Page 1 GAO-05-699R 

June 3, 2005 

The Honorable F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr. 

Chairman 

Committee on the Judiciary 

House of Representatives 

Subject: Interim Report on the Effects of COPS Funds on the 

 Decline in Crime during the 1990s

Dear Mr. Chairman: 

The enactment of the Public Safety Partnership and Community Policing 

Act of 1994, Title 1 of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act 

(VCCLEA),1

 authorized appropriations of $8.8 billion to advance the 

practice of community policing as an effective strategy in communities’ 

efforts to improve public safety. It had as a goal adding 100,000 new police 

officers nationwide.2

 The Attorney General created the Office of 

Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) to administer community 

policing grants. VCCLEA was enacted shortly after a period of increasing 

violent crimes such as murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault. For 

example, from 1983 to 1992—the year before the nationwide volume of 

violent crime began to decline—the number of violent crimes known to 

the police increased from less than 1.3 million to more than 1.9 million (or 

about 54 percent), and the violent crime rate per 100,000 population 

increased from 538 to 758 (or about 41 percent). 

In December 1993, the Department of Justice (DOJ) began making 

community policing grants to state and local law enforcement agencies.3

 1

Pub. L. 103-322 (1994), 42 U.S.C. § 3796dd. 

2

The act contained other provisions to address violent crime, such encouraging states to 

increase the use of incarceration for violent offenders through the Violent Offender 

Initiative and Truth-in-Sentencing grants, enhancing penalties for gang crimes, and 

expanding the number of federal death penalty offenses. 

3

Prior to the enactment of VCCLEA, DOJ awarded grants under the Police Hiring 

Supplement Program, established by the Supplemental Appropriations Act of 1993 ((P.L. 

103-50 (1993)). Grants made under this program were funded by DOJ’s Bureau of Justice 

Assistance and monitored by the COPS Office. In this report, COPS grants refer to both 

these grants and community policing grants authorized under VCCLEA. 

Washington, DC 20548 
Page 2 GAO-05-699R 

By 2001, COPS grants totaling $7.3 billion in obligations had been made to 

state and local law enforcement agencies, and these agencies had 

expended about $5 billion of these obligated amounts.4

 The COPS grant 

expenditures amounted to about 1 percent of total local law enforcement 

expenditures from 1994 through 2001. During the time that agencies were 

spending COPS funds, violent crimes declined. For example, between 1994 

and 2001, the number of violent crimes declined from about 1.9 million to 

about 1.4 million (or about 23 percent), and the violent crime rate per 

100,000 population declined from 714 to 504 (or about 29 percent). While 

the less than 1 percent of total local law enforcement expenditures 

contributed by COPS funds during this period is unlikely in itself to have 

generated the 29 percent decrease in the violent crime rate, the questions 

of whether and, if so how much, the roughly $5 billion in COPS 

expenditures contributed to the decline in crime merit attention. 

One recent study of the effects of COPS grants on crime concluded that 

the COPS grants contributed to reductions in crime in the 1990s.5

However, we previously reviewed the study and reported that its 

methodological limitations were such that the study’s results should be 

viewed as inconclusive.6

 Moreover, neither the study we reviewed nor a 

second study of the effects of COPS grant funds on crime analyzed specific 

ways by which COPS funds could affect crime.7

 For example, the two 

studies did not examine whether reductions in crime were associated with 

the additional police officers that COPS funds provided or whether they 

 4

Grants were also available to other public enforcement agencies, Indian tribal 

governments, other public and private entities, and multi-jurisdictional or regional 

consortia that employ sworn law enforcement officers. 

5

Zhao, J., and Thurman, Q., A National Evaluation of the Effect of COPS Grants on Crime 

from 1994 to 1999 (December 2001). 

6

Our review of this study was reported in: Technical Assessment of Zhao and Thurman’s 

2001 Evaluation of the Effects of COPS Grants on Crime, GAO-03-867R (Washington, 

D.C.: June 13, 2003). 

7

In addition to the Zhao and Thurman work cited above, David Muhlhausen has assessed 

the effects of COPS funds on crime rates. Using county-level data, Muhlhausen found that 

other than the various grants used to fund specific actions such as targeting domestic 

violence and gang activities, COPS grants used to hire additional officers and redeploy 

current officers were not associated with reductions in crime. See Muhlhausen, D. Do 

Community Oriented Policing Services Grants Affect Violent Crime Rates (Washington, 

D.C.: The Heritage Foundation, May 25, 2001). An updated version of the Zhao and 

Thurman study can be found at Zhao, J., and Thurman, Q., “Funding Community Policing to 

Reduce Crime: Have COPS Grants Made a Difference from 1994 to 2000?” Report submitted 

to the Office of Community Policing Services, U.S. Department of Justice, July 2004. 
Page 3 GAO-05-699R 

were associated with changes in policing practices that may have been 

stimulated by COPS funds. 

In response to the inconclusive results of the study we reviewed, you 

asked us to undertake our own independent evaluation of the impact of 

COPS grants on the decline in crime that occurred during the 1990s. This 

report provides results to date from our evaluation regarding three interrelated questions about the extent to which, if any, that COPS grants 

affected the decline in crime in the 1990s: (1) How were the COPS grant 

funds distributed among local law enforcement agencies, and to what 

extent did the distribution of funds correspond to the distribution of total 

crime and violent crime? (2) Were COPS grants associated with changes in 

policing practices such as proactive problem identification and 

intervention, collaboration between police and their communities, and a 

focus on specific places with high concentrations of crime? (3) Did COPS 

grant funds lead to increases in the number of sworn police officers, and if 

so, what was the impact of these COPS-funded officers on the decline in 

crime during the1990s? Our final report on our evaluation—due for release 

in fall 2005—will assess additional aspects of these research objectives, 

such as other distributional issues related to the flow of funds, officers, 

and crime; cost-effectiveness issues; and the relationship between policing 

practices and crime. 

