Title: The COPS Program After 4 Years National Evaluation.
Series: Research In Brief
Author: Jeffrey A. Roth and Joseph F. Ryan
Published: National Institute of Justice, August 2000
Subject: Law enforcement; Community policing; Problem-oriented policing;
Program evaluation
38 pages
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U.S. Department of Justice
Office of Justice Programs
National Institute of Justice

National Institute of Justice
Julie E. Samuels, Acting Director

Research In Brief
August 2000

-----------------------------

Issues and Findings

Discussed in this Brief: An independent process evaluation of the Community
Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program, whose legislative basis is Title I
of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. Covering
primarily the first 4 years of the COPS program but including some projections
up to 2003, the evaluation, sponsored by NIJ and conducted by the Urban
Institute, is based on a series of nationwide telephone surveys, site visits, and
case studies. The evaluation focuses primarily on COPS grants enabling law
enforcement agencies (1) to hire police officers to engage in community policing
activities, and (2) to redeploy existing officers to community policing by
increasing officer productivity through the acquisition of technology or by
freeing up officers for community policing by filling some officer-held positions
with civilians. 

Key issues: To what extent did the COPS program succeed in putting more
officers on the street and, through its promotion of community policing, change
the practice of policing in the United States? Did the distribution of COPS
mirror the disparity in crime levels among jurisdictions? How satisfied were
grantees with the COPS application and administration processes? Have
grantees engaged in community policing by building partnerships, solving
problems, and doing crime prevention?

Key findings: Among the principal findings of the evaluation are the following:

--By May 1999, 100,500 officers and equivalents had been funded. Of them,
preliminary estimates indicate that between 84,700 and 89,400 will have been
deployed by 2003. Because some officers will have departed before others
begin service, the federally funded increase (based on awards through May
1999) in policing levels will peak in 2001 between 69,000 and 84,600 before
falling to 62,700-83,900 in 2003. These estimates will be revised as data
collected in mid-2000 are analyzed. The COPS Office has continued to award
grants since May 1999.

--The program accelerated transitions to locally defined versions of community
policing. COPS funds seem more likely to have fueled movements toward
adoption of community policing that were already accelerating than to have
caused the acceleration.

--An analysis found that the 1 percent of COPS grantees with the largest 1997
murder counts received 31 percent of all COPS funds awarded through 1997.
The 10 percent of grantees with the highest murder counts received 50 percent
of total COPS awards.

--COPS application procedures and customer service orientation resulted in
many smaller police agencies reporting high levels of satisfaction with the
program's application and administrative processes. Larger agencies tended to 
find administrative requirements no less burdensome than those of other grant
programs. 

--Building partnerships with communities by COPS grantees was commonplace
in many of the agencies visited but, all too often, partnerships were in name only 
or simply standard, temporary working arrangements. Most visited agencies did
some form of problem solving, but form and visibility varied widely from agency
to agency. In observed sites, crime prevention efforts abounded, primarily
manifested as traditional programs now subsumed under the community policing
label.

--The COPS program facilitated the efforts of agency chief executives who
were inclined toward innovation and represented perhaps the largest effort to 
bolster development of law enforcement technology since the 1967 President's
Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice. COPS-funded
technology is benefiting localities but not yet meeting productivity projections.

Target audience: State and local law enforcement agencies, State and local
government administrators, Federal agencies and congressional committees
involved in criminal justice issues, and researchers. 

-----------------------------

The COPS Program After 4 Years--National Evaluation

by Jeffrey A. Roth and Joseph F. Ryan

Nearly $9 billion of the $30 billion of expenditures authorized by the Violent
Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (Crime Act) was allocated
to the law's Title I, the legislative basis of what soon became known as the
Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program. Title I listed four
specific goals intended to change both the level and practice of policing in the
United States:

1. To increase the number of officers deployed in American communities.

2. To foster problem solving and interaction with communities by police 
officers.

3. To encourage innovation in policing.

4. To develop new technologies for assisting officers in reducing crime and its
consequences.

Over a 6-year period, the approximately $9 billion was to fund three primary
approaches to achieving the foregoing goals. The first approach involved the
award of 3-year grants to law enforcement agencies for hiring police officers to
engage in community policing activities. The second was to award grants for
acquiring technology, hiring civilians, and, initially, paying officer overtime--all
with the intent of increasing existing officers' productivity and redeploying their
saved time to community policing. The third approach was to award grants to
agencies for innovative programs with special purposes, such as reducing youth
gun violence and domestic violence.

The hiring grants were limited to 75 percent of each hired officer's salary and
fringe benefits, normally up to a "3-year cap" of $75,000. The grants for other 
resources were not limited by the cap. Normally, grantees were required to
match the grants with at least 25 percent of program costs, to submit
acceptable strategies for implementing community policing in their jurisdictions,
and to retain the COPS-funded officer positions using local funds after the
3-year grants expired. Funds were authorized to reimburse up to $5,000 of
training costs for former military personnel hired under the Act.

Further, the Act required simplified application procedures for jurisdictions 
with populations of less than 50,000 and mandated an equal distribution of
funds between jurisdictions with populations of more than and less than
150,000. As with most Federal grant programs, COPS-funded resources were
required to supplement local expenditures, not supplant or replace them.

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

1. Within a month after the Crime Act was signed into law, COPS Phase I
grants for hiring officers were awarded to agencies that had previously applied
unsuccessfully for grants under the previous Police Hiring Supplement (PHS)
program; together, COPS Phase I and PHS funded nearly 4,700 officers.

2. Also within that month, the Department of Justice created a new agency, the
COPS Office, to administer the new grant program.

3. In November, the COPS Office established two grant programs for hiring
officers: Funding Accelerated for Small Towns (COPS FAST), with simplified
application procedures for small agencies; and Accelerated Hiring, Education,
and Deployment (COPS AHEAD), with more stringent application procedures,
for large agencies. Later, these two programs were succeeded by the Universal
Hiring Program (UHP) for all jurisdictions regardless of size.

4. Within a few months, the COPS Office created the Making Officer
Redeployment Effective (COPS MORE) program to fund technology, civilians,
and overtime (the overtime option was eliminated after fiscal 1995).

5. To process training grants for hired military personnel, the COPS Office
established the Troops to COPS program. 

6. To address local law enforcement needs other than new officers and other
resources, the COPS Office received authorization to administer the existing
Comprehensive Communities Program and created other grant programs to
launch the Police Corps and to help grantees address such specific problems as
domestic violence, youth firearms violence, gangs, methamphetamine, and
school crime. 

7. To encourage and assist the policing field in its transition to community
policing, the COPS Office funded four additional activities: the Community
Policing Consortium to provide training and technical assistance in community
policing; its own Program, Policy Support, and Evaluation Division to conduct
assessments and evaluations of community policing activities; part of the
policing research program of the National Institute of Justice (NIJ); and a
network of Regional Community Policing Institutes (RCPIs), where educators,
law enforcement agencies, and community organizations collaborated in
community policing research, demonstration programs, training, and technical
assistance.

8. To foster compliance with the programmatic requirement to implement
community policing and with all administrative requirements, the COPS Office
undertook an extensive program of information dissemination, training and
technical assistance, telephone contact with grantees, legal reviews and opinion
letters regarding grantees plans, and onsite monitoring by the COPS Office,
working in conjunction with the 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
independent evaluation of the COPS program; NIJ selected the Urban Institute
(UI) to conduct it. In addition, NIJ awarded grants to various organizations to
evaluate several components of the COPS program other than the hiring and
COPS MORE programs. With NIJ's concurrence, the UI team excluded the
innovative programs from its scope to avoid duplicating other evaluators'
efforts. The PHS and COPS Phase I grants were awarded before all
grantmaking innovations were adopted, and the award processes were fully
completed before this evaluation began. Therefore, although UI counted those
program resources in its analyses, it did not single out those programs for
separate program evaluation purposes. Finally, because the RCPIs emerged
well after the evaluation was under way and project resources committed,
observations of their activities were limited to incidental findings onsite rather
than a systematic evaluation.

This Research in Brief presents UI's national evaluation findings covering
roughly the first 4 years of COPS, with primary focus on the COPS FAST,
AHEAD, UHP, and MORE programs. Our work was guided by the logic
model shown in exhibit 1, which outlines the COPS program and its 
intended effects.

The model indicates that COPS program outcomes depend on local decisions
and actions to a greater degree than Federal block grant programs (in which
formulas determine funding allocations) or discretionary programs (in which
Federal officials select grantees based on detailed plans for using the funds).
Starting from the upper left of the exhibit, distribution of COPS resources
depended on eligible agencies' responses to a proposed exchange of Federal
resources in return for local financial and programmatic commitments. The
financial commitments were to share the costs of the resources during the life of
the grant and to retain the COPS-funded officer positions thereafter. Grantees'
programmatic commitments were to police their jurisdictions following
principles of community policing.

As the COPS program was launched, neither the retention nor the community
policing commitment was fully spelled out at the Federal level. The retention
requirement was not precisely defined until 1998. Consistent with community
policing principles, grant applicants were required to define the concept locally
by submitting their own strategies specifying how they would meet four broad
objectives--partnership building, problem solving, prevention, and
organizational support of those objectives--using a plan tailored to local needs,
resources, and context. Awards to applicants with inadequate community
policing strategies were accompanied by a special condition requiring training
and technical assistance by the Community Policing Consortium.

