Title: National Evaluation of the COPS Program Title I of the 1994 Crime Act. Series: Research Report Authors: Jeffrey A. Roth, Joseph F. Ryan, Stephen J. Gaffigan, Christopher S. Koper, Mark H. Moore, Janice A. Roehl, Calvin C. Johnson, Gretchen E. Moore, Ruth M. White, Michael E. Buerger, Elizabeth A. Langston, David Thacher Published: National Institute of Justice, August 2000 Subject: Law Enforcement; Community policing; Problem-oriented policing; Program Evaluation 335 pages 912,000 bytes --------------------------- Figures, charts, forms, mathematical formulas, and tables are not included in this ASCII plain-text file.To view this document in its entirety, download the Adobe Acrobat graphic file available from this Web site or order a print copy from NCJRS at 800-851-3420 (877-712-9279 for TTY users). --------------------------- National Evaluation of the COPS Program--Title I of the 1994 Crime Act Research Report U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs 810 Seventh Street N.W. Washington, DC 20531 Janet Reno Attorney General Daniel Marcus Acting Associate Attorney General Mary Lou Leary Acting Assistant Attorney General Julie E. Samuels Acting Director, National Institute of Justice Office of Justice Programs World Wide Web Site http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov National Institute of Justice World Wide Web Site http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij --------------------------- National Evaluation of the COPS Program--Title I of the 1994 Crime Act by Jeffrey A. Roth, Joseph F. Ryan, Stephen J. Gaffigan, Christopher S. Koper, Mark H. Moore, Janice A. Roehl, Calvin C. Johnson, Gretchen E. Moore, Ruth M. White, Michael E. Buerger, Elizabeth A. Langston, David Thacher with Catherine Coles, Francis X. Hartmann, Daryl Herrschaft, Edward R. Maguire, Peter Sheingold, and Mary K. Shelley Co-principal Investigators Jeffrey A. Roth Joseph F. Ryan August 2000 NCJ 183643 --------------------------- National Institute of Justice Julie E. Samuels Acting Director Steven M. Edwards Program Manager This evaluation was supported, with funds transferred from the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, under an award (number 95-IJ-CX- 0073) to the Urban Institute by the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. 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. The authors' views should not be attributed to 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. --------------------------- Foreword Title I of the 1994 Crime Act (Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act) encouraged local and State law enforcement agencies to pursue two objectives simultaneously: increase the number of sworn officers on the street and adopt community policing. Signed into law on September 13, 1994, the legislation authorized nearly $9 billion over 6 years to achieve those objectives. Soon after the signing of the Crime Act legislation, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) created the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) to administer the new grant program and fulfill the mandated objectives of Title I. The Act also authorized funds for the Attorney General to initiate a national evaluation of what soon became known as the COPS program. The National Institute of Justice (NIJ)--the primary research and development arm of DOJ-- issued a solicitation requesting proposals from organizations desiring to compete for the task. On the basis of a competitive process, NIJ awarded the grant to the Urban Institute, which embarked on a series of national telephone surveys, site visits, case studies, and other data collection efforts focusing on the COPS program. The data and findings presented in this report represent the results of the independent evaluation conducted by the Urban Institute. This Research Report presents evaluation findings based primarily on the first 4 years of the COPS program, but includes several projections up to 2003. Analyses of data collected in mid-2000 are under way and may result in refinements of some findings. In addition to the national evaluation, NIJ has awarded several grants to researchers for jurisdiction-specific studies focusing on transitions to community policing and on other related issues. Julie E. Samuels Acting Director National Institute of Justice --------------------------- Acknowledgments This evaluation combines the work of many people. In such a joint enterprise, fairly recognizing the credit and responsibility that each contributor is due is no easy task. The list of coauthors on the title page is ordered to identify the two co-principal investigators, followed by alphabetical lists of: four lead authors of chapters; the leader and two members of an analysis team whose work permeates most of the report; three coauthors of at least one chapter; and six colleagues whose findings, insights, databases, or analyses helped make this volume what it is. Three coauthors--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. We are grateful to all of 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 coauthors--Coles, Sheinbaum, and Thacher--also served double duty, by writing case studies of organizational change in 10 COPS grantee agencies, under the direction of Mark Moore and Francis Hartmann. We are grateful to them and to the chiefs and staff of those 10 agencies. We owe thanks to our colleagues at the National Opinion Research Center (NORC), who conducted three waves of national law enforcement agency surveys. 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 the NORC interviewing teams for their persistence and accuracy, and to the 1,724 law enforcement chief executives and designees who answered their questions. At the Urban Institute, John Roman 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 Kerlikowske, Nina Pozgar, Ellen Scrivner, Benjamin Tucker, and Craig Uchida--arranged or provided 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 the National Institute of Justice 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 these contributors consider the final product worthy of their efforts. Responsibility rests with us for any errors or omissions that remain despite the valuable assistance received. --------------------------- Contents Foreword Acknowledgments Chapter 1. Overview The National Evaluation The COPS Program and Its Roots COPS Application Decisions Distribution of COPS Funds Officer Hiring, Deployment, and Retention Planning MORE Awards and Projected Productivity Gains COPS Effects on Policing Levels COPS and the Style of American Policing Measures of Success Chapter 2. Origins and Objectives of the COPS Program The Evolution of a Presidential Initiative From Police Reforms to Community Policing The 1994 Crime Act Planning and Launching the COPS Program Pursuing Program Objectives Evaluation Questions Notes References Chapter 3. The Flow of COPS Funds Overview of Findings The Terms of COPS Grants Agencies' Application and Withdrawal Decisions The Flow of COPS Funds Coordination of Multiple Grants for Community Policing Grantees as Customers From COPS Office Grant Decisions to Funds Expended Notes Chapter 4. Using COPS Resources Overview of Findings Hiring Grants: Recruiting, Training, and Deployment Officer Retention and Redeployment Implementing COPS MORE Notes References Appendix 4-A. Implementing MORE-Funded Mobile Computing Technology Chapter 5. Putting 100,000 Officers on the Street: Progress as of 1998 and Preliminary Projections Through 2003 Summary of Interim Estimates Hiring Grants MORE Grants Projecting the Course of the First 100,000 Officers Awarded Through COPS Notes References Appendix 5-A. Variances and Confidence Intervals for Estimated Ratios and Proportions Chapter 6. COPS and the Nature of Policing Data Sources and Samples Defining Community Policing Partnerships Problem Solving: Background Prevention Organizational Changes in Support of Community Policing COPS and Community Policing: Conclusions Notes References Appendix 6-A. Policing Tactics Checklist Appendix 6-B. Estimation Models for Assessing Tactic-Specific Differences Between COPS-Funded and Nonfunded Agencies Chapter 7. COPS Grants, Leadership, and Transitions to Community Policing The Methodology of the Study Measuring the Change Toward Community Policing Accounting for High Levels of Achievement and Rapid Change: The Role of the Context and Environment Accounting for High Levels of Achievement: The Role of Leadership Conclusions Notes Appendix 7-A. Empirical Methods Methodological Appendix Survey Objectives The Sample Frame and the National Law Enforcement Agency List Sample Strata and Designed Sampling Fractions Survey Completion Rates Weights and Sampling Errors: Accounting for Multiple Selection Probabilities Notes About the Authors --------------------------- Tables Table 1-1. Estimates of COPS Impact on Level of U.S. Policing Table 3-1. Discounted COPS-Supported Share of Officers' Discounted Life Cycle Costs Table 3-2. Participation of Stakeholders in COPS Application Process by Agency Size and Type Table 3-3. Prevalence of "Frequent" Indicators of Community Support for Police, by COPS Funding Status, 1996 Table 3-4. Reasons for Nonapplication, Wave 1 and Wave 3, Ranked in Order of Mentions Table 3-5. COPS Grant Status of Agencies, by Jurisdiction Size, Eligibility, Program, and Application Status, 1995-97 (Cumulative) Table 3-6. Estimated Award Distribution by Agency Type and Year (Cumulative in Millions) Table 3-7. Distribution of COPS Funds for All Agency Types and for Local/County Agencies Table 3-8. Regional Distribution of COPS Hiring and MORE Grants and Funds Through 1997 Table 3-9. Regional Distribution of Grants to Core City and Other Grantees, Cumulative Through 1997 Table 3-10. COPS Grantees' Use of Non-COPS Funds for Community Policing Table 3-11a. Accepted Grant Applications and Sum of Awards and Officer-Equivalents (Cumulative Through 1995) Table 3-11b. Accepted Grant Applications and Sum of Awards and Officer-Equivalents (Cumulative Through 1996) Table 3-11c. Accepted Grant Applications and Sum of Awards and Officer-Equivalents (Cumulative Through 1997) Table 3-12. Elapsed Time in Processing COPS Grant Applications, by Stage Table 3-13. COPS Grant Obligations and Debits by Program Selection and Year (Cumulative) Table 4-1. 1996 Status of FAST/AHEAD Officers Funded in 1995 Table 4-2. Time From Award Obligation to Hiring for 1995 FAST and AHEAD Grantees (Agencies That Had Hired Officers as of Fall 1996): Cumulative Percentages Hiring Within Selected Time Frames Table 4-3. Types of Training for COPS-Funded Officers (FAST and AHEAD Grantees) Table 4-4. Time From Hiring to Hitting the Street: Cumulative Percentages of Officers Hitting the Street Within Selected Time Frames (FAST and AHEAD Grantees) Table 4-5. Community Policing Deployment Strategies, 1996 (FAST and AHEAD Grantees) Table 4-6. Community Policing Deployment Strategies, 1998 (Medium and Large Municipal/County Hiring Grantees, n=272) Table 4-7. Selection, Training, and Deployment Status of Redeployed Officers (FAST and AHEAD Grantees), 1996 Table 4-8. Training for Redeployed Officers (FAST and AHEAD Grantees) Table 4-9. Share of COPS-Funded Officers Still With the Agency by Number of Officers Funded Table 4-10. Expectations About Postgrant Retention Table 4-11. Primary Activities of COPS-Funded Officers Table 4-12. Community Policing Activities: Reported Share of COPS Officers' Time Table 4-13. Community Policing Delivery Structure and Reported Share of Officers' Time Spent on Routine Patrol Table 4-14. Community Policing Delivery Structure and Reported Share of Officers' Time "Squeezing in Proactive Work as Time Permits" Table 4-15. Accumulated MORE and Hiring Grant Awards by Size (COPS Accepted Local/County Agencies, 1996) Table 4-16. Distribution of MORE and Hiring Grants for 1996, 1997, and 1998 Table 4-17. Technology Types Acquired by Local/County MORE Grantees, 1996 and 1998 Table 4-18. Projected FTEs, by Type of Technology, From MORE Grants Through June 1998 Table 4-19. Projected and Anticipated FTEs Table 4-20. Percentage of Agencies Reporting Time Savings From Operational Technology, 1998, by Status of Time Measurement System Table 4-21. Percentage of MORE Technology Grantees Reporting Unexpected Cost, by Implementation Status Table 4-22. Percentage of Grantees Creating or Expanding Civilian Positions Table 4-23. Percentage of Agencies Reporting That Civilians Saved Sworn Officers' Time by Whether or Not a Measurement System Is in Place Table 5-1. Estimates of COPS Impact on Level of U.S. Policing Table 5-2. Wave 3 Survey Estimates and 95-Percent Confidence Bounds for COPS Officers Hired and on Assignment by June 1998 (Expressed in Parentheses as a Proportion of Approved Officers) Table 5-3. Agencies With Consistent UCR Reporting on Sworn Force Levels, 1989-96 Table 5-4. Actual Changes in Sworn Officers by Department Type (Agencies With Employment Data for Every Year) Table 5-5. Percentage Changes in Sworn Officers by Department Type (Agencies With Employment Data for Every Year) Table 5-6. OLS Estimates of the Impact of COPS Hiring Awards (1994-95) on National Net Changes in Police Staffing Through 1996, Controlling for 1991-96 Trends in Police Staffing (N=61,284) Table 5-7. Wave 3 Survey Estimates and 95-Percent Confidence Bounds for COPS-Funded Officers Recruited From Other Agencies (Expressed in Parentheses as a Proportion of Approved Officers) Table 5-8. Percentage of COPS Officers Expected to Be Retained After Grant Expiration, Based on Wave 3 Survey Results for Pre-1998 Grants (Number of Pre-1998 Officers Expected to Be Retained in Parentheses) Table 5-9. Wave 3 Survey Estimates and 95-Percent Confidence Bounds for FTEs Redeployed With MORE Civilian and Technology Grants as of June 1998 (Expressed in Parentheses as the Ratio of Redeployed to Approved FTEs) Table 5-10. Wave 3 Survey Estimates and 95-Percent Confidence Bounds for Eventual Productivity Increases Expected From COPS MORE Grants Awarded Through June 1998, Expressed as a % of Awarded FTEs (Redeployments Expected From Awards Through June 1998 in Parentheses) Table 6-1. Law Enforcement Agencies Visited, by Type and Population of the Jurisdiction Served Table 6-2. Law Enforcement Agencies Visited, by Approximate Start Date of Community Policing and Type and Population of the Jurisdiction Served Table 6-3. Pre- and Post-1995 Implementation of Community Policing Tactics--Reported Relationship to COPS Grants for Large Local/County Funded Agencies Only Table 6-4. Pre-1995 and 1998 Partnership Building Tactics Implementation, Large Local/County Agencies Table 6-5. Partnership Building Tactics Implementation (Pre-1995, by 1998, and Net Percentage Change), Large Local/County Agencies Table 6-6. COPS Impact on "Newly" (Post-1995) Implemented Partnership Building Tactics, Large Local/County Agencies Table 6-7. COPS Impact on "Old" (Pre-1995) Implemented Partnership Building Tactics, Large Local/County Agencies Table 6-8. Pre-1995 and 1998 Problem-Solving Tactics Implementation, Large Local/County Agencies Table 6-9. Problem-Solving Tactics Implementation (Pre-1995, by 1998, and Net Percentage Change), Large Local/County Agencies Table 6-10. COPS Impact on "Newly" (Post-1995) Implemented Problem-Solving Tactics, Large Local/County Agencies Table 6-11. COPS Impact on "Old" (Pre-1995) Implemented Problem-Solving Tactics, Large Local/County Agencies Table 6-12. Pre-1995 and 1998 Prevention Program Tactics Implementation, Large Local/County Agencies Table 6-13. Prevention Program Tactics Implementation (Pre-1995, by 1998, and Net Percentage Change), Large Local/County Agencies Table 6-14. COPS Impact on "Newly" (Post-1995) Implemented Prevention Program Tactics, Large Local/County Agencies Table 6-15. COPS Impact on "Old" (Pre-1995) Implemented Prevention Program Tactics, Large Local/County Agencies Table 6-16. Pre-1995 and 1998 Supportive Organizational Changes, Large Local/County Agencies Table 6-17. Supportive Organizational Change Implementation (Pre-1995, by 1998, and Net Percentage Change), Large Local/County Agencies Table 6-18. COPS Impact on "Newly" (Post-1995) Implemented Supportive Organizational Changes, Large Local/County Agencies Table 6-19. COPS Impact on "Old" (Pre-1995) Supportive Organizational Changes, Large Local/County Agencies Table 7-1. Levels of Community Policing (Circa 1997), Changes in Community Policing (1990-97), Preliminary Assessments Table 7-2. Initial Context of Organization (Circa 1990) Table MA-1. Agencies in Grantee Component of Sampling Frame Table MA-2. Distribution of Agencies in the Master List and Sampling Frame, by Non-COPS Data Source Table MA-3. Number of Ineligibles From Each Source Table MA-4. Sampling Frame by Funding/Program Status and Population Category Table MA-5. Sampled Agencies by Funding/Program Status and Population Category Table MA-6. Designed Sampling Fraction by Funding/Program Status and Population Category Table MA-7. Wave 1 Response Rates (Percent), by Funding/Program Status and Population Category Table MA-8. First-Time UHP and MORE Mobile Computer Grantees, by Population Category Table MA-9. Wave 2 Sampled Agencies, by Program Status and Population Category Table MA-10. Wave 2 Response Rates (Percent), by Grant Program and Population Category Table MA-11. Wave 3 Sampled Municipal and County Police Agencies, by Funding/Program Status and Population Category Table MA-12. Wave 3 Response Rates (Percent), by Funding/Program Status and Population Category Figures Figure 1-1. Logic Model Figure 3-1. Reasons for Nonapplication for 1995 COPS Grants Figure 3-2. Reasons for Withdrawal From 1995 COPS Grants Figure 3-3. Agencies Accepted for COPS Programs by Jurisdiction Size (Cumulative Totals) Figure 3-4. Accepted Agencies by Number of Grant Applications Accepted, Size, and Year (Cumulative) Figure 3-5. Total COPS Grant Awards, by Programs Through 1997 ($3.47 Billion Total) Figure 3-6. Estimated Total Award Distribution by Number of Grant Applications Accepted, Jurisdiction Size, and Year (Cumulative) Figure 3-7. Estimated MORE Award Distribution by Number of Grant Applications Accepted, Jurisdiction Size, and Year (Cumulative) Figure 3-8. Concentration of COPS Grant Awards Through 1998 Figure 3-9. Percentage of Eligible Agencies Receiving One or More COPS Grants, by Region Figure 3-10. Dollar Amount of COPS Awards per 10,000 Residents, by Region Figure 3-11. COPS Awards per 1,000 Index Crimes, by Region Figure 3-12. Customer Satisfaction: 1998, Large Local/County Grantee Agencies Figure 3-13. Future Intentions of Local/County Grantees Figure 3-14. Factors Described as "Very Important" Influences on Future Application Decisions Figure 4-1. Reported Hiring and Deployment Status of COPS-Funded Officers, 1998 (Wave 3 Large Local/County Agencies) Figure 4-2. Expected Dates All Officers Will Be on Assignment for Those Officers Not Already on Assignment (Wave 3, Weighted, Large Local/County Agencies, June 1998) Figure 4-3. Reported Selection and Redeployment Status of Backfilled Community Police Officers, 1998 (Wave 3 Large Local/County Agencies, June 1998) Figure 4-4. Expected Dates All Redeployed Officers Will Be in Community Policing Assignments, for Those Officers Who Have Not Begun Their Duties (Wave 3 Local/County Agencies, June 1998) Figure 4-5. Planned Use of Time, by Community Policing Delivery Structures Figure 4-6a. Use of MORE Funds for Agencies Less Than 50,000 Figure 4-6b. Use of MORE Funds for Agencies With Populations Between 50,000 and 150,000 Figure 4-6c. Use of MORE Funds for Agencies Larger Than 150,000 Figure 4-7. Percentage of Agencies Reporting Technology Fully Implemented as of June 1998, by Population Category Figure 4-8. Expected and Actual Dates for Technology Implementation Figure 4-9. Percentages of 1995 Grantees Achieving Four Milestones in Mobile Computer Implementation by Autumn 1998 Figure 4-10. Expected and Actual Hire Dates for MORE-Funded Civilian Positions Where Agency Reported All Civilians Were Assigned to That Position (Wave 3, June 1998) Figure 5-1. Projections of Net Officers Added and Retained From COPS Hiring Grants Awarded Through May 1999 Figure 5-2. Projections of FTEs Added From COPS MORE Grants Awarded Through May 1999 Figure 5-3. Projections of Officers and Officer Equivalents Added and Retained From the First 100,000 COPS Officers and Officer Equivalents Awarded Figure 7-1. Analytic Framework --------------------------- 1. Overview Jeffrey A. Roth and Joseph F. Ryan The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act (the Crime Act) was signed into law by President Clinton on September 13, 1994. Of the $30 billion in expenditures authorized by the Crime Act, nearly $9 billion was allocated for Title I, which is also known as the "Public Safety Partnership and Community Policing Act of 1994." Title I, the legislative basis for the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program, 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. Title I authorized the expenditure of approximately $9 billion over 6 years for use in three primary approaches to achieving the goals. The first approach was to award 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' productivity and redeploying their freed-up time to community policing. The third 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 awards with at least 25 percent of the 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 an equal distribution of funds between jurisdictions with populations of more than and less than 150,000. As with most Federal grant programs, COPS-funded resources were required to supplement local expenditures, not supplant or replace them. To carry out this statutory mandate, eight initiatives, described more fully in chapter 2, 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 Police Hiring Supplement (PHS) program; together, COPS Phase I and PHS funded nearly 4,700 officers. 2. Also within that month, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) created a new agency--the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (the COPS Office)--to administer the new grant program. 3. In November, the COPS Office established two grant programs for hiring officers: Funding Accelerated 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 help grantees address such specific problems as domestic violence, youth firearms violence, gangs, methamphetamines, and school crime. 7. To encourage and assist the policing field in its transition to community policing, the COPS Office 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 assess and evaluate 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), in which 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. 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 evaluators' efforts. The PHS and COPS Phase I grants were awarded before all the COPS Office grant-making 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 were committed, our observations of their activities are limited to incidental findings on site rather than a systematic evaluation. This report presents UI's national evaluation findings covering roughly the first 4 years of COPS, with primary focus on the COPS FAST, AHEAD, UHP, and MORE programs. Our work was guided by the logic model shown in figure 1- 1, which describes the COPS program and its intended effects. The model reflects the fact 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 figure 1-1, the distribution of COPS resources depended on eligible agencies' responses to a proposed exchange of Federal resources in return for local financial and programmatic commitments. Grantees were financially committed to share the costs of the resources during the life of the grant and to retain the COPS-funded officer positions thereafter. Programmatically, grantees were committed to police their jurisdictions following principles of community policing. 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 figure 1-1, 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, hire civilians, or (under 1995 grants only) manage officers' overtime to enable 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 figure 1-1, 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, grantees' expanded pursuit of those objectives affect local criminal justice agencies and other units of local government. The processes described above are the subject of this report. As a process evaluation, this study sets aside questions of community impact, represented in the shaded sector of figure 1-1: 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, and levels of serious crime, etc. More specifically, this report addresses the following questions: 1. How did local agencies respond to the exchange offered by the COPS program? We 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 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 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 (see methodological appendix for details of sample design). During June-July 2000, Wave 4 reinterviewed all agencies interviewed at 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? We addressed this question through analyses of COPS Office grant management databases, which were updated several times between February 1996 and March 1998. 3. How did COPS hiring grantees accomplish their hiring and deployment objectives through mid-1998, and how did they expect to retain the COPS-funded officers? We addressed the hiring question primarily through the Wave 1 survey, the retention question primarily in the Wave 3 surveys, 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? To ascertain what types of technology were awarded in the first year of the program, we analyzed a representative sample of 438 grant files for 1995 MORE awards. 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, we updated this information in the Wave 3 survey 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, we applied survey-based estimates of hiring progress, technology implementation, and retention expectations 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). For a preliminary estimate of long-term increases in policing levels due to COPS hiring and MORE programs, we 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 our 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 we observed "ground truth" during our 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. The following sections summarize the findings of this research. The COPS Program and Its Roots The answers to the seven preceding 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 addressing those evaluation questions, we will review salient aspects of that history. The COPS program can be viewed as the confluence of two forces. First, the 1992 presidential campaign occurred at a time 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 it could be done with a display of Federal efficiency at minimal cost. Second, over the preceding two decades, some students and practitioners of policing had developed 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 emerged 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 youths and making high-crime 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 of their 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 argued that those resources would be more useful than additional officers. For several years, beginning in the Bush administration, DOJ and other Federal departments were rethinking the mechanisms for distributing Federal financial assistance. Grant programs inched 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 to support local priorities in less constraining ways without giving up all Federal leverage for shaping those priorities. Early programmatic steps in this 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 the extremely ambitious goal of encouraging law enforcement agencies across the Nation to hire 100,000 officers and 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 permit the redeployment of existing officers to the street at least as cost effectively as hiring grants. Other civilian or technology benefits 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 on grantees' 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. Senior DOJ 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 successfully processed more than 10,000 grant awards in its first 4 months. While the early rounds of that work were completed before our study began, we relied heavily on COPS Office manual and automated records to design and carry out our own study. During that work, we 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 DOJ budget review and administrative requirements, which are administered by the Office of the Comptroller (OC). For the relatively simple hiring grants, the combined COPS Office/OC process required about 7 months on average from application submission to signed 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. For many 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 was 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 applications and administration as simpler than others, as of 1996. This compared to 40 to 50 percent among large agencies, which faced more elaborate application requirements, especially among MORE grantees, who had suffered the most during 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. It expanded the Community Policing Consortium, which the Bureau of Justice Assistance had created in 1993 to advance community policing. It created Innovative Community Oriented Policing programs. Some of these 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, and to 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, 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 Office of Justice Programs Office of the Comptroller established a separate branch to monitor compliance with financial and administrative requirements and the adequacy of grantees' accounting and administrative controls. The Office of the Inspector General audited COPS grantees onsite for 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. While 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. With this description as background, the following sections report findings on the questions raised above. COPS Application Decisions In this section we describe 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 typically are a fairly closed process involving the chief law enforcement executive, elected officials or their staffs, and, in larger agencies, the unit that will administer the grant and the agency grant manager, if one exists. Yet many believe 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? We estimate that 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 (NCIC), 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 their 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 Justice Department 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 they used 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; 74 percent of local/county grantees stated they planned to apply for at least one additional COPS grant in 1998 or 1999: 66 percent of small agencies (jurisdictions of less than 50,000), 78 percent of medium-size agencies (50,001-150,000), and 89 percent of large agencies (150,001 or more). 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). Only 6 percent planned to apply for hiring grants only, and 3 percent 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 In this section, we summarize the amounts of COPS grants awarded and highlights of the distribution pattern. What is the total value of COPS grants for increasing the level 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. We estimate that by then, the COPS Office and its predecessors had awarded $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, only 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 for the United States as a whole, 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 sheriff's and State police agencies, and the remainder to a variety of special jurisdictions. As required by Title I, dollars awarded were approximately evenly split between jurisdictions with populations of more than 150,000 and smaller jurisdictions. 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 1 percent of grantee agencies with the largest grants had received 41 percent of grant funds. Did COPS funds go where the crime is? Awards to repeat grantees helped focus cumulative COPS awards on jurisdictions that suffer disproportionately from serious crime. Of the 8,062 UCR contributors that had received 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 the awards, the OC reviewed and approved the budget 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 224 days. How did officer hiring and deployment proceed? Once funds became obligated and available to spend, hiring of COPS-funded 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 all of their officers had finished training and begun working in their first regular assignments. All the agencies reported expecting to have 100 percent of their officers awarded through 1997 on the street by June 2000. As of our 1996 Wave 1 survey, half of all small-agency (COPS FAST) grantees reported deploying their new officers directly into 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 do COPS-funded officers spend their time? Two of the three prime components of community policing articulated by the COPS Office--partnership building and problem solving--were the most commonly expected uses of COPS-funded officers' time; each was mentioned by about 40 percent of the medium and large local/county agencies in our 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 which 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 the agencies. The COPS-funded officers were expected to spend substantial time on routine patrol by 40 percent of the agencies with agencywide community policing and in 24 percent of the 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 COPS-funded officers' activities, we asked how those activities affected 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 our respondents reported they had either kept their COPS-funded officers on staff or replaced departed officers expeditiously. At the time of our Wave 3 survey in 1998, our sample contained few agencies with expired grants. Therefore, our 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 length of grantees' retention commitment: compliance with the retention requirement requires keeping grant-funded 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, 6 percent were "pretty sure," and 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 long-term 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 the COPS-funded officers would be retained by "using positions that open up" (i.e., through attrition, indicating an intention to retain the COPS-funded officers but not the positions). About 20 percent reported expecting the COPS-funded officers would be retained by cutting back positions elsewhere, a plan that would constitute supplanting under many common conditions; and 5 percent agreed that the COPS-funded officers were likely to be retained both through attrition and cutbacks. Now that the retention requirement has been spelled out in more detail, we are re-examining 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 using 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 of MORE-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 to just 5 percent of agencies serving populations of 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 to 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 a little more than 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 obtained exclusively technology, another 44 percent were funded for both technology and civilians, and 5 percent were funded 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 replacements of officers on a one-for-one basis. Technology projections averaged 6.12 FTEs per $100,000. Starting in 1996, the COPS Office converted dollars from MORE technology grants to projected FTEs at the four-per-$100,000 minimum needed to demonstrate cost-effectiveness--a more conservative 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 to 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. The balance of this section first describes the types of technology purchased with MORE funds. It then describes the status of implementation, productivity gains, and other costs and benefits MORE grantees accrue from their technology. 