To address our reporting objectives, we created and analyzed a database 

consisting of data on 13,133 local law enforcement agencies that had 

reported complete crime data for at least 1 year during the years from 1990 

through 2001. We organized the database as a panel data set, in that it 

contained information on multiple units of analysis (law enforcement 

agencies) over multiple years. For each agency, we obtained data on COPS 

and other federal law enforcement grant obligations and expenditures 

from the DOJ’s Office of Justice Programs (OJP), and data on index crimes 

and the number of sworn officers from the Federal Bureau of 

Investigation’s (FBI) Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program. Index 

crimes include the violent crimes of murder and non-negligent 

manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault, and the 

property crimes of burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson.8

We obtained data on some of the factors that the research literature on 

crime suggests are related to changes in crime. From the Department of 

Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis, we obtained data on local 

economic conditions---including employment rates and per capita 

 8

We excluded arson from our analyses because according to the FBI, there is limited 

reporting of arson offenses to the UCR Program by law enforcement agencies. 
Page 4 GAO-05-699R 

income—and from the Census Bureau, we obtained data on demographic 

variables—including the percent of the population aged 15 to 24, and the 

racial and gender composition of the population. We also obtained data 

from two surveys of nationally representative samples of police 

departments on the policing practices that they reportedly used. Each 

survey was administered to its respective sample of agencies in 2 separate 

years, thereby allowing for analyses of changes in policing practices.9

Using agency and year identifiers, we matched and merged data on funds, 

crime, officers, and economic and demographic conditions from our 

database with the agency-level records in each of the surveys. Prior to 

developing our database, we assessed the reliability of each data source 

and in preparing this report, we used only the data that we found to be 

sufficiently reliable for the purposes of our report. See enclosure I for 

more information on the data that we used and the procedures we 

undertook to assess the reliability of the data. 

We analyzed the data on COPS and other federal grant obligation and 

expenditure amounts to describe how many agencies received COPS 

grants and the types and amounts of grants and expenditures. We 

compared the amounts of COPS grants with selected characteristics of 

each agency’s community, such as its population size and volume of crime. 

To address the relationship between COPS grants and changes in policing 

practices, we analyzed data from the two surveys by comparing changes in 

reported policing practices between agencies that received COPS grants 

and those that did not receive them. To assess the effects of COPS 

expenditures on the number of officers and crime, we developed and 

estimated fixed-effects regression models to determine the size and 

significance of these relationships. The fixed-effects models assisted us in 

controlling for unobserved factors that are not accounted for by the 

control variables included in the models. Our regressions estimated the 

effects of COPS and other federal law enforcement grant expenditures on 

 9

The first survey was The National Survey of Community Policing Strategies which was 

administered at two time points, in 1993 and 1997 (Rosenthal, Arlen M., and Fridell, Lorie. 

National Survey of Community Policing Strategies Update, 1997, and Modified 1992-

1993 Data [Computer file]. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research 

(ICPSR) version. Calverton, Md: ORC Macro International, Inc. [producer], 2002. Ann 

Arbor, MI: ICPSR [distributor], 2002). In the remainder of this letter, we refer to the two 

administrations of this longitudinal survey as the Policing Strategies Survey. The second 

survey was conducted by the National Opinion Research Center for the Urban Institute in 

1996 and 2000 as part of the National Institute of Justice-funded implementation evaluation 

of the COPS program. See Roth, J., et al., National Evaluation of the COPS Program—

Title I of the 1994 Crime Act, Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Justice, August 2000. 

In the remainder of this letter, we refer to the two administrations of this second 

longitudinal survey as the National Evaluation of COPS Survey. 
Page 5 GAO-05-699R 

officers and crime, respectively, while controlling for differences among 

agencies in their pre-COPS program trends in crime rates and sworn 

officers, and for differences over time in socio-economic factors that could 

affect both the number of police officers and crime rates, such as 

unemployment and per-capita income, and changes in population 

composition. We used agency-level fixed-effects to control for systematic 

cross-sectional differences, and we used year-fixed effects to control for 

time-specific differences between the agencies. In addition, we used stateby-year fixed effects to control for changes in state-level practices that 

could affect crime, such as changes in incarceration, sentencing practices, 

or other state programs. Because of the complexity of the statistical 

models that we used to estimate the effects of COPS grants on crime, we 

reviewed our approach and methods with a group of experts in the field of 

policing and crime. The group consisted of criminologists, economists, 

statisticians, and practitioners, and was convened for us by the National 

Research Council of the National Academies to enable participants to 

offer their individual advice as experts in the field. See enclosure I for 

additional details on our methods. 

We conducted our work between January 2004 and June 2005 in 

accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. 

The COPS Office distributed grants in about 30 different grant program 

funding categories. The largest grant program category was the COPS 

hiring grants,10 which required agencies to hire new officers and at the 

same time to indicate the types of community policing strategies that they 

intended to implement with the officers that they were to hire with these 

grants. The hiring grants paid a maximum of $75,000 per officer over a 3-

year period (or at most 75 percent of an officer’s salary) and generally 

required that local agencies cover the remaining salary and benefits with 

state or local funds. The next largest grant category was the Making 

Officer Redeployment Effective (or MORE) grant program, which 

provided funds to law enforcement agencies to purchase equipment and 

hire civilians, with the goal of expanding the amount of time spent on 

community policing. Additional COPS grant programs provided funds for 

specific innovations in policing. For example, the Distressed 

 10Hiring programs authorized under VCCLEA and administered by the COPS office included 

the Phase I program, which funded qualified applicants who had applied for the Police 

Hiring Supplement but were denied because of the limited funds available; COPS AHEAD 

(Accelerated Hiring, Education, and Deployment) for municipalities with populations 

50,000 and above; and COPS FAST (Funding Accelerated for Smaller Towns) for towns 

with populations below 50,000. In June 1995, Phase I, COPS AHEAD and COPS FAST were 

replaced by the Universal Hiring Program. 

Background 
Page 6 GAO-05-699R 

Neighborhoods Pilot Project grants provided funds to communities with 

high levels of crime and/or economic distress to hire officers and 

implement a variety of strategies to improve public safety, and the 

Methamphetamine Initiative provided funds to state and local agencies to 

support a variety of enforcement, intervention, and prevention efforts to 

combat the methamphetamine problem. COPS also provided grants for a 

variety of other purposes, including funding to meet the community 

policing training needs of officers and representatives of communities and 

local governments (through a network of Regional Community Policing 

Institutes), and grants to law enforcement agencies to hire and train 

school resource officers to help prevent school violence and improve 

school and student safety (the COPS in Schools Program). 