As shown in exhibit 1, successful applicants were to implement three kinds of
organizational transitions. First, recipients of hiring grants had to recruit, hire,
train, and deploy an influx of new police officers. Second, COPS MORE
grantees were obligated to acquire and implement technology, to hire civilians,
or (under 1995 grants only) to manage officers' overtime, thereby permitting the
redeployment of officers or full-time equivalents (FTEs) to community policing.
Third, to accommodate the demands of community policing, most agencies
needed to change their organizations in various ways--an explicit objective of
the COPS program.

As shown in the center of exhibit 1, successful local implementation was 
to include advancement of three programmatic community policing objectives
specified by the COPS Office: problem solving, building partner-ships with the
community, and participating in prevention programs. In turn, grantees'
expanded pursuit of those objectives affects local criminal justice agencies and
other units of local government.

The processes described above are the subjects of this Research in Brief. As a
process evaluation, this study sets aside questions of community impact,
represented in the shaded sector of the exhibit: how police and community
actions stimulated by the COPS program affected levels of community
satisfaction with police, fear of crime, social and physical quality of life, levels of
serious crime, etc. More specifically, this report addresses the seven major
questions noted in the accompanying sidebar (see "Major Questions Addressed
by the National Evaluation" on page 7).

The answers to those questions were shaped by the history of the COPS 
program and its roots in presidential politics, academia, policing practice, and
Federal assistance programs to local law enforcement and criminal justice
agencies. Therefore, before this report addresses those evaluation questions, a
review of the salient aspects of COPS history and roots is appropriate. 

The COPS program and its roots

The COPS program can be viewed as the confluence of two forces. First, the
1992 presidential campaign occurred when public confidence in the ability of
government to control crime was low, fear of crime was high, and resistance to
Federal budget increases was even higher. In such a climate, a program to "put
100,000 officers on the street" made sense, especially if done with a display of
Federal efficiency at minimal cost.

Second, over the preceding two decades, some students and practitioners of
policing had begun to develop ideas that collectively became known as
"community policing." The meaning of the term was fuzzy--as many believe it
should be because its essence involves tailoring program specifics to local
needs and resources. Nevertheless, a consensus was emerging that community
policing had five main ingredients: solving underlying problems that linked
seemingly unrelated incidents of crime and disorder instead of responding to
them one by one; deemphasizing routine patrol and rapid response as primary
crimefighting tools; involving the communities being policed as partners in
identifying problems and planning or even executing responses; preventing
crime through strategies for socializing children and youth and for making
high-crime places safer; and changing organizations to support the other goals.

From the standpoint of many police executives, a program that combined
community policing with additional officers had both positive and negative
aspects. Community policing encouraged police to share crime reduction
responsibilities with other segments of their jurisdictions. Additional resources
are generally seen as useful, but involving other partners in deciding how to use
them can raise sensitive issues. Similarly, while at the time "more technology
and more civilian employees" was hardly a politically viable Federal response to
the Nation's fear and outrage over crime, several prominent police chiefs and
mayors were arguing that those resources would be more useful than additional
officers. 

For several years, beginning in the Bush administration, the U.S. Department of
Justice and other Federal departments had begun to rethink the mechanisms for
distributing Federal financial assistance. Grant programs had begun inching
toward bypassing States to deal directly with local governments, reducing
administrative burdens, and lowering categorical boundaries on how funds
could be used. The difficult question was how to support local priorities in less
constraining ways without giving up all Federal leverage for shaping those 
priorities. Early programmatic steps in this direction included the Bush
administration's Operation Weed and Seed and the Clinton administration's
early Project PACT and Comprehensive Communities Program.

These factors challenged the COPS program with an extremely ambitious goal:
encouraging law enforcement agencies across the Nation to hire 100,000
officers and to adopt community policing as a guiding philosophy--without
raising the Federal budget deficit. These objectives compete, because
burdensome measures taken to monitor compliance with the community
policing requirement could diminish the attractiveness of the grants. Yet failure
to monitor compliance raises the danger that a program intended to increase the
number of agencies doing community policing may reduce the quality of the
community policing they do.

At the urging of several influential police chiefs who placed higher priority on
acquiring technology and hiring civilians than on hiring new officers, the COPS
MORE program was created to support these alternative resources. However,
the statute obligated the COPS Office to require applicants to demonstrate that
the productivity gains associated with these resources would permit the
redeployment of existing officers to the street at least as cost-effectively as
hiring grants. Other benefits of civilians or technology were irrelevant under the
statute. Lacking an experience base for estimating the productivity gains, most
applicants succeeded in projecting that redeployment would occur
cost-effectively. However, achieving the projected redeployment became
contingent on grantees' ability to implement technologies that were sometimes
unfamiliar and, in the case of one key technology--wireless transmission of field
reports--essentially unavailable at the start of the COPS program.

Senior Justice Department officials concluded that demonstrating effectiveness
of the Federal Government in this complex mission required a new organization
doing business in new ways. Therefore, a new Office of Community Oriented
Policing Services was created within weeks after passage of the Crime Act and
quickly became known as the COPS Office. The new agency undertook the
heroic task of staffing up, announcing the COPS program to all eligible grantee
agencies, assuring that applications complied with programmatic requirements,
and making award decisions, all within a few months. 

The COPS Office succeeded in processing more than 10,000 grant awards in
its first 4 months. While the early rounds of that work were completed before
the national evaluation began, the design and implementation of the evaluation
relied heavily on COPS Office manual and automated records. During that
work, evaluators found that grant files typically showed evidence of fairly
thorough eligibility and programmatic review. The high accuracy levels of
COPS Office records greatly facilitated our work. 

COPS grants were not exempt from standard Department of Justice budget
review and administrative requirements, which are administered by the OC. For
the relatively simple hiring grants, the combined COPS Office/OC process
required about 7 months on average from application submission to signed
acceptance of those awards. During startup, the COPS Office attempted to
reduce this delay with an "accelerated" procedure that permitted agencies to
hire officers after receiving an announcement letter but before formal obligation
of grant awards; 50 percent of AHEAD grantees and 35 percent of FAST
grantees reported using this procedure. In some jurisdictions, local rules
prevented agencies from hiring new officers before the official award. 

Formal review and approval of the more complex COPS MORE grants 
required an average of 11 months, even under normal circumstances. For many
grantees, this delay was prolonged between October 1995 and April 1996
while a Federal budget dispute shut down OC grant reviews and left the COPS
budget in doubt. Consequently, an average of 16 months elapsed for 1995
MORE applicants between application submission and signed acceptance of
the awards.

During debates over the 1994 Crime Act, a Local Law Enforcement Block
Grant (LLEBG) program had been proposed unsuccessfully by Republicans as
an alternative to the COPS program. After the 1994 elections, the LLEBG
initiative resurfaced and COPS program authorizations were reduced by about
$500 million in the fiscal 1996 and subsequent budgets, with the $500 million
reprogrammed to LLEBG. This reprogramming raised concerns that LLEBG,
with its lower match requirement of only 10 percent and fewer restrictions on
how funds could be spent, would reduce localities' interest in COPS grants.

Despite these difficulties, the COPS Office "customer satisfaction" orientation
succeeded at the outset with small agencies (i.e., those serving jurisdictions of
less than 50,000). Among small-agency Wave 1 survey respondents with prior
Federal grant experience, nearly 80 percent described COPS application and
administration as simpler than others, as of 1996. This compared with 40-50
percent among large agencies, which faced more elaborate application
requirements, especially among MORE grantees, who had suffered the most
consequences of the Federal budget confrontation and whose applications
required more elaborate review.

As startup difficulties were surmounted, the COPS Office shifted its focus to
program operations, which were intended to encourage implementation of
community policing and new technology and to foster compliance with
administrative regulations. The office expanded the Community Policing
Consortium, which the Bureau of Justice Assistance had created in 1993 to
advance community policing, and created Innovative Community Oriented
Policing programs. Some of those programs were intended to develop
innovative approaches to such problems as gangs, domestic violence, and
methamphetamine. Others were intended to advance community policing in
special environments, such as schools and distressed neighborhoods, to
advance problem-solving skills, and to advance community policing through
supportive organizational innovations. Finally, the COPS-funded RCPIs
brought academic, practitioner, and community perspectives to bear on training
and local innovation for community policing.

To foster compliance with administrative regulations, five units were involved.
The COPS Office Legal Division defined compliance by interpreting Title I,
writing regulations, and applying them to specific local circumstances. The
Grants Division informed the field about requirements, reviewed applications for
compliance, and assigned grant advisors to maintain regular telephone contact.
The Monitoring Division monitored compliance through site visits to 432
grantees in 1998, with a planned expansion to 900 in 1999. The OC
established a separate branch to monitor compliance with financial and
administrative requirements and to monitor the adequacy of grantees'
accounting and administrative controls. The Office of the Inspector General
(OIG) audited COPS grantees onsite in search of possible violations of the Title
I statute.

