COPS Anti-Methamphetamine Program—How 

Decisions were Made to Allocate Approximately $6 

Million Available When More than $11 Million was 

Requested

The COPS Office received applications from 19 eligible state law enforcement agencies requesting 

$11,939,931 in federal funding for the FY 2014 COPS Anti-Methamphetamine Program (CAMP). 

The COPS Office developed an application to meet the 

requirements of the law

The COPS Office developed an application for CAMP funds that met the requirements of the statute with 

a focus 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

To measure and compare the necessary scoring indicators, the COPS Office consulted with experts in the 

fields of policing, criminology, and public finance to develop appropriate application questions. 

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 19 eligible applications underwent a comprehensive review process that included both internal 

specialists and external methamphetamine subject matter expert (SME) peer reviewers. 

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

• Strategy to achieve program goals

• Applicable and allowable budget items requested

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

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

agencies ranked within the "Highly Recommended" and "Recommended" ratings; eight agencies that 

were “Not Recommended” were removed from further consideration.

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 applicants that received a rating of "Highly Recommended" or 

"Recommended" was then scored and ranked within their respective recommendation rating 

categories. 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 most recent year 

• Seizures of precursor chemicals rate for most recent year 

• Seizures of finished methamphetamine rate for most recent year

• Seizures of methamphetamine laboratories rate for most recent year 

• Laboratory dump seizures rate for most recent year

• 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

One applicant was removed from consideration for their seizure data score.