Each year COPS was required to distribute half of the grant funds to 

agencies in communities whose populations exceeded 150,000 persons 

and half of the grant funds to agencies in communities with populations of 

150,000 or fewer persons.11

The COPS program aimed to affect change in policing practices. For 

example, in the application for COPS hiring grants, agencies were asked to 

report the types of practices that they planned to implement with their 

grants, such as identifying crime problems by looking at records of crime 

trends and analyzing repeat calls for service, working with other public 

agencies to solve disorder problems, locating offices or stations within 

neighborhoods, and collaborating with community residents by increasing 

officer contact with citizens and improving citizen feedback. The types of 

practices that agencies planned to implement with their grants correspond 

with general approaches to policing. For example, problem-solving 

policing practices may rely on crime-analysis tools to identify crime 

problems in developing solutions to these problems. Place-oriented 

practices attempt to identify the locations where crime occurs repeatedly 

and to implement procedures to disrupt these recurrences of crime. By 

collaborating with community residents, agencies attempt to improve 

citizen feedback about crime problems and the effectiveness of policing 

efforts to address these problems. 

Assessing whether COPS funds contributed to the decline in crime during 

the 1990s is complicated by many factors. Nationwide, the decline in crime 

 11Of funds available in any fiscal year, up to 3 percent may be used for technical assistance 

or for evaluations or studies carried out or commissioned by the Attorney General. The 

requirement to allocate the funds by size of agency population applies to the remaining 

funds in any fiscal year (42 U.S.C. § 3793(a)(11)(B)). 
Page 7 GAO-05-699R 

began in 1993 before the COPS program made its first grants, and the 

general decline in crime makes it difficult to isolate the effect, if any, of 

COPS funds on crime. COPS grants were distributed in ways that make 

rigorous evaluations of their causal impacts difficult to implement. For 

example, the majority of police agencies in our analysis—82 percent—

received at least one COPS grant. This wide distribution of COPS grant 

recipient agencies limits the number of agencies that could be used as 

comparison agencies against which to assess the effects of COPS grant 

funds on the decline in crime. Further, the amount of funding certain 

agencies receive may also relate to the agency's ability to combat crime. 

For example, certain police chiefs may be more capable than others at 

acquiring funds and also more up-to-date on policing methods. Therefore, 

to assess the effects of COPS funds on crime, it is necessary to attempt to 

control for an agency's underlying ability to address crime problems and 

obtain funds, as well as other unobserved factors. 

Appropriate methodologies from research on crime have been developed 

to address these constraints. For example, fixed-effects regression models 

that use a panel of data—or repeated observations on the same units, such 

as police agencies, over several time periods—allow for assessing changes 

in the number of sworn officers and crime rates that are associated with 

variation in the timing and amount of COPS grant expenditures. These 

regression methods also allow for the introduction of controls for 

unobserved pre-existing differences between units (agencies) and 

differences over time within units. In addition, methods incorporating the 

underlying trajectories in crime rates and sworn officers in each agency 

into the modeling of the effects of COPS funds allow for explicit 

comparisons within groups of agencies sharing similar trajectories. By 

identifying and explicitly modeling the mechanisms through which a 

program could have its effects—such as COPS funds leading to increases 

in the number of officers and their effects on crime—the possibility of a 

spurious relationship between inputs (such as COPS funds) and outcomes 

(such as crime) can be minimized. 

Of the $6.01 billion in total COPS grant funds obligated to agencies in our 

sample between 1994 and 2001, the majority was obligated in the form of 

hiring grants, which accounted for about $4.05 billion, or 67 percent of all 

obligations.12 About 82 percent, or about 9,100, of the agencies in our 

 12The sample consisted of 11,187 agencies out of the 13,133 agencies in our entire sample of 

agencies with at least 1 complete year of crime data. The 11,187 agencies are those for 

which we were able to link crime, COPS, and other federal law enforcement expenditures’ 

data. The 11,187 agencies accounted for about 86 percent of the reported index crimes in 

the United States from 1990 through 2001. 

Results 
Page 8 GAO-05-699R 

sample received at least one COPS grant, of any type, during this period, 

and about 75 percent received at least one hiring grant. By 2001, about 70 

percent of the obligated amounts had been spent by the agencies that 

received the grants.13 In the sample of COPS grantee agencies for which we 

obtained population and crime data and could make comparisons, we 

found that the COPS Office distributed about half of the grant money to 

agencies covering populations of more than 150,000 and half to agencies 

with populations of less than 150,000. Because crime may not be directly 

related to population, one potential effect of the statutory requirement to 

allocate funds based upon population is that funds might not necessarily 

be allocated in relation to the volume of crime. We found that, in the 

aggregate, COPS grant funds were distributed in proportion to the total 

volume of index crimes, but they were not distributed in proportion to the 

volume of violent crimes in the agencies that fell into these two population 

categories. For example, agencies serving populations of less than 150,000 

persons received about 53 percent of COPS funding, but they accounted 

for about 38 percent of violent crimes reported to the police. The disparity 

was even greater for agencies serving the smallest populations (such as 

places with populations of fewer than 25,000 persons). 

Our analysis of changes in policing practices shows that agencies that 

received COPS grant funds reported on average larger increases in 

policing practices than those agencies that did not receive a COPS grant. 

However, it may be the case that the receipt of COPS grants resulted from 

agencies’ efforts to change policing as opposed to being the cause of the 

change in policing practices. 

