Community policing is generally defined as a shift in police efforts from a solely reactive response to crime to also proactively working with residents to prevent crime. Citizens, police departments, and other agencies are to work together to identify problems and apply appropriate problem-solving strategies. The practice of community policing began to emerge in the late 1970s. The Department of Justice (DOJ) has supported community policing efforts through various implementation and research grants for about the last 15 years. The Public Safety Partnership and Community Policing Act of 1994 (Community Policing Act)—Title I of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994—authorizes DOJ to make grants for the hiring or rehiring of law enforcement officers to participate in community policing. In addition, the Community Policing Act authorizes DOJ to award grants for the purchase of equipment, technology, and support systems if the expenditures would result in an increase in the number of officers deployed in community-oriented policing. It also authorizes grants for other programs such as providing specialized training to enhance skills needed to work in partnership with members of the community. The purposes of the grants are to increase police presence, expand and improve cooperative efforts between law enforcement agencies and members of the community to address crime and disorder problems, and otherwise enhance public safety. The Community Policing Act authorizes $8.8 billion in grants over a 6-year period to states, local governments, Indian tribal governments, other public and private entities, and multijurisdictional or regional consortia. Fiscal year 1995 appropriated funds for the Community Policing Act totaled $1.3 billion. The President’s fiscal year 1996 budget requests about $1.9 billion for public safety and community policing grants. DOJ has used three programs to date—COPS: Phase I, COPS FAST, and COPS AHEAD—as part of its efforts to increase by 100,000 the number of sworn law enforcement officers over current levels by providing community policing grants. COPS: Phase I was open only to jurisdictions not funded due to a scarcity of funds under DOJ’s 1993-1994 Police Hiring Supplement Program (PHSP). COPS FAST is open to state, local, and other public enforcement agencies, Indian tribal governments, other public and private entities, and multijurisdictional or regional consortia that employ sworn law enforcement officers and that serve populations under 50,000. COPS AHEAD is open to those agencies serving populations of 50,000 or more. DOJ community policing guidelines provide that jurisdictions that had received COPS: Phase I funding were also eligible to receive additional funding under COPS AHEAD if the combined hiring under both programs did not exceed 3 percent of the actual October 1, 1994, total police force level.In addition, an agency that received funding under COPS: Phase I is eligible to receive additional funding under COPS FAST. DOJ has also announced additional programs. The guidelines also stipulate that federal grant funds awarded under the COPS FAST and COPS AHEAD programs cannot exceed 75 percent of the total salary and benefits of each officer up to a maximum of $75,000 per officer for a 3-year period. Grantees are required to provide at least 25 percent of officer costs and commit to retaining new officers after the grant expires. The application and selection processes varied somewhat between the COPS: Phase I program and the COPS FAST and COPS AHEAD programs because they were administered differently by separate offices within DOJ. BJA administered the application and selection of COPS: Phase I awards. The Attorney General created a separate office, the COPS Office, to administer the Community Policing Act grants. This office designed the application and selection processes for the COPS FAST and COPS AHEAD grants. The COPS Office is to monitor the grants awarded under all three programs. The Community Policing Act requires that each application (1) include, among other things, a long-term community policing strategy and a detailed implementation plan; (2) demonstrate a specific public safety need; and (3) explain the applicant’s inability to meet its public safety needs without federal assistance. The act makes special provisions for applications of local government or law enforcement agencies in jurisdictions with populations of less than 50,000 and for nonpolice hiring grants of less than $1 million by allowing the Attorney General to waive one or more of the grant application requirements and to facilitate the submission, processing, and approval of these applications. The difference in the application process between COPS: Phase I and COPS FAST and COPS AHEAD grants is the stage at which jurisdictions could begin recruiting and hiring additional officers. In the traditional grant process used for COPS: Phase I, jurisdictions submitted a detailed application to BJA for review and waited for final grant approval and award before beginning officer recruitment, hiring, and training. For the COPS FAST and COPS AHEAD grant programs, the COPS Office implemented a two-step application process that allowed jurisdictions to recruit, hire, and train officers while