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 pursued 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 pursued telephone reporting systems (2 percent), Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) systems (1 percent), and other technologies, such as geo-mapping and reverse 911 systems. By 1998, many MORE grantees were implementing more than one type of technology. Therefore, the fractions implementing each technology type had grown to 79 percent for mobile computers, 45 percent for management/administrative computers, 12 percent for CAD systems and booking/arraignment technology, and 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 the mobile computers were projected to play an important role in increasing productivity. Of 16,870 projected FTEs funded through June 1998, 34 percent were generated by agencies with mobile computers only, and 29 percent 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, the fractions reporting that each technology type was fully operational was 61 percent for management/administrative computers, 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 to 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 our Wave 3 survey. Nevertheless, for two reasons these figures probably understate the adverse effect of delays in mobile computer implementation on achievement of 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 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 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 is 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, our 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 our Wave 3 sample was not designed to produce a definitive national estimate. Our estimate of productivity gains will be updated in a future report based on our Wave 4 survey, fielded in June 2000, when more grantees are expected to have experience with fully operational technology. What other benefits and costs of technology are local agencies experiencing? While 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: 1. 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. 2. Wireless query and response functions: Improved officer safety due to faster, more secure responses to queries regarding license plates, vehicle registrations, and persons; secure car-to-car communication; and fewer demands on dispatchers. 3. Increased effectiveness: Higher clearance and conviction rates due to improved reports; better recovery of stolen property; positive response from the community (though some agencies 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. 4. 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 officers in use of the new technologies. The time of computer staff and/or vendors was an especially common expense in agencies that had ongoing technology projects that the MORE-funded technology had to fit. Some agencies that anticipated the costs included them in their initial grant budgets without sacrificing the cost-effectiveness of their MORE programs. Others found that the local costs of the MORE grant increased by 10 percent or more over their initially planned local match. 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 that an agency would experience 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 systems, and vehicle mounts, which were frequently designed from scratch. Use of MORE-funded civilians In this section, we describe 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 the grantee agencies reported having completed their civilian hiring, and all expected to complete their civilian hiring by the end of 1999. Sixty-four percent of the grantees reported all their civilian hires were still on staff, and 80 percent of the remainder reported they had replaced all who had left. An estimated 96 percent reported the civilians saved officer time, and, for the four most common civilian positions, 73 to 80 percent of agencies reported 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 civilianization process 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 3 years. What functions are the MORE-funded 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 because of 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. For several reasons, the estimates in this report should be treated with caution. 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 fraction 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 as of two points in time: the impact, through the end of 1998, of grants awarded through 1997; and the long-term 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? We first used the Wave 3 survey data 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 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 non-COPS positions and cross-hiring between agencies. Allowing for these factors, we estimate the 41,000 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-than-complete retention of COPS-funded positions beyond the 3-year grant period. Recognizing the uncertainty surrounding these factors, we constructed a "best case" scenario, in which grantees would retain 91 percent of their new hires indefinitely, and a "worst case" scenario of 64 percent. By May 1999, the COPS Office had awarded agencies approximately 60,900 officers through hiring grants. Under the best case scenario, we project that these awards will produce a peak effect of 57,200 officers by the year 2001, and that after postgrant attrition, the permanent effect of the grants will stabilize at 55,400 officers by 2003. The minimum retention scenario, in contrast, suggests the net impact of these awards will peak at 48,900 officers in 2000 but then decline to a permanent level of 39,000 officers by 2003. How will COPS MORE grants affect the number of FTE officers redeployed through increased productivity? All of our 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 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, though we recognize that 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 we plan to revise the estimates of MORE-supported productivity increases later this year using our 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. We project that 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 effect of hiring and MORE grants awarded by May 1999 on the level of policing in the United States? 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 table 1-1. 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 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 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 to 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 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 on the street at a single point in time to 100,000 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 our Wave 4 survey. 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. We used three approaches to observe how the COPS program affected law enforcement agencies' pursuit of these goals. First, at three points in time, our 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 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 United States? 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, 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, became almost universal by 1998. 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. However, 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 were significantly 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 commonly labeled as community policing. In our limited time on site, one might expect it to be difficult to separate the rhetoric of community policing from the reality of what law enforcement agencies actually do. Indeed, it often was. Therefore, the enormous variation we detected across sites in the operational meanings of key community policing concepts is especially telling. This variation 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 short-term 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 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 on site 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 we observed included the evolution of problem solving from "special operations" to more complex activities that attack disorder and fear and that require police to search for interventions other than arrest; administrative systems that recognize problem solving at multiple scales and multiple levels within 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 because they are unlikely 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 re-enter public spaces and develop 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 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 community policing goals within a framework that uses community input to set 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 the sites we observed, primarily manifested as traditional prevention programs now subsumed under the community policing label. Neighborhood Watch, DARE, 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, which 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 along the long and tortuous road. A few agencies want nothing to do with it. Our 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 have 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 umbrella traditional quick-fix enforcement actions, 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 our 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 at top 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 is broad 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 a 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 to the 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 "1-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 and administration 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 non-supplanting 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 Office of Inspector General (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, the COPS program 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 full-time 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 announced target of "100,000 new cops on the beat." Even though we plan to update and refine these estimates after our 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 to record. 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 add new 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. While 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 and Administration 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 presents 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, it should 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. ----------------------------- 2. Origins and Objectives of the COPS Program Stephen J. Gaffigan, Jeffrey A. Roth, and Michael E. Buerger Title I of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (hereinafter referred to as the Crime Act) was a landmark piece of legislation that altered the Federal role in State and local law enforcement. Never before in U.S. history had Federal legislation so aggressively encouraged local and State law enforcement agencies to pursue two objectives simultaneously: increasing the number of sworn officers on the street and adopting a specific policing approach, namely community-oriented policing (i.e., community policing). At a time when virtually no one was calling for an expansion of the Federal Government, a new Office of Community Oriented Policing Services-- the COPS Office--was created to carry out that mandate. The COPS story begins at the confluence of two significant forces--one grounded in presidential politics and the other with roots in policing practice and research. First, perceptions of increased levels and viciousness of violent crime during the late 1980s had driven public fear and anger over crime to high levels and had created questions about the ability of government at any level to achieve its constitutional mandate to insure domestic tranquility. Responding to those concerns, presidential candidate Bill Clinton pledged to put 100,000 new police officers on the streets of the Nation, as part of his campaign. Second, policing reforms over the previous two decades provided both the need for and seeds of new approaches to policing, which had become known as community policing and problem-oriented policing. Community policing stressed greater police responsiveness to the community at several levels, including more personal service; greater citizen input into police priorities; increased police attention to previously ignored "quality of life" issues-- behaviors, actions, and conditions that were low-level nuisances to the police but major problems to residents and business people; and an expanded commitment to crime prevention without sacrificing the quality of crime suppression. Community policing emphasized community organizing and interagency cooperation to a greater degree than ever before. Herman Goldstein first articulated problem-oriented policing in 1979 as a critique of past police practices. Goldstein (1979) argued for disaggregating the traditional police crime categories such as the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) index, looking for common patterns within the disaggregated categories and in other demands for police service, and identifying the common causes that linked seemingly unrelated events that came to police attention. Like community policing, problem-oriented policing placed a premium on identifying resources and partnerships external to the police agency and bringing a coordinated response from all levels of government and all segments of the community to bear on common problems. However, problem-oriented policing did not necessarily require the fundamental change in the relationship to the community that COPS represented. Problem solving could be, and often was, conducted as a police-only exercise with modest and police-controlled community participation where needed. Since problem-oriented policing was a relatively well-defined strategy that often produced visible successes, it rapidly gained adherents in the police community (Goldstein, 1979; Eck and Spelman, 1987; Sherman, Buerger, and Gartin, 1989). By contrast, community policing was originally promulgated as a philosophy, lacking specific strategic or tactical applications. Its definition varied from one jurisdiction to another during its developmental phase, often taking the form of small, self-contained programs staffed by volunteers. Community-oriented policing (COP) acquired an image as inherently "soft" policing, giving rise to a common locker room joke that COP means "Call the Other Police." It was rejected by some as "not real police work"; derided by others as "just what we've always done, only now they've figured out what to call it"; and even when recognized as a laudable goal, dismissed on the grounds of being too labor intensive for existing staffing levels to accommodate. Some academic observers also found little that was substantively new in community policing; Klockars (1991), for example, described it as merely "the latest in a fairly long tradition of circumlocutions whose purpose is to conceal, mystify, and legitimate police distribution of nonnegotiably coercive force." In contrast, other academics considered community policing not only a viable strategy but the "only form of policing available for anyone who seeks to improve police operations, management, or relations with the public" (Eck and Rosenbaum, 1994:4). Despite the divergent viewpoints, some prominent police administrators recognized community policing as an important development by the early 1990s. Though recognizing the need for more police resources in the wake of the rising crime rate and level of public concern, local governments also understood that more officers pursuing crime suppression solely by arrest would not stem the crime problem. A new approach was needed to make communities less vulnerable to crime and disorder, and community policing seemed to hold promise. In a survey by Trojanowicz (1994), 42 percent of all police departments serving jurisdictions of more than 50,000 reported having adopted some form of community policing. Perhaps more importantly, city administrators recognized the importance of community policing: Several major cities (including Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and Los Angeles) instituted community policing as a reform in the wake of high-profile incidents that exacerbated the tensions between their police departments and their minority communities. New Federal resources seemed a plausible incentive for a local agency to launch or accelerate a transition to community policing, especially in view of its reputation as labor intensive. Nevertheless, simultaneous Federal pursuit of both objectives--putting more officers on the street quickly while encouraging agencies to change their ways of doing business--created a fundamental dilemma. Too much Federal coercion to change might discourage local agencies from participating in the program, thereby jeopardizing the goal of augmenting overall police staffing levels. At the other extreme, simply increasing officer counts without a fundamental change of mission would effectively dilute any benefits that problem-oriented policing and community policing offered to communities and agencies. Other inherent conflicts also influenced the shape of the program. Although the Crime Act nowhere mentioned a target number of new officers, presidential campaign promises had made 100,000 the benchmark for success. Expanding the Federal share of the cost could aggravate public concern over the Federal budget deficit, yet requiring localities to pay too great a share of the cost could discourage their participation. The formidable volume of administrative regulations and procedures that had grown up around Federal assistance to law enforcement since the 1968 Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act caused additional difficulties. Most Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) funds intended for localities had to pass through State criminal justice planning agencies dominated by guber-natorial appointees, a longstanding procedure. Lengthy advance Federal and State reviews of grant applications and cumbersome monitoring procedures had been imposed to ensure grantees' compliance and prevent diversion of grant funds to unintended purposes. The advance reviews necessarily slowed the distribution of funds, and local concern over ongoing administrative requirements (the "Federal strings attached" to the money) potentially discouraged program participation. An additional obstacle was created when some visible leaders among mayors and law enforcement chief executives explicitly questioned whether new officers were the most useful form of Federal assistance (see, e.g., Committee on Law and Justice, 1994:17). The stage was set for a difficult balancing act. The remainder of this chapter describes in more detail how these forces shaped the multiple objectives of the COPS program. In turn, the multiple program objectives shaped the objectives of this evaluation. The Evolution of a Presidential Initiative Fear of crime and violence Americans' fear of crime and violence has ebbed and flowed in public opinion polls over the decades. In the early 1990s, it registered quite high on the "political barometer." In February 1992, during the presidential primary election season, a Gallup Poll reported record high expressions of public concern about crime. Fifty-four percent of the poll respondents, the highest since 1981, felt that crime in their area was "more" than the year before, while 89 percent, the highest in the 20-year history of the poll, felt that crime throughout the United States was higher than the previous year. Without attempting to present a definitive explanation of the peak in concern over crime at that time, it is worth mentioning some possible causes. Statistically, lethal violence had increased substantially since the mid-1980s, particularly among male African-American youths and young adults, so that by 1992 many cities throughout the United States reported record numbers of homicides. The seemingly random and indiscriminate nature of many of these killings left an indelible mark on the public psyche. "Drive-by shootings," often committed with semiautomatic pistols that killed bystanders and other unintended targets who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, were especially unsettling. Such killings broke the traditional profile of homicides, which involved people who knew each other and intimate situations in which the parties lost their self-control. The news media reported brutal attacks frequently, even those in faraway cities, focusing on crimes in which the killers were strangers to their victims. Some evidence suggests this increase in lethal violence resulted from the rapid expansion of the crack cocaine trade (Reiss and Roth, eds., 1993; Blumstein and Rosenfeld, 1998). Cash and drugs flowed in volume through rapidly expanding and unstable drug markets that lacked mechanisms for nonviolent resolution of disputes. Rival drug dealers' competition over turf (i.e., sales territory), personal affronts, and challenges to authority frequently led to violent outbursts and retaliatory attacks. The almost daily experience of hearing shots fired and seeing the consequences created a sense of hopelessness among the residents in the most heavily affected inner city neighborhoods. Attitudes in the larger community were influenced by media reports that, not surprisingly, tended to focus on the most spectacular incidents. Daily news broadcasts and newspaper articles in some large cities occasionally resembled war time reporting of the latest "body counts," often accompanied by graphic footage and pictures of the carnage. This saturation of violence took a painful toll on the American psyche: In cities, suburban areas, and even small towns, Americans are fearful and concerned that violence has permeated the fabric of their communities, and degraded the quality of their lives. This anxiety is not unfounded. In recent years, murders have killed about 23,000 people annually, while upward of 3,000,000 nonfatal but serious violent victimizations have occurred each year. These incidents are sources of chronic fear and public concern over the seeming inability of public authorities to prevent them. (Reiss and Roth, eds., 1993:vii.) As if this real violence were not destructive enough, fictional television dramas and "action" movies further amplified its effect on the public mind set. Graphic and gratuitous violence was becoming a mainstay in television programming and movie production. Beyond passive forms of entertainment, arcade and video games appeared that encouraged players to "seek out and destroy" countless human targets, and toy stores stocked simulated guns and other means of pretend destruction. According to an article commissioned by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ): The public's concerns about crime seem to be somewhat independent of the actual crime rate, a phenomenon that may discourage law enforcement professionals but underscores just how frightening this issue is for most people. Deeply held public fears developed over decades may be slow to dissipate even in the best of circumstances. Many observers have suggested that public fears about crime are driven by media coverage rather than by any real knowledge of crime rates in their area. (Johnson, 1994:10.) Public opinion regarding public institutions Perhaps even more troubling to policymakers than the public's rising fear of crime was the growing crisis in confidence expressed in similar polls concerning the ability of the government, especially the criminal justice system, to do anything constructive about it. In a democracy, such erosion of confidence in so vital an area could be catastrophic. Indeed, a small but growing band of commentators contrasted presumed advantages of private deterrence achieved by private citizens carrying concealed firearms with presumed disadvantages of public deterrence achieved by police and the criminal justice system (See, e.g., Benson, 1990). In a 1995 Gallup poll, respondents were asked to rank 14 institutions in American society according to the levels of respect and confidence they held for each. In the final ranking in this poll, Congress placed number 12 and the criminal justice system was last at number 14. Opinion research strongly suggests that, for the public, the concept of justice includes both protecting the rights of the accused and redressing wrongs done to victims and society. The vast majority of Americans appears to believe that the balance between these two goals has tipped too far in favor of the accused. Eighty-six percent of Americans say the court system does too much to protect the rights of the accused and not enough to protect the rights of victims (ABC News, February 1994). Only 3 percent of Americans say the courts deal too harshly with criminals; 85 percent say they are not harsh enough (National Opinion Research Center, May 1994). (See Johnson, 1999.) In contrast, respondents to another poll taken at about the same time ranked the police number two in respect and confidence, behind only the military. Importantly for the development of the COPS program, other polls reflected not only general respect but a belief that police might be able to solve the problem that other public institutions failed to address. According to a review commissioned by DOJ: Putting more police officers on the streets as an effective way to fight crime is broadly supported. Nine in ten Americans say that increasing the number of police is a very (46 percent) or somewhat (44 percent) effective way to reduce crime (ABC News, November 1994). And, given the general skepticism people feel about many institutions and most of government, Americans voice substantial confidence in law enforcement. Fifty-eight percent say they have a "great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in the police; another 30 percent say they have "some" confidence in the police; only a handful (11 percent) express very little or no confidence. (The Gallup Organization for CNN/USA Today, April 1995.) The review went on to discuss critical links between proper police behavior and the maintenance of such high levels of confidence in police ability to control crime and violence. But the high public confidence in police offered the possibility that the public might accept deploying additional police officers as a plausible governmental response to this visible concern. Past Federal responses to crime The early 1990s were not the first time that violence had seized public attention and bipartisan Federal concern. The decade of the 1960s gave rise to multiple Federal initiatives to address the precipitous rise in public violence related to antiwar and civil rights protests. In July 1965, as part of the Federal response to the "long, hot summers" of racial protest and rioting in the Nation's inner cities, President Lyndon Johnson created the Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice (hereinafter, the Crime Commission), chaired by former U.S. Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach. Its report, The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society, was released in February 1967 (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1967) and became the most influential of all the 1960s commissions over the next two decades. Its 200 recommendations spanned all of law enforcement and criminal justice, urged the Nation toward a fundamental rethinking of crime and the national response, and urged pursuit of seven objectives. Three of the objectives were intended to reorient the societal response to crime toward prevention; the remaining four dealt with upgrading the capacity and operations of the criminal justice agencies. The three components of the intended reorientation were to focus on preventing crime before it occurred; to eliminate injustices within the criminal justice system; and to create shared responsibility for criminal justice with the citizenry, social institutions, and agencies at all levels in government. Upgrading criminal justice system operations included developing new ways of dealing with offenders; attracting people with greater expertise, initiative, and integrity into the criminal justice professions; increasing the knowledge base by conducting more basic and applied research on crime and criminal justice administration; and giving the agencies more money. Shortly after release of the Crime Commission's report, the Omnibus Crime and Safe Streets Act of 1968 (Pub. L. 90-351) was enacted by Congress and signed by President Johnson. To support the Crime Commission's objectives to improve criminal justice system capacities, the 1968 Act created the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA). LEAA contained separate units to disburse Federal grants to State and local criminal justice agencies, sponsor and disseminate research intended to improve criminal justice practice, and encourage States and localities to expand their use of criminal justice information systems and the statistics they can generate. Initially, LEAA operated through an elaborate structure of regional offices, which, in turn, distributed block grants to States on a formula basis, along with some Federal discretionary funds. State criminal justice planning agencies, in turn, allocated funds to local jurisdictions. Although the structure has been streamlined since 1968, the LEAA mission and functions were retained, and they are still active within DOJ's Office of Justice Programs (OJP). BJA awards formula and discretionary action grants to law enforcement and criminal justice agencies, and State planning agencies still allocate much of the Federal funding to localities--a structure that continues to rankle mayors and city managers (Committee on Law and Justice, 1994). The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) sponsors and conducts criminal justice research and program evaluations. The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) manages a variety of criminal justice statistics and information systems programs. Until 1994 these agencies served as the sole mechanisms of Federal support to State and local law enforcement agencies for noninvestigative functions. The prevention agenda espoused by the Crime Commission received less attention than did the enhancement of the criminal justice system, but it was far from ignored. In 1968, after another wave of riots engulfed the Nation in the wake of the assassinations of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Sen. Robert Kennedy, President Johnson selected Republican Milton Eisenhower to chair the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence. The Eisenhower Commission's 1969 report identified poverty and inequality as root causes of much of the violence of the decade and called for a frontal attack on both. Less heralded than the LEAA, the legacy of the Eisenhower Commission's recommendations included the Model Cities program and a spectrum of community organizing and community-building initiatives that laid the groundwork for many later aspects of community policing. The Ford, Eisenhower, and Mott foundations, among many others, sponsored a panorama of social reform projects as well as some high-profile law enforcement initiatives. The latter included Ford's creation of the Police Foundation to conduct policing research and Mott's sponsorship of the original Flint (Michigan) Foot Patrol Experiment. This course paralleled the LEAA initiatives and prefigured today's public/private partnerships. During the 1980s and early 1990s, the U.S. Congress passed little comprehensive legislation that carried as much potential for changing State and local practice as the 1968 act. The Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 abolished parole and created a commission to develop Federal sentencing guidelines, which some hoped would provide a national model for replication by the States. However, the national debate on criminal matters came to be dominated by a "get tough" approach, and criminal justice system reform took an increasingly punitive direction. Subsequent legislation nullified one area of the U.S. Sentencing Commission's work through a series of mandatory minimum sentences that exceeded the guideline ranges for various drug distribution and use offenses. Though drug distribution and use were the initial targets of mandatory minimum sentences, other statutes extended the list of Federal crimes and authorized Federal prosecution of other crimes that had traditionally fallen under State purview. Alternatives to "getting tough" became more politically unpopular as crime continued to rise. The 1988 Democratic presidential candidate, Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis was vigorously attacked in both the primary and general elections over the case of Willie Horton, a convicted murderer who raped a Maryland woman and savagely beat her fiance while on furlough from a State prison during Dukakis' gubernatorial term. Conservative Federal and State legislators seized the Horton episode as a national symbol of the futility of rehabilitation programs and painted the Democrats who supported them as being "soft on crime." Republican George Bush defeated Dukakis, and conservative legislators successfully overrode proposals to expand crime prevention programs. The Bush administration coincided with the rise in violence during the late 1980s and a peak in public concern over the crack cocaine trade. For the most part the administration promoted "get tough" responses. A 1992 report authored by Attorney General William Barr called for greater use of such tactics as pretrial detention, mandatory minimum sentences, the death penalty, and adjudicating juvenile offenders as adults (Barr, 1992). The administration continued building new prisons as well, to cope with the prison crowding that was the predictable result of longer sentences and sharply curtailed prospects for parole. However, within the Bush administration and, later, in Congress, the realization emerged that pulling together the bipartisan consensus needed to "do something about crime" would be more easily achieved if the response combined symbols and elements of crime prevention with those of tough enforcement. The product of this new course, launched near the end of the Bush administration's term, was Operation Weed and Seed (OWS), which attracted supporters from across the political spectrum. Weed and Seed represented a hybrid that combined tough, no-nonsense enforcement efforts to bring order to crime-plagued neighborhoods ("weeding") with a broader governmental effort to sustain order through social services and neighborhood redevelopment ("seeding"). Through Weed and Seed, community policing became a formal part of Federal policy for the first time and was described in the program implementation manual as the "bridge between weeding and seeding" (Executive Office for Weed and Seed, 1992:1-4). OWS encountered obstacles, and some targeted neighborhoods were suspicious and reluctant to participate. The local initiatives were housed in U.S. Attorneys' offices, which were seen as enforcement-oriented and remote from communities. The weeding metaphor embodied in the program name was seen as insulting because the weeds targeted for removal were often residents--sons, cousins, or neighbors of community members who viewed their lawbreaking more as a result of disenfranchisement than of moral bankruptcy. Seeding components proved difficult to mount, in part because the infrastructure needed for service delivery was lacking in some neighborhoods and separate, often cumbersome, grant applications were required to obtain seeding funds from programs in the departments of Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Education, and Labor. Nevertheless, OWS was recognized as a break from past programs that emphasized solely enforcement or solely services. In addition, programs in several cities reduced crime in the Weed and Seed neighborhoods, giving credence to the concept. By fiscal 1993, when Bill Clinton was inaugurated, OWS was funded in 21 sites at a total of $13.5 million (Dunworth and Mills, 1999); it had expanded to 200 sites by fiscal 1999. Another Bush administration crime control program reflected the combined approach philosophy. The Public Housing Drug Elimination Program (PHDEP), jointly funded by BJA and HUD, combined aggressive tactical police sweeps to remove drugs and drug traffickers from housing projects with enhanced access to drug treatment and prevention resources. This program resulted in the development of comprehensive training and technical assistance resources for use by local communities, and a small consortium of organizations was funded to deliver these services to local teams. The new administration takes charge The 1992 presidential campaign shifted into high gear during a period of growing public pressure on elected officials and candidates for a visible, plausible response to crime and violence. Mindful of the role played by the Willie Horton episode in their 1988 defeat, Democrats and presidential candidate Bill Clinton seized the initiative on crimefighting. Arguing that restoring order in communities was a critical precursor to other initiatives, Clinton proposed an aggressive approach to the crime problem in which the substantial Federal role included a massive infusion of funds to support local jurisdictions. Recognizing from national polls that law enforcement agencies still commanded public respect, Clinton called for the hiring of 100,000 new police officers to be deployed by State and local law enforcement agencies on the streets of the Nation's cities and towns. In its early months, the Clinton administration continued the dual approach of enforcement and prevention. Clinton's new Attorney General, Janet Reno, had established herself as a prosecutor in south Florida; she brought with her a strong belief that local coalitions and partnerships between law enforcement agencies and community-based organizations were necessary to achieve any kind of meaningful and lasting impact upon crime and violence. Two early programs emphasized the development and coordination of such partnerships. The unfunded Pulling America's Communities Together (PACT) was run initially from the office of the deputy attorney general. Later, BJA launched the funded Comprehensive Communities Program (CCP), which incorporated several innovative features. CCP grants required preliminary planning by all potential partners, as well as monitoring and support for the planning process. Grant applications could access multiple programs through a single application process, with federally preset funding allocations across the various partners. This went a long way toward eliminating any potential infighting over money: Potential partners knew from the start what money they could expect, so the planning process could focus on program goals rather than resource allocation. Emphasizing the need to build or strengthen local capacities to participate in partnerships, BJA provided targeted training and technical assistance to all CCP sites for that purpose (Kelling et al., 1998). While PACT provided no funds, its technical assistance components also emphasized partnership building. The new administration recognized that such partnership building, while potentially important, would be seen neither as a sufficient response to the Nation's crime problem, nor as redemption of the campaign promise of 100,000 police officers. Two basic obstacles remained, however: how to pay for the officers in the midst of an outcry over Federal budget deficits, and how to deploy them in ways that would reinforce emerging police-community partnerships without visibly compromising the image of "toughness." Solving the fiscal problem required two decisions to be negotiated with Congress. Costs of the officers would be shared with localities, and the Federal share would be paid for out of a Violent Crime Reduction Act Trust Fund financed by savings from downsizing the Federal Government.