We compared the pre-COPS grant program (i.e., 1993) levels of reported 

policing practices overall, and for four types of policing practices—

problem-solving practices, place-oriented practices, crime analysis, and 

community collaboration—with their reported levels during the COPS 

program (i.e., in 1997) in the Policing Strategies Survey sample of police 

agencies. We found that there were larger increases in the reported use of 

policing practices among the agencies that received at least one COPS 

grant in this period than occurred among the agencies that did not receive 

a COPS grant. The average increase in the level of reported use of all 

 13We obtained a total of $7.32 billion in COPS grant obligations from 1994 through 2001 

among all agencies in our database that received at least one federal law enforcement grant 

from 1990 through 2001 regardless of whether these agencies could be matched with the 

UCR crime data. Of this total, $4.69 billion was in the form of hiring grants. Not all COPS 

obligated amounts were expended in the same years that agencies received grants. This 

may be due to lags between the time of the receipt of a grant and the hiring of officers or 

purchasing equipment. 
Page 9 GAO-05-699R 

policing practices among the COPS grantee agencies was about 31 

percent, while among the agencies that did not receive a COPS grant, the 

increase was about 17 percent. For example, the mean level of reported 

practices among agencies that received a COPS grant increased from 9.9 to 

12.9 practices, while among the non-grantee agencies the mean level 

increased from 8.3 to 9.8 practices.14 In addition, the agencies that received 

COPS grants also had larger increases in the average levels of reported use 

of problem-solving, place-oriented, and community-collaboration practices 

than did the agencies that did not receive a COPS grant. For example, 

among agencies that received COPS grant funds in this period, the average 

level of reported use of problem-solving practices increased by about 35 

percent, as compared to about a 20 percent increase among the nongrantee agencies. The increase in place-oriented practices among COPS 

grantee agencies was about 32 percent, as compared to about 13 percent 

among the non-COPS grantee agencies. 

Our analysis of the National Evaluation of COPS Survey data on policing 

practices in 1996 and in 2000 also showed that agencies that received 

COPS grants reported larger increases in the use of policing practices than 

did non-COPS grantee agencies. We found this relationship regardless of 

when an agency received its first COPS grant. For example, for the 

agencies that received their first COPS grant prior to 1996, the average 

increase in reported use of policing practices from 1996 to 2000 was about 

22 percent, and for the agencies that received their first COPS grant 

between 1996 and 2000, the average increase in reported use of policing 

practices was about 16 percent. By contrast, for the agencies that had not 

received a COPS grant by 2000, there was about a 2 percent increase in the 

reported use of policing practices from 1996 to 2000. 

Our regression models for estimating the effects of the variation in the 

timing and amount of COPS hiring grant expenditures per capita on the 

levels of sworn officers over the years from 1991 through 2001 showed 

that COPS hiring grant expenditures were associated with increases in the 

net number of sworn police officers. We obtained these results after 

controlling for agency-level differences in the timing and amount of other 

COPS grant expenditures and other federal law enforcement grant 

expenditures; after controlling for annual changes in local economic and 

demographic conditions in the county in which an agency was located; 

and after controlling for changes in state-level factors that could affect the 

 14Reported changes in this paragraph are based on statistical tests of differences in levels of 

policing practices from 1993 to 1997 between agencies that received a COPS grant and 

those that did not receive a COPS grant in this period. 
Page 10 GAO-05-699R 

level of sworn officers. Specifically, from our analyses of data for police 

agencies serving populations of 10,000 or more persons we estimated that 

each $25,000 in COPS hiring grant expenditures per year added about 0.6 

of a sworn officer to the net number of sworn officers. We assessed the 

effects of all COPS grant expenditures in specific years on the level of 

sworn officers in these years, compared to the baseline, pre-COPS 

program year of 1993. In 1998 through 2000—the 3 highest years of COPS 

expenditures—we estimated that COPS expenditures were responsible for 

an increase in the number of sworn officers per capita of about 3 percent 

above the levels that would have been expected without the funds.15 Upon 

projecting the results from our analysis of our sample of agencies to the 

entire U. S. population, we estimated that, in the years from 1998 to 2000, 

COPS grant funds were associated with about 18,000 officers in each year. 

Using COPS hiring grants as a statistical link between the change in the 

number of sworn officers and the change in crime, we estimated that 

COPS-funded increases in sworn officers per capita were associated with 

declines in the rates of total index crimes, violent crimes, and property 

crimes in our sample of agencies serving populations of 10,000 or more 

persons.16 These effects held after we controlled for the effects of other 

federal law enforcement grant program expenditures by agencies, local 

socio-economic and demographic changes that could affect crime, and 

state-level factors—such as increases in incarceration, changes in 

sentencing practice, and state-level changes in other programs such as 

welfare—that could also affect crime.17 The effects of COPS funds on 

crime varied among specific categories of index crimes. We calculated that 

a 1 percent increase in the level of sworn officers per capita was 

associated with reductions in the rates of specific index crimes from about 

0.1 percent to about 2 percent. For example, a 1 percent increase in the 

level of officers was associated with about a 2 percent reduction in 

robbery rates, about a 0.5 percent reduction in the rate of aggravated 

assaults, and about a 0.1 percent reduction in the larceny-theft rate.18 

 15COPS expenditures were $785 million in 1998, $790 million in 1999, and $869 million in 

2000. 

16In addition, in our analyses of the effects of sworn officers on specific categories of 

crimes, we found reductions in the rates of murder and non-negligent manslaughter, 

aggravated assault, robbery, burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft. 

17While our results are based upon statistically significant findings, uncertainties associated 

with model formulation are always of potential concern. 

18In our analyses, COPS expenditures were not associated with reductions in the rate of 

forcible rape. 
Page 11 GAO-05-699R 

In our analysis, the total effect of COPS grant expenditures on crime rates 

depended upon the level of all COPS grant expenditures in a given year, 

and level of expenditures varied from year to year. For the years from 1998 

through 2000—when COPS grant expenditures were at their peak levels—

and among the agencies in our sample, we estimated that COPS grant 

expenditures were associated with about 1 percentage point of the annual 

reduction in the index crime rate from its 1993 level, and about 3 

percentage points of the annual reduction in the violent crime rate from its 

1993 level. When we projected these results from the analysis of our 

sample to the entire U. S. population, we estimated the annual reductions 

in crimes attributable to COPS funds nationwide. For the years 1998 

through 2000, we estimated that COPS grant expenditures were associated 

with reductions in index crimes from their 1993 levels that ranged from 

about 200,000 to 225,000 index crimes, and about one-third of these were 

violent crimes and about two-thirds were property crimes. In 1998—when 

COPS grant expenditures amounted to about $785 million or 1.5 percent of 

all local law enforcement expenditures—we estimated that the crimes 

reduced due to COPS grant expenditures amounted to about 8 percent of 

the total decline in index crimes and about 13 percent of the total decline 

in violent crimes from their 1993 levels. During the years 1999 and 2000—

when COPS expenditures averaged about $829 million per year, or also 

about 1.5 percent of all local law enforcement expenditures—and crime 

continued to decline, we calculated that the COPS-funded reductions in 

crimes accounted for about 5 percent of the total reduction in index 

crimes and about 10 percent of the total reduction in violent crimes from 

their 1993 levels. 

