COPS Anti-Methamphetamine Program (CAMP)—

How Decisions were Made to Allocate 

Approximately $6 Million Available When More 

than $14 Million was Requested

The COPS Office received applications from 16 eligible state law enforcement agencies requesting 

$14,569,244 in federal funding for the FY 2015 COPS Anti-Methamphetamine Program (CAMP). 

The COPS Office developed an application to meet the 

requirements of the law

This is the second fiscal year that the COPS Office has received funding for CAMP. As in the previous 

fiscal year, CAMP focuses on advancing public safety by providing funds to investigate illicit activities 

related to the manufacture and distribution of methamphetamine. Only state law enforcement agencies 

authorized by law or by a state agency to engage in or supervise anti-methamphetamine investigative 

activities were eligible to apply for funding. 

The COPS Office balanced scoring indicators

Applicants were asked to submit information regarding their jurisdiction’s methamphetamine problem 

on such indicators as

• reported seizures of methamphetamine for the previous three years; 

• current anti-methamphetamine investigative activities; 

• planned or current involvement in an anti-methamphetamine task force. 

The community policing philosophy engages in a proactive and systematic examination of identified 

problems that can be countered with effective responses. Community policing relies heavily on 

partnerships and relationships between law enforcement and the community it serves. Narrative 

questions were designed to examine an agency’s formation of collaborations with federal, state, local, 

or tribal partners such as other law enforcement and public agencies, private organizations, or 

participation in multijurisdictional task forces. Agencies were asked to identify and describe the types of 

partnerships they intended to initiate or enhance in order to address their identified methamphetamine 

problem.
The COPS Office verified with applicants the data that 

was submitted

The application system contains numerous built-in logic checks to help prevent the submission of 

erroneous data. In addition, once the applications were submitted, specialists in the COPS Office 

immediately reviewed the data contained therein. In some cases, the COPS Office contacted applicant 

agencies to verify information provided in their application. This data verification process, though timeconsuming, was crucial to ensuring that all applicants were properly evaluated based on accurately and 

consistently reported seizure data. 

The COPS Office developed a uniform system of 

evaluating the information that applicants submitted

Comprehensive Review

The 16 eligible applications underwent a comprehensive review process conducted by external 

methamphetamine subject matter expert (SME) peer reviewers. 

SME peer reviewers evaluated the following criteria in the Project Narrative and Budget Narrative 

sections of the application to determine the quality of each application. The reviewers looked at the 

following:

• Problem identification

• Current methamphetamine investigative activities

• Anti-methamphetamine task force participation

• Collaboration and partnerships

• High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area threat assessment regarding methamphetamine

• Strategy to achieve program goals

• Applicable and allowable budget items requested

The SME peer reviewers then developed recommendations based on a rating of "Highly 

Recommended," "Recommended," or "Not Recommended" for each proposal. From the 

recommendations, seven agencies ranked within the "Highly Recommended" rating, and five agencies 

ranked within the "Recommended" rating; four agencies were ranked within the “Not Recommended” 

rating. 
Data Scoring

The focus for funding was on state-level law enforcement agencies in states with high rates of identified 

methamphetamine problems, as indicated through the following sources of state-wide data:

• Number of seizures of precursor chemicals

• Numbers of seizures of finished methamphetamine

• Number of seizures of methamphetamine laboratories

• Number of laboratory dump seizures

State methamphetamine seizure data for all applicants was scored and ranked within their respective 

recommendation rating categories. At this time, because of funding availability, applicants that received 

“Recommended” and “Not Recommended” ratings were removed from further consideration. A 

methodology for scoring was established to analyze and rank the seizure data provided in each 

application. Each category is of equal value, and the data was scored based on the rate of change 

between each year and the most recent year's data. Below is a classification of each item that was 

scored:

• Seizure data rates for the past three years 

• Seizures of precursor chemicals rate for the past three years 

• Seizures of finished methamphetamine rate for the past three years

• Seizures of methamphetamine laboratories rate for the past three years 

• Laboratory dump seizures rate for the past three years

• Percent change in seizure rates across three years 

• Percent change in seizures of precursor chemicals rates across three years 

• Percent change in seizures of finished methamphetamine rates across three years 

• Percent change in seizures of methamphetamine laboratories rates across three years

• Percent change in laboratory dump seizures rates across three years