentionof COPS-funded officer positions andnonsupplanting of local fiscal effort. Atleast a few jurisdictions failed to applybecause of their overly conservativeinterpretations. Other jurisdictionsadopted more aggressive interpreta-tions. Determining the compliancestatus of some of those required sev-eral years for OIG audits, COPS Officeappeals of audit findings, and inde-pendent mediation to resolve disagree-ments between OIG and the COPSOffice regarding compliance status.

Effect on level of policingOur best estimate at this time is thatby 2003, awards through May 1999will have raised the level of policingon the street by the equivalent of62,700 to 83,900 full-time officers.This estimate contains two elements:39,000–55,400 hired officers (net ofattrition and cross-hiring betweenagencies), and 23,800–28,500 full-time equivalents (FTEs) of officer timecreated by productivity gains due totechnology and civilians acquiredwith COPS MORE funds. To thosewho considered the level of policing in1994 inadequate, this constitutes suc-cess, even though it␣ falls well short ofthe target of “100,000 new cops onthe beat.”

20


Even though we plan to update and re-fine these estimates after the Wave 4survey, the actual increase is unlikelyever to be known precisely, for severalreasons. First, if the optimal number ofpolice officers in a jurisdiction is re-lated to local conditions, such as crimerates or tax receipts, then the bench-mark against which the COPS-fundedincrease is counted should shift whenconditions change. Second, only abouthalf the COPS MORE grantees havesystems in place to measure productiv-ity gains, and because the measure-ment requires before-and-aftercomparisons, it is already too late toput measurement systems in place.Third, even where measurement sys-tems are in place, they are likely tounderstate the productivity gains be-cause some of it occurs in very smallincrements of time, which officers maywell forget to␣ record.

Effect on transitions tocommunity policingIt seems clear that the COPS pro-gram accelerated transitions to locallydefined versions of community polic-ing in at least three ways. First, bystimulating a national conversationabout community policing and provid-ing training and technical assistance,the COPS program made it difficult fora chief executive seeking professionalrecognition to avoid considering adopt-ing some approach that could plausi-bly be labeled “community policing.”Second, the COPS hiring funds and in-novative policing grants allowed chiefexecutives who were so inclined toadd␣ new community policing programswithout immediately cutting backother programs, increasing responsetime, or suffering other adverseconsequences. Third, the COPS funds

created an incentive for agency execu-tives to adopt community policing.

Whether, in accelerating transitions tocommunity policing, the COPS pro-gram distorted or watered down theconcept is difficult to say. Tautologi-cally, more replications of any strategythat encourages tailoring to local con-ditions will stimulate deviations fromone specific definition of that strategy.In addition, two policing strategiesburst onto the national scene duringthe life of COPS but apparently inde-pendently of it: zero tolerance andCOMPSTAT (computer comparisonstatistics), the New York City PoliceDepartment’s system for increasingcommanders’ accountability. Althoughthe obligation of COPS grantees topursue community policing may haveencouraged some police executives todescribe those strategies as “commu-nity policing because the communitywants it,” it seems at least plausiblethat use of those techniques wouldhave proliferated even if there hadbeen no COPS program.

Effects on organizational andtechnological innovationIn agencies whose chief executiveswere inclined toward innovation, theCOPS program facilitated their effortsin several ways. First, the broad se-mantic umbrella offered by the term“community policing” creates latitudefor experimentation with new policingtactics and organizational structures.Second, the application requiredspecification of a community policingstrategy, thereby offering an occasionfor engaging broad segments of theagency and community in planningthat strategy. Third, COPS resourcesallowed departments the opportunity toadd new modes of policing without

drawing resources away from existingpriorities. Fourth, although achievingthe projected productivity increasesfrom MORE-funded mobile computersrequired telecommunications andother technology that was unavailableat the outset of COPS, the MOREfunds fueled a large enough market toattract vendors’ interest and to stimu-late their efforts to satisfy the newdemand. This represented perhaps thelargest effort to bolster developmentof law enforcement technology sincethe recommendations of the 1967President’s Commission on LawEnforcement and␣ Administration ofJustice.

Effects on crimeAs a process evaluation, this study didnot address the question of whetherthe COPS program had an effect oncrime. Indeed, that question could nothave been seriously addressed in theearly years of COPS because “theCOPS program” meant somethingdifferent in each jurisdiction.