We requested comments on a draft of this report from the Attorney 

General. Department of Justice officials informed us that the agency did 

not have any comments on the report. 

As agreed with your office, unless you publicly announce the contents of 

this report earlier, we plan no further distribution of it until 30 days from 

the date of this report. We will then send copies of the report to the 

Attorney General and will make copies available to others upon request. 

In addition, the report will be available at no charge on GAO’s web site at 

http://www.gao.gov. 

If you or your staff have any questions concerning this report, please 

contact Laurie Ekstrand at (202) 512-8777 or by e-mail at 

Ekstrandl@gao.gov or Nancy Kingsbury at (202) 512-2700 or by e-mail at 

Kingsburyn@gao.gov. Contact points for our Offices of Congressional 

Relations and Public Affairs may be found on the last page of this report. 

Agency Comments 

and Our Evaluation 
Page 12 GAO-05-699R 

In addition, William J. Sabol, Tom Jessor, David Lilley, and Benjamin 

Bolitzer made major contributions to this report. 

Sincerely yours, 

Laurie Ekstrand, Director 

Homeland Security and Justice Issues 

Nancy Kingsbury, Managing Director 

Applied Research and Methods 

Enclosures - I 
Enclosure I: Elements of the Database Used in 

Our Analysis and Methods Used to Address 

Our Research Objectives 

Page 13 GAO-05-699R 

We constructed a database—our primary analysis database—that 

consisted of up to 12 years of data (covering the period from 1990 through 

2001) for each of 13,133 law enforcement agencies that reported at least 

1 complete year of crime data to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting 

(UCR) Program. These agencies represented about 71 percent of the 

roughly 18,000 to over 19,000 agencies that were included in the data that 

we received from the UCR. The 13,133 agencies covered about 

88 percent of index crimes reported in the UCR. We constructed our 

database in the form of a panel, in which we obtained repeated measures 

on key variables in each agency over time. 

The database contained information on federal law enforcement grant 

amounts, reported crime, number of police officers, and socio-economic 

and demographic factors associated with crime. The types of information 

contained in our database were: 

• Grant obligation amounts to and annual amounts expended by each 

recipient of a community-oriented policing (or COPS) grant.1

• Annual amounts of other federal local law enforcement grants 

expended both by agencies that received COPS funds and those that 

did not. 

• Annual data on the number of index crimes and seven categories of 

index crimes, along with annual data on the number of such crimes per 

100,000 persons. 

• Annual observations on the number of sworn police officers and the 

number of officers per 10,000 persons. 

• Annual data on economic and demographic factors that are related to 

crime, such as employment, per-capita income, relative number of 

persons in the 15 to 24 age group—an age group associated with high 

crime rates—the gender and racial composition of populations, and 

total population. 

We linked data from the various sources to each law enforcement agency 

contained in our sample of agencies. The sources of data used to compile 

 1

In this report, COPS grants refer both to DOJ grants awarded through the Police Hiring 

Supplement Program and the COPS Office’s community policing grants authorized under 

VCCLEA. 

Enclosure I: Elements of the Database Used 

in Our Analysis and Methods Used to Address 

Our Research Objectives 
Enclosure I: Elements of the Database Used in 

Our Analysis and Methods Used to Address 

Our Research Objectives 

Page 14 GAO-05-699R 

the annual observations from 1990 through 2001 on local police 

departments included: 

• The UCR—Annual data files on the number of crimes and sworn 

officers reported by each agency to the UCR. We analyzed data for the 

violent crimes of murder and non-negligent manslaughter, forcible 

rape, robbery, and aggravated assault, and the property crimes of 

burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft. In addition, the data 

on sworn officers represent the reported number of full-time officers in 

each agency on October 31 of each year. We used the originating 

agency identifier (or ORI) variable and place codes to link crime and 

officer data to other data sources. 2

• Office of Justice Programs (OJP) Financial Data—Annual data on the 

amounts obligated and paid (expended) from each grant awarded by 

OJP. Because OJP and COPS share data, these OJP data also included 

COPS grant expenditures. We used information about place codes and 

OJP vendors to link these data to our other sources. 

• Bureau of Economic Analysis (U.S. Department of Commerce)—

County level data on per capita income and employment. We linked 

these data to agency-level data using place codes. Local economic 

conditions within each county are applied to each agency within a 

county. 

• Population Estimates Program (U.S. Census Bureau)—For each 

county, we obtained population totals and population breakdowns by 

gender, race, and age. We linked these data using place codes. 

In addition to the sources above that provided annual data on local 

policing agencies, we obtained and analyzed data from two separate 

surveys of nationally representative samples of local law enforcement 

agencies about the types of policing practices that they reportedly used. 

Both surveys consisted of two administrations or waves of observations 

on the agencies in their respective samples. The first survey, the National 

Survey of Community Policing Strategies (or “Policing Strategies Survey”), 

was administered in 1993 and again in 1997. The Police Foundation 

administered the 1993 wave of the survey, and Macro International, Inc. 

 2

We used Federal Information Processing Standards codes (or FIPS codes), which identify 

named population places and are issued by the National Institute of Standards and 

Technology. 
Enclosure I: Elements of the Database Used in 

Our Analysis and Methods Used to Address 

Our Research Objectives 

Page 15 GAO-05-699R 

administered the 1997 wave of the survey. 3 We identified agencies in the 

Policing Strategies Survey that responded to both waves of the survey, and 

of these, we were able to link the data from 1,035 agencies to our larger 

database on crime, officers, money, and economic conditions.4

 We used 

the Policing Strategies Survey data to compare reported changes in the 

types and levels of policing practices that occurred during the COPS 

program with pre-COPS levels of practices. 

