Goal of 100,000 New Cops Questioned

By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN, AP

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Clinton administration is likely to fall 40,000 short of its promise to put 100,000 more state and local cops on the nation's streets by the end of the year 2000, the Justice Department inspector general estimated Monday.   Releasing an audit of the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program, Inspector General Michael Bromwich said program officials have shifted their timeline.

``COPS officials have informed us that their goal is to fund - that is, to have approved grant applications for - 100,000 new officers by the end of fiscal year 2000,'' Bromwich said. ``This is significantly different from having 100,000 new officers ... actually deployed to the streets.'' That goal has been stated publicly by administration officials.

Using COPS office projections, Bromwich estimated 59,765 additional officers will be deployed by the end of 2000.  Attorney General Janet Reno said, ``We have every intention of reaching the president's goal.'' She called the report ``a constructive tool for improving program management in reaching that goal.''

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said the report ``confirms many of Congress' criticisms'' about the program. He also said it should raise questions about whether COPS can handle another $6.375 billion sought by the president to add 50,000 more officers by the end of 2005.

A centerpiece of President Clinton's 1992 campaign, the COPS program was part of a 1994 crime law. It authorized $8.8 billion for grants to state and local police agencies to hire new officers or redeploy old ones into street work with the community.   Mary Lou Leary, the program's acting director, disputed Bromwich's conclusions about whether the ultimate goal will be reached. She said the findings relied heavily on audits of 149 grantees, either referred to him by the COPS program or selected by him because they appeared to have problems.

``The inspector general has no basis for inferring broad conclusions about the COPS program from this high risk pool of pre-selected sites, which represents only approximately 1 percent of the 11,300 COPS grantees,'' Leary said.

Acknowledging the audits may not be representative, Bromwich said they nevertheless raised questions about some COPS figures.  He said grantee audits played no role in these findings: that COPS counted 7,722 officers as funded even though local police agencies had not accepted the $485 million for them, and that the program prematurely counted another 2,526 officers as funded before grantees received award documents.

The dispute has been referred to Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder for resolution. Bromwich and Leary had some points of agreement, however.

Leary said her office accepted recommendations from the inspector general for tightening supervision of grantees. Bromwich said ``the COPS office has taken essential first steps to address identified weaknesses in grant program management and administration.''

The inspector general also noted that by February, COPS had awarded grants to hire or redeploy 92,324 officers at an average cost of $54,256 per officer, well below the anticipated average cost of $75,000 per officer. The cost includes hiring, training, salary and benefits.

If this trend continues, Bromwich said, the program could reach its goal for $5.8 billion - a savings of $1.7 billion from authorized spending.

The grants to hire new officers last three years, but grants to redeploy officers are for one year only and often pay for equipment designed to free officers from desks for street duty.  When the grants end, local police agencies are left to pay for the officers with their money.

Bromwich said redeployment grants are to account for one-third of the 100,000. But he said audits of 67 redeployment grantees found that more than three-quarters ``could not demonstrate they had or would redeploy officers from administrative duties to the streets.''

Bromwich said there is no requirement that 31,091 officers funded early in the program will still be on duty in 2000.  His random survey of 191 grantees found that 96 percent said they would retain the officers, but 70 percent of audited grantees had yet to draft a retention plan. Leary said 96 percent of original grantees requested local funds to retain the officers.

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