[1] For a deployment strategy that showed promise of reinforcing police-community partnerships, the administration drew on community policing, a concept that had evolved for some time and had gained adherents among law enforcement executives, yet remained ambiguous. From Police Reforms to Community Policing Though community oriented policing was spoken of as a dominant or at least emerging model of policing in the early 1990s, its popularity was tinged with ambiguity. The Trojanowicz (1994) survey indicated community policing in some form was being adopted by almost half the agencies serving more than 50,000 people; Moore (1994) reported at about the same time that "in practice, no department has yet fully implemented community policing as an overall philosophy." Several years earlier, in an attempt to clarify the community policing concept, Goldstein (1986:8) noted in passing that the term served a useful purpose as a rhetorical device. He speculated that the term was useful for calling attention to values that should underlie policing in a free society: more community involvement, greater accountability to the community, and improved service to the community. Controversy over what community policing really is or really means has attended the discussions of its implementation down to the present day. For Trojanowicz and his colleagues it was a philosophy for guiding every aspect of a police agency's operations. In some cases, it is indeed merely a rhetorical device used not in Goldstein's terms but in Klockars': a progressive-sounding verbal smoke screen to protect traditional methods and values quite different from the philosophy articulated by Trojanowicz. To many scholars and observers of the police, community policing is primarily a collection of programs or tactics employed in good faith within agencies that still cling to traditional deployments and attitudes. In a small number of departments, community policing represents a long-term strategy that uses the smaller programs and tactics as a means to bring about a slow but permanent change in the overall way the agency does business. Arguably, the concept has played all four roles at various times and in various endeavors, including the development of Title I and the operation of its programs. During congressional debate over the 1994 Crime Act, the simultaneous popularity and ambiguity of community-oriented policing enhanced its rhetorical value as a device for attracting the legislative majority needed to pass the Act. As had been true of Weed and Seed, advocates of get-tough crime control (weeding) could hear "policing" while community enhancement (seeding) adherents could focus on "community oriented." Later, the new COPS Office created to carry out Title I took a step toward defining community policing by asking Congress to judge its success (and applicants to describe their intended uses of grants) in terms of three objectives: building partnerships with their communities, adopting problem-solving tactics, and refining organizational structures and functions to support the programmatic objectives (Brann, 1995). Crime prevention had been added to the programmatic objectives by the time more than 11,000 law enforcement agencies submitted their required community policing strategies with their first grant applications. In turn, those strategies outlined the programs and tactics they planned in pursuit of those objectives. Given the practical difficulties of obtaining valid measures of progress toward those objectives on such a large scale, the COPS Office monitored strategy implementation in terms of the programs and tactics. Similarly, for the present study, the Urban Institute based its comparison of community policing implementation by grantee and nongrantee agencies on a national survey of law enforcement agencies' adoption of tactics used more or less commonly to pursue the four COPS Office objectives. Although measuring tactics implementation was the only practical way to develop a national picture of progress toward the stated objectives, other components of this study found examples of grantee agencies changing their mission, vision, or values statements or taking other steps to incorporate community policing explicitly into their agencies' philosophies. Not only has the term "community policing" played multiple roles with respect to the COPS program, but also, as chapter 6 makes clear, police agencies employ the term to cover a wide variety of practices. The term offers such a wide umbrella for at least two reasons. First, to the extent that community policing means addressing the needs and using the resources of local neighborhoods, diversity of neighborhoods calls for diversity in community policing strategies and tactics. Second, the term seems to have acquired a variety of meanings because over the past several decades it has been applied to a rather wide variety of policing reforms, innovations, and programs. A review of the history of community policing is beyond the scope of this evaluation. Nevertheless, to give readers some appreciation of the wide range of meanings that well-informed and well-meaning legislators, program administrators, grantees, and observers assigned to the term "community policing," this section offers an overview of some strategies and tactics to which the term has been applied. The reference point: Professional law enforcement Community policing is perhaps best understood in relation to what it is not. Such a benchmark is especially useful in light of frequent objections that community policing is "what we've always done." Following Moore (1992), we use "professional policing" as the reference point. The professional policing vision was fairly clearly described in chapter 4 of the 1967 report of the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1967). The Crime Commission viewed crime as a broad social problem, with root causes that lay well beyond the domain of policing. For the commission, the mission of the police was "not to remove the causes of crime, but to deter crime, and to deal with specific criminals whoever they are, and with specific crimes whenever, wherever, and however they occur." The commission reminded readers that the police are "only one part of the criminal justice system," and the criminal justice process is "limited to case by case operations, one criminal or one crime at a time" (1967:93). To carry out this mission, the commission described the "heart of the police law enforcement effort [as] patrol, on foot or by vehicle, of uniformed policemen . . . If they are motorized, they spend much of their time responding to citizen complaints and the reports of crime that are relayed to them over their radios . . . A principal purpose of patrol is 'deterrence,' [and] [w]hen patrol fails to prevent a crime or apprehend the criminal while he is committing it, the police must rely on investigation" (1967:95-96). The commission went on to note that "[p]reventive patrol . . . by visible and mobile policemen . . . is universally thought of as the best method of controlling crime that is available to the police" (1967:116). Moreover, ". . . in view of the limited area that foot patrolmen can cover, . . . [t]he extreme mobility and coverage provided by motor patrol compels its use, despite losses in neighborhood contact" (1967:117).[2] Beyond the loss of neighborhood contact, the commission anticipated other issues that would later resurface in discussions of community policing. Recognizing that public and private services tended to be poor in the high-crime neighborhoods to which patrol officers should be assigned for the sake of efficiency, the commission recommended creating "community service officers" who would report badly maintained parks and other conditions that should be corrected (1967:98). Lamenting how differently whites and nonwhites perceive the police and recognizing that "professionalization of the police has meant . . . improving efficiency by various methods [that lessen] informal contact between policemen and citizens," the commission called for community relations programs and for making community relations "the business of an entire department" through frequent meetings with precinct-level citizens' advisory committees (1967:100-101). Recognizing that lengthy procedures manuals usually fail to give officers on the street adequate guidance on the use of discretion that is called for every day, the commission called on agencies to develop policies guiding use of discretion in such matters as "the issuance of orders to citizens regarding their movements or activities, the handling of minor disputes, the safeguarding of the rights of free speech and free assembly, the selection and use of investigative methods, and the decision whether or not to arrest in specific situations involving specific crimes" (1967:104). Organizationally, the commission was firmly committed to the "guiding organizational principle of central control." The vision was that, with the advice of trained specialists and an internal board cutting across functions and ranks, the chief and his staff should be "developing, enunciating, and enforcing departmental policies and guidelines for the day-to-day activities of line personnel" (1967:114-115). The commission noted that large police departments were nearly always characterized by organizational fragmentation, with separate and poorly coordinated units responsible for patrol, investigation of specific crime types, and community relations. To improve efficiency, it called for experimentation with "team policing," a structure that would put all such functions under unified command at the district level (1967:117-118). Despite the commission's acknowledgment of limitations and calls for innovation, most of its recommendations presumed a hierarchical organization and sought to improve the efficiency or effectiveness of what Moore (1992:108) called the principal tactics on which professional policing relied: patrol, rapid response to calls for service, and investigation of crimes. Shaped by the commission's thinking, testing and refinements of these functions formed the centerpiece of professional policing in the following years. For the general public at the time, the essence of professional policing was captured by Jack Webb's character in the radio and television series Dragnet: Detective Joe Friday, whose signature phrase "Just the facts, ma'am," became a national cultural symbol of police practice at the time. Over time, research prompted by the commission's work generated additional questions about the professional model. Moore (1992) summarized these challenges to the four fundamental assumptions underlying the professional model: that patrol deters crime (Kelling et al., 1974), that detectives can often solve crimes using crime scene evidence (Greenwood et al., 1977), that rapid response often leads to apprehension of perpetrators (Kansas City Police Department, 1980), and that arrest, even if followed by conviction and incarceration, deters crime (Blumstein et al., 1978). It overreaches the evidence to suggest the findings of those four studies show police can do nothing about crime. They nevertheless seriously called into question the claims of some politicians, police officials, and academics at the time that crime could be controlled simply by having more police doing more of these activities. The research challenge to the efficacy of policing as then practiced stimulated two kinds of responses: efforts to improve the professional model and efforts to replace or augment the professional model with promising alternative approaches. Most efforts to improve the professional model involved thinking of crime and crime fighting efforts in more systemic ways. For example, Differential Police Response (DPR) to calls for service introduced formal call screening protocols to free patrol units from mundane tasks so they would be available for more serious matters, reduce response time, and provide better service. Managing Patrol Operations (MPO) formalized directed patrol activities to target specific crime problems in communities. Managing Criminal Investigations introduced formal case screening protocols to optimize the use of criminal investigators on more serious cases and allocate other investigative work to patrol officers. The Integrated Criminal Apprehension Program (ICAP) introduced crime analysis to allocate patrol resources to target specific crime types and attempted to formalize the roles of patrol officers, investigators, and other specialists in criminal investigations. "Career criminal" or "repeat offender" programs targeted the relatively small number of chronic and violent offenders for more intense police scrutiny and higher priority prosecution. Between the early 1970s and early 1990s, other police executives and scholars developed alternatives to the professional model. Although many locally conceived projects received Federal support, the energy of this period was essentially a grassroots attempt to improve policing. No master plan of systematic design, pilot testing, experimental testing, and replication governed the process, although instances of each occurred. New ideas were tried in their home settings, sometimes accompanied by fairly robust evaluations, and then introduced (with Federal help) on the national stage for replication and modification. At one level, LEAA's research arm, the National Institute of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice and its successor the National Institute of Justice, promoted evaluation of the programs and disseminated the findings through the Exemplary Projects series, "Best Practices/Model Programs" publications, and national conferences, among other channels. At another level, law enforcement professionals kept one another informed of promising ideas and innovations through articles in practitioner magazines, such as The Police Chief and FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, and in presentations at their national conferences. Among the most prominent alternatives cited by Moore (1992) were team policing, community relations units, community crime prevention programs, problem-oriented policing, and fear reduction projects. Though each had its limitations and some visible failures, collectively they broadened the police perspective and mission. Perhaps more importantly, they changed the nature of police executives' conversations. Nationally published evaluation findings, rigorous local experiments, and conversations with police executives from other jurisdictions all legitimated the cross-fertilization of ideas throughout the police community. Progressive policing came to be defined in part by police executives' willingness to test and evaluate new ideas, often through the research programs of the Police Foundation, the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), and other organizations. At the center of this evolutionary process were the five alternatives listed above, each of which was an important precursor to the broad reconceptualization of the police mission we now call community policing. Some were tested or implemented under grants from LEAA, BJA, or NIJ. Compared to the professional policing model, all of them had the potential to align police concerns more closely with those of the community, bring officers in closer contact with community residents, or both. To help understand the origins of the ambiguity of community policing in the context of COPS, we briefly describe the five alternative approaches in the following sections.[3] Alternative 1: Team policing Police departments in New York City, Cincinnati, and Los Angeles were among the first to act on the commission's recommendation to test the team policing concept as a means of establishing neighborhood-level control over all police resources. The concept was still in operation in Los Angeles at the time of our first site visit. As practiced there, the patrol force was divided into "X cars" that could be dispatched throughout the city and "basic cars" that remained in their assigned neighborhoods. A senior lead officer was assigned to each basic car and given higher pay for establishing and maintaining liaison with the community. The city was divided into 70 patrol areas, each policed by 3 to 5 basic cars and commanded by a lieutenant, who directed not only patrol but all the specialist units and had 24-hour accountability for conditions in the area. Because of this neighborhood-level focus, Moore (1992:133) described team policing as "the first modern model of what [was] becoming community policing" at that time. Moore reports that evaluations of team policing in several locations found the model was popular with the public and sometimes improved neighborhood conditions, including crime rates. However, even successful examples fell by the wayside, perhaps because of resource constraints, opposition by higher-ups in the chain of command, or incompatibility with an organizational culture committed to the professional model. Even the Los Angeles team policing model was discontinued between our first and second site visits. Despite the virtual demise of full-blown team policing in most jurisdictions, several of its vestiges--dispatch rules that keep beat officers in their beats, a team approach to decisions in the field rather than chain of command, and pushing decisionmaking responsibility down to the beat level--are prominent in descriptions of community policing today. Alternative 2: Community relations units As described by Moore (1992:134), community relations units dated back at least to the 1950s, when "Officer Friendly" visited schools, made speeches, and spoke to citizens in other forums as a means of gaining support from community residents. In the wake of urban riots in the 1960s, these units' activities in some agencies evolved into what we now know as community meetings, often with community activists playing visible roles. Because the community relations officers kept senior command staffs abreast of tensions and plans, Goldstein, in a 1990 conversation with Moore (1992:134), described the units as among the first innovations to alert chiefs to the potential value of community policing. In some departments, regular community meetings evolved into permanent citizen action or advisory councils, which, then as now, offer potential "megaphones for the department [and] . . . antennae tuned into neighborhood concerns (Moore, 1992:135)." The balance between those two functions varies across jurisdictions, but the meetings offer a structure through which a motivated department can make community relations "the business of an entire department from the chief down," as the Crime Commission (1967:100) had recommended. In some jurisdictions, community meetings raised the issue of external accountability, which sometimes led to new policies, procedures, and practices. One such practice, the civilian review board, offered a formal mechanism for community input and monitoring of police misconduct. Regular meetings and councils offered the necessary communications channels, and the emergence of review boards may have helped to create a congenial climate, for building police-community partnerships. However, they did not necessarily lead the new partners to action agendas. Those were more likely to arise from two strategies with different orientations: community crime prevention and problem-oriented policing. Alternative 3: Community crime prevention Experiences of the fledgling partnerships demonstrated that communities have legitimate and important roles to play in crime prevention--roles that go well beyond being the "eyes and ears of the police." As noted by Dennis Rosenbaum in a 1986 evaluation report on community crime prevention: The sentiments underlying community crime prevention arose partly out of a growing realization that the institutions represented by the police and the court system were failing in their mission to reduce the crime problem and to restore and maintain the existing social order (Silberman, 1978). This extended conception of citizen involvement through community crime prevention programs acknowledged that the success of law enforcement was highly dependent upon the participation and cooperation of the populace in anticrime efforts, and that some crime prevention activities were better conducted by residents themselves. (Rosenbaum, 1986:21.) Around the same time, evaluations produced evidence suggesting that effective crime control involving communities need not be restricted to a passive role of the community in support of the police. Potentially useful active roles for residents included marking property to deter burglars, Neighborhood Watch, resident patrols, "hardening" business premises against shoplifting and robberies, cleaning up crime-prone spaces open to the public, and reducing the loitering and public drinking that bred simple assaults and petty crimes. In implementing these tactics, some community residents possessed expertise not available to the police, and many communities also possessed resources that could be directed toward these problems. In reviewing rigorous impact evaluations of four well-executed community crime prevention programs, Rosenbaum (1986) concluded that, under favorable conditions, they could reduce burglary and robbery while increasing residents' feelings of security. However, he and others concurred that the necessary favorable conditions are hard to generate and even harder to sustain (Lurigio and Rosenbaum, 1986; Rosenbaum, 1988). In Skogan's (1988:42, 45, cited in Buerger, 1994) words, "Anticrime organizations are often most successful in communities that need them least . . . [and] least common where they appear to be most needed--in low-income, heterogeneous, deteriorated, renting, high-turnover, high-crime areas." Nonetheless, for some, the occasional successes of community crime prevention tactics warranted their inclusion among the potential tools for implementing community policing strategies. Alternative 4: Problem-oriented policing In a seminal article, Goldstein (1979) proposed an alternative to the "one crime at a time" approach that characterized professional policing. While the Crime Commission had already recognized that some 70 percent of calls for police service concerned nonemergency matters, Goldstein focused on the theory that clusters of calls frequently reflected some underlying problematic cause. He reasoned that if police came to understand the problem well enough, then they, working with others, could reduce future call volumes by solving it. As an example of problem-oriented policing, scanning of dispatch records might reveal that an agency devoted disproportionate resources in responses to frequent late night complaints of noise, muggings, and larcenies from autos from a residential area near an entertainment district. Further analysis might discover the underlying problem: revelers parked illegally in the residential neighborhood to avoid high parking fees in the entertainment district. As they returned to their cars, they were likely to make noise, they were easy targets for muggers, and they were likely to find valuables had been stolen from their cars during the evening. The illegal parking might be prevented with such responses as parking enforcement units doing directed ticketing, officers and community residents erecting permanent physical barriers to illegal parking, or nightclub managers validating parking garage ticket stubs for free parking.[4] The success of any of these responses could be assessed by a reanalysis of dispatch records, by community surveys, or both. The problem-solving approach was popularized by the Police Executive Research Forum (Eck and Spelman, 1987), using an acronym SARA (Scanning, Analysis, Response, Assessment). As a logical process, SARA need not enhance police-community contact; common problem-solving responses such as enforcement of housing or alcohol codes, truancy reduction initiatives, and graffiti eradication can take place without community involvement. However, one goal of analysis is to identify property managers, organizations that supervise potential offenders, or others in the neighborhood who may be in a position to help solve the problem and have a stake in doing so. Therefore, at a minimum, bringing community and agency partners into the problem-solving process almost certainly broadens the range of plausible alternative responses and may augment the resources available for the response. Beyond that, seeking and using residents' input in identifying problems, priority setting, and analysis increases the likelihood that problem-oriented policing projects address problems of concern to the community, develops responses consistent with neighborhood values, and avoids unnecessary confrontations because residents understand the rationale for the response. For these reasons, Moore and Trojanowicz (1988) described problem-oriented policing and community policing as overlapping, though each has a distinctive thrust. Alternative 5: Fear reduction Reducing communities' fear of crime emerged during the 1980s as a policing problem in its own right, for several reasons. First, observers recognized fear of retaliation as one of several barriers to citizen participation in community crime prevention and problem-solving activities (Grinc, 1994; Rosenbaum and Lurigio, 1994). Second, the finding that fear of crime was not highly correlated with the actual level of crime (Skogan, 1987) implied that reducing fear would require something different from techniques that successfully reduced crime. Third, police practitioners and researchers developed two promising strategies for reducing fear: expanding police presence and policing disorder. As recounted by Moore (1992), the initial spark for fear reduction initiatives came from successful experiments with foot patrols in Flint, Michigan, and Newark, New Jersey. While the foot patrols did not reduce property or violent crime, they did reduce citizens' fears; the Flint experiment was so popular that voters passed a tax to continue the program, and calls for service declined (Police Foundation, 1981; Trojanowicz, 1982). Later, two federally sponsored experiments in Newark and Houston, Texas, demonstrated that police could reduce fear using such techniques as opening neighborhood substations, contacting citizens about neighborhood problems, and stimulating citizens to form new neighborhood organizations (Pate et al., 1986; Wilson, 1989). The second fear reduction strategy, policing disorder, is a response to what is sometimes known as the "Broken Windows" theory, after the title of an Atlantic Monthly article by Wilson and Kelling (1982). The authors argued that, left uncorrected, signs of physical decay (the metaphorical broken window) and social disorder (e.g., public drinking, groups of loiterers) communicated a message that "anything goes." In turn, frightened law-abiding people would avoid the area, leaving it to the disorderly and criminals. Skogan (1990) later discovered strong supporting statistical correlations. The metaphor became the rationale for a variety of joint police-community efforts to repair signs of physical decay: examples include neighborhood cleanups, graffiti removal, and building code enforcement. The strategy became more controversial when applied to social disorder. Kelling and Coles (1996) describe Kelling's experience with two examples from New York City, both involving proactive arrest and jailing. One target was "fare beaters," who avoided subway fares by jumping turnstiles instead of inserting tokens. The other was "squeegee men" who, unasked, "washed" the windows of cars stuck in traffic and then intimidated drivers into giving them money. As carried out, these proactive order maintenance efforts had community policing objectives: arresting squeegee men was intended to reduce fear, and the fare-beater crackdown originated in a problem-oriented policing exercise (Kelling, 1999). In recent years, much to Kelling's (1999) regret, opponents now describe the New York Police Department's proactive order maintenance strategy as "turning police loose" in ways that led to the well-known Louima and Diallo tragedies; Kelling (1999) himself remarks that some NYPD adherents to "tough" policing have misconstrued successful assertive policing as license for combative or military policing. To prevent such misinterpretations and tragedies, while advancing police-community partnerships, Kelling (1999) advocates explicitly structuring discretion in order maintenance policing with guidelines, developed jointly with citizens whenever possible. What is community policing? The brief overview above should demonstrate that as debate began over the 1994 Crime Act, anyone advocating community policing as a break with the dominant professional policing model could point to a variety of objectives, strategies, and tactics as examples of differences. But beyond that, little was settled. Reasonable people could (and still do) argue whether the strategic objective of community policing was to improve community relations, encourage community crime prevention, expand the use of problem-oriented policing, reduce fear, or accomplish some combination of the above. As Congress debated the 1994 crime bill, advocates and opponents of community policing could plausibly describe it in terms of tactics that ranged from appearances by Officer Friendly or McGruff the Crime Dog to sophisticated analyses of calls for police service, regular meetings in high crime communities, citizen advisory boards, and assertive order maintenance policing. BJA had already recognized that the widespread confusion posed a threat to the diffusion of community policing to police agencies across the country. To help build and disseminate a consensus on the meaning of community policing, BJA established and funded the Community Policing Consortium (CPC) in 1993. CPC began operations under the aegis of four of the major national law enforcement organizations: the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP); the National Sheriffs Association (NSA); the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF); and the Police Foundation. Beginning in Phase III of the CPC's work, the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives (NOBLE) was added as the fifth CPC organization. In Phases I and II of the CPC Richard Ward, then director of BJA's Discretionary Grant Program, guided CPC's development as BJA's pivotal provider of community policing training and technical assistance on behalf of DOJ. One important rationale for CPC was the previously described lack of definition and consensus in the law enforcement profession as to the meaning of community policing. As Ward described it: By the early 1990s, law enforcement realized many problems with community policing were definitional. Nobody knew exactly what it meant. To some it implied social work. Others thought it moved away from professionalism and wouldn't work. When I asked chiefs what they meant by community policing, I'd get a different answer each time. 'I've got a foot patrol officer in one of my high crime districts.' 