The second survey, which we termed the National Evaluation of COPS 

Survey, was conducted by the National Opinion Research Center for the 

Urban Institute in its national evaluation of the implementation of the 

COPS program.5

 We used the two waves of the survey from 1996 and 2000, 

and we were able to link the data from 1,001 agencies that responded to 

both of these waves of the survey to our larger database on crime, officers, 

money, and economic conditions.6

 We used the data from this survey to 

compare changes in reported policing practices occurring during the 

period of the COPS program. 

Prior to developing our database, we assessed the reliability of each data 

source. To assess the reliability of the various data sources, we 

(1) performed electronic testing for obvious errors in accuracy and 

completeness; (2) reviewed related documentation, including data 

dictionaries, codebooks, and published research reports that made use of 

the data sources; and (3) worked closely with agency officials to identify 

any data problems. When we found discrepancies (such as nonpopulated 

fields or what appeared to be data entry errors) we brought them to the 

agencies’ attention and worked with them to correct the discrepancies 

before conducting our analyses. We determined that the data were 

sufficiently reliable for the purposes of our report. 

 3

The 1993 survey was designed to provide information on what was occurring and what 

needed to occur in the development and implementation of community policing. The 1997 

survey was designed to provide information on the most current practices and trends in 

community policing. 

4

These agencies represented about 82 percent of the agencies that responded to both 

waves of the Policing Strategies Survey. 

5

See Roth, J., et al., National Evaluation of the COPS Program—Title I of the 1994 Crime 

Act. 

6

These agencies also represented about 79 percent of the agencies that responded to both 

waves of the National Evaluation of COPS Survey. 
Enclosure I: Elements of the Database Used in 

Our Analysis and Methods Used to Address 

Our Research Objectives 

Page 16 GAO-05-699R 

In addition, we assessed potential biases of using UCR reported crime data 

for our estimates of the effects of COPS funds on crime. The crime data in 

the UCR consist of crimes brought to the attention of law enforcement 

agencies. These crimes are a subset of all crimes. Underreporting crimes 

by citizens could introduce bias in our results if the rate at which citizens 

reported crimes to the police declined during our study period. Under 

such a scenario, the true crime rate would diverge from the reported crime 

rate, and our results, which are based on the reported crime rate in the 

UCR, could attribute reductions in crime to COPS expenditures when in 

fact the true crime rate diverged from the reported crime rate. We 

assessed the direction of potential biases associated with reporting of 

crimes to the police and concluded that, if the rate of reporting crimes 

increased or remained the same, then our estimates of the effects of COPS 

expenditures on crime would underestimate the true effects of COPS 

expenditures. However, if the rate that citizens reported crimes to the 

police declined, then our estimated effects would overstate the true effects 

of COPS expenditures on crime. To assess possible bias in reporting 

crimes to the police, we analyzed data from the National Crime 

Victimization Survey (NCVS). These data, which are drawn from a 

nationally representative sample of households, report on individuals’ 

experiences as victims of crimes. If respondents had been victimized, they 

were asked if they or others reported the criminal victimization to the 

police. The NCVS data show that during the 1990s, victims generally 

increased the rate at which they reported crimes to the police, especially if 

they had been the victim of a violent crime. Given these findings, it 

appears that our model is more likely to underestimate than overestimate 

the effect of COPS funds on changes in the true crime rate. 

We conducted our work between January 2004 and June 2005 in 

accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. 

In analyzing the flow of COPS funds to local law enforcement agencies, 

our objectives were to assess how COPS funds were distributed in relation 

to population and crime. We used the OJP financial data to compute the 

amount of COPS funds obligated by COPS grants and the amount 

expended by local police agencies during the period from 1994 through 

2001. To describe the overall COPS funding trends by grant type, we 

analyzed the universe of agencies in the OJP data that received any federal 

law enforcement grant during the period from 1990 through 2001, 

regardless of whether or not the agency received a COPS grant during the 

period and regardless of whether we were able to link the data from these 

agencies to records in the UCR. For the 1990 through 2001 period, the OJP 

data show that 13,332 agencies received any federal law enforcement 

grant. For analyses of COPS funds by agency population sizes and for 

Methods Used to 

Analyze the Flow of 

COPS Funds 
Enclosure I: Elements of the Database Used in 

Our Analysis and Methods Used to Address 

Our Research Objectives 

Page 17 GAO-05-699R 

comparisons of funding levels with levels of violent and total index crime, 

we limited our analysis to the subsample of agencies whose crime and 

population data we were able to link to the OJP data. This resulted in a 

sample of 11,187 agencies—or 85 percent—of the 13,133 agencies in our 

primary analysis database. These 11,187 agencies accounted for 86 

percent of the reported index crimes in the United States from 1990 

through 2001. 

To address whether COPS grants were associated with changes in the use 

of policing practices, we analyzed the Policing Strategies and National 

Evaluation of COPS survey data. We compared differences in the reported 

levels of policing practices between agencies that received COPS grants 

and those that did not receive grants during the 2 periods covered by the 

surveys. With the Policing Strategies Survey, we compared pre- and 

within-COPS program differences in the reported use of policing practices 

(or from 1993 to 1997), and with the National Evaluation of COPS Survey, 

we compared changes in the reported use of policing practices that 

occurred during the COPS program (or from 1996 to 2000). 

Each of the surveys reported data on the policing practices used by 

agencies. Survey responses were obtained from knowledgeable officials 

within each agency, such as the police chief or the chief’s designee. The 

number of items related to policing practices differed between the two 

surveys. For the data in each survey, we classified items into four 

categories of policing practices: problem-solving practices, place-oriented 

practices, community collaboration activities, and crime analysis 

activities. 