Between 1996 and 1998, as the COPS Office process of awarding grants
yielded some of the center stage to compliance activities, the satisfaction of
large local/county agencies with COPS Office operations declined somewhat.
The percentage of hiring grantees describing COPS grants as easier than others
to administer declined from 63 to 47 between 1996 and 1998. Although nearly
90 percent continued to describe their grant advisors as helpful, the percentage
who found them "easy to reach" dropped from 81 to 74 percent.

COPS application decisions 

This section describes who participated in local decisions to apply, what
considerations weighed in their decisions, and what their future application plans
were as of 1998.

Who participated in agencies' application decisions?

Law enforcement agencies' decisions to apply for Federal grants are typically a
fairly closed process, involving the chief law enforcement executive, elected
officials or their staffs, and, in larger agencies, the unit that will administer the
grant and the agency grant manager, if one exists. Yet many believe that
community policing initiatives are more likely to succeed with broad and deep
participation in planning throughout the agency. 

For COPS applications, agencies' chief executives were reportedly involved in
virtually all decisions and elected officials in more than 80 percent. According to
the Wave 1 survey, about half the agencies brought sergeants into the
application decisions, nearly 40 percent involved patrol officers, and various
segments of the community were brought into 20 to 45 percent of decisions.
Less than 25 percent involved union representatives. Despite COPS Office
success in simplifying application procedures, some 40 percent of applicants
nevertheless involved consultants in the application process.

Which agencies became grantees, and why?

An estimated 19,175 law enforcement agencies were eligible for COPS grants.
This estimate was obtained by merging law enforcement agency lists maintained
by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the FBI's National Crime Information
Center, the UCR Section, and the COPS Office. Duplicate records were
removed and agencies that appeared to be ineligible deleted. Of these agencies,
10,537 (55 percent) requested and received at least one COPS grant by the
end of 1997. Of grant recipients, 761, or about 7 percent, had withdrawn by
March 1998.

After the COPS startup period, when short application deadlines and related
local logistical problems discouraged some agencies from applying immediately,
financial considerations became the primary influence on agencies' decisions not
to apply. Financial concerns during the grant period--the explicit 25 percent
match requirement and the implicit match needed to cover annual salary and
fringe benefits exceeding $33,333 and collateral costs of an officer, such as
training and equipment--were the most commonly mentioned reasons given in
1996 by agencies for their decisions not to apply in 1995. By mid-1998,
concern over the cost of retaining the officers after grant expiration was the
primary influence on decisions not to apply, and this concern also led to an
estimated 40 percent of the agency withdrawals. At that time, the nature of the
retention requirement was unclear: the U.S. Department of Justice had not 
announced the length of the required retention period (one complete budget
cycle after grant expiration), and we believe the prevailing assumption was a
much longer and more costly period. 

Resistance to community policing was not a significant deterrent to applying for
COPS grants. Objections to community policing or to Federal grants 
in general were mentioned by only 8 percent of respondents. Moreover, 88
percent of the largest agencies in our sample that had received LLEBG funds
reported that they were using them to support community policing even though
there was no requirement to do so. It appears that by covering collateral costs
not covered by COPS grants, the advent of LLEBG may have encouraged
participation in the COPS program.

What are agencies' future application plans?

In June-July 1998, the program remained popular among grantees: 74 percent
of local/county grantees stated they were planning to apply for at least one
additional COPS grant in 1998 or 1999, as were 66 percent of small agencies
(jurisdictions of less than 50,000), 78 percent of medium-size agencies
(50,001-150,000), and 89 percent of large agencies (150,001 or more).
Among the prospective applicants, MORE technology grants were
resoundingly popular: 20 percent planned to apply for that type only, and an
additional 41 percent planned to request MORE-funded technology in
combination with officer hiring, civilians, or both. The most popular combination
was technology plus sworn officers (25 percent of prospective applicants). Six
percent planned to apply for hiring grants only, and 3 percent for civilians only.

As with prior application decisions, financial considerations strongly influence
future intentions. Of the large local/county agencies surveyed in Wave 3, the
local match requirement was described as "very important" by 55 percent of the
agencies, restrictions on allowable purposes for which grant funds could be
spent by 48 percent, restrictions on allowable types of resources by 43
percent, and uncovered collateral costs by 40 percent.

Distribution of COPS funds 

This section summarizes the number and dollar amounts of COPS grant awards
and their distribution pattern.

What is the total value of COPS grants for increasing the level of policing?

By the end of 1997, according to COPS Office records, awards had been
announced of 18,138 grants worth $3.47 billion. Of those, 754 were for
innovative programs. The remaining 17,384 grants were intended to increase
the level of policing. They carried a total of $3.388 billion in awards: about 16
percent under COPS MORE, and 84 percent under hiring grant programs
including PHS and COPS Phase I. These programs, plus FAST, AHEAD, and
UHP supported the hiring of approximately 41,000 officers. COPS MORE
supported the acquisition of other resources (primarily technology and civilians)
whose productivity was projected to yield the FTE of approximately 22,400
additional officers for at least 3 years, for a total of 63,400 officers and
equivalents.

By May 12, 1999, according to COPS Office press releases, another $1.9
billion had been awarded, about 74 percent under hiring grants and the
remainder under MORE. At a ceremony that day, the White House 
announced that the goal of funding 100,000 police officers had been reached.
By then, the COPS Office and its predecessors had awarded an estimated
$4.27 billion in hiring grants and another $1.017 billion in MORE grants, for a
total of $5.387 billion, exclusive of innovative program support. These funds
supported the hiring of 60,900 officers and the acquisition of other resources
projected to yield 39,600 FTEs of officer time through productivity gains.

How were COPS funds distributed?

Eligible agencies' application decisions led to significant variation by region, but
regional patterns differed depending on how they were measured. The Pacific
region ranked first in terms of the percentage of eligible agencies receiving
grants but third in terms of COPS dollars awarded per capita and sixth in terms
of COPS dollars per crime. The Mid-Atlantic region ranked eighth in terms of
agency participation but first on both the per capita and per crime measures.

Of all agencies selected for awards by the end of 1997, 4 percent served core
city jurisdictions (i.e., central cities of Census Bureau Metropolitan Statistical
Areas), which are home to 27 percent of the U.S. population. They received
40 percent of COPS dollar awards for all programs combined, and 62 percent
of all COPS MORE funds. On average nationwide, core cities received
substantially larger awards per 10,000 residents ($151,631) than did the rest of
the country ($86,504). However, their average award per 1,000 index crimes
($184,980) was less than two-thirds the average for the rest of the country
($299,963).

Which types of agencies received the most COPS grants? 

Some 75 percent of hiring and MORE funds went to municipal or county police
agencies, 15 percent to sheriffs and State police agencies, and the remainder to
a variety of special jurisdictions. As required by Title I, dollars awarded were
about evenly split between jurisdictions with populations of more than 150,000
and smaller ones.

The growth in awards during 1996 and 1997 was driven largely by repeat
awards to existing grantees rather than by first awards to new grantees. By the
end of 1997, $1.42 billion, or 47 percent of all funds designated for award, had
been allocated to agencies with four or more grants. As a result, the distribution
of COPS funds became skewed, so that through 1998 the 1 percent of grantee
agencies with the largest grants had received 41 percent of grant funds. 

Did COPS funds go where the crime was?

Awards to repeat grantees helped to focus cumulative COPS awards on 
jurisdictions that suffer disproportionately from serious crime. Of the 8,062
UCR contributors that had received at least one hiring grant by December
1997 or one MORE grant by June 1998, the 1 percent with the largest 1997
murder counts received 31 percent of all funds awarded through the end of
1997. They reported 54 percent of all U.S. murders. The 10 percent with the
highest murder counts received 50 percent of total COPS awards. A nearly
identical pattern occurred with respect to robbery. 

Officer hiring, deployment, and retention planning

After the COPS Office announced awards, OC reviewed and approved the
budget and obligated the Federal funds. Following OC approval and obligation
of the funds, the COPS Office mailed a formal award package informing
grantees of all conditions. Grantees were allowed to draw down funds only
after they had returned a signed acceptance of the award and conditions to the
COPS Office. For the hiring grants, in which conditions were fairly standard
and most OC review issues involved merely calculation of salary and fringe
benefits, these processes moved fairly smoothly, even through the Federal
budget dispute and Government shutdown in 1995-96. During those years, the
mean elapsed time between COPS Office receipt of the application and mailing
the award package to the grantee was 149-154 days for hiring programs, and
grantees who had returned their signed acceptances by mid-1997 did so in an
average of 70-75 days, for a total elapsed time of about 224 days.

How did officer hiring and deployment proceed?

Once funds became obligated and available to spend, hiring of COPS-funded
officers proceeded smoothly throughout the entire 1996-98 observation period.
In 1996, more than 95 percent of agencies reported hiring their officers within
10-12 months of award obligation. As of June 1998, 83 percent of medium
and large local/county grantees reported they had hired all their officers funded
through the end of 1997. Nearly 70 percent of them reported that all of their
officers had finished training and begun working in their first regular
assignments. All the agencies reported that they expected to have 100 percent
of their officers awarded through 1997 on the street by June 2000. 