'We're doing some crime prevention work.' Until we got beyond the hurdle of defining community policing, we couldn't convince practitioners that's what they needed to do. BJA believed that if the largest professional organizations could get together, everybody might eventually start reading off the same sheet of music. The idea behind the Community Policing Consortium was to establish some fundamental definitions. We started with a theoretical model that scared everybody, went to a prototype, and finally developed a framework that effectively describes the umbrella concept. Now we can plug in the technical assistance and training that support the conceptual framework (Community Policing Consortium, 1995). Under the direction of BJA and the heads of the four organizations, CPC developed "Understanding Community Policing: A Framework for Action." Based upon that publication, a core set of training modules was developed and training commenced in 1993. CPC was to become the coordinator of all community policing training and technical assistance supported by BJA funds and to dedicate very intense training and technical assistance support to selected demonstration sites. CPC was tasked in this manner to develop multiple community policing "models" from all of these sites and to further develop prescriptive training and technical assistance curricula and publications that could assist other jurisdictions in the implementation of community policing. The consortium was still new as the 1994 Crime Act was being formulated, and concern was expressed at the time that such a massive infusion of funds into an evolving reform might weaken this ambiguous concept before it was fully defined. Would the importance of a coherent local community policing strategy, developed with input from diverse perspectives, be lost in a mad scramble for Federal dollars to hire new police officers and acquire technology? Would agencies merely graft community relations or prevention programs from the past onto ongoing professional policing practices? Would agencies simply adopt a few signature tactics (Moore, 1992) as a facade of some version of community policing without making the organizational changes needed to make them work? In short, would this huge effort to promote community policing water the concept down still further, or change it in undesirable ways? These questions remained as the Crime Act was debated and passed. The 1994 Crime Act By any standard the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 was a massive piece of Federal anticrime legislation. This legislation authorized the spending of a staggering $30 billion to help State and local law enforcement agencies fight crime over the 6-year life of the bill's coverage. Of this total, Title I--The Public Safety Partnership and Community Policing Act of 1994-- authorized the largest expenditure, $8.8 billion over 6 years, to increase the number of police officers on the Nation's streets. Although Title I nowhere mentioned a specific number of officers, the Clinton campaign pledge of 100,000 officers was still fresh, and the statutory cost-sharing formula would fund that number of officers from the $8.8 billion. Because Federal assistance to the entire local criminal justice function, including law enforcement, had never substantially exceeded $1 billion on a sustained basis, and Title I represented an unprecedented Federal intervention into local law enforcement. Understandably, legislation of this magnitude required careful negotiations and compromises. Concerns were expressed about Title I and other parts of the bill "federalizing" a traditionally State and local function, and it was deemed critical to design its programs to ensure that the Federal assistance role did not preempt local autonomy and control. There were also divided opinions, principally along Democratic and Republican party lines, about crime fighting ideology and the designation of "soft" community policing as the desired core crime fighting strategy. These contending forces shaped the programs authorized by the bill when it was eventually signed into law. The administration proposal On January 25, 1994, President Clinton reiterated his campaign pledge to put 100,000 new police officers on the streets of America. Later that year, on August 21, the House of Representatives approved the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 on a bipartisan vote of 235 to 195. Four days later, the Senate voted to approve the act on a vote of 61 to 38. On September 13, 1994, Clinton signed the act into law in a ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House. This swift legislative victory reflected planning that had begun shortly after Clinton's inauguration. An internal DOJ working group had met in the spring of 1993 to draft elements of the "COPS on the Beat" program. This group consisted primarily of staff from OJP and DOJ who basically tried to establish eligibility and funding standards for the planned program. Although final and serious discussions of the final crime bill did not start in earnest until a year later, in the spring of 1994, these earlier discussions led to Police Hiring Supplement grants, which BJA awarded in late 1993. The application kit contained an introductory letter in which the Attorney General described PHS as "the first stage" of efforts to fulfill the President's pledge of 100,000 community policing officers. PHS contained several features that later appeared in the COPS program: the 3-year grant period, an explicit 25-percent local match requirement, and a 3-year grant maximum of $75,000 per officer. PHS also contained a provision that was intended to ensure that jurisdictions of all sizes would have equal access to funding. Half the funds were awarded to agencies serving jurisdictions with populations of 150,000 or more, and half were awarded to smaller jurisdictions. In the spring of 1994, serious negotiations took place among the White House, DOJ staff, and Congress over the emerging crime bill. Compromises were made to develop bipartisan support. One such concession was to permit grantees to spend grant funds for officer overtime, which PHS had prohibited. (The overtime prohibition was restored after the first full year of the new program.) Another was to retain the PHS population demarcation of 150,000, so that Title I would target equal aggregate amounts for agencies over and under that benchmark. Beyond that, advocates for rural and tribal jurisdictions demanded and received a statutory requirement for a simplified grant application process for jurisdictions of less than 50,000. These provisions were politically attractive because they ensured some level of funding support for all jurisdictions, regardless of size. This feature was obviously important to garner necessary congressional support, and it was consistent with the White House priority, which was first and foremost to deploy the 100,000 new police officers. Another change made late in the process led to COPS MORE (Making Officer Redeployment Effective) grants. Several prominent police executives and mayors urged that funds be available for resources other than sworn officers-- specifically, civilians and information technologies. The administration desired these advocates' support for the legislation, but civilians and technology lacked the appeal of "cops on the street" to tough-on-crime constituencies and would not necessarily help redeem the 100,000-officer campaign pledge. The COPS MORE resolution required applicants to estimate officer productivity gains from the new technology or civilians, measured as full-time equivalents (FTEs) of officers, and to demonstrate that COPS MORE grants would yield FTEs at least as cost effectively as grants to hire actual officers.[5] The FTEs generated by the productivity gains would then be counted toward the target of 100,000. No sound empirical basis existed for such estimates, and so these calculations and machinations would prove to be troublesome later. At the time, however, sponsors found it appealing that the COPS MORE device could apply a given amount of resources toward two goals, simultaneously advancing the program toward the 100,000-officer mark and providing the localities the additional benefits they sought from technology and civilianization. At the senior levels of DOJ, however, there were other critical interests expressed in terms of the scope and intent of this massive Federal initiative. The Deputy Attorney General and other senior staff at DOJ strongly advocated two priorities for the emerging anticrime legislation. First, they felt this large Federal investment would build on the "professional policing" model across the United States. Community policing was emerging as an alternative, and priority should be given, according to these advocates, to a strong Federal role in helping to facilitate the implementation and expansion of this new policing strategy. The second desired priority within DOJ was more controversial, given the need to fashion a legislative majority. Some senior DOJ executives supported targeting Crime Act resources particularly at the highest crime jurisdictions in the country, rather than the "shotgun" dissemination implied in the equal allocation based upon population size. Outside government, such renowned experts as James Q. Wilson and Lawrence Sherman also advocated this position. They argued that while $8.8 billion and 100,000 new police officers were formidable numbers, dispersing the funds and new officers too broadly would greatly dilute any potential for meaningful impact upon crime and violence in the areas having the most need. It is clear from the distribution formula in the final legislation that the advocates of a targeted funding formula did not prevail. Because any grantee could apply for a second or subsequent grant in future years, however, the extent to which COPS funds were targeted on high-crime areas remained an empirical question. The congressional debate A substantial part of the explanation for the final shape of the Crime Act was purely political. Although the politics of crime and this historic crime act are not the subject of this evaluation report, the political climate helped to shape not only the act itself, but ultimately how the newly created COPS Office would execute its mandates. The actual negotiations in Congress over a large Federal crime act dated back to early 1993. These negotiations, and the various versions of different bills that emerged, reflected the sometimes deep ideological differences between the Democratic and Republican parties. Even though the Democrats at that time maintained numerical control of both chambers in Congress, the presence of conservative Democrats guaranteed that any "final" crime act would somehow have to mediate these ideological differences. The Democrats, and particularly candidate (and later President) Clinton, were determined to reclaim the crime issue they had "lost" to the Republicans as far back as the late 1960s. The memory was fresh in their minds of the successful use of the crime issue in the 1988 presidential campaign, as epitomized by Willie Horton. The 100,000-officer campaign pledge was intended, in part, to preempt a repeat in 1992. The Republicans supported responses to crime that were very popular in the country, particularly the death penalty and other "get tough" measures on criminals. The public, given the spiraling crime rates almost everywhere, had lost its patience for the old Democratic party line of the past 30 years, which was seen as too liberal and too supportive of the rights and needs of criminals. Given this climate, Joseph Biden and Charles Schumer, then chairs of the Senate and House Judiciary Committees, respectively, adopted the following three-part legislative strategy for passing the 1994 Crime Act: First, Biden and Schumer recognized that Democrats' basic weakness on the crime issue was their perceived opposition to the death penalty, since capital punishment is the most powerful litmus test used by voters to determine whether a politician is "tough on crime". . . Second, Biden and Schumer went on the offensive, mounting a strong attack against the Bush administration's crime plan, which was designed to honor his 1988 campaign promises to "reform" presumptively liberal and permissive crime policies. . . . Third, Biden and Schumer proposed their own innovative crime plan, which in comparison to Bush's approach, was "real, not rhetorical." The Democrat approach can be summarized in a few brief words: more police, fewer guns. (Chernoff et al., 1996.) As a "new" and desired policing strategy, the abstract and ambiguous term "community policing" offered the flexibility needed to gain the necessary political support for the Crime Act. The term also allowed wide latitude to State and local police agencies in the application of this concept within their agencies. Avoiding even the perception of a "one size fits all" approach was seen as critical to the success of the Crime Act, and necessary also to ameliorate some concerns being expressed that one of the bill's outcomes could be to create a national police force. The bill incorporated such key elements of community policing as partnerships and problem solving and described these principles loosely in terms of their application within a police organization and in communities. In fact, these core principles were consistent with much of the language of the police profession itself as expressed in various publications, reports, and other community policing documents both at the national and local levels. Beyond the civilians and technology to be funded under COPS MORE, other funds were set aside to support local initiatives and programs thought to show particular promise in dealing with crime and violence issues (domestic violence, gangs, youth firearm violence, and so forth). In the final version of the bill, these kinds of programs became part of the Innovative Community Oriented Policing (ICOP) section, which could be funded with up to 15 percent of the appropriation each year. Similarly, in recognition of the need to provide State and local agencies some level of training and technical assistance support, up to 3 percent of the annual appropriation could be utilized to provide these services. Both of these categories of programs and services are described in a later section of this chapter. A broad range of constituencies influenced the bill's content and helped ensure its passage. Supporters included national police management and labor organizations and other political organizations, such as the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the International City Managers Association, the National Governor's Association and the National League of Cities. This diverse group of supporters became critical in ameliorating the philosophical tension in Congress between forces favoring the creation and funding of a large Federal crime program that would award grants directly to local jurisdictions, in contrast to the longstanding practice of disseminating these funds through State-level planning agencies controlled by gubernatorial appointees. Planning and Launching the Cops Program As the Crime Act was being crafted during the spring and summer of 1994, DOJ high-level organizational planning continued. The goal of the planners, who completed their work under the new Associate Attorney General, was to award grants for new officers within days after passage of the bill--an unprecedented goal for a new grant program. A critical organizational question was how to integrate the grant program for new officers with other Crime Act grant programs and with other local assistance programs, some dating back to the 1968 Safe Streets Act. For the most part, these were administered by the Office of Justice Programs and its component bureaus. Normally, programmatic aspects of Federal assistance to law enforcement and criminal justice agencies were managed by BJA, and the Office of the Comptroller (OC) conducted financial administration. The Attorney General assigned then-Associate Attorney General John Schmidt to coordinate implementation of the Crime Act within DOJ. To strengthen coordination, oversight responsibility for OJP was moved from the Deputy Attorney General to the Associate Attorney General. Because the new program was in some sense an expansion of the OJP mission, and, in fact, BJA and OC had already begun funding new officers through Police Hiring Supplement Grants in 1993 and 1994, it was recognized that future coordination with OJP entities would be critical if the COPS Program were to be smoothly implemented and ultimately successful. Organization of the COPS Program A top priority of the Attorney General and Associate Attorney General (ASG) was the need to expedite the receipt and processing of COPS Program grant applications, which drove both startup decisions and all subsequent oversight activity. The core and most critical mission of this new program would be to fund the hiring of 100,000 new police officers throughout the United States. Given features of the bill that encouraged small agencies to apply, the ASG and his staff estimated that within weeks the new agency could be confronted with applications from as many as 17,000 agencies, some applying to more than one program and some planning to apply for additional grants in future years. Any chance of funding 100,000 officers in the 6-year COPS Program authorization period would require a highly efficient and responsive organization. The ASG had two options at the time: Integrate the program within the existing OJP entities or create a separate new organization. The 1994 planning meetings, which continued up to early fall and involved, among others, the leadership and staff of OJP, ultimately led to the decision that there was a rationale and need to create a new office outside OJP because of the unique statutory mandate, magnitude, and short lifespan of the COPS Program. This decision was approved by the Attorney General, and the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office) was created in the fall of 1994. It seems that the ASG and other staff ultimately felt that creating a new COPS Office would facilitate the development of an organization with a new culture that would focus on the mandates and goals of the 1994 Crime Act. To fulfill one critical goal--expeditious processing and awarding of a very large number of grants--a single-minded organization seemed like the logical step to take. Over the years OJP, faced with broad and complex mandates, had developed voluminous regulations intended to prevent various administrative problems. The State planning agencies were accustomed to playing a central role in distributing Byrne grants, BJA's largest assistance program. The tension inherent in seeking to coordinate OJP and its six components, each headed by a presidential appointee, had occasionally hindered interagency cooperation. In that context, trying to alter the structure and culture of OJP to ensure success of the highly political and ambitious COPS program was probably thought to be too risky. The decision to create a new agency was balanced by giving OJP components visible responsibilities connected to the COPS program. NIJ, for example, would have important research and evaluation program responsibilities funded under COPS. A key organizational decision was made to have the COPS Office rely on OJP's existing Office of the Comptroller for financial administration instead of creating its own comptroller operation. This decision, along with OC's decision to create a branch specializing in COPS grants, was certainly critical to quick COPS Office startup. However, because of separate "chains of command," some time elapsed while the COPS Office and its OC branch developed shared visions of organizational mission and goals, customer service, and appropriate timetables for responding to the needs of prospective and existing grantees. Launching the COPS Office The selection of a COPS Office director became a priority task for the ASG. The first candidate seriously considered for this position withdrew his name from consideration. As a result, Kent Markus, from the Associate Attorney General's staff, assumed the position of Acting Director from October to December 1994. At that time, Chief Joseph Brann of Hayward, California, was selected and appointed by the Attorney General. He took the helm as the permanent director in early 1995 and remained as director until mid-1999. To expedite the hiring process, the Office of Personnel Management granted the COPS Office Schedule A hiring authority for a limited period of time since it was a new Federal agency. Under this authority, the agency could bypass the normal process of posting positions and screening civil service lists before making hiring decisions. Without Schedule A authority, this process could have taken at least 3 to 4 months, which would have been far too long. The COPS Office recruited staff even before the crime bill was passed and hired staff immediately after the Act was signed. The ASG hired all of the senior management team members during this period, except the assistant director of training and technical assistance, who was not selected until early 1996. The obvious hiring priority was the Grants Division staff. With a first-year budget of $1.3 billion and White House pressure to achieve results quickly, there was tremendous urgency to hire this staff quickly and accelerate the grant solicitation and awarding processes. During its first year of operation, the COPS Office was established as a "full service" organization under the supervision of the ASG. Staff were hired and assigned to multiple functions within the office: grant administration and monitoring, training and technical assistance, congressional liaison, intergovernmental liaison (working with national and other political organizations), and communications (for coordination with media and the handling of all critical office communications of other types). Other support staff were hired for the personnel, computer support, and administrative areas within the office. Thus, the office would conduct all aspects of its business in the awarding and monitoring of grants and the liaison with key external oversight and constituency groups without having to rely on any other DOJ office. These organizational decisions, again, were in support of the office's most visible mission--funding the 100,000 new police officers within the 6-year Crime Act authorization. Given its highly political and visible role and the direct connection of its program to the President of the United States, the COPS Office, by necessity, had to coordinate certain announcements and other activities through the ASG with the Attorney General, the White House, and members of Congress. At one level, the new office perfected the process of coordinating these kinds of high-level announcements. Key staff from all internal divisions were involved in a highly coordinated effort to process and announce all significant grant awards. At another level, however, COPS Office critics saw the coordinated announcements and attendant publicity as signs of a politically driven organization rather than one driven by substantive policing issues and needs. During 1995 that same visibility and connection to President Clinton also made COPS a target of Republicans, who won control of both Houses of Congress just 2 months after the President signed the 1994 Crime Act. Not only were the Republicans bent on reducing total Federal expenditures, but the COPS program, which was seen as one of the President's and Democrats' most visible legislative accomplishments, was an immediate and frequent target of many who wanted to abolish it. These issues dramatically affected the program starting in October 1995, when negotiations between the White House and Congress over the fiscal 1996 budget reached an impasse and the Federal Government "shut down" until April 1996. COPS Office staff were exempt from the shutdown and continued to process grant applications with a skeleton staff. Nevertheless, the agency was hobbled during the fall of 1995 and into the spring of 1996 in terms of its ability to obligate fiscal year 1996 funds, given the uncertainty of its future existence and appropriated funding level. House Republicans favored a budget that would have eliminated the COPS Office and shifted all grant funds to a new Local Law Enforcement Block Grant (LLEBG) program. LLEBG was developed as a Republican alternative to COPS that would distribute funds to jurisdictions proportionately based on their violent crime levels, permit grantees to use funds for virtually any type of resources, and free jurisdictions from any commitment to community policing. In the end, the fiscal 96 budget reduced COPS Office funding from $1.9 billion to $1.4 billion, with the $500 million difference being added to BJA's budget for disbursement under the LLEBG program. COPS and LLEBG coexisted at roughly those appropriations levels for the next several years, but the flow of grant funds had already been interrupted for the 7 months between October 1995 and April 1996. Because of the possibility of being "zeroed out," the COPS Office did not award many grants, either continuations from the previous year or new, until the final budget compromises made its future clear. This forced delay particularly affected pending MORE applications. Because fiscal 95 applications for COPS MORE grants had exceeded available MORE funds, COPS Office staff told a number of MORE applicants informally during September 1995 that their applications would be accepted but that formal award and obligation of the funds would be delayed into the first few weeks of fiscal 96. Because OC staff were not exempt from the shutdown, however, those weeks stretched into months, and the applicant agencies were kept in suspense until May 1996. COPS Office budgetary uncertainty also delayed until May 1996 grant awards for the hiring of police officers under Universal Hiring Program grants. The COPS Office culture From its inception, the new COPS Office consciously sought to differentiate itself from other Federal grant making agencies by creating what some have called a "corporate" operating culture that, internally, emphasized an informal team management style. Externally, the COPS Office adopted procedural simplification and customer service as guiding principles for its relations with grantees. Management style. In the early days, the ASG personally participated in and coordinated the management of critical COPS program decisions, along with the acting and permanent COPS Office directors. The Office was committed to a team management approach with emphasis on a flat and streamlined organization with ample opportunity for all key staff to participate in decisionmaking. During his entire tenure, the ASG met weekly with the COPS Office senior management team, which consisted of the director, deputy directors, and all assistant directors. This weekly forum provided regular opportunities for all key players from the COPS Office and the ASG's staff to candidly discuss and decide key program issues. Under Director Brann's leadership, the COPS Office developed a mission statement that committed the agency to this open management style that fostered innovation, to developing and maintaining customer relationships with law enforcement agencies, and to advancing the practice of community policing: We, the staff of the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, dedicate ourselves, through partnerships with communities, policing agencies, and other public and private organizations, to significantly improve public safety in neighborhoods and communities throughout the country. We will accomplish this by putting into practice the concepts of community policing in order to reduce levels of disorder, violence and crime through the application of proven, effective programs and strategies. We will meet the needs of our customers through innovation and responsiveness. We will create a workplace that encourages creativity, open communication, full participation, and problem solving. We will carry out these responsibilities through a set of core values that reflect our commitment to the highest standard of excellence and integrity in public service. (COPS Mission Statement, 1997.) Simplifying grant applications. The objective of the COPS Office simplification effort was to eliminate grant submission requirements that often generated voluminous proposals with "addenda" and other related materials appended to each proposal. In the minds of some, such grant application packages created undue burdens on both the agencies that had to prepare and submit them and DOJ program managers and staff members, who had to review and evaluate them in the process of making funding decisions. Indeed, a number of COPS Office staff members had acquired experience with such applications in previous positions in the OJP agencies. COPS staff designed greatly simplified forms and submission requirements. These forms, initially as short as one to two pages for jurisdictions of less than 50,000, were designed to record only the information that was critical to program decisionmaking. Appended to each of these applications were the required "Assurances" that were signed by each applicant stipulating that all information in the package was accurate and truthful. The staff designed the grant solicitation packages for each of the major grant initiatives to streamline and speed up the process. These were color coded according to the particular type of solicitation. These packages provided prospective applicants with easy-to-read information concerning the scope of the program, the funding requirements and expectations or desired outcomes. They included a question and answer section that provided answers to questions that the staff thought would be frequently asked by applicants. Serving customers. The dominant service standard within the COPS Office was a strong commitment to rapid, responsive, and quality customer service. Management was determined that the new agency would not become a large bureaucracy in the traditional and negative sense and that its "customers" would always come first. For example, a DOJ Response Center was created within the COPS Office and staffed by Aspen Systems, the contractor that already provided support to OJP in the operation of the National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS). The COPS Office widely disseminated the Response Center's toll free number and encouraged agencies to call for all grant-related information and other relevant publications produced by the COPS Office, OJP, or their grantees. COPS Office grant advisors were assigned to specific States and regions of the country as points of contact on all existing and prospective grant initiatives supported by the office. These staff members were to get to know the agency representatives in their assigned geographic areas and to keep themselves available to answer telephones and questions. A high priority also was given to returning telephone calls as soon as possible. Pursuing Program Objectives Through its first 5 years, the COPS Office maintained the cultural priorities discussed above as it pursued three primary functional objectives: fulfilling presidential promises regarding 100,000 police officers, ensuring that funds were spent according to the provisions of Title I, and promoting community policing as the wave of the future. 100,000 officers The first statutory purpose of Title I (Sec. 10002 (1)) was to "substantially increase the number of law enforcement officers interacting directly with members of the community," with no specific target number mentioned. However, White House speeches put 100,000 on the public screen and, soon thereafter, into COPS Office public information materials. Through its first 5 years, the COPS Office pursued this target through aggressive marketing and a demanding but fast-paced review procedure for grant applications. On May 12, 1999, these efforts culminated in a White House ceremony at which it was announced that the 100,000-officer goal had been met. The following subsections describe the marketing and grant review processes more fully and explore implications of the announcement. Marketing COPS grants. To further its first purpose, the COPS Office developed an aggressive external marketing and dissemination strategy to inform law enforcement agencies of its planned and pending grant solicitations on a timely and user-friendly basis. Individual grant solicitation packages were developed by Grants Division staff to summarize all relevant administrative requirements for COPS grants in the simplest possible language. These information packets were reinforced by an active Web site, a widely disseminated newsletter, and a series of fact sheets that addressed specific areas. The COPS Office director traveled extensively throughout the country to conferences and meetings to "market" the program and educate the law enforcement community about resources available to them as part of the 1994 Crime Act. In telephone conversations, grant advisors and other staff encouraged executives of grantee and nongrantee agencies to apply for supplemental or new grants. Aggressive marketing was a key activity because COPS Office executives felt it was critical to attaining the goal of funding 100,000 police officers. Jurisdictions needed some level of convincing that the COPS Office grant process was, in fact, streamlined rather than cumbersome and that the office culture emphasized being "customer friendly" rather than bureaucratic. From applications to awards. While external processes were designed to make grant application and administration as customer friendly as possible, elaborate but fast-paced internal review and administrative procedures were required to ensure that funds were spent as Title I intended while demonstrating progress toward the goal of 100,000 officers. COPS Office grants staff, supervisors, and managers reviewed each application and made funding decisions. From the outset of the COPS hiring programs, key programmatic decisions about each application concerned agency eligibility, adequacy of its community policing strategy, evidence of intent to use the grant funds for precisely the purposes and types of resources allowed under the specific COPS program funding the grant, and the status of applicants' compliance with other DOJ regulations. Later, checks were added to ensure that awards would reflect need and would not impose undue financial burdens at the end of the grant. COPS MORE applications requesting support for technology had additional requirements. Finally both COPS Office and OC staff screened applications for compliance with administrative requirements. For most law enforcement agencies, eligibility status was clear before the application was submitted: Public general jurisdiction law enforcement agencies were eligible, whether they policed municipalities, counties, States, Indian or tribal lands, or special jurisdictions such as highways, university campuses, or parks. Jurisdictions with startup agencies were eligible, as were jurisdictions with no law enforcement agencies, which could apply for grants either as members of consortia or to contract for services from county- or State-level agencies. Private jurisdictions such as homeowners' associations were ineligible. Eligibility decisions for sheriffs' departments were made on a case-by-case basis, depending on whether the department had law enforcement functions beyond operating detention facilities. The Methodological Appendix contains further details about eligibility criteria. Each applicant, regardless of the type of program solicitation, was required to complete a community policing information sheet as part of the grant application package. This form was designed to facilitate the quick profiling of agencies in terms of their level of commitment or experience with community policing. In addition, agencies serving jurisdictions of more than 50,000 were required to submit written community policing strategies; the strategies submitted ranged from simple to elaborate. Evidence of insufficient knowledge or commitment regarding community policing did not result in rejection of the grant application. Rather, staff used information from this work sheet to identify agencies in need of training and technical assistance to familiarize them with community policing and its implementation. These services were offered by the Community Policing Consortium (CPC), which BJA had launched in 1993. Applications for COPS MORE funds were subject to three additional checks. First, "[e]quipment and technology which does not directly contribute to increased community policing presence through redeployment . . ." (Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, 1994a:2-3. Emphasis in original) was not an allowable use of COPS MORE funds. For some types of technology, the basis for exclusion was evident: Weapons, office furnishings, and equipment for undercover operations or riot control were unlikely to increase community policing presence. Other distinctions were more discretionary: Automated booking systems, for example, were listed as an example of eligible technology, while an application to purchase a flashing speed sign was rejected even though the jurisdiction projected that the sign would free up an officer from radar patrol to community policing. Second, applicants were required to demonstrate that the MORE funds would free up full-time equivalents of officers at least as cost-effectively as a hiring grant of the same amount. For agencies with annual salaries and fringe benefits exceeding $33,333, this requirement would be met if the applicant projected that the MORE-funded resources would yield at least four FTEs per $100,000 funded.