U.S. Department of Justice

Office of Justice Programs

National Institute of Justice

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

National Institute of Justice

Julie E. Samuels, Acting Director

continued...

The COPS Program After 4 Years—

National Evaluation

by Jeffrey A. Roth and Joseph F. Ryan

August 2000

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 withmost Federal grant programs,

COPS-funded resources were required

tosupplement local expenditures, not

supplant or replace them.

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’

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
2

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

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 mid2000 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

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 AccelerIssues and Findings

continued...

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.

ated 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
3

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

evaluators’ efforts. The PHS and COPS

Phase I grants were awarded before

allgrantmaking 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,

withprimary 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.

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

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 partnerships with the community, and participating in prevention programs. In turn,
4

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

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

aprocess 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

itsroots

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 highcrime 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

oftheir 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

theBush 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

tosupport local priorities in less constraining ways without giving up all

Federal leverage for shaping those

priorities. Early programmatic steps

inthis 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
5

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

Exhibit 1. Logic Model

permit the redeployment of existing

officers to the street at least as costeffectively 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

ongrantees’ 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.

RESOURCES AND

REQUIREMENTS

Federal

• COPS

• Other programs

State/Local

• Financial

• Governmental

• Community

Local Decisions

• Apply?

• Accept?

• Resources

• Community 

• policing plan

Hire officers

Acquire

technology,

civilians

Redeploy

officers 

or FTEs

Reorient Organization

• Community voice

• Officer discretion

• Interagency cooperation

• Capacity for change

COPS IMPLEMENTATION

PROGRAM

OUTPUTS

Arrests

Problem Solving

• Analysis

• Community input

• Maintenance

Partnership Building

• Surveys, meetings

• Citizen councils

• Joint projects

• Community capacity

• Cross-agency collaboration

Prevention

• Prevention education

• Code/truancy enforcement

• Victim assistance

OUTCOMES IN

OTHER CJAs

Caseloads

Crime

Social/physical

quality of life

Informal social

control

Fear of crime

Information

sharing

Police respect/

satisfaction

COMMUNITY OUTCOMES

(+)

(+)

(+)

(+)

(+)

(–)

(+)

(+)

(+)

(+)

(+)

(+)

(–)

(+)

(+)

(+)

(+)

(+)

(+)

(–)

(–)

(–)

(?)

CONTEXT

CONTEXT

CONTEXT

CONTEXT

Abbreviations and Symbols:

FTEs: Full Time Equivalents

CJAs: Criminal Justice Agencies

(+): Items listed in preceding box result in positive impact on, or increase in, items listed in the following box.

(–): Items listed in preceding box result in negative impact on, or decrease in, items listed in the following box.
6

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

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

tosigned 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.

Formany 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,

andto 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,
7

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

Major Questions Addressed by the National Evaluation

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.

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.

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, surveybased 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).

1.
8

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

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,

inlarger agencies, the unit that will

administer the grant and the agency

grant manager, if one exists. Yet

manybelieve 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:

74percent 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-
9

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

size agencies (50,001–150,000), and

89 percent of large agencies (150,001

ormore). 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

3percent 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 thelevel 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

andits 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

1percent 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
10

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

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

thebudget 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 COPSfunded 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

ofcommunity policing articulated by

the COPS Office—partnership building and problem solving—were the

most commonly expected uses of

COPS-funded officers’ time; each

wasmentioned 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 COPSfunded officers were expected to spend

substantial time on routine patrol

by40 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 COPSfunded 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
11

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

length of grantees’ retention commitment: compliance with the retention

requirement requires keeping grantfunded 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;

6percent 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 longterm 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 COPSfunded 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

ofMORE-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

MOREtechnology grants to projected

FTEs atthe four-per-$100,000 minimum needed to demonstrate costeffectiveness—a more conservative
12

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

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 geomapping 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,

34percent were generated by agencies

with mobile computers only, and

29percent 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
13

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

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 definitive 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 costsof

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 tofaster, 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

ofstolen 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 MOREfunded technology had to fit. Some

agencies that anticipated the costs

included them in their initial grant

budgets without sacrificing the costeffectiveness 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
14

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

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. Sixtyfour 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

ofcivilianization 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

3years.