As of the 1996 Wave 1 survey, half of all small-agency (COPS FAST)
grantees reported deploying their new officers directly to community policing
and 38 percent assigned them to "backfill" in routine patrol assignments for
more experienced officers redeployed to community policing. About 68 percent
of medium- and large-agency (COPS AHEAD) grantees reported using the
backfill strategy, which the COPS Office recommended.

How are COPS-funded officers spending their time?

Two of the three prime components of community policing articulated by the
COPS Office--partnership building and problem solving--were the most
commonly expected uses of COPS-funded officers' time; each was mentioned
by about 40 percent of the medium and large local/county agencies in the Wave
3 sample. About 26 percent of those agencies reported their COPS-funded
officers would spend substantial amounts of time on "quality of life" policing, a
style some believe requires strong control by the community if it is not to
undermine community partnership building. Routine patrol and "squeezing in
proactive work" were both mentioned by around 30 percent of agencies. The
COPS-funded officers were expected to spend substantial time on routine
patrol by 40 percent of the agencies with agencywide community policing and
by 24 percent of agencies with specialized community policing units. Some 23
percent of the agencies reported their COPS-funded officers would spend at
least some of their time on undercover and tactical assignments, and 35 percent
expected them to spend at least some time on administrative or technical
assignments.

As an indirect measure of COPS-funded officers' activities, we asked how
those activities were affecting other agencies. Among the large local/county
grantees, 83 percent reported greater demands on code enforcement and
sanitation agencies; 83 percent reported greater demands on community
organizations and businesses; and 66 percent reported greater demands on
agencies that deal with violence in the home. These impacts are consistent with
direct reports of strong emphasis on problem solving and partnership building,
along with referrals of domestic violence cases. 

How were agencies planning to retain the COPS-funded officers as of 1998?

Through the 3-year hiring grant periods, 98 percent of respondents reported
they had either kept their COPS-funded officers on staff or replaced departed
officers expeditiously. At the time of the Wave 3 survey in 1998, our sample
contained few agencies with expired grants. Therefore, findings are limited to
plans and expectations regarding retention, not actual retention experience. 

The Wave 3 survey was conducted before the COPS Office announced the
length of grantees' retention commitment: compliance with the retention
requirement requires keeping grant-funded officer positions filled using local
funds for at least one budget cycle beyond grant expiration. Despite the
uncertainty, approximately 66 percent of Wave 3 respondents reported they
were "certain" their agencies would retain the COPS-funded officers when their
grants expired. Another 24 percent indicated they were "almost positive" they
would retain the officers; 6 percent were "pretty sure"; only 4 percent stated
they were "not sure at all."

Next, respondents were asked whether they agreed or disagreed with a series
of statements intended to describe in more detail their expectations about how
their agencies would retain the COPS-funded officers. About 95 percent
reported that the COPS-funded officers either were or would be part of the
agency's base budget by the time the grant expired. About 52 percent stated
they were uncertain about long-term retention plans. Only 10 percent of the
respondents reported that despite the "good faith effort" required as a grant
condition, unforeseen conditions were likely to keep their agencies from
retaining all of the positions.

Other common responses are difficult to interpret and suggest that despite
extensive COPS Office efforts to educate agencies about the retention
requirement, the persons authorized to speak to our interviewers on behalf of
the agencies may have been uncertain about what the requirement entailed.
About 37 percent reported expecting that the COPS-funded officers would be
retained by "using positions that open up" (i.e., through attrition, indicating an
intention to retain the COPS-funded officers but not the positions). About 20
percent reported expecting that the COPS-funded officers would be retained
by cutting back positions elsewhere, a plan that would constitute supplanting
under many common conditions; 5 percent agreed that the COPS-funded
officers were likely to be retained both through attrition and by cutbacks
elsewhere. Now that the retention requirement has been spelled out in more
detail, we are reexamining long-term retention plans in the Wave 4 survey.

MORE awards and projected productivity gains

COPS MORE was a pivotal component of the COPS program. From the
administration's perspective, MORE was key because it accounted for 39
percent of the 100,000-officer total but only 19 percent of the COPS budget.
From the grantees' perspective, MORE-funded resources, especially
technology, were extremely attractive because they promised a variety of local
benefits without the burden of postgrant retention costs that new officers
carried. This section describes what is being acquired with COPS MORE
awards, how implementation of MORE-funded technology and achievement of
productivity gains is proceeding, and how MORE-funded civilians are being
integrated into grantee agencies.

How are COPS MORE funds being allocated and used?

COPS MORE has been especially popular with large jurisdictions, and awards
have been more heavily concentrated than hiring grant awards in relatively few
agencies. Of the 17 agencies serving populations of more than 1 million, 53
percent had received at least one COPS MORE grant by the end of 1998,
compared with just 5 percent of agencies serving populations less than 25,000.
By the end of 1997, the 1 percent of grantees with the largest MORE grants
had received 48 percent of the $528 million awarded to that point, compared
with 37 percent for the largest hiring grantees. The concentration of large
MORE grants was even greater among local/county police agencies, and it
increased slightly during 1998.

In 1996, the General Accounting Office reported that technology absorbed just
over half of 1995 COPS MORE resources, civilians somewhat less, and
overtime less than 10 percent. Overtime was not supported by COPS MORE
after that year. By 1998, 38 percent of MORE grantees had been funded
exclusively for technology, another 44 percent for both technology and civilians,
and 5 percent for technology, civilians, and overtime.

What is the relationship between COPS MORE grants and counts of officers?

To receive a MORE grant, an applicant had to produce a credible projection
that the funded resources would yield at least four FTEs in increased
productivity per $100,000 of grant funds--the rate at which Federal COPS
funds supported officer hiring. On average, in a random sample of 1995
MORE grant applications, civilians were projected to yield 4.54 FTEs per
$100,000, largely through replacement of officers on a one-for-one basis.
Technology projections averaged 6.12 FTEs per $100,000

Starting in 1996, the COPS Office began converting dollars from MORE
technology grants to projected FTEs at the four-per-$100,000 minimum needed
to demonstrate cost-effectiveness--a more conservative assumption than
applicants' projections. The conservative projections were used in COPS Office
estimates of total FTEs funded and were the standard of accountability imposed
on grantees. Even under the conservative assumption, technology accounts for
64 percent of total productivity gains projected for COPS MORE.

Implementation of MORE-funded technology

Starting with the budget review and funding obligation process, COPS MORE
technology implementation was problematic. Because of the additional
complexity of COPS MORE plans and budgets, Federal processing of
applications required at least 4 months longer than hiring grants. For 1996 
applicants, the average time between receiving a MORE application at the
COPS Office and mailing the award package to the grantee was 269 days,
compared with 149 days for hiring programs.

Between October 1995 and April 1996, the MORE award process was
stretched out even further by a Federal budget confrontation. A Government
shutdown halted OC review of 1995 applications in the pipeline. Also,
uncertainty over the fiscal 1996 COPS Office budget delayed award decisions
on applications received just before the September 30 end of fiscal 1995,
which had pushed the total requests for fiscal 1995 beyond available MORE
resources. As a result, successful 1995 MORE applicants waited an average of
16 months between submitting their applications and receiving authority to draw
down funds.

What types of technology were acquired and what redeployment was
projected? At the time of our Wave 1 survey in 1996, few agencies had
received more than one MORE grant, and so most local/county MORE
technology grantees were pursuing only one type of technology. By far the most
common was mobile computers, being implemented by an estimated 60 percent
of these agencies, followed by management/administrative computers (23
percent) and booking/arraignment technology (10 percent). Some agencies
were pursuing telephone reporting systems (2 percent), Computer Aided
Dispatch (CAD) systems (1 percent), and other technologies such as
geo-mapping and reverse 911 systems.

By 1998, many MORE agencies were implementing more than one type of
technology. Therefore, the percentage of agencies implementing each
technology type had grown to 79 percent for mobile computers, to 45 percent
for management/administrative computers, to 12 percent for CAD systems and
booking/arraignment technology, and to 6 percent for telephone reporting
systems. The 1996-98 changes make clear that most CAD and telephone
reporting system projects were begun more recently than most mobile and
management/administrative computer projects.

Although automated COPS Office records do not allow one to attribute
projected FTEs to specific technologies, it was possible to compute the number
of FTEs for categories of MORE technology grantees based on their
combinations of funded technologies. These computations suggest that the
mobile computers were projected to play an important role in increasing
productivity. Of 16,870 projected FTEs funded through June 1998, 34 percent
were generated by agencies with mobile computers only, and 29 percent by
agencies with a combination of mobile computers, management/administrative
computers, and other technologies. Only 24 percent were projected to come
from agencies without mobile computers.

The knowledge base from which MORE applicants could develop their
projections of FTEs saved through productivity gains was sparse. For most of
the technologies, projections clustered around 2.4 hours per officer per shift,
slightly more than the 2 hours used by the COPS Office as an example in the
MORE application kit.