However, the adoption of new policingtactics by so many agencies as theyexpanded their sworn forces doespresent an opportunity to investigatewhich tactics (or clusters of tactics)had beneficial effects on crime rates.By statistically relating local crimetrends to the adoption of new tactics,it␣ should be possible to identify prom-ising strategies that were more likelythan not to reduce crime more rapidlythan the national average. Once prom-ising strategies or tactics are identifiedstatistically, semistructured site obser-vations should help to identify thequalitative aspects of implementationthat distinguish effective from ineffec-tive uses of these promising strategies.

21


AcknowledgmentsWe are deeply grateful to our coauthorsof the full evaluation report, who devel-oped so many of the findings that wewere privileged to read, probe, synthe-size, and summarize in this Research inBrief: Stephen J. Gaffigan, Christopher S.Koper, Mark H. Moore, Jan Roehl, CalvinC. Johnson, Gretchen E. Moore, Ruth M.White, Michael E. Buerger, Elizabeth A.Langston, and David Thacher. We arealso deeply indebted to six colleagueswhose findings, insights, databases, oranalyses helped make this study what itis: Catherine Coles, Francis X. Hartmann,Daryl Herrschaft, Edward R. Maguire,Peter Sheingold, and Mary K. Shelley.

In addition, three of those colleagues—Buerger, Langston, and Roehl—ledprogrammatic assessment teams thatgenerated rich reports based on site visitsto 30 COPS grantee agencies. Otherleaders and members of site teamswere Thomas Cowper, Mark Cunniff,Lawrence Fetters, Jack Greene, BlaineLiner, Ray Manus, Michael Maxfield,Edmund McGarrell, Alberto Melis, KevinReeves, William Rehm, Roger Rokicki, andDennis Rosenbaum. We␣ are grateful tothem and to the chief executives andstaff, too numerous to mention here, ofthe 30 agencies that hosted our teams,answered their questions, and reviewedtheir draft reports.

Three more colleagues listed above—Coles, Sheinbaum, and Thacher—alsoserved double duty by writing, underthe direction of Mark Moore and Frank

Hartmann, case studies of organizationalchange in 10 COPS grantee agencies.

We owe thanks to our colleagues at theNational Opinion Research Center (NORC),who conducted three waves of nationalsurveys of law enforcement agencies. CathyHaggerty directed Wave 1; Alma Kuby andLaurie Imhof directed Waves 2 and 3; andPhil Panczuk did the complex programmingneeded for computer-assisted telephoneinterviewing at all three waves. We aregrateful to NORC interviewing teams fortheir per-sistence and accuracy and to the1,724 law enforcement chief executives anddesignees who answered their questions.

At the Urban Institute, John Roman contrib-uted an economic analysis and Mary NorrisSpence capably managed several data col-lection operations. O. Jay Arwood producedthe text, tables, and figures for three com-plete drafts of this report; he displayed cre-ativity, accuracy, and grace under pressurewell beyond the call of duty. He, DianaDandridge, Joyce Sparrow, and NicoleBrewer provided the administrative supportneeded throughout this complex project.

The COPS Office supported us in every waythat an evaluator has a right to expect: pro-viding background information, answeringour questions, providing manual and auto-mated files, and constructively challengingour interim findings as needed. DirectorsJoseph Brann and Thomas Frazier created acordial climate within which others, espe-cially Pam Cammarata, Charlotte Grzebian,Dave Hayeslip, Gil Kerlikowski, Nina Pozgar,Ellen Scrivner, Benjamin Tucker, and Craig

Uchida, arranged or␣ provided whateverassistance we requested.

Joseph Koons extracted and explained theCOPS Office grants management datathat we needed to study grantees.Cynthia Schwimer provided financial datafrom the Office of Justice Program’s Officeof the Comptroller. Weldon Kennedy andBrian Reaves provided datasets from theFederal Bureau of Investigation and theBureau of Justice Statistics, respectively,that we needed to construct the sampleframe for nongrantees.

We are grateful to NIJ not only for the op-portunity to conduct this study but alsofor protecting the study’s independence,providing background information, andediting the report. Providing supportthroughout the entire project were JeremyTravis, former NIJ Director; Sally Hillsmanand Tom Feucht, Director and Deputy Di-rector, respectively, NIJ Office of Researchand Evaluation; and Steve Edwards, Pro-gram Manager. Acting NIJ Director JulieSamuels provided helpful comments andbackground information in the project’sfinal stages. We also wish to thank fouranonymous peer reviewers, courtesy NIJ;their comments greatly improved thereport and we appreciate them.