[6]The COPS Office required justification for the projection, politely reduced obviously inflated projections and, after fiscal 1995, used four FTEs per $100,000 as the standard for agencies' accountability and as the counting factor toward the goal of funding 100,000 officers. Third, because applications for COPS MORE funds exceeded the statutorily available amounts,[7] some eligible applications were rejected on the basis of proposal quality and related discretionary factors. A final step in the COPS Office award decision process involved vetting applications at senior levels within DOJ. Normally, executive management and the relevant U.S. Attorney were given 2 weeks to point out "vetting problems" such as ongoing investigations or findings of noncompliance with programmatic or administrative requirements on other DOJ grants, civil rights violations, or other matters. In June 1997, the COPS Office grant administration unit added a "pre-vetting" step, which was intended to ensure that applications reflected legitimate needs and that applicants were not taking on nonsustainable financial burdens to retain COPS-funded officer positions after grants expired. To check needs, staff used data on sworn force per capita to ascertain whether award of a requested number of officers, combined with previous awards, would give an applicant substantially more officers per capita than other agencies in its State. To check on sustainability, staff computed the percentage increase in the applicant's sworn force that an award would produce. When a requested grant would raise the count of COPS-funded officers per capita by too much in relation to its current size or to the average for the applicant's State, applicants were contacted by phone and case-by-case decisions were made. The usual remedy was to reduce the size of the officially recorded request and award. When the COPS Office decided to make an award (in official terms, to "accept the application"), it normally notified the relevant U.S. Representative, then the successful applicant, that an award would be made, subject to budget and administrative review by the OJP Office of the Comptroller (OC). Awards in this category were commonly accumulated over several weeks, publicly announced by a high-ranking DOJ or White House official, and counted in the total of police officers "funded" for public information purposes. Meanwhile, the accepted applications would have been forwarded to OC for clearance. For hiring grants, OC reviews typically concerned relatively clear-cut financial issues, such as the allowability of all fringe benefit components and the accuracy of computations. For COPS MORE grants, more complex but fairly unambiguous issues arose, such as the allowability, procurement procedures, and pricing of specific components of the overall technology. While resolving these issues sometimes entailed delays and exchanges of correspondence, they had only short-term program effects, which are discussed in chapter 3. Following OC clearance, the COPS Office mailed successful applicants an award package, containing official notice of the award and its administrative and programmatic conditions. OC obligated the grant funds (i.e., made them available for grantees to draw down) upon receipt of the grantee's signed acceptance of the award and agreement to comply with the conditions. A milestone reached? On May 12, 1999, at a White House ceremony, President Clinton announced that "[t]he COPS Office met its goal of funding 100,000 community policing officers, ahead of schedule and under budget." (U.S. Department of Justice, 1999:4). The meaning and accuracy of this claim quickly fell into dispute; resolution of the dispute is clouded by semantic matters, local implementation issues, and program complexity. The claim was first officially questioned just 2 months later, in a summary report by the DOJ's Office of Inspector General (OIG) based on its audits of 149 COPS grantees (USDOJ/OIG, 1999). OIG began by questioning the COPS Office description of its goal as funding (i.e., approving grant applications for) 100,000 officers by the end of fiscal year 2000, in contrast to having 100,000 officers hired and on the street by that time. OIG quoted a DOJ annual report and strategic plan, as well as press releases by the COPS Office and the White House that seemed to point to the latter objective. Having officers on the street is, of course, a more demanding goal and one that depends on actions at both the Federal and grantee levels. After the COPS Office "accepts" a hiring grant application and begins counting the awarded officers, the application must still clear OC review and local acceptance before the grantee can begin the process of recruiting, testing, training, and deploying them. As discussed further in chapter 4, training inexperienced recruits requires upwards of 5 months in many large agencies; recruiting, testing, and postacademy field training can further delay deployment by several months. For COPS MORE grantees, redeployment of officers or their full-time equivalents to community policing cannot occur until civilians are hired or technology procured (both are usually under time-consuming local regulations), technology is implemented, civilians are trained in their specialties, and (in some agencies) officers are trained in community policing. To accommodate these considerations, it was common for grantees to request and receive no-additional-cost extensions of their hiring and MORE grants; the OIG report cites a COPS Office projection that only 59,765 of the funded officers would be deployed by the end of fiscal 2000. While the respective roles of policy makers and public information offices in blurring the distinction between officers funded and on the street remain to be sorted out, the OIG argued further that even the goal of funding 100,000 officers--in the sense that funds were obligated and available for grantees to draw down--might not be met by the end of fiscal 2000. OIG estimated that grants accounting for 2,526 officers and FTEs had not been mailed to awardees, and awardees had failed to accept grants accounting for another 7,722 FTEs, even though an average of 12 months had elapsed since they were notified of the award. Local interpretations of complex features of COPS MORE and the hiring programs added further difficulty to measuring program effects on the number of officers and FTEs "on the street" at any point in time.[8] Measurable productivity gains from MORE-funded resources require both that the resources be deployed and that the expected productivity increases occur. As explained more fully in chapter 4, observing whether or not both steps have been accomplished is relatively straightforward in the case of civilians: at any point in time the funded civilians are either hired or not, and the sworn officers they were to replace are either redeployed to the field or not. In contrast, achieving projected productivity gains from technology depends on changes in the way humans spend their time--often a matter of a few minutes or hours per day for each officer. Ascertaining the implementation status and field use of a specific productivity-enhancing feature of technology is sometimes difficult; nevertheless, it is clear that implementation of the most commonly requested technology lagged well beyond expectations. Even worse, measuring changes in officers' use of their time is likely to require elaborate measuring devices and perhaps a fairly complex before/after study design to rule out alternative explanations of an observed change. Therefore, documenting MORE productivity effects can easily require resources that are a sizable fraction of the productivity gain itself. Due at least in part to these difficulties, the OIG reported that 78 percent of the MORE grantees they audited could not demonstrate achievement of their projected productivity gains. Even measuring how COPS hiring grants affected the size of the sworn force is difficult because of confusion surrounding two complex but key administrative requirements: nonsupplanting and officer retention. The logic of nonsupplanting is simple: Federal resources should supplement and not replace local resources dedicated to the same function. However, as explained further below and in chapter 4, application of this logic to specific local circumstances was occasionally very difficult. As explained further below, the officer retention requirement evolved over the life of the COPS program into its present form: that grantees retain the COPS-funded officer positions (or MORE-funded resources) using local funds for at least one agency budget cycle following grant expiration. Since 12-month budget cycles are commonplace, some September 1994 awardees could, in theory, have laid off their COPS-funded officers in October 1999 without violating the retention requirement. At that time, new officers were still being funded and hired, and previously awarded MORE-funded technology was still being implemented. Because these resources did not come on stream until later, it seems clear that if the COPS program contribution of officers and FTEs on the street turns out to be 100,000 (or some lower number), that achievement must be interpreted analogously to attendance at an "open house," where some guests arrive early and leave before other guests arrive. Unless all grantees retain their COPS-funded resources well beyond the requirement, there will be no single day on which all COPS-funded resources are deployed simultaneously.[9] Compliance with nonsupplanting, retention, and other requirements is discussed below, and the implications are explored more fully in chapter 5, where we present interim estimates of the COPS program impact on sworn police strength. We plan to update the chapter 5 estimates in a future report based on an agency survey being conducted during the summer of 2000. Ensuring compliance with Title I COPS grantees must comply with nine categories of requirements. This study is intended to evaluate the program not to monitor compliance. Therefore, we made no attempt to define or measure compliance with four basic financial and administrative requirements: filing timely financial and progress reports, limiting expenditures to allowable cost categories, and observing Federal security and privacy regulations on criminal intelligence systems funded under COPS MORE. Other requirements had programmatic implications and were therefore of interest to us. Requirements to implement community policing and, for some agencies, to be trained in community policing, are discussed later in this chapter, and COPS program effects on community policing implementation are addressed in chapter 6. The requirement that COPS MORE grantees monitor redeployment of officers due to productivity gains from the MORE-funded resources is discussed in chapter 4 and its implications in chapter 5. Defining and measuring compliance with the two remaining requirements-- retention of COPS-funded officers and nonsupplanting of local funds with COPS funds--proved elusive. The resulting uncertainty may well have had implications for local decisions to apply for grants, for the COPS impact on the national count of sworn law enforcement officers, and for later adverse findings in OIG audits. Fostering compliance. Throughout the first 5 years of the COPS program, five separate organizations dealt with the nonsupplanting and retention requirements as they fostered grantees' compliance with applicable Federal regulations. Within the COPS Office, the Legal Division defined compliance by applying the regulations to specific local circumstances to determine whether or not a given plan or action would comply and provide legal guidance through determination letters to potential and actual COPS grantees who inquired or were referred for investigation of signs of potential noncompliance.[10] The Legal Division also reviewed COPS Office fact sheets and other publications for accuracy regarding these requirements before they were disseminated to the field. The Grants Division encouraged compliance by informing potential applicants and grantees regarding eligibility conditions and grant requirements, reviewing applications for compliance with programmatic requirements (e.g., adequacy of the community policing strategy, allowability of proposed technology), and assigning each grantee an advisor to maintain regular contact. Grant advisors served as a two-way communication channel, informing grantees of requirements and informing the Legal Division or other units of possible violations that came up in the course of conversations with grantees, progress reports, or other communications. The Grants Monitoring Division took a proactive approach to monitoring compliance through site visits to agencies selected randomly or through referrals from grant advisors. Monitoring Division staff visited 432 grantees in fiscal 1998 and planned to expand the number of fiscal 1999 visits to 900. Visits were planned to all grantees with populations of more than 150,000 or total grants exceeding $1 million and to a sample of jurisdictions with smaller populations and smaller grants. The OJP Office of the Comptroller established a separate branch to monitor grantees' compliance with financial and administrative regulations. OC had two primary concerns: whether grantees' accounting and administrative controls were adequate to detect violations, and whether violations actually occurred. OC's activities included reviews of periodic financial status reports and site visits to observe grantees' controls and record systems. The DOJ Office of Inspector General (OIG) enforced these and other regulations, criminal and civil laws, and ethical standards for all DOJ programs including COPS. In this role, it audited COPS grantees in search of possible violations of these regulations, either locally or by the COPS Office itself. Retention and nonsupplanting. Lingering uncertainty in the field over two administrative requirements had potential programmatic consequences both before and after COPS grants were awarded. The first, "retention," is specific to COPS hiring programs and concerned grantees' obligations after expiration of their grants. The second, "nonsupplanting," is a standard requirement of all DOJ grant programs that Federal funds increase total resources dedicated to the purpose of the grant, not replace local resources diverted from that purpose in anticipation of the grant award. Consistent with the customer service orientation of the COPS Office, early materials disseminated to prospective applicants were designed to explain the requirements as simply as possible. The simple explanation and the evolution of the retention requirement over time created a situation in which applicants and potential applicants could interpret the requirements in unintended ways. From the inception of the COPS program, the Legal Division responded with detailed opinion letters to agencies' questions about applications of the requirements to their specific situations. Later the COPS Office proactively disseminated less simplified guidance materials that were approved by the Legal Division. Nonetheless, some agencies that did not take the initiative to request Legal Division opinions were unnecessarily discouraged from applying because they interpreted these requirements too conservatively, while some grantees were subjected to adverse OIG audit findings because they (and in some cases, the COPS Office) interpreted them more liberally than OIG. The retention requirement was problematic for three reasons. First, the length of the required retention period was not determined until August 1998, when the Attorney General approved setting it at one budget cycle following grant expiration. Therefore, prospective applicants in the first 3 years of the program were left to form their own expectations about the requirement. Second, several years elapsed before all documentation and application forms disseminated to potential applicants consistently made clear that the object of the requirement was officer positions rather than officers (see, for example, Universal Hiring Program Application Kit, 1995).[11] The distinction mattered because an agency could satisfy a requirement to retain the COPS-funded officers (or replacements) at no local cost through attrition, by failing to replace other officers who left the department. However, this approach would create no lasting net increase in sworn force size, defined in terms of officer positions. The COPS Office Legal Division informed agencies that inquired, or whose retention plans relying on attrition came to its attention, that "retention by attrition" was unacceptable because the correct interpretation concerned officer levels or positions. Nevertheless, confusion on the point remained in the field. Third, interpretations varied, and rules changed, on whether formal retention plans were required. The 1995 COPS Universal Hiring Program Application Kit (OMB #1103-0027, exp. 5/98, Community Policing Information Part II, p. 2) required an explanation of how retention would be accomplished only from agencies that did not provide written assurance from their local governments that the officers would be retained.[12] A 1997 COPS Facts publication on monitoring made clear that grantees were required to plan to retain their officer positions but did not address the question whether a formal written retention plan was required. Later, however, following audits of several agencies in which OIG could find no written documentation of good faith efforts to retain the officers, it recommended that the agencies develop a written plan although it was not a formal grant requirement. In August 1998, the COPS Office began requiring written retention plans as a grant condition (USDOJ/OIG, 1999). The August 1998 articulation of the retention requirement--in terms of both the required length of time and the need for a written plan--barely preceded expiration of the first large wave of 3-year COPS FAST grants to more than 6,500 agencies serving jurisdictions of less than 50,000. Retention was problematic in some small communities, in which the addition of just one or two officer positions could amount to a 25 or 50 percent increase in sworn force size, and therefore in the law enforcement budget following grant expiration. To ease the transition, the COPS Office established a Small Community Grant program on September 1, 1998, which awarded grants to cover 1-year retention costs in 774 small jurisdictions. The nonsupplanting requirement requires the applicant to certify: 1) "that Federal funds will not be used to replace or supplant State or local funds É that would, in the absence of Federal aid, be made available to or for law enforcement; and 2) that funds required to pay the . . . 'cash match' . . . shall be in addition to funds that would otherwise be made available to or for law enforcement purposes" (see COPS Universal Hiring Program Application Kit, OMB #1103-0027, exp. 5/98, Appendix A--Legal Certifications). Further, the kit expressed an expectation that "grantees . . . proceed with new hiring at a level consistent with historical practice, and . . . take positive steps to fill all vacancies resulting from attrition." The nonsupplanting requirement, of course, discourages the strategy of "retention through attrition." Yet it, too, raises a series of fairly subtle questions: What constitutes a commitment to hire--an offer letter, authorization to hire, or a local budget appropriation to hire? What if "positive steps" fail to fill all vacancies, as is often the case in poor, low-salary jurisdictions? What if "historical practice" entails a chronic gap between actual and authorized sworn force levels because of turnover? What if "historical practice" is to reduce sworn force size during periods of declining crime? Useful guidance was especially difficult for prospective applicants to obtain with respect to two issues: the meaning of supplanting in the context of a declining trend in funds for law enforcement and the precise benchmark for measuring supplanting. From the start of the program, COPS Office materials prominently featured the requirement that grant funds must supplement and not supplant local expenditures. Most explanations included an example similar to the following from the Universal Hiring Program Grant Application Kit (OMB No. 1103- 0027, p.5): "If a grantee, prior to applying to participate in the COPS Universal Hiring Program, had committed to hire ten new officers, then the grantee must hire those ten officers in addition to those requested under COPS Universal Hiring." Further, both COPS and OIG posted examples of supplanting on their Web sites. COPS examples included grantees hiring officers before award dates, using COPS funds for the salaries of previously hired officers, and using COPS funds to pay for previously authorized positions (emphasis added) (http://www. usdoj.gov/cops/toolbox/general_info/compliance/ default.htm, 6/23/99, page 1 of 6). OIG examples included: a department with vacancies at the start of the grant period that hires no new officers other than COPS-funded hires, a department that does no timely hiring to fill vacancies created by attrition before or during the grant period, and use of grant funds to replace or reallocate funds already committed for law enforcement purposes (emphasis added) (http://www. usdoj.gov/oig/au9914/-9914pt2.htm, 6/19/99, page 2 of 6). The two agencies' explanations were not entirely consistent at all times, and none of the published examples suggested the possibility that an agency could avoid supplanting in the context of a local hiring freeze or declining trend in the size of its sworn force. It is possible that the absence of such explanations or examples discouraged agencies in fiscally stressed jurisdictions from applying. Yet agencies that proactively requested advice on these questions were advised that it was possible that no violation would occur if the jurisdiction certified that the reduction or freeze would have occurred regardless of the anticipation of grant funds. Similarly, as we discuss further in chapter 3, confusion about whether the appropriate benchmark for supplanting was the "authorized," "committed" (i.e., budgeted), or "actual" sworn force level may have unintentionally discouraged some eligible agencies from applying for grants. Because full law enforcement careers are typically only 20 or 25 years long, large police agencies often faced attrition rates of at least 6 percent annually, and so their actual sworn force levels tended to be chronically below their authorized levels. In jurisdictions that anticipated a semipermanent replacement lag, it was not unusual for the budgeted sworn force to lie between its authorized and actual levels. Although the committed or budgeted level was the intended benchmark throughout the program, some potential applicants may have been confused by various widely disseminated uses of the other standards. The only benchmark requested on the one-page COPS FAST application (OMB No. 1105-0081, p. 1) was the actual number. The 1995 COPS Universal Hiring Program application (OMB No. 1103-0027) required the actual and authorized counts but not the budgeted. And for a time, an example of supplanting on the COPS Office Web site erroneously referred to the authorized level instead of the budgeted level (http://www.usdoj.gov/cops/toolbox/general_info/compliance/default.htm, 6/23/99, page 1 of 6). As in the context of declining budgets, guidance was available upon request from the COPS Office Legal Division. Yet some agencies that interpreted the requirements over-conservatively decided not to apply for COPS funding without having sought guidance. Others with arguable but more liberal interpretations of the retention and nonsupplanting requirements were later described as noncompliant by OIG auditors. According to the OIG's 1999 Summary of Audit Findings, 58 percent of OIG-audited grantees had violated the retention requirement, and 41 percent showed indicators of supplanting. The COPS Office formally appealed the OIG results, and an independent mediator reviewed a random sample of 64 OIG findings of noncompliance. On December 21, 1999, the Deputy Attorney General adopted the mediator's determination that audited grantees were actually in compliance in 33 percent of the retention issues and 65 percent of the supplanting issues in the sample. The programmatic effects of long-term uncertainty in the field about these two key requirements are discussed more fully in chapters 3 and 4. While second-guessing individual Federal or local agencies' compliance determinations is not an issue for this report, the possibility that prospective grantees may have had a hazy view of an evolving standard raises the possibility that confusion over these requirements may have had adverse program effects-- an evaluation question addressed in chapters 3 and 4. Starting and accelerating transitions to community policing The third COPS objective, fostering transitions to community policing, was complicated for a number of reasons. Not the least of these was the wide array of tactics discussed earlier in this chapter, which were plausible elements of community policing at the start of the program. Another was the fact that agencies could adopt "signature" tactics of community policing without embedding them in a comprehensive strategy intended to better align interests of the police and the policed. The COPS Office took a number of steps to operationalize community policing, disseminate its view of the concept, and refine the concept. It specified a set of community policing objectives. It expanded the Community Policing Consortium, which BJA had launched in 1993 to provide training and technical assistance. It set up special Innovative Community Oriented Policing grant programs to encourage local agencies to test creative ways of dealing with specific forms of crime or disorder within a community policing framework. It funded 28 Regional Community Policing Institutes under competitive grants and carried out additional training and technical assistance programs. These activities are described more fully in the following paragraphs. On December 7, 1995, in testimony before the House Crime Subcommittee, COPS Office Director Brann removed some of the ambiguity surrounding community policing by succinctly stating his office's view of its "three critical elements." He described them as: (1) building crime fighting partnerships among the police, community, and other governmental resources; (2) developing effective problem-solving tactics that involve all three of these stakeholders so that officers no longer respond to recurring incidents at the same location, and (3) refining organizational structures and improving deployment tactics to enhance the overall community policing strategy (Brann, 1995). Crime prevention was also a part of the concept, as explained and inventoried, for example, in the COPS FAST community policing strategy checklist. The COPS Office did not immediately develop any kind of formal publication elaborating on these principles in operational terms. However, it did fund the development of such descriptions by the Community Policing Consortium, which had been launched earlier with BJA support. At the beginning of Phase III of the Community Policing Consortium's work, the COPS Office picked up the costs of consortium funding and oversight from BJA. The COPS Office faced a formidable problem very different from the one confronting BJA. While BJA had used the consortium as an incubator for developing and promulgating the community policing concept, the new COPS Office had to anticipate awarding thousands of community policing grants within a few months. It needed a large-scale provider of training and technical assistance that could specifically target the grantees that needed these services. The consortium was a natural to assume this role, given its many community policing curriculum modules in hand, with many more under development by the staffs of consortium organizations. However, it needed to expand and change its approaches to delivering training and technical assistance. With COPS Office support, the consortium developed a clearinghouse and a series of publications and curricula about community policing, available to all law enforcement agencies. It operated training and technical assistance programs that were available to any agency but required by the COPS Office of grantees whose community policing strategies reflected a lack of understanding or support of the concept. The consortium provided training for many thousands of law enforcement personnel from these grantee agencies. Its operations continue at a high level today. The 1994 Crime Act authorized the COPS Office to spend up to 15 percent of its appropriation on innovative programs that showed particular promise and hope in dealing with crime and violence. During its first year, the agency chose not to award any of these grants due to the priorities of hiring staff and processing and awarding hiring grants. In subsequent years, however, several of these programs were launched, to award a limited number (usually 10 to 20) of grants for local demonstration initiatives against such problems as gangs, domestic violence, youth firearms violence, and later methamphetamine. Other innovative programs funded community police officers for special areas such as schools and distressed neighborhoods. Still others were funded to implement problem solving and to advance community policing through supportive organizational innovations. In 1997 the COPS Office solicited competitive proposals and awarded cooperative agreements for 28 Regional Community Policing Institutes (RCPIs) throughout the country. These institutes required partnerships among one or more law enforcement agencies, community-based nonprofit organizations, and an educational institution (i.e. police academy or university); because the awards were cooperative agreements rather than grants, the COPS Office itself retained a partner's role. Each RCPI was to design and deliver a broad array of training and technical assistance curricula and services within its region of the country. Up to 3 percent of COPS funds can be set aside for training and technical assistance. Clearly, the consortium is being funded under this category. Additionally, there were about 11 targeted training grants awarded by COPS in 1996, which involved a number of different projects aimed at the development and delivery of community policing training and technical assistance, including three grants that were awarded to community organizations. Training grants were also awarded to many U.S. Attorneys' Offices throughout the country in support of their coordination of community policing training programs. Evaluation Questions The events related above raised a number of questions for this evaluation. Chapter 3 reports our findings on field perspectives on and responses to COPS Office operations: agencies' decisions regarding grant applications and withdrawals, their satisfaction with the COPS Office grant simplification and administrative activities, and the resulting distribution of funds. Chapter 4 describes grantees' implementation of their COPS grants: the hiring and deployment of officers, and expectations regarding postgrant retention; civilianization and technology implementation funded under COPS MORE; and redeployment of officer full-time equivalents from productivity increases due to MORE-funded resources. Chapter 5 draws on the preceding chapters to estimate increases in the number of officers and FTEs deployed to the street through mid-1998 and to make preliminary projections of eventual deployment based on the grants for 100,000 officers awarded by May 12, 1999. Chapter 6 reports our findings on how grantees met their commitments to implement community policing. Finally, chapter 7 describes how local leaders used COPS funds to change their organizations in various local contexts. Notes 1. Costs of the COPS program and certain other components of the 1994 Crime Act are still charged against the trust fund as an accounting device in the Federal budget and annual appropriations bills, but the significance of the trust fund has faded as the Federal budget has shifted from deficits to surpluses. 2. The specific methods mentioned decreased the number of officers on foot patrol, reduced the number of precinct stations, and insisted that patrol officers spend less time on maintaining relations with citizens on the street. 3. This description summarizes a more complete discussion in Moore (1992:132-133). 4. The second tactic was the alternative actually used in the Coconut Grove district of the Miami Police Department and observed on a site visit during this project. 5. In fiscal 1995, the first year of the program, COPS MORE grants were also awarded to support officer overtime, but this option was eliminated for subsequent years. 6. The 3-year hiring grants were subject to a 3-year cap of $75,000--an annual average of $25,000 per officer, or, equivalently, four officers per $100,000. Because the grants were to cover 75 percent of salary and fringe, the caps came into play only when those costs exceeded $33,333 per year. 7. In fiscal 1998, MORE requests totaled $760 million, with only $240 million available. 8. Our analyses here and elsewhere in the report abstract from the fact that on average and independently of the COPS program, upwards of 20 percent of a typical large agency's sworn force is unavailable for street duty on a given day. This gap occurs because of assigned days off during the 7-day week, vacation and sick leave, duty restrictions because of disability, and time required for court appearances, training, and other duties. 9. The OIG report (99-21) estimated that if all grantees attained only minimal compliance with the retention requirement, at least 26,518 funded officers and FTEs will have terminated by the last day of fiscal 2000. 10. Memo to Pam Cammarata, assistant director, from Charlotte C. Grzebian, associate general counsel, "Comments re: Urban Institute Draft Report," August 6, 1999. 11. Interim program guidelines (60 FR 3648, Section 4.2.5.) published January 18, 1995, refer explicitly to "continuation of the increased hiring level using State or local . . . funding." Yet the COPS FAST fact sheet published October 15, 1994, mentioned no retention requirement, and the COPS FAST application form (OMB No. 1105-0081, page 6, item 8) mentions only that "the Federal grant share must decrease each year leading to full local funding of officers' salaries and benefits at the end of the grant period." Similarly, the Universal Hiring Program Application Kit (OMB No. 1103-0027), published in May 1995, states that "by the end of the three-year grant period, the department is wholly responsible for funding of the officers hired under the grant" (p. 2), and Part II (P.2, item 6) of the accompanying application form refers to plans for a good faith effort to retain the new officers following expiration. By at latest mid-1997, in contrast, COPS Facts materials on Monitoring (updated July 14, 1997) and the Universal Hiring Program (updated September 1, 1998) made quite clear that the requirement concerned officer positions. [All emphases added.] 12. The item read as follows: 6. b) Do you have assurance from your local government that these officers will be retained? [Yes or No] If you have answered Yes, attach any written letters or other assurances to this application. If you have answered No, explain how you intend to retain the officers. References Barr, W.P. (1992). Combating Violent Crime: 24 Recommendations to Strengthen Criminal Justice. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice. Benson, B.L. (1990). The Enterprise of Law: Justice Without the State. San Francisco: Pacific Research Institute. Blumstein, A., J. Cohen, and D. Nagin. (1978). Deterrence and Incapacitation: Estimating the Effects of Criminal Sanctions on Crime Rates. Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences. Blumstein, A., and R. Rosenfeld. (1998). "Explaining Recent Trends in U.S. Homicide Rates." Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 88 (4):1175-1216. Brann, J.E. (1995). Statement before the subcommittee on the judiciary U.S. House of Representatives concerning oversight of the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. Washington, D.C. Buerger, M.E. (1994). "A Tale of Two Targets: Limitations of Community Anticrime Actions." Crime and Delinquency 40 (3):411-436. Chernoff, H.A., C.M. Kelly, and J.R. Kroger. (1996). "The Politics of Crime." Harvard Journal on Legislation 33:538-539. Committee on Law and Justice. (1994). Violence in Urban America: Mobilizing a Response. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. Community Policing Consortium. (1995). "The View from BJA's Dick Ward." The Exchange 1 (1) (March-April). COPS Office. (1995). Universal Hiring Program Application Kit (OMB No. 1103-0027). Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice. COPS Office. (1997). COPS Facts: Mission Statement. Washington, D.C.: COPS Office, U.S. Department of Justice. Dunworth, T., and G. Mills. (1999). National Evaluation of Weed and Seed (NCJ 175685). Research in Brief. Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice. Eck, J.E., and W. Spelman. (1987). Problem Solving: Problem-Oriented Policing in Newport News. Washington, D.C.: Police Executive Research Forum. Eck, J.E., and D.P. Rosenbaum. (1994). "The New Police Order: Effectiveness, Equity, and Efficiency in Community Policing." In Rosenbaum, D.P. (ed.), The Challenge of Community Policing: Testing the Premises. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications:3-23. Executive Office for Weed and Seed. Operation Weed and Seed, Implementation Manual. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs. Goldstein, H. (1979). "Improving Policing: A Problem-Oriented Approach." Crime and Delinquency 22:236-258. Goldstein, H. (1987). "Toward Community-Oriented Policing: Potential, Basic Requirements, and Threshold Questions." Crime and Delinquency 33 (1):6-30. Greenwood, P., J. Chaiken, and J. Petersilia. (1977). The Criminal Investigation Process. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath. Grinc, R. (1994). "'Angels in Marble': Problems in Stimulating Community Involvement in Community Policing." Crime and Delinquency 40 (3):437-468. Johnson, J. (1994). Americans' Views on Crime and Law Enforcement, Survey Findings, Measuring What Matters Project Paper. Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Justice and COPS Office, U.S. Department of Justice. Johnson, J., S Farkas, A. Bers, C. Connolly, and Z. Maldonado. (1999). "Americans' Views on Crime and Law Enforcement: A Look at Recent Survey Findings." In R. Langworthy (ed.), Measuring What Matters: Proceedings From the Policing Institute Meetings. Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Justice, National Institute of Justice, and Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. Kansas City Police Department. (1980). Response Time Analysis: Volume II-- Part I Crime Analysis. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. Kelling, G.A., A. Pate, D. Dieckman, and C. Brown. (1974). "The Kansas City Preventative Patrol Experiment: A Technical Report." Washington, D.C.: Police Foundation. Kelling, G.A., and C. Coles. (1997). Fixing Broken Windows. New York: Free Press. Kelling, G.A., M.R. Hochberg, S.L. Kaminska, Rocheleau, D.P. Rosenbaum, J.A. Roth, and W.G. Skogan. (1998). The Bureau of Justice Assistance Comprehensive Communities Program: A Preliminary Report (NCJ 171132). Research in Brief. Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice. Kelling, G.A. (1999). "Broken Windows" and Police Discretion (NCJ 178259). Research Report. Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice. Klockars, C.B. (1991). "The Rhetoric of Community Policing." In Greene, J.R., and S.D. Mastrofski (eds.), Community Policing: Rhetoric or Reality. New York: Praeger:239-258. Lott, J.R., Jr. (1998). More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun-Control Laws. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lurigio, A.J., and D.P. Rosenbaum. (1986). "Evaluation Research in Community Crime Prevention: A Critical Look at the Field." In Rosenbaum, D.P. (ed.), Community Crime Prevention: Does It Work? Beverly Hills: Sage Publications:19-44. Lurigio, A.J., and D.P. Rosenbaum. (1994). "The Impact of Community Policing on Police Personnel: A Review of the Literature." In Rosenbaum, D.P. (ed.), The Challenge of Community Policing: Testing the Promises. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications:147-163. Moore, M.H. (1992). "Problem-Solving and Community Policing." In Crime and Justice: A Review of Research, Vol. 15. Chicago: University of Chicago Press:99-158. Moore, M.H. (1994). "Research Synthesis and Policy Implications." In Rosenbaum, D.P. (ed.), The Challenge of Community Policing. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications:285-299. Moore, M.H., and R.C. Trojanowicz. (1988). "Corporate Strategies for Policing." Perspectives on Policing, No. 6. Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Justice and Harvard University. Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. (1994a). COPS MORE: Making Officer Redeployment Effective Application Kit (OMB Approval No. 1103-0019). Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice. Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. (1994b). COPS Universal Hiring Program Application Kit (OMB Approval No. 1103-0027). Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice. Pate, A.M., M.A. Wycoff, W.G. Skogan, and L.W. Sherman. (1986). Reducing Fear of Crime in Houston and Newark: A Summary Report. Washington, D.C.: Police Foundation. Police Foundation. (1981). The Newark Foot Patrol Experiment. Washington, D.C.: Police Foundation. President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice. (1967). The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. Reprinted by U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, 1997. Reiss, A.J., Jr., and J.A. Roth. (eds.). (1993). Understanding and Preventing Violence. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. Rosenbaum, D.P. (1986). "The Problem of Crime Control." In Rosenbaum, D.P. (ed.), Community Crime Prevention: Does It Work? Beverly Hills, California: Sage Publications:11-18. Rosenbaum, D.P. (1988). "Community Crime Prevention: A Review and Synthesis of the Literature." Justice Quarterly 5 (3):323-395. Sherman, L.W., M.E. Buerger, P.R. Gartin, and others. (1989) Repeat Call Address Policing: The Minneapolis RECAP Experiment. Final report to the National Institute of Justice. Washington, D.C.: Crime Control Institute. Skogan, W.G. (1987). "The Impact of Victimization on Fear." Crime and Delinquency 33:135-154. Skogan, W.G. (1988). "Community Organizations and Crime." In Tonry, M., and Morris, N. (eds.), Crime and Justice: A Review of Research Vol. 10. Chicago: University of Chicago Press:39-78. Trojanowicz, R.C. (1982). An Evaluation of the Neighborhood Foot Patrol Program in Flint, Michigan. East Lansing: Michigan State University. Trojanowicz, R.C. (1994). Community Policing: A Survey of Police Departments in the United States. East Lansing: National Center for Community Policing, Michigan State University. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. (1999). "100,000 officers funded." [press release online]. Available: www.usdoj.gov/cops/pdf/news_info/b_officers_funded_001.pdf U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General. (1999). "Special Report: Police Hiring and Redeployment Grants: Summary of Audit Findings and Recommendations, October 1996-September 1998" (Report Number 99- 14). [Online]. Available: www.usdoj.gov/oig/au9914a3456.htm U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General. (1999). "Audit Report 99-21: Findings and Recommendations." Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice. Wilson, J.Q. (1989). Bureaucracy. New York: Basic Books. --------------------------- 3. The Flow of COPS Funds Jeffrey A. Roth, Calvin C. Johnson, Gretchen Maenner, and Daryl E. Herrschaft with Mary K. Shelley To a degree rare among Federal grant programs, local decisions drove the distribution of COPS funds. Beyond a broad statutory requirement that funds distributed to jurisdictions of less than 150,000 population equal funds awarded to jurisdictions exceeding that size, no Federal formula governed the allocation of funds. Yet the program was not typical of discretionary grant programs either. Initially, Federal discretion was limited to determining applicants' eligibility, vetting applications to prevent awards to agencies that potentially violated statutes or regulations unrelated to COPS, specifying allowable uses of funds, and occasionally postponing award decisions into a new fiscal year as a short-term cash management tool. In years when MORE grant applications exceeded available funds, COPS Office staff reportedly considered the merits of proposed technology projects and applicants' implementation capacities in selecting applications for awards. In 1997, as a few agencies accumulated multiple large awards, the office limited awards to amounts that would not cumulatively increase a grantee agency's sworn force size substantially more than either its pre-COPS size or typical per capita sizes of other agencies in its State. Within these broad limits, local governments' decisions largely determined the patterns of grant awards and COPS funds. We asked the following questions about local decisionmaking and the resulting flow of funds: 1. Who was involved in decisions to apply? 2. What factors influenced local decisions to apply and occasionally to withdraw from grants after award? 3. What was the total number and value of COPS grant awards? 4. What was the distribution pattern of COPS grants in terms of concentration across agencies, region, population, and crime? 5. How did grantees coordinate their use of COPS grants with other streams of funding for community policing? 6. How satisfied were grantees with their relations with the COPS Office, and what were their intentions to apply for future grants? 7. How much time elapsed between the submission of applications and the receipt of spendable funds? Wave 1 of our national survey of law enforcement agencies, conducted in autumn 1996, addressed questions 1, 2, and 6. Wave 3 of the national survey, conducted in summer 1998, updated the answers to questions 2 and 6 for medium and large local/county agencies[1] (see the methodological appendix for details of the survey design). We used periodic updates of COPS Office grant management data through the end of 1997 to address question 3 and combined it with Uniform Crime Report (UCR) and Census data to address question 4. To address question 5, we conducted a special survey of the 100 grantees serving the most populous jurisdictions in our Wave 1 sample, and we augmented 5 of our site teams with a grant administration specialist to study that process. Finally, we merged the COPS Office database with a file obtained from the DOJ Office of the Comptroller (OC) in late 1996 to address question 7. Overview of Findings Participants in application decisions Virtually all decisions to apply were reportedly made by law enforcement agencies' chief executives, usually in consultation with elected officials and sometimes with participation by others. Elected heads of local government and their budget officers were involved in nearly 90 percent of the agencies. Apparently recognizing that successful implementation of the required community policing strategies would require broader consensus and participation, some departments brought other stakeholders into the decision process. When asked to list participants in their application decisions, about half the agencies named sergeants, 40 percent named patrol officers, and 25 percent mentioned union representatives. Various segments of the community were named by 20 to 45 percent. Despite substantial and successful COPS Office efforts to simplify grant application procedures, some 40 percent of grantees reported using consultants in the application process. Among the largest 100 grantee agencies in our sample, only 11 used consultants, in part because large agencies tend to have their own grant writers on staff. Influences on application and withdrawal decisions Throughout the first 4 years of the COPS program, financial concerns were the predominant influence on local decisions to apply, according to survey responses. Of these, the most important in 1996 were costs during the 3-year grant period: both the explicit 25-percent match requirement and expectations about "implicit match" in the form of uncovered collateral costs. For hired officers, these included training, weapons, vehicles and annual salary and fringe benefits exceeding $33,333 per officer. For technology funded by COPS MORE, the most commonly mentioned uncovered cost was technical staff to integrate new systems into ongoing systems or projects. Postgrant costs, primarily retaining COPS-funded officer and civilian positions and maintaining MORE-funded technology, were mentioned somewhat less frequently in our 1996 survey. However, even though the length of the required retention period was not announced until after we completed data collection, post-grant costs had become the primary influence on application and withdrawal decisions by 1998. Local government officials in several of the sites we visited mentioned the political dilemma presented by the COPS program: "Do I take political heat now for passing up 'free' officers or later for raising taxes to keep them?" Various administrative difficulties were a factor in something less than 10 percent of application decisions during the first 2 years of COPS and largely disappeared thereafter. Philosophical objections to either community policing or Federal grants in general were cited as an influence on decisions by about 8 percent of respondents. In summer 1998, 74 percent of local/county COPS grantee agencies indicated they planned to apply for at least one more COPS grant during 1998 or 1999. Of those, 61 percent intended to apply for MORE technology grants, either alone or in combination with grants to hire officers or civilians. Only 6 percent of the prospective applicants planned to apply for hiring grants only. Among possible considerations in future application decisions, the most commonly named were the explicit local match requirement (by 55 percent of grantees) and restrictions on allowable purposes and types of resources (by 40 percent each). Value of COPS awards By the end of 1997, the COPS Office had received more than 19,000 grant applications for hiring and MORE grants. Virtually all hiring grant applications from eligible agencies that cleared the vetting process were accepted for funding (i.e., the COPS Office announced a decision to award a grant). The COPS MORE program became more popular over time, while the statutory limits on MORE program size remained fixed. Therefore, rejection rates for MORE applications rose from 5 percent in 1995 to 21 percent through 1997. By the end of 1997, 18,138 grant applications, worth $3.47 billion, had been accepted. Of those, 754 were for innovative programs, which are beyond the scope of this evaluation and are intended to encourage local innovation rather than to support hiring new officers. The remaining 17,384 grants to create additional officer time carried a total of $3.388 billion in awards: about 75 percent under hiring grants, 16 percent under COPS MORE, 7 percent under Police Hiring Supplements and COPS Phase I, and 2 percent to support a variety of innovative programs. Some 75 percent of the 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 approximately evenly split between jurisdictions with populations of more than 150,000 and smaller jurisdictions. Grants designated for award by the end of 1997 were projected to support 40,806 hired or rehired officers and 22,437 full-time equivalents (FTEs) of officers projected from productivity gains to be achieved using MORE-funded resources. Under those projections, the grants awarded through 1997 would support the equivalent of 63,243 full-time officers deployable to community policing. Funding distribution patterns The growth in awards after the first full year of COPS was driven largely by requests from previous grantees, not awards to new grantees. Between 1995 and 1997, the number of agencies with designated grant awards grew from 8,332 to 9,593, while the value of the awards approximately doubled, from $1.6 billion to $3.4 billion. By the end of 1997 $1.42 billion or 42 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 concentrated over time, with the 1 percent of agencies with the largest grants having received some 40 percent of COPS funds. Those agencies serve approximately 11 percent of the U.S. population. Awards to repeat grantees helped to focus cumulative COPS awards on grantees that suffer disproportionately from serious crime. Of the 8,062 agencies that submitted 1997 UCR data and received at least one COPS grant by the end of 1997, the 1 percent with the largest murder counts received 31 percent of cumulative COPS awards 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 awards. A similar pattern occurred with respect to robbery. Participation in COPS varied significantly by region, but regional patterns differed depending on how participation was measured.[2] 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 Middle 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, only 4 percent served core city jurisdictions,[3] 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 for the United States as a whole, 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). On both the per capita and per crime bases, mean awards to core cities were highest in the Middle Atlantic region and lowest in the West South Central region. Integrating multiple funding streams As of autumn 1996, about 25 percent of COPS grantees reported tapping other funding sources for community policing. The most commonly mentioned external source was "State administered funds other than Byrne grants," which often turned out to be programs that several States created to help local agencies meet the COPS match requirements. Local general revenues, Local Law Enforcement Block Grants (LLEBG), and business sources were the next most commonly mentioned. In a special survey in 1997, the 100 largest[4] local/county grantee agencies in our national sample described themselves as "integrating the multiple funding streams to implement a local vision." Eighty-two of the 100 believed they interpreted grant requirements to implement that vision. Only 37 reported feeling constrained by grant conditions, and only 31 believed their agencies would be better off if the Justice Department offered only a single law enforcement assistance program. The most common example of local integration of multiple Federal funding streams was that 88 of these very large agencies reported using LLEBG funds for community policing, despite the absence of a requirement to do so. One common approach was to use LLEBG funds to cover the unallowable collateral costs of hiring COPS-funded officers and implementing MORE-funded technology; the two programs thus complemented each other. Grantees as customers One Justice Department goal in creating the new COPS Office was to achieve high satisfaction among its "customers," the grantees, with simplified application forms, rapid decisions, and regular contact. This goal was achieved well in the early years, especially for small local/county police agencies, but less well for sheriffs, State police, and other special jurisdiction agencies. Satisfaction declined slightly between 1996 and 1998, which may have reflected localities' experience with the simpler LLEBG program, increases in COPS Office staff members' workloads, COPS Office staff turnover, or the accumulation of experience with the more complex COPS MORE grants. Our Wave 1 survey indicated high grantee satisfaction with the COPS FAST program, which used a so-called "one-page" application form for small agencies. About one-fourth of FAST grantees had prior Federal grant experience; of these, 77 percent found the COPS application process easier than other grants, and 73 percent found COPS grants easier to administer than other grants. For the AHEAD program (aimed at larger agencies) and the MORE program, these percentages were some 20 to 30 points lower. In 1996, grantees reported high satisfaction with the COPS Office, with upwards of 80 percent describing their COPS grant advisor as helpful and easy to reach. Among local/county police, sheriffs/State police, and special jurisdiction police, similar portions (67 to 72 percent) described the COPS grant application process as easier than others they had experienced. In contrast, 66 percent of local/county police described grant administration as easier than they had experienced with other programs, compared with 50 percent of sheriffs/State police and 47 percent of special jurisdiction police. Local/county agencies were also more likely than the other types to describe their COPS Office grant advisors as "easy to reach." Between 1996 and 1998, as COPS grantees gained experience with other Federal grant programs, especially the formula-driven LLEBG program, they were less likely to describe the COPS application process as simpler than other Federal programs. As the percentage of medium and large jurisdictions with other program experience grew from 64 to 72 percent, the percentage describing the COPS application as simpler fell slightly, from 49 to 46 percent. Among small-agency MORE grantees, the percentage with other program experience grew more sharply, from 38 to 59 percent, and the percentage describing COPS applications as simpler than others fell from 63 to 47 percent. Over the same period, the percentage of medium and large local/county agencies describing their COPS grant advisor as "helpful" remained at around 86 percent, while the percentage who found their advisor "easy to reach" dropped from 81 to 74 percent. While about 78 percent of medium and large local/county agencies described the COPS Office as "excellent" or "good" in answering questions and making decisions, only 68 percent rated paperwork processing speed so favorably. In general, the most populous 10 percent of grantees in the sample rated the COPS Office higher than did other grantees on these satisfaction measures. Time from application to award In general, the local processes of hiring officers, hiring civilians, or implementing technology could not begin until grant budgets had been approved, official award documents mailed, Federal funds obligated, and signed acceptances returned by awardees.[5] For hiring grants, the mean time to complete these steps was more than 224 days for both 1995 and 1996 applicants, of which 70 to 75 days was used by the grantees to sign and return the acceptance letters. For MORE grants, whose complex budgets required more extensive reviews, processing required an average of more than 481 days--16 months--for 1995 applications and 322 days for 1996 applications. The extra processing time for 1995 applications was related to a 6-month congressional delay in appropriating the fiscal 1996 COPS Office budget. At the same time, a Federal Government shutdown halted OC's budget review process. The COPS Office was not shut down then but had difficulty filling staff vacancies because its future was uncertain. The remainder of this chapter examines these matters in more depth. We begin by explaining in some detail the terms of COPS grants, which framed local agencies' decisions to apply or not. The Terms of COPS Grants The COPS hiring and MORE programs presented potential grantees with a strategic-decision problem in which the immediate rewards were clear but the costs were unclear because two key requirements were not fully understood from the outset of the program. Under the FAST and AHEAD programs, and later under UHP, agencies could receive 3-year grants for 75 percent of the first $100,000 of salary and fringe benefit costs incurred for a newly hired entry level officer during the life of the grant--up to a 3-year cap of $75,000. In 1995, the first year of COPS MORE, successful applicants could receive 75 percent of the cost of acquiring new technology, hiring civilians, or paying officers' overtime provided that, according to the applicant's projection, COPS MORE expenditures on these resources would yield at least as many full-time equivalent officers in the form of time saved as would a hiring grant of the same amount. Starting in 1996, overtime was disallowed. Programmatically, grantees committed themselves to implement community policing as they defined it in strategies submitted with their grant applications. Chapter 6 describes the variety of community policing programs implemented by grantees and nongrantees. Some of the financial obligations were clear from the outset. Grantees were required to provide explicit match: 25 percent of the first $100,000 in salary and fringe benefit costs during the 3-year grant period. Grantees for which the full 3-year costs exceeded $100,000 per officer (i.e., average annual salary and fringe costs exceeded $33,333) faced an implicit match requirement of the entire excess over the grant period. In addition, all grantees paid the collateral costs of hiring an officer, including training, equipment, vehicles, and uniforms, for example. As explained more fully in chapter 2, uncertainty existed for several years about two other financial requirements, retention, and nonsupplanting. First, through August 1998, the COPS Office required hiring grant recipients to make a "good faith effort" to retain their COPS-funded officer positions after their grants expired but was silent on the length of the retention commitment. At that time, the Attorney General set the length of the retention commitment at one grantee budget cycle following grant expiration and required applicants to submit written retention plans. Until the required retention period was set in 1998, a jurisdiction could reasonably assume it extended through an officer's entire 20- or 25-year career; some jurisdictions made this assumption. Because of the $75,000 3-year cap on hiring grants and the exclusion of collateral costs from reimbursement eligibility, the actual COPS share of the cost of an officer varied markedly depending on the length of the retention requirement and on an agency's levels of salary, fringe benefits, and collateral costs. Table 3-1 demonstrates this sensitivity in four hypothetical but plausible agency settings. In a "low-salary" agency in which a 3-year hiring grant of $67,500 covered 75 percent of the nominal 3-year salary and fringe cost, the grant would cover 52 to 60 percent of the real (i.e., inflation-adjusted) 3-year total cost including salary, fringe, and collateral cost, depending on whether the collateral cost is assumed to be 25 or 50 percent of salary. The grant would cover only 7 to 10 percent of the discounted total cost of an officer's entire 20-year career. In a hypothetical "high salary" agency, the grant would cover only 29 to 34 percent of 3-year total cost and about 4 percent of the discounted 20-year cost, depending on the assumed collateral cost. The expected retention cost for an officer fell dramatically when the expectation was finally set at one budget cycle beyond grant expiration, commonly 1 year. As shown in Table 3-1, a COPS hiring grant to a low-salary, low-cost agency that would cover only 10 percent of the discounted 20-year cost of an officer will cover 38 percent of the discounted 4-year cost (i.e., the grant period plus 1 year) for that officer. A grant to a high-salary, high-cost agency that covers only 4 percent of the 20-year cost will cover 17.5 percent of the 4-year cost. Because of the high retention costs that hiring grants were presumed to entail, COPS MORE was seen as a financially attractive alternative for higher salary, higher cost agencies, especially when funds were used for new technology. MORE grantees assumed the 25-percent explicit match requirement, and some reported unexpected collateral costs for systems development, training, and maintenance contracts (see chapter 4 for further discussion). However, net retention costs for technology may actually be negative or positive, depending on whether the future streams of redeployed officer time and other benefits exceed the future streams of maintenance and other costs of the technology during its useful life. Second, as with all Department of Justice grant programs, grantees were required to certify that grant funds would supplement, not supplant, local financial effort. Although the COPS Office Legal Division provided guidance on interpretation of the nonsupplanting requirement to agencies that requested it, outreach materials that explained the requirement contained examples of only some allowable courses of action. Therefore, an agency that based its application plans on erroneous assumptions without seeking advance clarification ran the risk of making a less than optimal decision. Local interpretations of the nonsupplanting requirement ranged from conservative to aggressive. During a pretest of one of our instruments, we encountered one nonapplicant agency whose budget and sworn force were slated to be cut in its next fiscal year; its chief stated he declined to apply for a hiring grant because the grant funds would simply replace the funds and officers to be eliminated--which he construed as a violation of the nonsupplanting requirement. Yet other agencies in similar circumstances treated their anticipated (lower) future budgets as baselines for assessing their own potential compliance with the requirements and successfully applied for COPS grants.[6] During site visits, we found local agencies were similarly ambiguous about whether to count salaries of staff assigned to ongoing technology projects as a match for their MORE grants--with one MORE grantee having done so and another regretting that it had not. Agencies' Application and Withdrawal Decisions In this section we report findings about potential grantees' decisionmaking processes, the grant characteristics, and other factors they considered in applying and the factors they weighed in deciding whether to accept their grants. The application process Although COPS is a law enforcement program and chiefs and sheriffs are its primary focus, the potential effects of accepting and implementing a COPS grant ripple well beyond headquarters. Elected legislative and executive officials and their budget staffs accept financial obligations. Most versions of community policing alter the discretion and responsibilities of line officers and their supervisors. New personnel rules that agencies might choose (e.g., to place ethnically appropriate officers in certain neighborhoods, to give community police officers flextime to facilitate work with community organizations, to minimize rotation of community police officers out of their patrol areas) may run afoul of union contracts. Functional community policing creates new relationships between the police and segments of the community such as business, churches, and grassroots organizations. Finally, jurisdictions sometimes involve planning or grants staff in the offices of elected officials, city or county managers, or police chiefs. Some agencies engage consultants to prepare grant applications. For all these reasons, the list of potential participants in local decisions about COPS grant applications--especially development of the required community policing strategy--is long. We surveyed grantees about their lists of actual participants, as both an indicator of how broadly they anticipated ripple effects and a possible predictor of success in implementing community policing. We also surveyed both grantees and nongrantees about the considerations that influenced their decisions to apply for grants or to withdraw after receiving awards. Participation in application decisions According to Wave 1 survey responses, the application process for COPS grants nearly always involved five categories of participants: senior executives, senior command staff, and planning/grants officers in the law enforcement agency; chief executives of local government; and the local government's budget office. However, a sizable minority of agencies reported a broader range of people "actively participated in the application process" for COPS grants (see the methodological appendix for survey methodology).[7] These results are reported in table 3-2. Chiefs or sheriffs themselves reportedly participated in virtually all agencies' decisions; for all agency categories except sheriffs and State police, senior command staff reportedly participated in at least 80 percent of agencies' applications. Of the 55 percent of agencies that considered a deputy chief's input "applicable," 75 percent reported that he or she participated in the process. Among local/county agencies, only about half involved sergeants in the application process, and only about 35 percent involved officers below that rank. Police unions generally did not participate in the application process, even though many styles of community policing involve changes in working hours, assignment procedures, and other working conditions commonly covered in union contracts. Among sheriffs and State police, agencies with special jurisdictions, and small local/county jurisdictions, between 50 and 60 percent reported that unions were not applicable to the process. This compares with 21 percent of the medium and large agencies, in which union representation is more common. However, even among agencies reporting that unions were applicable, only 26 percent of small local/county agencies, 21 percent of medium and large local/county agencies, and 9 percent of special agencies reported that unions participated. In contrast, among sheriffs' departments that considered unions applicable, 54 percent reported the unions participated in the COPS application process. Agency planning directors were described as "not applicable" in about half of all agencies, presumably because the departments had no such position. About 70 percent of the agencies with such positions reported they participated in the COPS application process. Similarly, grant managers were described as "not applicable" in 60 percent of responding agencies; not surprisingly, virtually all the agencies that had them involved them in the application process. Elected officials and their staffs generally participated in COPS application decisions. Among local/county agencies, 87 to 90 percent described their chief executives (e.g., mayors or city/county managers) as active participants, and only slightly fewer--81 percent--reported their local legislative bodies were involved. Eighty-two to 87 percent of local/county agencies also described their budget offices as involved. The application requirement to include a community policing strategy evidently drew some nongovernmental participants at least nominally into the application process. Few respondents in any category described the religious or business community, community organizations, or individual residents as not applicable. Generally 19 to 27 percent of small local/county agencies (populations less than 50,000) and 32 to 45 percent of medium and large agencies reported that these segments of the community participated in the process. Site visits revealed substantial variation in the local meaning of participation, however, a matter to which we return in chapter 6. During the site visits, agency staff typically spoke in terms of four stages in grant application: discovering the opportunity, deciding whether to apply and for how much money, obtaining approval, and preparing the application. Because COPS Office outreach efforts were aimed at agency chiefs, the police chief or sheriff was often the first person to learn of the provisions and deadlines associated with the various COPS programs. Most commonly, word came through COPS Office mailings. However, more than one-fourth of the 100 largest agencies in our sample--agencies that participated in a supplemental study of larger agency grant management--reported using the Internet as a source of grant information. In some of the larger jurisdictions, a centralized grants office reporting directly to the city or county manager or the senior elected official would also become aware of the COPS grants about the same time; however, several jurisdictions we visited that had such offices were in the process of decentralizing grant application decisions to the relevant agencies, including law enforcement. In small departments that we visited, chiefs or sheriffs typically made initial application decisions, obtained approval, and prepared the streamlined applications for FAST grants. In our special large agency survey, 57 of the 100 largest COPS grantees in our national sample reported having offices staffed by a civilian, midlevel, or senior sworn officer who focused on grant application and administrative activities. Most of these predated the COPS program, but 11 of the 100 agencies had established their grant offices more recently, reportedly because of the increase in grant activity, which was predominantly COPS-related. Typically, the grants offices in the largest agencies reported they handled budget and procedural aspects of grant applications but relied on staff in the units that would carry out work under the grant to write the substantive content. Under this model, directors of community policing would normally write the community policing plans for COPS grants and the hiring and retention discussions for hiring grants, while information services units would describe the substance of MORE applications for technology support. The COPS Office devoted substantial effort to making the application process simple in comparison with other law enforcement grant programs such as Byrne grants, Weed and Seed, and other discretionary programs. This effort was intended both to encourage applications and to comply with a statutory requirement of simplified application processes for "small" agencies that served jurisdictions with populations of less than 50,000. By any objective standard, the COPS Office succeeded in simplifying the application form. Perhaps ironically in light of the successful simplification effort, consultants participated in COPS applications in all but the largest agencies. About 40 percent of both local/county agencies of all sizes involved them, as did even greater proportions of sheriff/State agencies and special jurisdictions. Only among the 100 largest agencies in our national sample, who were surveyed in a special study of grant administration, were consultants less visible. Eleven of the 100 reported using consultants in grant writing, and about one-third of those--mostly agencies pursuing multiple grants, especially under innovative COPS programs, COPS MORE, and non-COPS programs--described the consultant's role as "major." By way of comparison, only 3 percent of LLEBG recipients in the large agency special study and 7 percent of Byrne grant recipients used consultants in their applications for those grants. Evidently, the grant managers in large agencies felt confident enough to prepare and submit applications without consultants' assistance. Among small agencies, the explanation for use of consultants seems to have been disbelief that the application was as simple as it seemed, combined with fear of losing the award because of a procedural error. Of survey respondents from small agencies, 72 percent stated they had no prior experience with Federal grants before the COPS program, and, as one small-agency chief explained to a visiting site team, "We wanted a consultant to check it over and make sure we hadn't left anything out." Early influences on agencies' application and withdrawal decisions Through the end of 1997, the share of eligible law enforcement agencies with COPS grants (i.e., their applications were successful, and they had not withdrawn after receiving awards) was 77 percent of the 397 eligible agencies serving large jurisdictions (populations of more than 150,000), 67 percent of the 1,003 serving medium jurisdictions (populations between 50,000 and 150,000), and 49 percent of the 17,775 small-agencies serving jurisdictions with smaller populations. We surveyed grantees and nongrantees in our sample about considerations that had weighed in their application decisions. Financial considerations. Financial considerations were the primary influences on local agencies' application decisions, with application process difficulties playing some role in the early years of the program and philosophical considerations playing almost no role.