How rapidly is implementation proceeding? Technology implementation was far
from complete as of summer 1998, even by agencies whose first COPS
MORE grant was awarded under the 1995 program. Among those agencies, 61
percent reported that management/administrative computers were fully
operational, as did 47 percent for telephone reporting systems, 45 percent for
booking/arraignment systems, 44 percent for mobile computers, 39 percent for
CAD systems, and 65 percent for other technologies. For computing
technologies, implementation has proceeded most rapidly among small agencies:
50 percent of agencies serving jurisdictions of less than 50,000 have all mobile
computers operational, compared with 23 percent of agencies with jurisdictions
of more than 150,000. For management/administrative computers, the
comparable percentages are 78 percent and 53 percent.

Some management/administrative and mobile computers were not operational
simply because they were purchased not long before the Wave 3 survey.
Nevertheless, for two reasons these figures probably understate the adverse
effect of delays in mobile computer implementation on achievement of
projected productivity increases. First, CAD and telephone system projects
began, on average, under more recent grants than computer implementation.
Second, the one available time study indicates that any projected mobile
computer productivity increases will be due to wireless field reporting, which
eliminates trips to stations to write reports--not from wireless inquiry functions
applicable to driver's license, vehicle registration, and other files. The inquiry
capability produces benefits such as improved officer safety, elimination of waits
for clear voice-radio channels, and protection from scanners but are unlikely to
save measurable officer time that can be redeployed to community policing. Yet,
to our knowledge, as of June 1999, no major police department has achieved
departmentwide implementation of wireless field reporting, although three are
reportedly in the final phases of testing. Therefore, all the agencies that reported
they had operational mobile computers were referring to inquiry capability, not
wireless field reporting.

What productivity gains are being achieved and reallocated to community
policing?

Because of the delays in technology implementation, the 1998 Wave 3 survey
offers only a fragmentary basis for comparing actual productivity gains with
those projected in MORE grant applications. As of June 1998, MORE
grantees from 1995 expected to achieve only about 49 percent of the
projected FTEs, but the Wave 3 sample was not designed to produce a defini-
tive national estimate. The estimate of productivity gains will be updated in a
future report based on the Wave 4 survey in 2000, when more grantees are
expected to have experience with fully operational technology.

What other benefits and costs of technology are local agencies experiencing? 

Although prospects for achieving 100 percent of the projected productivity
gains are not encouraging at this time, agencies report expecting or achieving a
variety of other benefits from their mobile computers, even without wireless
transmission capability. These include:

--Automated field reporting: more complete, accurate, and recent 
real-time information and permanent records; improved crime/data analysis
capability; more accurate/complete/timely records; improved
spelling/grammar/legibility; more report writing; easier retrieval of 
information; shorter review process; and reduced time for records staff.

--Wireless query and response functions: improved officer safety due to faster,
more secure responses to queries regarding license plates, vehicle registrations,
and persons; secure car-to-car communication; and fewer demands on
dispatchers.

--Increased effectiveness: higher clearance and conviction rates due to
improved reports; better recovery of stolen property; positive response from
the community (though some report adverse reactions from victims and
witnesses); more information sharing across shifts; better communications with
neighboring agencies; better tracking of community events; easier provision of
information to the public; and better preparation for court.

--Agency benefits: opportunity for staff to learn computers; officer morale
booster (sometimes after a break-in period); and expected financial savings in
the long run.

Agencies also experienced extra costs due to the new technology. The most
common were computer staff time, system installation time, and time to train
personnel in the use of the technologies. Time incurred by computer staff and/or
vendors was an especially common expense in agencies with ongoing
technology projects that MORE-funded technology had to fit. Some agencies
that anticipated the costs included them in their initial grant budgets without
sacrificing the cost-effectiveness of their MORE programs. Depending on
technology type, 23 to 27 percent of MORE technology grantees implementing
the five most common technology categories reported that unexpected
implementation costs increased the local cost of their MORE grants by at least
10 percent over the match they had originally planned.

Not surprisingly, the likelihood of an agency experiencing unexpected costs
increased as implementation progressed. The percentage reporting 
unexpected costs rose from 21 percent of agencies with mobile computers not
fully implemented to 31 percent of agencies that had completed implementation.
The percentage reporting unexpected costs rose from 22 percent to 29 percent
for agencies implementing desktop computers, from 26 percent to 43 percent
for CAD systems, from 3 percent to 60 percent for automated booking systems,
and from 12 percent to 32 percent for telephone-reporting systems.

Three categories of cost have been especially problematic for agencies funded
for mobile computers, especially those pursuing wireless field reporting. These
are upgraded telecommunications capacity; integration of field reporting with
existing (or developing) records management systems; and vehicle mounts,
which were frequently designed from scratch.

Use of MORE-funded civilians This section describes the functions being
performed by MORE-funded civilians, civilian hiring and retention, and
deployment of the officers replaced by the new civilians.

How did hiring, deployment, and retention of civilians proceed? During 1995,
the first year of COPS MORE, the program awarded $145 million to fund
civilians to create 6,506 FTEs of sworn officer time. By June 1998, this amount
had risen to $287.2 million to support 12,975 FTEs. At that time, more than 80
percent of grantee agencies reported having completed their civilian hiring, and
all expected to complete their civilian hiring by the end of 1999. Sixty-four
percent of grantees reported that all their civilian hires were still on staff, and 80
percent of the remainder reported that they had replaced all who had left. An
estimated 96 percent reported that the civilians were saving officer time, and, for
the four most common civilian positions, 73 to 80 percent of agencies reported
that their new civilians had been used either to create a new position or to
increase the total number of people in each position.

The MORE civilian program appears to have provided modest encouragement
to an ongoing trend toward civilianization. Approximately 45 percent of MORE
civilian grant recipients claimed to be already in the process of civilianization
when they received their grants. The annual average increase in civilians
between 1993 and 1997 (which span the early COPS years) was 4 percent, up
from 3 percent annually over the preceding 3 years.

What functions are the MORE-funded civilians performing? MORE-funded
civilians were hired to increase resources for community policing in four ways:

1. Shedding routine tasks from sworn officers to civilians, such as
clerical/administrative positions (e.g., typing, filing, scheduling duty rosters,
taking phone messages) and record maintenance.

2. Replacing sworn personnel in existing specialist positions, such as desk/duty
officers, dispatchers, telephone reporting unit staff, and evidence technicians.

3. Filling new or existing specialist positions that are expected to improve
officer productivity, such as computer technicians.

4. Staffing new community policing positions, such as community
coordinators/organizers, domestic violence specialists, or CPTED (Crime
Prevention Through Environmental Design) planners.

The most common assignments of MORE-funded civilians were to
clerical/administrative positions (43 percent of agencies assigned at least some
civilians to such positions), dispatchers (34 percent), and telephone response
unit members (26 percent).

COPS effects on policing levels

The effect of the COPS program on policing levels is the total of the two
components discussed in the preceding sections. The first is sworn officers hired
through COPS grants and retained after the grants expire. The second is
productivity gains, measured in officer FTEs yielded by MORE-funded
resources. This report contains preliminary estimates of both effects, which
should be treated with caution for several reasons. First, anticipating the Wave 4
survey, we did not design Wave 3 to survey a representative sample of small
local/county agencies or, indeed, any samples of other types of agencies.
Second, Wave 3 data were collected at a time when grantees had little actual
experience on which to base estimates of two key factors in the projections: the
percentage of hired officers that will be retained following the required period
and the actual number of FTEs generated from resources acquired with COPS
MORE grants. The Wave 4 survey and other data will be used to produce
updated, more valid, estimates.

With these cautions in mind, we report estimates of COPS program impacts
as of two points in time: the impact, through the end of 1998, of grants
awarded through 1997; and the long-term impact of grants awarded through
May 12, 1999, the date the White House announced that the goal of funding
100,000 officers had been met.

How will COPS hiring grants affect the number of law enforcement officers in
the United States?

Wave 3 survey data were first used to estimate the number of COPS-funded
officers hired as of June 1998. Through 1997, the COPS Office had awarded
hiring grants for 41,000 officers; survey results indicate that about 39,000 of
them had been hired. The difference reflects grantee delays in accepting
awards, recruiting candidates, and hiring officers. 

This gross increase is partially offset by delays in filling vacancies for
non-COPS positions, and cross-hiring between agencies. Allowing for these
factors, we estimate that the 41,000 officers awarded by the COPS Office as of
the end of 1997 resulted in a national net increase of between 36,300 and
37,500 officers by the end of 1998.

In the longer term, offsetting factors include certain federally approved cuts in
sworn force size and less-than-complete retention of COPS-funded positions
beyond the 3-year grant period. Given the uncertainty surrounding these
factors, a best case scenario would have grantees retain 91 percent of their new
hires indefinitely, and a worst case scenario would result in a 64 percent
retention rate.

By May 1999, the COPS Office had awarded agencies approximately 60,900
officers through hiring grants. Under the best case scenario, these awards will
produce an estimated peak effect of 57,200 officers by the year 2001 and,
after postgrant attrition, the permanent effect of the grants will stabilize at an
estimated 55,400 officers by 2003. The minimum retention scenario, in contrast,
suggests that the net impact of these awards will peak at 48,900 officers in 2000
but decline to a permanent level of 39,000 by 2003. 