We used 30 items on policing practices from the Policing Strategies 

Survey. We combined eight practices pertaining to increasing officer 

contact with citizens and improving citizen feedback into a community 

collaboration index. We used items on the crime analysis units within 

police departments to create our index of crime analysis. We combined 

seven practices pertaining to increasing enforcement activity or place 

management in buildings, neighborhoods, or other specific places into an 

index of place-focused practices. And we compiled the data on 12 items 

that reflected organizational efforts to reduce or interrupt recurring 

mechanisms that may encourage crime into a problem-solving practices 

index. The classification of items from the Policing Strategies Survey into 

our four indexes of types of policing practices is shown in table 1. 

Methods Used to 

Analyze Changes in 

Policing Practices 
Enclosure I: Elements of the Database Used in 

Our Analysis and Methods Used to Address 

Our Research Objectives 

Page 18 GAO-05-699R 

Table 1: Categories of Policing Practices and Specific Items within Each Category 

in the Policing Strategies Survey 

Community collaboration 

Agency uses foot patrol as a specific assignment 

Agency uses foot patrol as a periodic expectation for officers assigned to cars 

Agency uses citizen surveys to determine community needs and priorities 

Agency uses citizen surveys to evaluate police service 

Patrol officers conduct surveys in area of assignment 

Patrol officers meet regularly with community groups 

Supervisors maintain regular contact with community leaders 

Agency uses citizens as volunteers within the police agency 

Crime analysis 

Agency has a decentralized crime analysis unit/function 

Agency has a centralized crime analysis unit/function 

Supervisors manage crime analysis for geographic area of responsibility 

Place-oriented practices 

Agency designates some officers as “community” or “neighborhood” officers 

Agency uses building code enforcement as a means of helping remove crime 

Geographically based crime analysis made available to officers 

Command or decision-making responsibility tied to neighborhoods or beats 

Patrol officers enforce civil and code violations in area 

Fixed assignment of patrol officers to specific beats or areas 

Agency uses other regulatory codes to combat drugs and crime 

Problem-solving practices 

Specific training provided officers for problem identification and resolution 

Training for citizens in problem identification or resolution 

Landlord/manager training programs for order maintenance 

Interagency involvement in problem identification and resolution 

Agency has revised procedures to deal with neighborhood problems 

Multidisciplinary teams to deal with special problems such as child abuse and 

neglect 

Specialized problem-solving unit 

Patrol officers work with citizens to identify and resolve area problems 

Organization has been redesigned to support problem solving efforts 

Line supervisors make final decision about which problems are to be addressed 

Line supervisors make final decision about how to handle most community 

problems 
Enclosure I: Elements of the Database Used in 

Our Analysis and Methods Used to Address 

Our Research Objectives 

Page 19 GAO-05-699R 

Line supervisors make final decision about application of agency resources to solve 

problem in geographic area of responsibility 

Source: Policing Strategies Survey, 1993 and 1997. 

Note: Each individual item is coded dichotomously (yes/no) to indicate whether an agency 

implemented the specific practice. 

We used 19 items on policing practices from the National Evaluation of 

COPS Survey, and we classified these items into the same categories of 

practices as we did with the Policing Strategies Survey data (table 2). 
Enclosure I: Elements of the Database Used in 

Our Analysis and Methods Used to Address 

Our Research Objectives 

Page 20 GAO-05-699R 

Table 2: Categories of Policing Practices and Specific Items within Each Category 

in the National Evaluation of COPS Survey 

Community collaboration 

Regular community meetings to discuss crime 

Surveys of citizens to determine general community needs and satisfaction with 

agency 

Citizen action/advisory councils in precincts or beats 

Officers analyze community residents’ comments to identify recurring patterns of 

crime and disorder on their beats 

Considering neighborhood values in creating solutions or planning projects 

Varying styles of preventive patrol (e.g., bike patrol, walk-and-talk patrol) 

Joint projects with local businesses to reduce disorder or petty crime 

Crime analysis 

Analyzing crime patterns using computerized geographic information systems 

Officers analyze and use crime data to identify recurring patterns of crime and 

disorder on their beats 

Place-oriented practices 

Clean up/fix up projects with community residents 

Joint projects with community residents to reduce disorder such as loitering, public 

drinking 

Beat or patrol boundaries that coincide with neighborhood/community boundaries 

Alcohol, housing, or other code enforcement to combat crime and disorder 

Problem-solving practices 

Designating certain recurring patterns as “problems” or “projects” requiring nontraditional responses 

Analyzing problems with business or property owners, school principals, or 

property managers or occupants 

Analyzing problems with probation/parole officers or others who monitor offenders 

Using agency data to measure effects of responses to problems 

Using citizens’ input to measure effects of responses to problems 

Team approach instead of chain of command for prevention, problem-solving, and 

law enforcement 

Source: National Evaluation of COPS Survey, 1996 and 2000. 

Note: Each individual item is coded dichotomously (yes/no) to indicate whether an agency 

implemented the specific practice. 

From each of the surveys, we developed summary indexes of the overall 

number of reported policing practices and the number of practices within 

each of the four categories of policing practices. We then computed and 

compared changes in the mean levels of reported policing practices 

between the COPS grantee and non-grantee agencies. We tested whether 
Enclosure I: Elements of the Database Used in 

Our Analysis and Methods Used to Address 

Our Research Objectives 

Page 21 GAO-05-699R 

the differences in reported increases in levels of practices between the 

COPS-grantee and non-grantee agencies were statistically significant using 

one-way analysis of variance techniques. 

To estimate the effects of COPS funds on officers, we used fixed-effects 

regression methods that permitted us to assess changes in the levels of 

sworn officers per 10,000 persons as a function of the timing and amount 

of COPS expenditures, other federal expenditures, local economic 

conditions, and changes in the age, gender, and racial composition of local 

populations. The fixed effects regression models allow us to control for 

two sources of unmeasured variation (i.e., omitted variables): The preexisting differences among the agencies in our sample that are constant 

within agencies over time and the differences within agencies over time in 

relation to the overall trends in variables. By adopting these models, we 

are able to control for the effects of unmeasured variables that vary over 

time between agencies and that might be correlated with our dependent 

variables. We introduced fixed effects at the level of the local law 

enforcement agency. In addition, to control for state-level influences on 

officers that we were unable to observe directly—such as changes in state 

sentencing practices—we also introduced state-by-year fixed effects into 

our models. 