[8] Based on our national survey, financial requirements of COPS grants were among the most common reasons for not applying, as of October 1996. Respondents were most likely to mention the retention requirement (15 percent), the explicit 25-percent match requirement (mentioned by 13 percent), implicit match to cover uncovered fringe benefits and collateral costs (3 percent), and the $75,000 3-year cap on COPS grants (0.6 percent). Local finances also surfaced as an explanation, with 8 percent of agencies reporting "no need" and 2 percent reporting they "had other community policing funds." Our national survey findings, shown in figure 3-1, were approximately consistent with those of the General Accounting Office (1997). Specific categories of agencies' concerns are described below. Application process. Difficulties with the application process itself, such as tight deadlines and lack of information (20 percent), lack of staff to write the application or administer the grant (16 percent), and local paperwork problems (1 percent) were all cited as reasons for not applying as of autumn 1996, when our first survey was conducted. However, the influence of these startup administrative barriers declined over time, as the rules became more widely understood; they were mentioned only rarely in our Wave 3 survey. Philosophical considerations. It seems clear that objectives to the community policing objective of Title I were of negligible importance as a barrier to applying for COPS grants. Objections to community policing or to Federal grants in general were mentioned by only 8 percent of grantee and nongrantee agencies in our national sample. Further, we conducted a supplemental survey of the 100 largest agencies in our national sample to ask how they administered multiple funding streams for community policing. Of the 96 agencies in that sample that had received Local Law Enforcement Block Grants, 88 percent reported using at least part of their LLEBG funds to support community policing initiatives, even though community policing was not a LLEBG requirement. As we discuss further in chapter 6, however, the widespread local approval of community policing as a concept may well be related to its ambiguity, which allowed agencies to apply the label to a wide variety of policing styles. As another test of the relationship between community policing status and COPS application decisions, we compared COPS awardees with nonawardees as of April 1995, controlling for jurisdiction population, in terms of the extent to which the community frequently interacted with police in nine ways, such as attending community meetings, describing crime patterns in helpful ways, and using influence in the neighborhood to increase citizen acceptance of community policing initiatives. As shown in table 3-3, 1995 differences in community support between grantees and nongrantees depended on population. In places of 50,000 or more, community organizations or residents of grantee jurisdictions were reportedly four times more likely than residents of nongrantee jurisdictions to attend regular meetings with police, twice as likely to provide specific information about active cases, 75 percent more likely to make constructive suggestions for community relations, and 38 percent more likely to use political influence with public officials to promote community policing efforts. However, they were only about 67 percent as likely to assist in operations, and there were only small grantee-nongrantee differences with respect to other tactics. In places of less than 50,000, differences were less clear, although residents of both grantee and nongrantee jurisdictions were reportedly less likely to provide most forms of assistance. Local officials' priorities. Based on our national sample, 5 percent of the agencies that did not apply for COPS grants cited disapproval by elected executive or legislative officials (see figure 3-1). Such disapproval, of course, may have reflected financial, programmatic, or other concerns. In several sites, elected officials described the local dilemma they believed the COPS program posed. On one hand, they experienced public pressure to accept "free" COPS officers, but on the other, they feared future opposition if there was a need to raise taxes to retain the new positions. Some large urban jurisdictions that we visited, such as Newark and Milwaukee, expected no such COPS-related future tax increase because the officers were an integral part of a larger economic development strategy. In those and other cities where downtown areas had suffered economic dislocations, it was hoped that the reality and public perception of a safer downtown would draw commercial interests, workers, customers, or conventions back to the city center. If successful, the increased tax revenue stream would finance improvements in city services across the board, including retention of the COPS-funded position. Misunderstandings of eligibility requirements. As discussed earlier in this chapter, project senior staff encountered a few apparently eligible agencies that did not apply because they believed they were ineligible, evidently because their interpretations of the nonsupplanting, match, and community policing requirements were erroneous and overly conservative. Situations involving budget cuts were discussed earlier. Other agencies mentioned situations in which their personnel rolls included officers who were expected to leave after the application deadline because of disability or impending retirement. The chief of another small agency reported that he believed in good faith that his agency had engaged in community policing for several years but accepting a COPS grant would require the launch of a new community policing program; he did not apply because he contemplated no new programs. We could not directly estimate how commonly such misunderstandings prevented eligible agencies from applying. However, we believe that all such cases are included among either the 4 percent of nonapplicant agencies that "doubted eligibility" or the 1 percent classified as "logistical/department mix-up" in figure 3-1. By the end of 1997, 10,537 agencies had received grant awards, and 761 had withdrawn. Figure 3-2 displays the agencies' reasons for withdrawal, as reported to survey interviewers in autumn 1996 by the 45 sampled agencies that had withdrawn. As shown in figure 3-2, financial issues dominated agencies' withdrawal decisions, just as they did in the decisions to apply in the first place. However, the relevant financial considerations differed. Forty percent of the withdrawn agencies cited the implicit match requirements--unfunded collateral costs such as training, patrol cars, and other equipment--as the reason for withdrawal. About 18 percent cited the explicit 25-percent match requirement, 6 percent mentioned doubts about the agencies' ability to retain the officers after the grant expired, and 5 percent cited the $75,000 3-year maximum for COPS hiring grants, which makes the grantee responsible for 100 percent of salary and fringe benefits over $100,000 during the 3-year grant period. Nearly 13 percent cited executive or legislative disapproval as the withdrawal reason. In specific comments, respondents typically blamed this reversal of the decision to apply on a new chief or an inability to obtain reauthorization for the local match payment. In many localities, reauthorization became necessary because the official COPS grant award did not arrive until the local fiscal year following the one for which the local match expenditure had been authorized. Excessive administrative requirements were mentioned by 9 percent and philosophical objections either to community policing or to Federal grants in general by another 6 percent--usually after a leadership transition. Respondents linked smaller fractions of withdrawals to the receipt of other community policing funds and to "unexpected outcomes" of the COPS grant application. One example was a partial MORE award that covered a civilian operator of technology but not the technology itself. Trends in decision criteria in medium and large local agencies For medium and large local and county agencies without COPS grants, we used our Wave 1 and Wave 3 surveys to ascertain, at least roughly, whether the factors that influenced application and withdrawal decisions changed between 1995 and 1998. The comparison is approximate because we coded single responses to an exploratory open-ended question in Wave 1 but asked respondents to mark all that applied from a series of closed-end choices in Wave 3.[9] Two distinct types of financial concerns emerged from the Wave 1 responses to open-ended questions. Immediate concerns included the explicit and implicit matches and the $75,000 3-year cap on COPS grants. Long-term concerns had to do with postgrant retention of the COPS-funded officer positions. At the time, potential retention costs appeared substantial.[10] The Wave 3 sample included 42 medium and large local/county agencies that stated they were nongrantees because they had not applied.[11] For them, postgrant money issues had moved slightly ahead of immediate costs as the most common reason for not applying.[12] Because the Wave 3 respondents could choose more than one reason for not applying, the percentage distribution is not directly comparable with the Wave 1 distribution, which is based on single responses and therefore sums to 100 percent. Therefore, to compare the two sets of responses, we placed them in a rank-order table (table 3-4). As table 3-4 shows, financial considerations during the 3-year grant were the main reason for nonapplication in 1996. Retention was a distant third. By 1998, long-term retention concerns had moved slightly ahead as the top reason for nonapplication, followed by immediate financial considerations and problems related to application and administration. Agencies evidently began to think beyond the initial grant administration and match concerns that were so important the first year. In both years, a small percentage of agencies felt they had "no need" for COPS grants. Philosophical objections were broken down into two distinct categories: skepticism about community policing and skepticism about Federal grants in general. Skepticism about Federal grants remained in fifth place for both years. Skepticism about community policing dropped from sixth place in 1996 to last place in 1998. Less than 3 percent of medium and large local/county agencies mentioned community policing skepticism in 1996, and none did so in 1998. In both 1996 and 1998 a few grantee agencies either failed to accept their grant awards or withdrew after accepting them. At the time of the Wave 1 survey in the autumn of 1996, 45 agencies, 2.3 percent of all awardees, had withdrawn.[13] By the end of 1997, 7.2 percent of the 10,537 awardee agencies for whom grant awards had been designated had withdrawn. As with reasons for nonapplication, we asked Wave 1 respondents from withdrawn agencies an open-ended question about their reasons. We coded the responses and used them as closed-end responses for Wave 3 respondents from nongrantee agencies that had either declined to accept their grant awards or withdrew from their grants. Because of the difference in approaches, we used the same kind of rank-order table to compare reasons for withdrawal or nonacceptance at the two points in time. However, in the Wave 3 sample, only 4.6 percent of nongrantees had withdrawn, and 5.6 percent had not accepted. Therefore, our findings about reasons for withdrawals and declinations to accept awards are based on only 12 observations and must be treated cautiously. At Wave 1, reasons for withdrawal were similar to those for not applying: immediate financial concerns and application/administrative problems dominated the list, with concerns about retention and skepticism about Federal grants lower on the list of concerns. Among the 12 agencies surveyed in Wave 3 for whom the question was relevant, the leading reasons for withdrawal and failure to accept grants were retention, immediate financial considerations, and skepticism about Federal grants. No agencies in either year attributed their withdrawals to skepticism about community policing. The Flow of COPS Funds This section describes the distribution of COPS awards through 1997 in terms of grants and dollars, funding concentration, and funding distribution patterns. Agency participation in COPS programs For the COPS hiring programs, an eligible agency's decision to apply virtually assured award of a grant, although requested grant amounts were occasionally reduced. Cumulatively through 1997, the COPS Office rejected only 217 applications including those from ineligible agencies, out of 14,508 applications received, a rejection rate of 1.5 percent.[14] In contrast, discretionary rejections of COPS MORE applications became more common over time as the program became more popular, while the statutory limit on the size of the MORE program remained in place. The cumulative rejection rates for MORE applications grew from 5 percent through 1995 to 13 percent through 1996 and 21 percent through 1997. During 1994 and 1995, about 45 percent of all eligible law enforcement agencies received at least one grant from one of the following programs: Police Hiring Supplements (PHS), COPS Phase I, a COPS hiring program, COPS MORE, or an Innovative Community Policing Program. During the next 2 years participation broadened very little, but previous grantees continued to request and receive additional grants. This section, which is based on COPS Office grant records, describes 1995- 97 trends in the number of agencies receiving grants from the COPS Office or its predecessors. We categorized agencies as small if they served jurisdictions of less than 50,000 in population;[15] medium if they served jurisdictions between 50,000 and 150,000; and large if they served jurisdictions with populations of more than 150,000. As shown in table 3-5, we estimate that a minimum of 19,175 agencies was eligible for COPS grants: 17,775 small agencies, 1,003 medium agencies, and 397 large agencies. Table 3-5 also reports that the COPS Office rejected applications that it received from 1,330 agencies, which is about 35 percent of the 3,748 possibly ineligible agencies that came to our attention in databases maintained by the COPS Office, the FBI's UCR and NCIC programs, or the Bureau of Justice Statistics for use in its Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS) survey.[16] By the end of calendar 1995, the first full year of COPS Office existence, grant awards had been announced to 8,612 eligible agencies under PHS, a grant program administered by the COPS Office, or both.[17] Awardees included 7,655 small agencies, 667 medium agencies, and 290 large agencies. Coverage increased with jurisdiction size, so that 43 percent of eligible small agencies, 66 percent of eligible medium agencies, and 73 percent of eligible large agencies had applied and been awarded funding by the end of 1995. The second full year of COPS, 1996, saw slow growth in the number of grantee agencies in all three size categories: to 8,408 small agencies (less than 10 percent growth), to 693 medium agencies (4 percent growth), and to 328 large agencies (13-percent growth). In 1997 the number of small-agency awardees continued to grow at about half the rate of the preceding year. However, the increase in agencies designated for award was more than offset by withdrawals during 1997 and expirations of grants awarded during 1994. Therefore, the actual number of grantee agencies fell by 16 for medium agencies and 22 for large agencies. For all size categories combined, the number of grantee agencies increased by 4 percent, to 9,776 (see figure 3-3). Nearly all the agencies that received any COPS grant received at least one under one of the hiring programs (FAST, AHEAD, or UHP) or COPS MORE. By the end of 1997 this proportion was nearly 99 percent for small agencies, about 95 percent for medium agencies, and 92 percent for large agencies. Overall, the number of agencies receiving awards under at least one of these four programs grew by only 15 percent, from 8,332 to 9,593, between 1995 and 1997. Because these four COPS programs were the only ones that were operating as we designed the evaluation, they received our primary evaluation attention. Therefore, as shorthand through the rest of this chapter, we refer to those four COPS programs collectively as "primary programs." As early hiring grant awardees began greater participation in COPS MORE, the number of agencies with both hiring and MORE grants more than doubled, from 825 in 1995 to 1,733 in 1997. Between 1995 and 1997, the number of designated MORE grantees grew by 90 percent, from 1,264 to 2,399. This 1,135-agency increase is composed of 908 agencies with both hiring and MORE grants but just 227 MORE-only agencies. As shown in figure 3-4, COPS program growth between 1995 and 1997 reflected primarily supplements and new awards to previous grantees rather than a broadening of the program to new agencies. The number of grantee agencies with only one primary program grant decreased in both absolute and relative terms, from 7,387 (89 percent of all grantees) to 5,327 (55 percent of all grantees). Meanwhile, the number of agencies with three or more grants grew by a nearly offsetting amount, from 57 (0.7 percent of all grantees) in 1995 to 1,907 (19.8 percent of all grantees) in 1997. By 1997, 11 percent of grantees, or 1,060 agencies, had been designated for four or more grants. During 1996, the COPS Office awarded only 874 Universal Hiring grants and 45 MORE grants to agencies receiving their first grants. The trend toward greater concentration of COPS grants among multiple grantees was especially pronounced among the large agencies. While the number of large-agency grantees grew by only 8 percent, from 261 to 282, between 1995 and 1997, the percentage with three or more grants more than tripled, from 15 percent to 55 percent. By 1997, 40 percent of large-agency grantees had applied for and received four or more primary COPS grants. Funding distribution patterns Through the end of calendar 1997, the COPS Office had awarded about $3.388 billion in grants under the primary programs. About 75 percent of those funds, $2.52 billion, were awarded under the officer hiring programs FAST, AHEAD, and UHP (see figure 3-5). Just under 15 percent of all awards, $528.3 million, were made for resources to support redeployed officer time under COPS MORE, reflecting statutory limitations on MORE program size. Another $81.7 million was awarded for innovative programs, and PHS and Phase I grants awarded in 1994 accounted for another $340 million. Distribution by agency type. As the COPS program grew between 1995 and 1997, local and county law enforcement agencies applied for and received about three-fourths of the awards designated each year. As shown in table 3-6, which displays cumulative COPS MORE and hiring grant awards, local and county police departments had accumulated $403 million in COPS MORE awards by the end of 1997, along with $2.0 billion in COPS hiring awards--a total of $2.4 billion. By the end of 1997, sheriff's departments and State police had accumulated about $517 million in hiring and MORE grants. Others, including tribal and other special-jurisdiction agencies, had been awarded $176 million. Concentration of COPS funds. Between 1995 and 1997, COPS grant funds became heavily concentrated among multigrant agencies, as repeat grantees sought and received increasingly large hiring and MORE awards. Figure 3-6 displays cumulative grant awards by jurisdiction size and number of grants designated for award through 1995, 1996, and 1997. During that period COPS funds awarded to agencies with only one primary program grant decreased in both absolute and relative terms, from $787.9 million through 1995 (64 percent of grant funds designated for award) to $547 million through 1997 (18 percent of grant funds), as more agencies applied for and received multiple grants. During the same period, funds awarded cumulatively to agencies with three or more grants grew about 16-fold, from $123.6 million (10 percent of 1995 grant funds) to $1.98 billion (65 percent of funds awarded cumulatively through 1997). Through 1997, $1.42 billion, or 47 percent of all funds designated for award, were allocated to agencies with four or more primary hiring or MORE grants. COPS MORE awards were even more heavily concentrated. Figure 3-7 shows that agencies with four or more grants received $329.9 million in MORE funds, 62 percent of all MORE awards through 1997. Some effects of repeat applications on the concentration of awards are summarized in figure 3-8 and table 3-7. The 1 percent of agencies with the largest cumulative grant awards, which serve about 11 percent of the U.S. population, received about 40 percent of all funds awarded through 1998. The 5 percent of agencies with the largest grants serve 27 percent of the U.S. population and received 56 to 59 percent of all funds awarded. Award concentration was similar for local/county agencies and for all agency types combined and changed only slightly between 1996 and 1997. A related question is whether the process of multiple applications and awards helped to target COPS resources on jurisdictions where crime disproportionately occurs. To examine that issue, we ranked the 8,062 COPS grantees that also participate in UCR in descending order of their reported 1997 UCR murder counts. We then tabulated theshares of total COPS grant awards (including grants to nonparticipants in UCR), cumulatively through 1997, that went to grantees that account for large shares of total U.S. murders. The 1 percent of grantees with the largest UCR murder counts accounted for 54 percent of all murders and received 31 percent of total COPS funds awarded through 1997. The top 5 percent received 44 percent of funds, and the top 10 percent received 50 percent of total awards. We found a similar pattern for robbery. Distributional equity Within broad constraints, such as annual appropriation amounts and the requirement that funds be split equally between jurisdictions with populations of more and less than 150,000, the allocation of COPS funds was largely the outcome of eligible agencies' decision processes, which we described earlier in the chapter. Despite the driving role of local decisions in the allocation of COPS funds, it is reasonable to ask how "equitably" those funds were distributed. At least three criteria for equity are potentially relevant: the relationship between awards and the number of agencies, the relationship between awards and population, and the relationship between awards and crime patterns. Patterns by region. We measured regional COPS funding distribution patterns in three ways: the percentage of all eligible agencies in a region that requested and received at least one grant, cumulative grant award per 10,000 population, and cumulative grant awards per 1,000 index crimes. The results are displayed in table 3-8 and figures 3-9, 3-10, and 3-11. Regional COPS participation patterns emerged in 1995 and remained stable through 1997, as measured by the ratio of grantees to eligible agencies (see table 3-8 and figure 3-9). Through 1997, 58.5 percent of eligible agencies in the Pacific region--the most active--had received at least one COPS MORE or hiring program grant. Just behind were the New England (57.2 percent) and East South Central (56.2 percent) regions. The two least active regions were West North Central (36.6 percent) and Middle Atlantic (41.3 percent). As figures 3-10 and 3-11 indicate, regional distributions of COPS funds on per capita and per crime bases differ from the distribution measured in terms of eligible agency participation. The Pacific region, which was top-ranked in terms of eligible agency participation, ranked third in COPS dollars awarded per capita and sixth in dollars awarded per 1,000 index crimes. The Middle Atlantic region (i.e., New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey), which ranked first in terms of both per capita and per crime awards, ranked eighth in eligible agency participation rate; this probably reflects large awards to major metropolitan police departments, while the many town and township police departments were less likely to apply for grants at all. New England ranked second on all three measures, and the West South Central ranked among the bottom third on all measures. The table also displays mean jurisdiction size (i.e., population per eligible agency) and indicates that it correlates rather poorly with all three distribution measures. Urbanization patterns. Of all agencies selected for awards by the end of 1997, only 4 percent served core city jurisdictions,[18] which are home to 27 percent of the U.S. population (see table 3-9). They received 40 percent of COPS dollar awards for all programs combined but 62 percent of all COPS MORE funds. Through 1997, on average for the United States as a whole, 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). On both the capita and per crime bases, mean awards to core cities were highest in the Middle Atlantic region and lowest in the West South Central region. Coordination of Multiple Grants for Community Policing Prevalence of multiple grants By autumn 1996, when Wave 1 of our national survey occurred, about 25 percent of all COPS grantees were combining other sources of support with their COPS grants for their community policing initiatives. This fraction continued to grow, at least among medium and large urban departments as they committed LLEBG funds to community policing programs. Table 3-10 describes how commonly agencies reported using specific other sources, both as a percentage of all COPS grantees and as a percentage of all grantees that used at least one other source. Agencies reported that besides COPS grants, support for their transitions to community policing came from a broad spectrum of sources, including all levels of government and local business communities. The four non-COPS resources most commonly tapped for community policing were State funds other than Byrne grants (by 14.5 percent of COPS grantees), Local Law Enforcement Block Grants (by 7.8 percent), local general funds (by 7.3 percent), and business communities (4.9 percent). Byrne grant support for community policing was mentioned by 4.5 percent of COPS grantees. Many of the agencies that reported use of State-administered funds other than Byrne grants mentioned State programs created specifically to pay the local match for COPS grants. California, New Jersey, and Virginia were among the States that created such programs. Use and coordination of multiple grants To explore the use of multiple grants in more detail, we conducted a supplemental telephone survey of the 100 COPS grantees in our national sample with the largest numbers of sworn officers. We also augmented five of our programmatic site assessment teams with an additional member, a criminal justice planning expert. The intent was to learn how agencies managed and coordinated COPS Hiring, MORE, and Innovative Program grants along with grants from the other two large programs that assist local law enforcement agencies: the Edward Byrne Memorial State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance Program (Byrne grants) and Local Law Enforcement Block Grants.[19] Results of that supplemental study will appear in a forthcoming report. As expected, the 100 very large city and county agencies selected for the supplemental study tended to manage several large grants from multiple sources. Of the 100 agencies surveyed, 65 percent of the agencies had at least one COPS hiring grant, and their average cumulative amount was $5,399,000. Seventy-one percent had COPS MORE grants, with a mean cumulative value of $1,146,000; 49 percent had grants for one or more of the COPS Innovative Programs, averaging a total of $361,000; 30 percent had Byrne grants, worth an average of $586,000; and 98 percent had LLEBGs, which averaged $1,260,000. The vast majority, 86 of the 100 respondents from these agencies, reported their agencies used their grant funds from all these Federal sources to make permanent agency improvements. The most commonly cited specific improvements were updated technology (mentioned by 38 respondents), increased staff (20 respondents), and the creation of new programs and patrol units (18 respondents). Eighty respondents stated they expected these improvements to have long-term agency impacts. Only 37 respondents agreed or strongly agreed that for at least one of these grant programs, "specific grant conditions often constrain us from using grant funds in ways that best support agency needs." Twenty-three respondents agreed with that assessment of COPS hiring grants, 18 with respect to COPS MORE, 13 with respect to a COPS innovative policing program, 13 with respect to Byrne grants, and even 10 percent with respect to LLEBGs. Despite these concerns of a few, most respondents portrayed their agencies as orchestrating multiple funding streams to implement a local vision of policing. Few saw themselves as entrepreneurs seeking all available Federal funds, regardless of how grant program conditions fit into their overall programs. Of the 100 agencies, 35 strongly agreed and 47 agreed with the statement that their "agency has a clear vision and is able to interpret grant requirements to support that vision." Only nine disagreed or strongly disagreed with that statement. Respondents preferred the complexity of administering multiple grants to the potential loss of freedom that might accompany a "monopoly" grant program. Only 31 percent agreed or strongly agreed with the statement that "local agencies would be better off if DOJ set up just one law enforcement grant and stuck with it," while 43 percent disagreed or strongly disagreed. Both the survey data and onsite observation suggest that the three types of COPS grants, LLEBG, and Byrne grants were used in complementary ways to fit large agencies' specific local circumstances. For example, a common refrain during site visits to large metropolitan jurisdictions was that COPS offered big city agencies much better opportunities for grants than did the Byrne block grant program, which is administered at the State level. The very large agencies in this supplemental study blended COPS and LLEBG funds to advance their visions of community policing, even though community policing was not an LLEBG requirement. Of the 100 agencies, 88 reported using LLEBG funds to support their community policing initiatives, despite the absence of a requirement to do so. During site visits, many agencies mentioned they used their LLEBG funds to cover the unfunded collateral costs associated with COPS-funded officers and technology. In short, the agencies appeared to combine their COPS and LLEBG funds into a package for covering the short-term costs of transition to their visions of community policing. Grantees as Customers As explained in chapter 2, one of the primary motives for creating the new COPS Office instead of processing grants through existing agencies in the Office of Justice Programs was that a new agency, inventing its policies and procedures from scratch, would encourage participation in the program by achieving a high level of satisfaction among its "customers," the grantees. We first examined this dimension of success in our Wave 1 survey by asking grantees various questions about their satisfaction with application and administrative procedures for COPS grants. Later, for local and county agencies, we measured changes in satisfaction between Waves 1 and 3. Also in Wave 3, we surveyed respondents about their intentions to apply for COPS grants in future years. Customer satisfaction: The early years In the Wave 1 survey, respondents designated by chief executives to speak on behalf of funded agencies were asked a series of questions about their satisfaction with application and administrative procedures for COPS grants. Of all those questioned, 39 percent had personal experience applying for other government grants and were therefore in a position to compare experience with COPS grants with experience with other Federal grants. Of these experienced respondents, 71 percent said applying for a COPS grant was easier than applying for previous grants. Fewer respondents in small agencies had previous Federal grant experience, but those who did found the COPS grant application relatively simple. Only 36 percent of small-agency respondents reported previous application experience, while 68 percent of the largest agencies reported past experience. Smaller agencies were, however, more likely to view the COPS application process as easier than were larger agencies (73 percent compared with 57 percent). This reflects a success of the "one-page" COPS FAST application, which was designed to satisfy the Title I mandate for a simplified application process for agencies serving jurisdictions of less than 50,000 in population. Thirty-one percent of respondents reported having administered grants of similar size. Of these, 64 percent said in the Wave 1 survey that COPS grants were easier to administer. As with the application process, smaller agencies reported less experience with administering similar grants (28 percent) than the largest agencies (56 percent). Among agencies with such experience, the percentage that rated administration easier for COPS grants declined as agency size grew, from 67 percent of small agencies with populations less than 50,000 to 52 percent of the large agencies with populations exceeding 150,000. Satisfaction with the COPS application process was similar for all agency types. The percentage of respondents describing the COPS application process as relatively simple was 71 percent for local/county police agencies, 67 percent for State and sheriff agencies, and 72 percent for agencies with special jurisdictions. State police, sheriffs' agencies, and special police agencies were somewhat less satisfied than local/county agencies with grant administration. Exactly 50 percent of State/sheriff agencies and 47 percent of special agencies said COPS grants were easier to administer than other grants, as opposed to 66 percent of local/county agencies. Further, 22 percent of State and sheriff agencies reported that COPS grants were more difficult to administer than other grants, compared with only 5 percent of local/county agencies, and 3 percent of special agencies. Finally, looking at agencies' satisfaction with application procedures and administrative requirements by grant program reveals some major differences in agency satisfaction. Among agencies with previous experience, FAST grants, with their "single-page" applications for small agencies, were considered easier to apply for and administer (77 percent and 73 percent respectively) than other types of COPS grants. Only 43 percent of larger agencies rated AHEAD grants as easier to apply for than other government grants. MORE and UHP grants also registered low ratings for ease of administration compared with other COPS grant programs; 45 and 49 percent respectively said these grants were easier to administer than other government grants. Overall, satisfaction with the COPS office staff was high and largely unrelated to the size or type of the agency. Ninety percent of funded agencies said the COPS staff was helpful, and 84 percent said their COPS Office contact was easy to reach. State, sheriff, and special agencies reported somewhat less ease in reaching their COPS office contact; 26 percent said their contact was hard to reach as opposed to 15 percent of local/county agencies. Customer satisfaction trends in local/county agencies For medium and large local/county agencies with MORE or hiring grants and small agencies with MORE grants, we measured changes between 1996 and 1998 in opinions about COPS program administration, based on a series of questions at Wave 1 and Wave 3.[20] Our Wave 3 sample comprised three subsamples of local/county agencies: Wave 1 interviewees in the medium/large AHEAD and UHP strata, Wave 1 interviewees in both the small and the medium/large MORE strata, and medium/large Wave 2 interviewees in a stratum of 1996 first-time UHP awardees. To measure 1996-98 customer satisfaction trends for medium and large local/county agencies, we analyzed only the 303 such agencies interviewed at both Wave 1 and Wave 3. For small agencies, the trend analysis is based on only the 176 members of the small MORE grantee stratum interviewed at both Wave 1 and Wave 3. The 303 medium/large agencies were used throughout the customer satisfaction analysis, including the analysis of several new questions added to the survey at Wave 3. In general, satisfaction levels declined slightly over time, and the highest satisfaction levels were found among the very largest grantee agencies. Between 1996 and 1998, the medium and large local/county grantees in the Wave 1 and Wave 3 samples gained in personal experience with Federal grants other than COPS, and there was a slight drop in ratings of ease of the COPS grant application process. The percentage of respondents from medium and large local/county agencies that reported previous personal experience rose from 64.3 percent in 1996 to 72.2 percent in 1998. Among those with such personal experience, the percentage that considered COPS grant applications easier than other Federal grant applications fell slightly, from 48.9 percent to 45.6 percent over the same period. This small drop may reflect the start of LLEBG, which simultaneously broadened experience with Federal grants and set a new standard for application simplicity, since these funds were distributed by formula. We found somewhat greater changes between 1996 and 1998 for small agencies with MORE grants.