How will COPS MORE grants affect the number of FTE officers redeployed
through increased productivity?

Estimates of time savings from MORE grants were based on the Wave 3
survey, which contained a representative sample of 1995 municipal and county
MORE grantees. To develop preliminary national estimates, we extrapolated
the results of these agencies to other types of agencies and later cohorts of
MORE grantees.

By the summer of 1998, the COPS Office had awarded agencies 22,400 FTEs
through MORE grants for civilians and technology, and survey results indicate
that grantees had redeployed 6,400 FTEs with these grants. At that time,
however, only 23 to 78 percent of MORE technology grantees (depending on
agency population category and type of technology) described some or all
components of their technology as fully operational. Therefore, grantees were
also asked to estimate future productivity increases they expected to achieve
once all grants were fully implemented.

Agencies that had progressed the furthest in making their technology
operational projected productivity gains that were smaller (60 percent of the
original projections) than those expected by MORE grantees as a whole (72
percent of the original projections), suggesting that agencies adjust their
expected productivity gains downward as they gain more experience with
operational technology.

We used those figures to compute best case and worst case interim estimates
but recognize the worst case estimates are based on only a partial subsample
that has substantial implementation experience. This subsample is growing and
becoming more representative over time, and so revisions of estimates of
MORE-supported productivity increases are planned in 2000 using Wave 4
survey data.

Using these assumptions and an estimated 3-year timeframe for full
implementation by grantees, we estimate that by the end of 1998, between
9,100 and 10,900 officers were redeployed from resources funded by MORE
grants awarded by the end of 1997. If these implementation patterns hold for
post-1998 MORE grants, the 39,600 FTEs awarded as of May 1999 will
result in the redeployment of between 23,800 and 28,500 FTEs by 2002. 

What will be the combined effect of hiring and MORE grants awarded by May
1999 on the level of policing?

By May 1999, the COPS Office had awarded approximately 100,500 officers
and officer equivalents through hiring grants and MORE grants. Our estimates
for the two types of grants are combined in exhibit 2. Upper bound projections
based on June 1998 survey estimates of maximum officer retention and
maximum officer redeployment suggest that these awards will result in a peak
national net increase of 84,600 officers and equivalents by the year 2001, before
declining somewhat and stabilizing at a permanent level of 83,900 by 2003.
Lower bound projections based on estimates of minimum officer retention and
minimum officer redeployment suggest that the COPS-supported increase in the
number of officers and FTEs deployed at any point in time will peak at 69,000
officers in the year 2001 and decline to a permanent level of 62,700 by 2003.

Total COPS-funded FTEs added to police agencies throughout this period will
be greater than the number available during any particular year, especially if our
lower bound projections prove more accurate. In this regard, the COPS
program might be compared with an "open house" event, in which the total
number of visitors to the event is larger than the number present at any given
point in time. Using this open house concept, we estimate that COPS awards
made through May 1999 will result in the temporary or permanent hiring of
60,900 officers and the deployment of between 23,800 and 28,500 FTEs,
thereby adding between 84,700 and 89,400 FTEs to the Nation's police
agencies at some point between 1994 and 2003, though not all these FTEs will
be simultaneously in service at any single point in time.

Whether the program will ever increase the number of officers and equivalents
to 100,000 on the street at a single point in time is not clear. The COPS Office
has continued to award COPS grants since May 1999. If the agency continues
to award hiring and MORE grants in the same proportions and our upper
bound projections are correct, roughly 19,000 additional officers and
equivalents awarded could be enough to eventually produce an indefinite
increase of 100,000 officers on the street. If the lower bound assumptions are
more accurate, the program may require an additional 59,000 officers and
equivalents awarded to create a lasting increase of 100,000 officers. More
definitive answers to these questions will be available following completion of the
Wave 4 survey in 2000.

COPS and the style of American policing

The COPS Office listed four principal goals of community policing: building
police-community partnerships, problem solving, crime prevention, and 
organizational support for these programmatic objectives. The evaluation used
three approaches to observe how the COPS program affected law
enforcement agencies' pursuit of these goals. First, at three points in time, the
national survey of agencies measured agency representatives' official statements
about the implementation status in COPS grantee and nongrantee agencies of
47 tactics for pursuing these objectives, as well as the role of COPS funds in
grantees' implementation of those tactics. Second, teams of police practitioners
and researchers visited 30 sites, many twice, for programmatic site assessments
of the "ground truth" underlying agencies' statements about the tactics in use.
Third, to explore the roles of local leadership and COPS resources in
facilitating community policing innovations, 10 case studies were conducted by
a Kennedy School of Government team.

Has the COPS program advanced the adoption of community policing in the
United States?

The answer is "yes," but it must be quickly qualified. "Adoption of community
policing" has very different meanings in different jurisdictions, and COPS funds
seem more likely to have fueled movements that were already accelerating than
to have caused the acceleration.

Between 1995 and 1998, the use of a number of tactics commonly labeled as
community policing swept the country among grantees and nongrantees. Among
those that reportedly spread the fastest were citizen police academies;
cooperative truancy programs with schools; structured problem solving along the
lines of SARA (Scanning, Analysis, Response, Assessment); and patrolling on
foot, bike, or other transportation modes that offered more potential than patrol
cars for interacting with citizens. Grantees and nongrantees alike reported
revising their employee evaluation measures and their mission, vision, and values
statements to codify their versions of community policing. Packaged prevention
programs became almost universal by 1998, such as Neighborhood Watch and
drug resistance education in schools, which in 1995 were already among the
most widespread tactics commonly described as community policing.

We have no measure of the extent to which the COPS program played various
roles that may have indirectly encouraged nongrantees to adopt these tactics.
Possible mechanisms included training and technical assistance programs and
materials, publicizing grantees' community policing successes, and acting as a
catalyst that encouraged grantees to demand more community policing training
from regional and State academies.

The advancement of community policing among nongrantees offers some weak
evidence that the COPS program provided fuel but not the launch pad for the
nationwide proliferation of community policing tactics between 1995 and 1998. 

With a few exceptions, COPS grantees' reported use of community policing
tactics grew more rapidly than did nongrantees'. However, the difference in
reported adoption rates was statistically significant for relatively few. They
include joint crime prevention projects with businesses, citizen surveys,
techniques for bringing the community more fully into problem solving, and
bringing probation officers into problem-solving initiatives. Grantees were
significantly more likely than nongrantees to report adopting late-night recreation
programs and victim assistance programs. Finally, grantees were significantly
more likely than nongrantees to report instituting three organizational changes in
support of community policing: new dispatch rules to increase officers' time in
their beats, new rules to increase beat officers' discretion, and revised employee
evaluation measures. 

In this information age, the community policing vocabulary is well known.
Federal funding rewards departments that profess the successful implementation
of community policing principles. In that context, survey findings that agencies'
use of community policing tactics grew between 1995 and 1998 could merely
reflect socially desirable responses, at least for COPS grantees. Our site visits
were intended to learn the ground truth behind the survey reports and to shed
light on the different meanings that law enforcement agencies assign to strategies
and tactics that are commonly labeled as community policing. Given the limited
time on site, one might expect it to be difficult to separate the rhetoric of
community policing from the reality of what law enforcement agencies actually
do. Indeed, it often was. Therefore, the enormous variation detected across
sites in the operational meanings of key community policing concepts is
especially telling. This variation is described next.

How are COPS grantees building partnerships with communities?

Problem-solving partnerships for coordinating the appropriate application of a
variety of resources are commonplace in many of the agencies visited. Yet all
too often, partnerships are in name only, or simply standard, temporary
working arrangements. Partnerships with other law enforcement units and
agencies merely to launch short-term crackdowns are not in the spirit of
problem solving or partnerships nor are partnerships in which citizens and
business representatives are merely "involved," serving primarily as extra eyes
and ears as before. True community partnerships, involving sharing power and
decisionmaking, are rare at this time, found in only a few of the flagship
departments. Other jurisdictions have begun to lay foundations for true
partnerships, however, and as problem-solving partnerships mature and evolve,
the trust needed for power sharing and joint decisionmaking may emerge.

How are COPS grantees implementing problem solving?

Certainly, it appeared onsite that the majority of agencies visited are engaged in
problem solving, although its form and visibility vary widely from agency to
agency. Some of the strongest features of problem solving that evaluators
observed included: the evolution of problem solving from "special operations" to
more complex activities that attack disorder and fear and require police to
search for interventions other than arrest; administrative systems that recognize
problem solving at multiple scales and multiple levels within the organizations;
broadly distributed authority to initiate problem-solving "projects"; systems to
assess the impact of particular projects and to learn from them; and the ability
of the law enforcement agency to engage other government agencies in defining
and solving community problems.

In some jurisdictions, traditional enforcement and investigative activities are
called problem solving under the community policing umbrella when these
activities are directed toward problems the community has identified as
concerns. Problem-solving projects dominated by enforcement actions,
however, rarely advance the objectives of community policing, in that they
are unlikely to either fix underlying causes or attract the community support
needed to maintain solutions. Therefore, enforcement-based solutions to
stubborn problems are likely to be short term, although when successful, they
sometimes encourage residents to reenter public spaces and begin developing
more permanent solutions.