We hope that all of these contributorsconsider the final report and this summaryworthy of their efforts. Responsibility restswith us for any errors or omissions thatremain despite the valuable assistancereceived.

This and other NIJ publications can be found at and downloaded from the NIJ Web site (http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij).

The address at which Urban Institute publications on the COPS program and other criminal justice issues may be accessed ishttp://www.urban.org/news/focus/focus_crime.html.

22


Findings and conclusions of the research re-ported here are those of the authors and do notnecessarily reflect the official position or poli-cies of the U.S. Department of Justice, and theviews the authors express in this document donot necessarily represent the views of the UrbanInstitute, its trustees, or its funders.

The National Institute of Justice is acomponent of the Office of JusticePrograms, which also includes the Bureauof Justice Assistance, the Bureau of JusticeStatistics, the Office of Juvenile Justice andDelinquency Prevention, and the Office forVictims of Crime.

Quick Access to NIJ Publication News

For news about NIJ’s most recent publications, including solicitations for grant applications,subscribe to JUSTINFO, the bimonthly newsletter sent to you via e-mail. Here’s how:

Or check out the “Publications and Products” section at the NIJ home page: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nijor the “New This Week” section at the Justice Information Center home page:

http://www.ncjrs.org

● Send an e-mail to [email protected]

● Leave the subject line blank● Type subscribe justinfo your name

(e.g., subscribe justinfo Jane Doe) in the body of the message

Jeffrey A. Roth, Ph.D., is Directorof Crime Control Policy Studies atthe Urban Institute, Washington,D.C. Joseph F. Ryan, Ph.D., isChair, Departments of Public Ad-ministration and Criminal Justice,Pace University, White Plains, NewYork. They are co-principal investi-gators of the national evaluationsummarized by this Research in

Brief. The full-length report of theevaluation is available on NIJ’s andUrban Institute’s Web sites. The re-search for this study was supportedby NIJ under a␣ grant (number 95–IJ–CX–0073) awarded to the UrbanInstitute with funds transferred fromthe Office of Community OrientedPolicing Services.

NCJ 183644

23


About the National Institute of JusticeThe National Institute of Justice (NIJ), a component of the Office of Justice Programs, is the research agency of the U.S.Department of Justice. Created by the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, as amended, NIJ is authorizedto support research, evaluation, and demonstration programs; development of technology; and both national and internationalinformation dissemination. Specific mandates of the Act direct NIJ to:

• Sponsor special projects and research and development programs that will improve and strengthen the criminal justicesystem and reduce or prevent crime.

• Conduct national demonstration projects that employ innovative or promising approaches for improving criminal justice.

• Develop new technologies to fight crime and improve criminal justice.

• Evaluate the effectiveness of criminal justice programs and identify programs that promise to be successful ifcontinued or repeated.

• Recommend actions that can be taken by Federal, State, and local governments as well as by private organizations toimprove criminal justice.

• Carry out research on criminal behavior.

• Develop new methods of crime prevention and reduction of crime and delinquency.

In recent years, NIJ has greatly expanded its initiatives, the result of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (the Crime Act), partnerships with other Federal agencies and private foundations, advances in technology, and a newinternational focus. Examples of these new initiatives include:

• Exploring key issues in community policing, violence against women, violence within the family, sentencing reforms,and specialized courts such as drug courts.

• Developing dual-use technologies to support national defense and local law enforcement needs.

• Establishing four regional National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Centers and a Border Research andTechnology Center.

• Strengthening NIJ’s links with the international community through participation in the United Nations network of criminological institutes, the U.N. Criminal Justice Information Network, and the NIJ International Center.

• Improving the online capability of NIJ’s criminal justice information clearinghouse.

• Establishing the ADAM (Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring) program—formerly the Drug Use Forecasting (DUF)program—to increase the number of drug-testing sites and study drug-related crime.

The Institute Director establishes the Institute’s objectives, guided by the priorities of the Office of Justice Programs, theDepartment of Justice, and the needs of the criminal justice field. The Institute actively solicits the views of criminal justiceprofessionals and researchers in the continuing search for answers that inform public policymaking in crime and justice.

To find out more about the National Institute of Justice,please contact:

National Criminal Justice Reference ServiceP.O. Box 6000

Rockville, MD 20849–6000800–851–3420

e-mail: [email protected]

the cops program after 4 years--national evaluation (rib)

Documents