To control for underlying trends in the pre-COPS grant period in sworn 

officers and crime, we estimated regressions that analyzed these trends, 

and then we classified each agency’s trend within population size groups. 

This allowed us to compare agencies within population size categories 

that had similar trends in officers and crime prior to the COPS program. 

Specifically, we separated the agencies in four groups based on the growth 

rate in both officers and in crime during 1990-1993, which is prior to the 

implementation of the COPS program. We constructed each combination 

of these groups, which produced 16 cells. We then interacted these cells 

with each of the 11 years of data used in the regressions that analyzed the 

effects of COPS funds on sworn officers and with 5 population categories 

to yield a total of 880 effects. In essence then, each agency is being 

compared with another agency that had a similar trajectory—or growth 

rate pattern—of crime and officers in the pre-COPS period.7

We analyzed the data for 4,509 police agencies with populations of 10,000 

or more persons. We estimated several regressions of the effect of COPS 

funds on sworn officers, and we included as time-varying independent 

 7

This approach was first implemented by Evans, W., and Owens, E., “Flypaper COPS,” 

(College Park, Md.: University of Maryland, April 2005). 

Methods Used to 

Estimate the Effects 

of COPS Funds on 

Sworn Officers 
Enclosure I: Elements of the Database Used in 

Our Analysis and Methods Used to Address 

Our Research Objectives 

Page 22 GAO-05-699R 

variables the per capita amounts of COPS hiring grants, COPS MORE 

grants, COPS grants for innovative programs, other COPS grants, Edward 

Byrne Memorial State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance 

Discretionary Grants, Local Law Enforcement Block Grants (LLEBG), the 

employment to population ratio, per capita income, the percent of the 

population that was male, the percent of the population that was 

nonwhite, and the percent of the population that was between the ages of 

15 and 24. All of our economic and demographic measures were observed 

at the level of the county that contained the local law enforcement agency. 

Our regressions included the agency-level fixed effects, year fixed effects, 

controls for the pre-COPS Program trends in the growth of officers and 

crime, population weights (to allow us to estimate national-level effects), 

and state-by-year fixed effects. 

We projected our results to the nation as a whole to obtain an estimate of 

the change in the national level of officers attributable to COPS 

expenditures in a given year. We did this by multiplying the population of 

the United States by our estimate of the per capita effects of COPS 

expenditures on officers in our sample. 

We estimated the impact of COPS expenditures on crime through these 

funds’ effects on changes in officers. We made use of the fact that, unlike 

the other COPS grant types, hiring grants were earmarked specifically for 

the hiring of officers. Consequently, given the number of officers, variation 

in hiring grant expenditures should be unrelated with other changes in 

crime. Taking advantage of this, we used variation in COPS hiring grant 

expenditures to identify the relationship between sworn officers and crime 

rates. 

We then estimated population-weighted regressions of the impact of the 

flow of COPS expenditures on crime rates, net of pre-existing trends in 

crime rates and growth of officers, and net of economic conditions, 

population change, and other amounts of funding for local law 

enforcement. We used the population weights to allow us to develop 

estimates for the nation as a whole. We estimated our regressions on the 

same sample of 4,509 agencies with populations of 10,000 or more that we 

used in our officers equations. We estimated crime equations separately by 

type of crime. Under the assumption that hiring grants can be used as an 

instrument, we used the results from the two regressions—officer rate on 

COPS funds and crime rate on COPS funds—to calculate the elasticity of 

crime with respect to officers (i.e., percent change in crime rates 

attributable to the percent change in officers). 

Methods Used to 

Estimate the Effects 

of COPS Funds on 

Crime through Sworn 

Officers 
Enclosure I: Elements of the Database Used in 

Our Analysis and Methods Used to Address 

Our Research Objectives 

Page 23 GAO-05-699R 

More specifically, we estimated the effect of COPS hiring expenditures on 

crime controlling for measures of specific types of COPS grant funds (e.g., 

MORE, grants for innovation, and other COPS grants) expended, measures 

of other federal grant funds expended, and the controls for socioeconomic and demographic changes in the population. We included the 

880 variables that controlled for pre-COPS trends in officers and crime, 

and we introduced agency-level, year-level, and state-by-year fixed effects. 

The state-by-year fixed effects allow us to control for unmeasured statelevel sources of variation with crime, such as increases in state 

incarceration rates, changes in state sentencing practices, and changes in 

other state programs—such as welfare reform—that could affect crime 

rates. We estimated regressions separately for the index crime rate and by 

type of index crime. 

After obtaining the coefficients from our officers and crime regressions, 

and to obtain estimates of the effects of COPS funds on crime through 

officers, we then calculated the elasticity of crime with respect to officers 

in any given year. The elasticity of crime with respect to officers provides 

an estimate of the effect of a 1 percent change in the level of sworn 

officers per capita on the per capita crime rate. Using these elasticities, we 

then apportioned the amount of the reduction in crime that we could 

attribute to COPS funds. To project the effects of COPS funds on crime to 

the nation as a whole, we then weighted the estimates of COPS effects on 

crime in our sample up to the nation as whole. 

We projected our results to the nation as a whole to obtain an estimate of 

the change in the national level of crimes attributable to COPS 

expenditures in a given year. We did this by multiplying the population of 

the United States by our estimate of the per capita effects of COPS 

expenditures on each category of crime in our sample. 

We reviewed our approach and methods with a group of experts in the 

fields of policing and crime. The group was convened for us by the 

National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, and 

consisted of criminologists, economists, statisticians, and practitioners. 

The members of the group offered their views on our data and methods, 

and offered suggestions about additional statistical tests that we could 

conduct to determine if our results held under different formulations of 

our models. For example, in the information that we presented to the 

experts, our regressions of the effects of COPS expenditures on officers 

and crime did not include the state-by-year fixed effects, which were 

suggested as a way to control for state-level changes in incarceration or 

sentencing practices. We included these effects in the regressions on 

which we reported in this correspondence. 

Review of Our 

Approach by Experts 

(440420) 
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