A visible sign of enforcement-based problem solving is the recent and growing
trend toward zero-tolerance policing, a term also lacking consensual definition.
In the sites visited, zero tolerance policies take different forms. Some are
manifested as zero tolerance efforts of short duration (e.g., operated for a few
days each quarter or once a year) with a narrow focus (e.g., street drug dealing
or public drinking on the July 4) and within a circumscribed area (e.g.,
high-trafficking area or downtown). In other jurisdictions, zero tolerance is less
focused. What might have been called a crackdown 5 years ago is now
implemented under zero tolerance or order maintenance policies and classified
as part of community policing.

Zero tolerance policies have been included by some agencies under 
community policing, since they often focus on quality of life crimes and
incivilities, and primarily because "the community wants it." Zero tolerance
policies may help achieve some goals of community policing within a framework
that uses community input in setting priorities and delegates discretion to officers
working under mission statements that value the dignity of citizens, even
suspected offenders. However, there are dangers that without adequate
mechanisms for the diverse communities within most jurisdictions to register their
demand for or opposition to zero tolerance tactics, those tactics may directly
undercut the objective of partnership building by alienating potential community
partners.

How are COPS grantees implementing crime prevention?

Prevention efforts abounded in observed sites, primarily manifested as
traditional prevention programs now subsumed under the community 
policing label. Neighborhood Watch, D.A.R.E.[Registered trademark], and a
wide variety of youth programs remain the mainstays of prevention efforts.
Beyond the standardized programs, examples were rare of systemic prevention
efforts based on the resolution of the underlying causes of crime.

What legacy will remain from community policing initiatives stimulated or
facilitated with COPS funds? 

There are shining stars among the COPS grantees that provide examples of
what most observers would classify as "the best of community policing." There
are far more agencies striving to change their organizations to pursue community
policing objectives and are somewhere on the long and tortuous road. A few
want nothing to do with it.

The national survey and site visit results indicate that COPS funding has helped
to accelerate the adoption and broaden the definition of "community policing."
The effects of this massive support for community policing has both positive and
negative aspects. Certainly, COPS funding has enabled a great number of law
enforcement agencies to move ahead in their implementation of community
policing as locally defined. Funding conditioned expressly on community policing
implementation, coupled with peer pressure to embrace this model of policing,
has also led a substantial number of law enforcement agencies to stretch the
definition of community policing to include under its semantic umbrella traditional
quick-fix enforcement, draconian varieties of zero tolerance, long-established
prevention programs, and citizen advisory councils that are only advisory.

Our supplemental study of multiple funding streams in large grantee agencies
hinted at the power of local decisions to determine the course of the community
policing movement. Of the 100 largest grantee agencies in the national sample,
88 reported using their LLEBG funds to augment COPS and local funding of
community policing, despite the absence of any requirement to do so.
However, 82 of the 100 agreed or strongly agreed that their "agency has a
clear vision and is able to interpret grant requirements to support that view." 

Given the power of local decision-makers, the COPS program will almost
certainly wind up affecting the nature of policing in three ways. In some
jurisdictions, the forces fueled by COPS grants will achieve the community 
policing objectives articulated by the COPS Office. In others, local forces will
transform the objectives into something unrecognizable by forebears and
creators of the program. In still others the forces will fizzle out for reasons that
have to do with leadership, implementation strategies, turnover at top levels,
organizational processes within grantee agencies, and communities' capacities
and willingness to join the enterprise.

Precisely where each of these outcomes occurs will not be known for some
years. However, change seems most likely to be institutionalized and sustained
when: planning for change is broad based; the commitment to change is rooted
throughout the senior leadership of the agency and the political leadership of the
jurisdiction; changes are organizationwide rather than limited to a special unit;
organizational changes become embodied in new physical plant or technology;
the new programmatic objectives are reflected in administrative systems (e.g.,
for personnel administration or performance measurement); and the change
redefines the culture of a department, or at least of an entire age or rank cohort
within the department.

Measures of success

Readers of an evaluation report are entitled to the clearest possible answer
to the question "Did the program succeed?" In the case of COPS, the clarity of
the answer depends on the criterion for success. At least the following success
criteria warrant attention:

--Client satisfaction.

--Effect on the quantity or level of policing in the United States.

--Effect on agencies' transitions to community policing.

--Effectiveness in stimulating technological and organizational innovation.

--Effect on crime.

Client satisfaction

If one considers grantees the clients of a Federal grant program, the COPS 
Office one-page application and customer service orientation largely succeeded
with law enforcement agencies serving small jurisdictions (i.e., those serving
populations of less than 50,000). For many of those agencies, COPS was their
first Federal grant experience and they reported high levels of satisfaction with
the application and administration processes; small agencies with prior Federal
grant experience found COPS grants easier than others to request and
administer. Larger agencies tended to find administrative burdens no less
burdensome than other grant programs, but a number of innovative departments
combined COPS funds with other funding streams to support their community
policing initiatives.

Simplification had one unfortunate consequence. By avoiding tedious 
explanations, the grant application kits failed to resolve ambiguity in two key
administrative requirements: retention of COPS-funded officer positions and
nonsupplanting of local fiscal effort. At least a few jurisdictions failed to apply
because of their overly conservative interpretations. Other jurisdictions adopted
more aggressive interpretations. Determining the compliance status of some of
those required several years for OIG audits, COPS Office appeals of audit
findings, and independent mediation to resolve disagreements between OIG and
the COPS Office regarding compliance status.

Effect on level of policing

Our best estimate at this time is that by 2003, awards through May 1999 will
have raised the level of policing on the street by the equivalent of 62,700 to
83,900 full-time officers. This estimate contains two elements: 39,000-55,400
hired officers (net of attrition and cross-hiring between agencies), and 23,800-
28,500 full-time equivalents (FTEs) of officer time created by productivity gains
due to technology and civilians acquired with COPS MORE funds. To those 
who considered the level of policing in 1994 inadequate, this constitutes
success, even though it falls well short of the target of "100,000 new cops on 
the beat."

Even though we plan to update and refine these estimates after the Wave 4
survey, the actual increase is unlikely ever to be known precisely, for several
reasons. First, if the optimal number of police officers in a jurisdiction is related
to local conditions, such as crime rates or tax receipts, then the benchmark
against which the COPS-funded increase is counted should shift when
conditions change. Second, only about half the COPS MORE grantees have
systems in place to measure productivity gains, and because the measurement
requires before-and-after comparisons, it is already too late to put
measurement systems in place. Third, even where measurement systems are in
place, they are likely to understate the productivity gains because some of it
occurs in very small increments of time, which officers may well forget
to record.

Effect on transitions to community policing

It seems clear that the COPS program accelerated transitions to locally defined
versions of community policing in at least three ways. First, by stimulating a
national conversation about community policing and providing training and
technical assistance, the COPS program made it difficult for a chief executive
seeking professional recognition to avoid considering adopting some approach
that could plausibly be labeled "community policing." Second, the COPS hiring
funds and innovative policing grants allowed chief executives who were so
inclined to add new community policing programs without immediately cutting
back other programs, increasing response time, or suffering other adverse 
consequences. Third, the COPS funds created an incentive for agency
executives to adopt community policing. 

Whether, in accelerating transitions to community policing, the COPS program
distorted or watered down the concept is difficult to say. Tautologically, more
replications of any strategy that encourages tailoring to local conditions will
stimulate deviations from one specific definition of that strategy. In addition, two
policing strategies burst onto the national scene during the life of COPS but
apparently independently of it: zero tolerance and COMPSTAT (computer
comparison statistics), the New York City Police Department's system for
increasing commanders' accountability. Although the obligation of COPS
grantees to pursue community policing may have encouraged some police
executives to describe those strategies as "community policing because the
community wants it," it seems at least plausible that use of those techniques
would have proliferated even if there had been no COPS program.

Effects on organizational and technological innovation

In agencies whose chief executives were inclined toward innovation, the COPS
program facilitated their efforts in several ways. First, the broad semantic
umbrella offered by the term "community policing" creates latitude for
experimentation with new policing tactics and organizational structures. Second,
the application required specification of a community policing strategy, thereby
offering an occasion for engaging broad segments of the agency and community
in planning that strategy. Third, COPS resources allowed departments the
opportunity to add new modes of policing without drawing resources away
from existing priorities. Fourth, although achieving the projected productivity
increases from MORE-funded mobile computers required telecommunications
and other technology that was unavailable at the outset of COPS, the MORE
funds fueled a large enough market to attract vendors' interest and to stimulate
their efforts to satisfy the new demand. This represented perhaps the largest
effort to bolster development of law enforcement technology since the
recommendations of the 1967 President's Commission on Law Enforcement and
Administration of Justice.

Effects on crime

As a process evaluation, this study did not address the question of whether the
COPS program had an effect on crime. Indeed, that question could not have
been seriously addressed in the early years of COPS because "the COPS
program" meant something different in each jurisdiction.