What functions are the MOREfunded 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

asof two points in time: the impact,

through the end of 1998, of grants

awarded through 1997; and the longterm 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 nonCOPS positions, and cross-hiring

between agencies. Allowing for these

factors, we estimate that the 41,000
15

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

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-thancomplete 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

officersredeployed 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

effectof hiring and MORE

grantsawarded by May 1999

onthe 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 
16

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

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

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

Officers Hired and Estimated Net Hired

FTEs Redeployed or Redeployed

Funded (12/97) Gross (6/98) Net (12/98) Funded Projection

Program (1) (2) (3) (4) Year (5)

Hiring 41,000 39,000 36,300–37,500 60,900 High

(PHS, COPS 2001 : 57,200

Phase I, FAST, 2003+ : 55,400

AHEAD, UHP)

Low

2000 : 48,900

2003+ : 39,000

MORE 22,400† ‡ 6,400 9,100–10,900 39,600 High

2002+ : 28,500

Low

2002+ : 23,800

Total 63,400 45,400 45,400–48,400 100,500 High

2001 : 84,600

2003+ : 83,900

Low

2001 : 69,000

2003+ : 62,700

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

‡ As of June 1998.

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

of between 23,800 and 28,500 FTEs,

thereby adding between 84,700 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
17

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

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

UnitedStates?

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 weresignificantly 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

ofwhat 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.

Thisvariation 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 shortterm 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
18

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

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

atmultiple scales and multiple

levelswithin 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

areunlikely 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.®, 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
19

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

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 decisionmakers, 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

attop 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

isbroad 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

tothe 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

andadministration 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 fulltime 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.”
20

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

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 torecord.

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

addnew 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 andAdministration 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,

itshould 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.
21

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

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. Weare 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 per-sistence 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 orprovided 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.

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.
22

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

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.

Quick Access to NIJ Publication News

For news about NIJ’s most recent publications, including solicitations for grant applications,

subscribe to JUSTINFO, the bimonthly newsletter sent to you via e-mail. Here’s how:

Or check out the “Publications and Products” section at the NIJ home page: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij

or the “New This Week” section at the Justice Information Center home page:

http://www.ncjrs.org

● Send an e-mail to listproc@ncjrs.org

● Leave the subject line blank

● Type subscribe justinfo your name

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

Jeffrey A. Roth, Ph.D., is 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 agrant (number 95–

IJ–CX–0073) awarded to the Urban

Institute with funds transferred from

the Office of Community Oriented

Policing Services.

NCJ 183644
23

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

About the National Institute of Justice

The National Institute of Justice (NIJ), a component of the Office of Justice Programs, is the research agency of the U.S.

Department of Justice. Created by the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, as amended, NIJ is authorized

to support research, evaluation, and demonstration programs; development of technology; and both national and international

information dissemination. Specific mandates of the Act direct NIJ to:

• Sponsor special projects and research and development programs that will improve and strengthen the criminal justice

system and reduce or prevent crime.

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

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

• Evaluate the effectiveness of criminal justice programs and identify programs that promise to be successful if

continued or repeated.

• Recommend actions that can be taken by Federal, State, and local governments as well as by private organizations to

improve criminal justice.

• Carry out research on criminal behavior.

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

In recent years, NIJ has greatly expanded its initiatives, the result of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 

1994 (the Crime Act), partnerships with other Federal agencies and private foundations, advances in technology, and a new

international focus. Examples of these new initiatives include:

• Exploring key issues in community policing, violence against women, violence within the family, sentencing reforms,

and specialized courts such as drug courts.

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

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

Technology Center.

• Strengthening NIJ’s links with the international community through participation in the United Nations network of

 criminological institutes, the U.N. Criminal Justice Information Network, and the NIJ International Center.

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

• Establishing the ADAM (Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring) program—formerly the Drug Use Forecasting (DUF)

program—to increase the number of drug-testing sites and study drug-related crime.

The Institute Director establishes the Institute’s objectives, guided by the priorities of the Office of Justice Programs, the

Department of Justice, and the needs of the criminal justice field. The Institute actively solicits the views of criminal justice

professionals and researchers in the continuing search for answers that inform public policymaking in crime and justice.

To find out more about the National Institute of Justice,

please contact:

National Criminal Justice Reference Service

P.O. Box 6000

Rockville, MD 20849–6000

800–851–3420

e-mail: askncjrs@ncjrs.org