final grant applications were being reviewed. In response to a suggestion from the U.S. Conference of Mayors to expedite the grant application process for the COPS FAST and COPS AHEAD programs, the COPS Office designed a two-step application process to try to get new officers on the street months earlier than they would be under traditional grant award processes. First, for COPS AHEAD, the COPS Office used a one-page initial application to determine the number of officers jurisdictions could recruit and train. Approved jurisdictions were notified of proposed funding levels, cautioned that the funding was tentative, and warned that if the subsequent application was not approved, the COPS Office would not be held liable for officers hired. In COPS FAST, grant decisions were made based upon one-page applications. Second, the selected jurisdictions in both programs were to submit additional information to the COPS Office prior to issuance of formal awards. COPS AHEAD agencies were asked to submit detailed applications, while COPS FAST supplied brief budget and community policing information. The type of information and amount of detail required in this second application differed between COPS FAST and COPS AHEAD programs. COPS FAST applicants were allowed to provide less detailed information because the Attorney General waived certain requirements for communities serving under 50,000 residents. BJA awarded the COPS: Phase I grants based primarily on public safety need, while the COPS Office used commitment to community policing as the primary eligibility criterion for the COPS FAST and COPS AHEAD grants. COPS: Phase I grantees were competitively selected on the basis of the following five criteria used for PHSP applicants: (1) public safety need (40 percent), (2) community policing strategy (30 percent), (3) implementation plan (10 percent), (4) continuation and retention plan (10 percent), and (5) additional resource commitments (10 percent). The eligible jurisdictions for COPS: Phase I were those 2,507 jurisdictions that applied for the 1993-1994 PHSP but did not receive funding. BJA considered applications from both traditional law enforcement jurisdictions—such as municipal, county, and state police—and special law enforcement jurisdictions—such as airports, parks, and transit authorities. A BJA official said that most of the COPS: Phase I applicants demonstrating a high or moderate need based on the above five factors received funding. In addition, 16 jurisdictions received waivers of the local match requirement after demonstrating extraordinary economic hardships. The Assistant Director for Grants Administration said the intent of the COPS Office was to award COPS FAST and COPS AHEAD grants to as many applicant jurisdictions as funds allowed. However, after receiving more applications than it had expected—about 8,000 of the approximately 15,000 law enforcement jurisdictions applied—the COPS Office decided to consider in COPS FAST and COPS AHEAD only applications from traditional law enforcement jurisdictions. Jurisdictions with satisfactory COPS FAST and COPS AHEAD applications were approved for funds based on the number of officers on board on October 1, 1994. About 92 percent of jurisdictions that applied for a COPS grant received initial award approval. COPS Office staff said that if an application was incomplete, a COPS Office grant adviser contacted a local official for further information. In some cases, jurisdictions were referred for technical assistance to help them plan and implement a community policing strategy. On July 1, 1995, the COPS Office and the Community Policing Consortium entered into a cooperative agreement for the provision of certain training and technical assistance services. Table 1 shows the authorized hiring scale for approved jurisdictions. Table 2 summarizes information about the grant application and selection process for the three COPS programs. The Attorney General established the COPS Office to administer all Community Policing Act grants, including monitoring and evaluation to assess the financial and programmatic impact of the grants. Grantees are required to submit progress and accounting reports and are to be contacted periodically by telephone. Some of the financial monitoring is to be done by DOJ’s Office of Justice Programs (OJP). An intra-agency agreement between the COPS Office and OJP allows OJP to provide certain accounting and financial monitoring to track grantee compliance with audit requirements, as well as prepare financial status reports. According to the Assistant Director for Grants Administration, the frequency and extent of evaluation to assess a jurisdiction’s grant implementation process will depend on the amount of the grant award, with the level of scrutiny increasing for larger awards. A COPS FAST jurisdiction, for example, which received a grant award for only one law enforcement officer—about 6,200 jurisdictions—is to receive a minimum of telephone contacts and have its periodic progress reports reviewed. A COPS AHEAD jurisdiction, however, which may have received funding for a large number of officers, should expect site visits, frequent telephone contacts, and close review of its community policing efforts through its periodic progress reports.