However, the adoption of new policing tactics by so many agencies as they
expanded their sworn forces does present an opportunity to investigate which
tactics (or clusters of tactics) had beneficial effects on crime rates. By
statistically relating local crime trends to the adoption of new tactics, it should
be possible to identify promising strategies that were more likely than not to
reduce crime more rapidly than the national average. Once promising strategies
or tactics are identified statistically, semistructured site observations should help
to identify the qualitative aspects of implementation that distinguish effective
from ineffective uses of these promising strategies.

---------------------------

Major Questions Addressed by the National Evaluation

1. How did local agencies respond to the exchange offered by the COPS
program? The evaluation addressed this question primarily through three waves
of national telephone surveys. Wave 1 interviewed a representative sample of
law enforcement agencies of all types and sizes, selected in May 1996 and
stratified to overrepresent COPS hiring grantees, MORE grantees, and the
nongrantees that were serving jurisdictions of more than 50,000. Wave 2
interviewed a new sample of agencies whose first COPS award was a 1996
UHP grant and reinterviewed members of the Wave 1 MORE subsample with
grants for mobile computing technology. Wave 3 reinterviewed the municipal
and county police agencies that were interviewed in Wave 1 and either (a)
belonged to the Wave 1 nongrantee or hiring grantee subsamples and served
jurisdictions of more than 50,000, or ( b) belonged to the Wave 1 MORE
subsample regardless of jurisdiction size. Under subcontract, the National
Opinion Research Corporation collected the Wave 1 data in
October-November 1996, Wave 2 in September-October 1997, and Wave 3
in June-July 1998. During June-July 2000, Wave 4 reinterviewed all agencies
interviewed in Wave 1. Additional information came to light during site visits to
30 grantee agencies, conducted between early 1996 and 1998 by teams of
researchers and police practitioners. 

2. What distribution of COPS funds resulted from localities' application
decisions through the end of 1997? Analyses of COPS Office grant
management databases addressed that question. The analyses were updated
several times between February 1996 and March 1998.

3. How did COPS hiring grantees accomplish their hiring and deployment
objectives through mid-1998, and what were their expectations for retaining the
COPS-funded officers? We addressed the hiring question primarily through the
Wave 1 survey, the retention question primarily in the Wave 3 survey, and
gathered supplemental information on both matters on site visits. The Wave 4
survey updated information on both issues.

4. How did COPS MORE grantees succeed in acquiring and implementing
technology, hiring civilians, and achieving the projected redeployment targets
through mid-1998? An analysis of a representative sample of 438 grant files for
1995 MORE awards ascertained what types of technology were awarded in
the first year of the program. Implementation progress was the primary focus of
the Wave 2 survey of all 183 1995 MORE grantees that received
MORE-funded mobile computers, the most commonly awarded type of
technology. For all types of technology, the Wave 3 survey updated this
information by asking all respondents about all their MORE grants, regardless
of how the agency was selected at Wave 1 or when their MORE grants were
awarded.

5. What increases in policing levels were projected and achieved by local
agencies using COPS resources? To estimate increases through 1998 based on
grants awarded through 1997, survey-based estimates of hiring progress,
technology implementation, and retention expectations were applied to the
projections in COPS Office data. As a benchmark, we performed time-series
analyses of 1989-96 data on sworn force size reported in annual Uniform
Crime Reports (UCR).

For a preliminary estimate of long-term increases in policing levels due to
COPS hiring and MORE programs, the evaluation applied factors estimated
from the Wave 3 survey to COPS Office grant award counts as of May 12,
1999, when the White House announced achievement of the goal of funding
100,000 police officers. We plan to update this estimate based on the Wave 4
survey.

6. To what extent had the COPS program succeeded by mid-1998 in
encouraging grantees to build partnerships with communities, adopt
problem-solving strategies, and participate in prevention programs? To trace this
evolution on a national basis, all three survey waves contained a checklist of
tactics in support of these objectives. We compared grantee and nongrantee
agencies' official statements on the extent to which these tactics were in place
before 1995, were begun or expanded later, and were supported by COPS 
funds through mid-1998. Observing the "ground truth" behind the survey
responses was a primary purpose of programmatic site assessments in 30
grantee agencies. 

7. To what extent did grantees' organizations change through 1998 to support
and sustain community policing? We obtained national profiles of organizational
change using the survey methodology we adopted for programmatic change and
observed "ground truth" during site visits. In addition, the question was
addressed through 10 case studies conducted under subcontract by the Program
in Criminal Justice Policy and Management of the Kennedy School of
Government.

---------------------------

Acknowledgments

We are deeply grateful to our coauthors of the full evaluation report, who
developed so many of the findings that we were privileged to read, probe,
synthesize, and summarize in this Research in Brief: Stephen J. Gaffigan,
Christopher S. Koper, Mark H. Moore, Jan Roehl, Calvin C. Johnson,
Gretchen E. Moore, Ruth M. White, Michael E. Buerger, Elizabeth A.
Langston, and David Thacher. We are also deeply indebted to six colleagues
whose findings, insights, databases, or analyses helped make this study what it
is: 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--led 
programmatic assessment teams that generated rich reports based on site visits
to 30 COPS grantee agencies. Other leaders and members of site teams 
were Thomas Cowper, Mark Cunniff, Lawrence Fetters, Jack Greene, Blaine
Liner, Ray Manus, Michael Maxfield, Edmund McGarrell, Alberto Melis,
Kevin Reeves, William Rehm, Roger Rokicki, and Dennis Rosenbaum. We are
grateful to them and to the chief executives and staff, too numerous to mention
here, of the 30 agencies that hosted our teams, answered their questions, and
reviewed their draft reports. 

Three more colleagues listed above--Coles, Sheinbaum, and Thacher--also
served double duty by writing, under the direction of Mark Moore and Frank
Hartmann, case studies of organizational change in 10 COPS grantee agencies.

We owe thanks to our colleagues at the National Opinion Research Center
(NORC), who conducted three waves of national surveys of law enforcement
agencies. Cathy Haggerty directed Wave 1; Alma Kuby and Laurie Imhof
directed Waves 2 and 3; and Phil Panczuk did the complex programming
needed for computer-assisted telephone interviewing at all three waves. We are
grateful to NORC interviewing teams for their persistence and accuracy and to
the 1,724 law enforcement chief executives and designees who answered their
questions. 

At the Urban Institute, John Roman contributed an economic analysis and Mary
Norris Spence capably managed several data collection operations. O. Jay
Arwood produced the text, tables, and figures for three complete drafts of this
report; he displayed creativity, accuracy, and grace under pressure well beyond
the call of duty. He, Diana Dandridge, Joyce Sparrow, and Nicole Brewer
provided the administrative support needed throughout this complex project. 

The COPS Office supported us in every way that an evaluator has a right to
expect: providing background information, answering our questions, providing
manual and automated files, and constructively challenging our interim findings
as needed. Directors Joseph Brann and Thomas Frazier created a cordial
climate within which others, especially Pam Cammarata, Charlotte Grzebian,
Dave Hayeslip, Gil Kerlikowski, Nina Pozgar, Ellen Scrivner, Benjamin Tucker,
and Craig Uchida, arranged or provided whatever assistance we requested.

Joseph Koons extracted and explained the COPS Office grants management
data that we needed to study grantees. Cynthia Schwimer provided financial
data from the Office of Justice Program's Office of the Comptroller. Weldon
Kennedy and Brian Reaves provided datasets from the Federal Bureau of
Investigation and the Bureau of Justice Statistics, respectively, that we needed
to construct the sample frame for nongrantees.

We are grateful to NIJ not only for the opportunity to conduct this study but
also for protecting the study's independence, providing background information,
and editing the report. Providing support throughout the entire project were
Jeremy Travis, former NIJ Director; Sally Hillsman and Tom Feucht, Director
and Deputy Director, respectively, NIJ Office of Research and Evaluation; and
Steve Edwards, Program Manager. Acting NIJ Director Julie Samuels
provided helpful comments and background information in the project's 
final stages. We also wish to thank four anonymous peer reviewers, courtesy
NIJ; their comments greatly improved the report and we appreciate them.

We hope that all of these contributors consider the final report and this
summary worthy of their efforts. Responsibility rests with us for any errors or
omissions that remain despite the valuable assistance received.

-----------------------------

Jeffrey A. Roth, Ph.D., is Director of Crime Control Policy Studies at the
Urban Institute, Washington, D.C. Joseph F. Ryan, Ph.D., is Chair,
Departments of Public Administration and Criminal Justice, Pace University,
White Plains, New York. They are co-principal investigators of the national
evaluation summarized by this Research in Brief. The full-length report of the
evaluation is available on NIJ's and Urban Institute's Web sites. The research
for this study was supported by NIJ under a grant (number 95-IJ-CX-0073)
awarded to the Urban Institute with funds transferred from the Office of
Community Oriented Policing Services.

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 is
http://www.urban.org/news/focus/focus_crime.html.

Findings and conclusions of the research reported here are those of the authors
and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S.
Department of Justice, and the views the authors express in this document do
not necessarily represent the views of the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its
funders.

The National Institute of Justice is a component of the Office of Justice
Programs, which also includes the Bureau of Justice Assistance, the Bureau of
Justice Statistics, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, and
the Office for Victims of Crime.

NCJ 183644

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NCJ 183644