[21] At Wave 1, 37.5 percent of the small jurisdiction MORE grantees reported personal experience with other Federal law enforcement grants, and 63.4 percent of those agencies stated that the COPS application was easier in terms of applying for funds. At Wave 3, 59.1 percent of small MORE grantees reported involvement with other Federal grants, but only 47.1 percent described the COPS application as easier than other grant programs. The decreased perception of simplicity between 1996 and 1998 may reflect additional budget reviews and revisions that occurred for MORE grants still in process at the time of Wave 1 data collection. Among the medium and large local/county grantees, overall satisfaction with the COPS Office remained high between 1996 and 1998, with one exception. The percentage of this sample that described the COPS Office as "helpful" remained in the 86 to 87 percent range between 1995 and 1998, while the percentage saying the COPS Office was "easy to reach" fell from 81.2 to 73.6 percent. However, the agencies with the largest grants reported more positive experience; 85.4 percent of agencies with total grant sizes above the 90th percentile described the COPS Office in 1998 as easy to reach. Several questions were added in 1998, which asked respondents from local/county grantees to describe COPS Office speed and accuracy in answering questions, making decisions, and processing paperwork. On the first two measures about 78 percent of respondents described the office favorably (i.e., "excellent" or "good") in terms of answering questions and making decisions. Only 67.7 percent of respondents rated the speed of COPS in processing paperwork as excellent or good (see figure 3-12). In each instance, agencies with grants larger than the 90th percentile rated the COPS office more favorably than did agencies with smaller grants. This group ranked the speed and accuracy of answering questions 10 percentage points higher than the total and the speed and accuracy of making decisions 6 percentage points higher than the total. The favorable rating for processing paperwork rose from 67.7 percent for all medium and large agencies to 78.3 percent (10 percentage points) for 10 percent of agencies with the largest grants.[22] Future application intentions To learn grantees' intentions to seek additional funding under COPS, we asked all 547 grantee respondents in Wave 3 what they planned to do about future grant applications. As of summer 1998, 73.5 percent of grantees stated they planned to apply for additional grants in 1998 or 1999; 65.9 percent of small agencies, 78 percent of medium agencies, and 88.6 percent of large agencies planned to apply in the future. MORE technology grants were the most popular choice, named by 80.7 percent of grantees, followed by UHP (57.5 percent), Innovative Programs (43.7 percent, although applications for these grants have been by invitation only), and finally MORE civilian grants (31.3 percent). As the large sum of these percentages suggests, respondents were asked to list all the types of grants they planned to apply for, and many responded with multiple choices. Figure 3-13 displays the various grant combinations chosen. Among the agencies that did plan to apply again, MORE technology grants and combinations including them were resoundingly popular. Of all agencies, 20 percent named MORE technology only, 7 percent planned to apply for MORE technology and MORE civilians, 25 percent planned to apply for MORE technology plus UHP, and 9 percent planned to apply for all three--MORE technology, MORE civilians, and UHP. Only 13 percent planned to apply exclusively for combinations of grants to hire sworn and civilian staff (6 percent UHP only, 4 percent MORE civilian and UHP, and 3 percent MORE civilian only or not sure). The UHP grant is of interest to more grantees than the MORE civilians grant. The most popular combination is MORE technology and UHP, with 25 percent of grantees planning to apply for that combination of grants in the future. Only 7 percent of grantees plan to apply for MORE grants involving technology and civilian hiring. Grantees--both prospective applicants and others--were asked what factors could affect their decisions about grant applications. The categories were presented to the respondents as a closed-end list of options, and they were asked to rank the importance of each category to their decisionmaking process for grant application (see figure 3-14).[23] As in our earlier surveys of influences on application decisions, financial concerns topped the list of considerations, with 54.9 percent of grantees describing the required local match rate as a very important consideration in grant application decisions. Grant flexibility was also described as important. Restrictions on the purposes for which grant funds could be spent and the types of resources on which grant funds could be spent were each very important concerns for more than 40 percent of the grantees. Agencies also cited unallowable but expected collateral costs like training, equipment, or uniforms for hiring grants, and systems development, training, and maintenance contracts for MORE grants (see chapter 4). As with Wave 3 nongrantees, characteristics like difficulty of application and administration were not as important. From COPS Office Grant Decisions to Funds Expended Through calendar year 1997, the COPS Office made decisions to award 17,384 hiring and MORE grants worth $3.388 billion to increase numbers of officers or hours of officer time. Under projections included in grant applications, these grants were intended to support the full-time equivalent of 67,216 new officers deployable to community policing for at least 1 year. Before grantees can achieve that potential, funds must be obligated after budget reviews, official grant award packages must be prepared, and awardees must accept all award conditions in writing. In the early years of the COPS program, the times required for these steps limited the speed with which officer deployment and technology implementation could begin. COPS Office award decisions Tables 3-11a-c summarize cumulative award decisions through calendar years 1995, 1996, and 1997, tabulated from a COPS Office grants management database received in April 1998. As shown in table 3-11c, the Justice Department had decided by the end of 1997 to award an overall total of 18,138 grants worth $3.47 billion (i.e., COPS Office databases indicated "accepted" status). As the "hiring subtotal" line indicates, 17,384 grants to create additional officer time carried a total of $3.388 billion in awards. These grants were projected to support 40,806 hired or rehired officers and 26,410 full-time equivalents through MORE-funded resources--the equivalent of 67,216 officers deployable to community policing for at least 1 year, and 63,243 for at least 3 years. These 1997 figures were the culmination of substantial increases since 1995, the first full year of the COPS program, when 9,946 awards had been made totaling $1.57 billion in value, intended to support 32,784 officers and FTEs (see table 3-11a). During calendar 1996, despite a 6-month delay in approval of the COPS Office fiscal 1996 budget, the agency's award decisions had brought the hiring subtotal of grants to 14,652, worth $2.868 billion, intended to support 53,140 new officers and FTEs (see table 3-11b). Application processing time The decision to award a grant ("accept the application" in COPS Office nomenclature) is only the first step in making funds available to grantees. As explained in chapter 2, the Justice Department's Office of the Comptroller reviews all grant budgets to ensure that only allowable expenditures are included, that budget assumptions comply with departmental regulations, and that the grantee maintains adequate fiscal and administrative controls. This process was relatively straightforward for hiring grants, where issues involved primarily compliance with the nonsupplanting and match requirements, along with allowable items to include in calculating fringe benefit rates. For MORE grants, budget review was far more complex and time consuming because of issues surrounding the purchase of expensive and elaborate technology; frequently, the process required budget revisions and resubmission by the applicants. Following successful budget review, official award packages were prepared and mailed to awardees. The packages listed award conditions with which applicants had to promise compliance by returning an acceptance of the award signed by an authorized official. Table 3-12 summarizes the mean elapsed times for these steps for 1995 and 1996 applicants. For 1996 applicants, the average time between receipt of the application at the COPS Office and mailing the award package to the grantee was 269 days for MORE grants and 149 days for hiring programs. The 4-month difference reflects the extra complexity of MORE budget reviews. Negligible time elapsed between mailing the award packages and formal obligation of the funds (i.e., creation of an account from which the grantee could draw down funds as needed). However, 1996 applicants took an average of 75 days to return their signed acceptances of hiring grant awards and 53 days to accept their MORE awards (the average excludes the 24 percent who had not returned their acceptances by April 1998, when our database was created). This delay probably involved a combination of routine paper flow delays at the local level, time to resolve second thoughts over acceptance of the award as the costs of implicit match and retention became more concrete, and the need for local reauthorization of the matching funds in jurisdictions that had begun a new fiscal year between application submission and award receipt. In total, then, for 1996 applicants, the average elapsed time for the entire process, from application receipt to award acceptance by the grantee, was 224 days for hiring grants and 322 days for MORE grants. MORE applicants in 1995 faced much longer elapsed times because of congressional budget debates between October 1995 and April 1996. While the COPS Office was exempted from the Federal Government shutdown caused by that debate, it was affected by the 7-month delay in approval (and $500 million cut) of its fiscal 1996 budget. Because MORE applications received during the first 9 months of 1995 exceeded available fiscal 1995 funds, many applicants were informed in the closing weeks of fiscal 1995 that approval was likely but would have to be delayed until fiscal 1996 funds became available. While that period would have been no more than a few days under normal conditions, it became a matter of 7 months because of the delayed appropriation. For these reasons, MORE awards to 1995 applicants occurred an average of 400 days after applications were received. As a result, for 1995 applicants the entire average elapsed time from MORE application receipt to award acceptance was 481 days, or 16 months. Award obligations and expenditures Because of the processing delays just explained, COPS funds obligated at any point in time were less than the award amounts discussed in earlier sections. As shown in table 3-13, obligated total awards for all programs intended to increase policing strength (i.e., PHS, Phase I, FAST, AHEAD, UHP, and MORE) were $950 million by the end of 1995 and $2.1 billion by the end of 1996. Respectively, these amount to 60 percent of funds awarded by the end of 1995 and 73 percent of the funds awarded by the end of 1996. In each year, these percentages were similar for MORE and the hiring programs. Notes 1. Throughout this chapter, "local/county agencies" refers to municipal and county police agencies; sheriffs were classified separately. We defined "small" agencies as serving jurisdictions with populations less than 50,000, "medium" as serving jurisdictions of 50,000 to 150,000, and "large" as serving still larger jurisdictions. 2. Regions were defined as follows: New England (ME, NH, VT, MA, RI, CT); Middle Atlantic (NY, NJ, PA); East North Central (OH, IN, IL, WI, MI); East South Central (KY, TN, AL, MS); South Atlantic (MD, DE, VA, NC, SC, GA, FL); West North Central (MN, IA, MO, ND, SD, NE, KS); West South Central (AR, LA, OK, TX); Mountain (MT, ID, WY, CO, NM, AZ, UT, NV); Pacific (WA, OR, CA, AK, HI). 3. Core cities are the largest city in a Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA). MSAs must include: (a) one city with 50,000 or more inhabitants or (b) a Census Bureau-defined urbanized area of at least 50,000 or more inhabitants and a total metropolitan population of at least 100,000. 4. Measured by jurisdiction population. 5. Through the end of 1995, the primary hiring programs, COPS FAST and COPS AHEAD, were "accelerated," in the sense that applicants were encouraged to recruit and hire on the basis of preliminary notifications ("Go FAST" and "Go AHEAD" letters) that they were likely to be awarded funds for a specified number of officers. 6. For the COPS Office Legal Division, no supplanting would occur in this situation if the budget cut was made independently of the COPS program and not in anticipation of a grant. 7. Reported percentages are based on agencies that did not classify the named position as "not applicable." 8. Respondents were asked to name all explanations that applied. 9. In survey Wave 1, seven categories of nonapplication reasons displayed in figure 3-1 were coded from responses to an open-ended question about why an agency did not apply for a COPS grant. In Wave 3, these categories were presented to respondents as a closed-end list of options, from which they could select as many as needed. The categories were as follows: no need for funds, problems related to the application or administrative requirements, financial considerations during the 3-year grant period, concerns about officer retention after the grant expires, skepticism about community policing, skepticism about Federal grants in general, and something else. 10. In our Wave 1 sample, 75 large local/county agencies (71 percent of all nongrantees) had not applied for a COPS grant as of 1995. The frequency with which they cited various reasons were: immediate financial considerations (40 percent), application/administrative problems (33.3 percent), retention costs (9.3 percent), no need (8.0 percent), skepticism about Federal grants (5.3 percent), skepticism about community policing (2.7 percent), and other (1.4 percent). 11. The 42 nonapplicants in the Wave 3 sample are not a pure subset of the 75 nonapplicants in the Wave 1 sample; 45 Wave 1 respondents were removed from the Wave 3 sample, and 12 agencies in the Wave 3 sample did not appear in the Wave 1 sample. The 45 agencies removed consist of: 9 nonrespondents to Wave 3; 6 "item nonrespondents" that skipped the relevant Wave 3 items; 19 that became grantees between Waves 1 and 3; 2 that became members of funded consortia; 2 that applied but were rejected; 1 that withdrew; 5 that responded "something else happened" (other than the above); and 1 "don't know." The 12 agencies in the Wave 3 sample that were not in the Wave 1 sample included: 5 that were selected as nongrantees for Wave 1, but reported they had grants at Wave 1, and answered as nonapplicants in Wave 3; 3 that were grantees at Wave 1 but claimed not to have applied at Wave 3; 3 that successfully applied but withdrew between the two waves; and 1 that applied but was rejected between the two waves. 12. The top three reasons were concern about retention after grant expires (87.7 percent), financial consideration during the 3-year grant period (85.3 percent), and problems related to application/administration (80.9 percent). Another 7.6 percent stated no need as a reason, followed by 5.5 percent who were skeptical about Federal grants in general and 1.3 percent who gave another reason. None of the nongrantees mentioned skepticism about community policing as a reason for nonapplication. 13. Of the 45 Wave 1 withdrawals, 15 withdrew from MORE grants, 28 withdrew from hiring grants, 2 withdrew from both hiring and MORE grants. 14. We believe that all 217 rejections involved either ineligible agencies or problems that surfaced during the Justice Department's vetting process, but we did not undertake the manual inspection of applications that would have been needed to verify this belief. 15. The "small" category also included agencies with unknown populations. As explained in chapter 2, these cutoff points had statutory and administrative significance: Title I required a simplified application process for jurisdictions of less than 50,000 and equal distribution of funds between jurisdictions of less than and more than 150,000. 16. Our procedures for ascertaining eligibility are explained in the methodological appendix. The sum of eligible and ineligible agencies in table 3- 5, 22,923, is larger than our sample frame of 20,894 as reported in table MA-2 of the methodological appendix. The difference is due to additional agencies identified after our sample was drawn when we received the updated Bureau of Justice Statistics sample frame created for use in LEMAS. N=19,175 is a conservative estimate of eligible agencies, limited to agencies recognized by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. 17. In this chapter, we use the term "awarded" as equivalent to "accepted" status in the COPS grants management databases, meaning that the COPS Office had accepted the application and notified the applicant of the award. We do so to distinguish this stage from signed acceptance of the award by the grantee. Our counts of grants and funds awarded and funds drawn down by grantees are based on databases generously provided by COPS and the Office of the Comptroller. In these analyses, "COPS programs" refers to several programs in addition to the "primary programs" that received our central focus, COPS FAST, COPS AHEAD, Universal Hiring (UHP), and COPS MORE. The additional programs included in these counts are: Police Hiring Supplements, COPS Phase I, Troops to COPS, and all the "innovative programs" developed or administered by the COPS Office. 18. Core cities are the largest city in a Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA). MSAs must include: (a) One city with 50,000 or more inhabitants or (b) A Census Bureau defined urbanized area of at least 50,000 or more inhabitants and a total metropolitan population of at least 100,000. 19. LLEBG was created in 1996 as the first block grant program to distribute funds by formula directly to local law enforcement agencies, which may spend the funds for functions and on types of resources of their own choosing, subject only to very broad constraints. The Byrne Program makes funds available in two ways: through a small program of discretionary grants directly to local agencies and private organizations for specific programs; and through a large program of block grants to States, whose planning agencies administer subgrants to local agencies and private organizations for projects to achieve any of 26 statutorily prescribed purposes. Each program is funded at approximately $500 million annually, about one-third the annual COPS appropriation during our period of study. However, while only law enforcement agencies are eligible for COPS and LLEBG funds, Byrne funds can be used to support all functions of criminal justice. 20. Three additional customer satisfaction questions were added at Wave 3. 21. At Wave 3, the sample included large local county agencies and all MORE agencies. Therefore, the only comparable group of small agencies at Wave 1 and Wave 3 is small MORE agencies (n=176). 22. The agencies above the 90th percentile in terms of total awards are repeat grantees, with a large fraction of the Nation's crime problems. However, because this group contains only 31 agencies, findings should be interpreted with caution. 23. The rank options were very important, fairly important, not important at all. --------------------------- 4. Using COPS Resources Jeffrey A. Roth, Christopher S. Koper, Ruth White, and Elizabeth A. Langston Once Federal funds are awarded, success in achieving the Federal goal of increasing the level of sworn officers on the street by 100,000 depends on grantees' success in implementing their COPS grants. For hiring grantees, implementation requires them to hire and train officers, deploy them to community policing activities, and retain their positions in compliance with grant conditions. Recipients of MORE (Making Officer Redeployment Effective) grants must first either purchase and implement technology or hire civilians. Then they must use these resources in a way that increases sworn officers' productivity and yields officer-hours that can be redeployed to community policing. We measured grantees' early implementation status in Wave 1 (autumn 1996) and Wave 2 (autumn 1997) surveys, interspersed with site visits. In a Wave 3 survey of two subsamples conducted in the summer of 1998, we updated these data and collected additional information on grantees' retention plans for officer positions and additional deployment enabled by MORE-funded resources. The subsamples were: (1) medium and large local/county recipients of hiring grants, and (2) local/county COPS MORE grantees of all sizes. The surveys are explained more fully in the methodological appendix. Overview of Findings This section summarizes our findings about local implementation for officer hiring programs and technology implementation and civilian hiring funded by COPS MORE. Hiring programs The COPS hiring programs required grant recipients to: (1) hire the funded officers, train them as needed, and deploy them or an equivalent number of other officers to communities, (2) retain the COPS-funded officer positions after grant expiration, and (3) have the deployed officers practice community policing. Hiring officers. Officer hiring proceeded smoothly throughout the entire 1996- 98 observation period. About two-thirds of 1995 grantees had hired their new officers within 3 months after their awards were announced, and more than 95 percent had hired them within 10 to 12 months of award obligation. About half of all small agencies deployed their new hires directly to community policing, while medium and large agencies more commonly assigned them to "backfill" for more experienced officers who were redeployed to community policing. By autumn 1996, more than 80 percent of officers hired by 1995 grantees were on the street in their first regular assignments. This pace of recruitment, hiring, training, and deployment continued at least through the summer of 1998, when we conducted the Wave 3 survey. Retaining officers. Through the 3-year hiring grant periods, 98 percent of our respondents reported they had either kept their COPS-funded officers on staff or replaced departed officers expeditiously. At the time of our Wave 3 survey in 1998, our sample contained few agencies with expired grants. Therefore, our 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 length of grantees' retention commitment: compliance with the retention requirement requires keeping grant-funded officer positions filled using local funds for at least one budget cycle beyond grant expiration. Nevertheless, survey respondents in 66 percent of the agencies reported feeling "certain" they would retain their officers. However, when we probed more specifically about the nature of these agencies' expectations, their responses indicated uncertainty and confusion. Many respondents reported they intended to follow two or more of the plans we posed to them (a plausible response for agencies with multiple cohorts of COPS officers). Many responded in ways that were arguably inconsistent with Department of Justice retention and nonsupplanting requirements. Some 42 percent indicated expectations of retaining the COPS officers through natural attrition of other officers, and 25 percent expected they would retain the COPS-funded officers by cutting positions elsewhere. Uses of officer time. Two of the three prime components of community policing articulated by the COPS Office--partnership building and problem solving-- were the most commonly expected uses of COPS-funded officers' time; each was mentioned by about 40 percent of the medium and large local/county agencies in our Wave 3 sample. About 40 percent reported their COPS-funded officers would spend substantial amounts of time on "quality of life" policing, a style some believe requires strong community control if it is not to undermine community partnership building. Routine patrol and "squeezing in proactive work" were both mentioned by about 30 percent of the agencies. COPS MORE grants COPS MORE grant awards were more highly concentrated than hiring grant awards, with 50 percent of the MORE dollars going to the 1 percent of grantees with the largest grants by the end of 1997. MORE grants tended to fund technology, either alone or in combination with civilian staff. Grant applicants projected that MORE grants for civilians would yield the full-time equivalent (FTE) of 4.54 officers per $100,000 of grant funds. This projection makes civilian grants a cost-effective alternative to COPS hiring grants, which yield four officers per $100,000 in agencies where annual salary and fringe benefits exceed $33,333 (see chapter 3 for details). For appropriate tasks, civilians can replace sworn officers on more than a one-for-one basis at lower salary and fringe benefit costs. Applicants for 1995 COPS MORE technology grants projected on average that their grants would yield an average of 6.12 FTEs per $100,000 through productivity increases. However, the experience base for such projections was sparse, especially for mobile computers, the most commonly funded category of technology. While the COPS Office continued to require subsequent applicants to include projections, it lowered the count--for grantee accountability and for its own published counts of funded officers--to four FTEs per $100,000 for grants awarded from 1996 on. Uses of COPS MORE technology grants. As of mid-1998, 79 percent of MORE technology grantees planned to use the funds for mobile computers, usually to be deployed in patrol cars for automated reporting, wireless queries to license tag and other databases, or both. About 45 percent of grantees planned to acquire desktop computers for general and administrative purposes. Computer-assisted dispatch (CAD) systems, booking/arraignment equipment, telephone-reporting systems, and other technologies were requested by smaller fractions of MORE grantees. In 1995 COPS MORE applications, each mobile computer assigned to an officer was projected to yield an average of 2.4 hours per shift. However, research available at the time indicated that automated field reporting could yield such productivity gains only through wireless field reporting, for which no off-the-shelf technology existed. Later research suggested that even with wireless field reporting, productivity gains may be limited. Implementation of MORE-funded technology. Implementation of MORE-funded technology has proceeded slowly. When we surveyed a sample of 1995 MORE grantees in mid-1998, only 43 percent with mobile computers described themselves as being fully operational, compared to about 64 percent of grantees with desktop or other management/administrative computers and 38 percent of grantees with computer-assisted dispatching systems. Grantees reported expecting to have all technologies except telephone reporting units fully operational by June 2000; however, confidence must be tempered by the reported expectations of our Wave 2 survey sample of MORE grantees in autumn 1997, 100 percent of whom expected to have their mobile computers fully operational by June 1998. Implementation of mobile computing beyond basic functions has been delayed by a variety of difficulties. These include developing reporting software, integrating it with existing record management systems, and upgrading or acquiring the telecommunications infrastructure needed for wireless reporting. Productivity gains from MORE-funded technology. Because of the delays in technology implementation, our 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 their projected FTEs, but the number of such grantees is too small for an adequate national estimate. Our estimate of productivity gains will be updated in a future report based on our Wave 4 survey, which is being fielded in June 2000, when more grantees are expected to have experience with fully operational technology. Other benefits of MORE-funded technology. While 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: 1. 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. 2. Wireless query and response functions: Improved officer safety due to faster, more secure responses to queries regarding license plates, vehicle registrations, and persons; secure car-to-car communication; and fewer demands on dispatchers. 3. Increased effectiveness: Higher clearance and conviction rates due to improved reports; better recovery of stolen property; positive response from community (though some report adverse reactions from victims and witnesses); more information sharing across shifts; better communication with neighboring agencies; better tracking of community events; easier provision of information to the public; and better preparation for court. 4. 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. MORE-funded civilians. MORE-funded civilians were hired to create sworn officer time for community policing in four ways. These include: shedding routine tasks from sworn officers to specialized civilians, such as crime scene technicians; replacing sworn personnel in existing positions, such as dispatchers; placing civilians in specialist positions that are expected to improve officer productivity, such as computer technicians; and staffing new community policing positions, such as domestic violence specialist or CPTED (Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design) planner, instead of a sworn officer. Hiring of civilians generally proceeded smoothly and rapidly. MORE-funded civilians are generally retained at least for several grant periods, and about 90 percent of MORE grantees with civilians report achieving at least the sworn officer time savings they projected. These findings are explained in more detail in the remainder of this chapter. Hiring Grants: Recruiting, Training, and Deployment For hiring grant programs, the relationship between COPS dollars and officers on the street depended on grantees' success in hiring, training, deploying, and retraining COPS-funded officers. This section describes that progress using data from both the Wave 1 and Wave 3 surveys. The most current results are from the Wave 3 survey, and they describe the progress of medium and large municipal and county agencies (defined as those serving populations of 50,000 or greater) as of June 1998 in utilizing COPS awards they received through the end of 1997 under COPS FAST (Funding Accelerated for Small Towns), COPS AHEAD (Accelerated Hiring, Education, and Development), and the Universal Hiring Program (UHP). FAST grants were awarded to agencies serving populations of less than 50,000, and AHEAD grants were awarded to agencies serving populations of 50,000 or more, so that "FAST agencies" are synonymous with "small agencies," and AHEAD agencies with "medium and large agencies." Most of the findings in this section describe the progress of medium and large municipal and county police ("local/county" in much of the following text) agencies because hiring grantees in that category were surveyed at both Waves 1 and 3.[1] Comparisons at Wave 1 suggest that through 1996, local/county agencies above and below the threshold of 50,000 had made similar progress in key respects. Therefore, many of the generalizations drawn below from the medium and large agencies in both samples are likely to apply to small agencies as well.[2,3] The Wave 4 survey, in progress at this writing, will recontact agencies of all types and sizes surveyed in previous waves. Recruitment and hiring Throughout the COPS initiative, agencies have made steady progress in selecting, training, and deploying officers. At the time of their interviews, large majorities of the agencies surveyed in the autumn of 1996 and the summer of 1998 had hired and deployed all of the officers for whom grants had been awarded in prior calendar years. The results from both surveys suggest that most COPS-funded officers were hired and deployed within a year of grant award. As of the September-November 1996 Wave 1 survey period, 94 percent of both the FAST (i.e., small) and AHEAD (i.e., medium and large) grantees reported they had hired their officers funded through calendar 1995 (see table 4-14).[5] More than 80 percent of both FAST and AHEAD agencies reported their new officers were on the street in their first regular assignments. FAST and AHEAD agencies had made virtually identical progress in hiring officers and deploying them to the street at the time of the Wave 1 survey. In June 1998, nearly 2 years later, 83 percent of medium and large municipal/county agencies reported in the Wave 3 survey they had hired all of their COPS officers funded through 1998 (see figure 4-1). Further, nearly 70 percent of the agencies reported all of their officers were finished training and working on their first regular assignments. Agencies reported expecting to have all of their pre-1999 COPS officers on the street by June 2000 (see figure 4-2).[6] Relative to the Wave 1 results, the Wave 3 numbers may suggest some gradual slowing in the speed with which agencies have hired and deployed COPS officers. Note, however, that the FAST and AHEAD programs were "accelerated" hiring programs under which the COPS Office permitted and encouraged agencies to hire officers even before funds were officially obligated. The Wave 1 survey permitted a more detailed assessment of the speed with which agencies hired FAST/AHEAD officers, though these results may not represent later COPS hiring grants which did not have "accelerated" status. Among FAST/AHEAD agencies which had hired their officers as of the fall of 1996, approximately two-thirds of FAST agencies and three-quarters of AHEAD agencies had done so within 3 months after their awards were announced and funds were obligated by the Federal government (see table 4-2). More than a third of the FAST agencies that had hired officers and half of the AHEAD agencies that had hired officers did so prior to the award obligations, as was permitted and encouraged under these accelerated programs. FAST agencies that hired their officers during or after the month of award obligation averaged 4.8 months from obligation to hiring. The comparable figure for AHEAD agencies was 4.7 months.[7] The Wave 4 survey is updating time estimates by stage, from recruiting to deployment. Cross-hiring The use of COPS funds to hire former sworn officers and to recruit officers directly from other police agencies has been fairly common throughout the history of the COPS program. We refer to the latter practice as cross-hiring. Cross-hiring facilitated the process of moving newly hired officers into their first assignments by reducing or eliminating training requirements. It also helped some agencies to deploy experienced officers directly into community policing assignments. Cross-hiring has the potential to reduce the net national increase in officers attributable to COPS rather than local expenditures.[8] However, estimates presented in chapter 5 indicate this effect was small. Approximately 40 percent of FAST agencies and 20 percent of AHEAD agencies surveyed in late 1996 indicated one or more of their funded positions was used or would be used to hire former sworn officers. Forty percent of the FAST agencies hiring former sworn officers and 56 percent of the AHEAD agencies hiring former sworn officers recruited directly from another agency. Overall, therefore, 16 percent of the FAST agencies and 11 percent of the AHEAD agencies reported recruiting one or more officers directly from other agencies. Approximately 41 percent of the agencies surveyed in June 1998 indicated one or more of their funded positions was used or would be used to hire former sworn officers, and about 14 percent reported they had hired or were going to hire former sworn officers for half or more of their new positions. Among agencies hiring former sworn officers, about 43 percent recruited at least some of these officers from other agencies. Therefore, nearly 18 percent of the Wave 3 agencies recruited one or more officers directly from other agencies. In comparison to the Wave 1 figure for AHEAD agencies, this suggests that cross-hiring increased over time among medium and large local/county agencies. Training Wave 1 survey respondents were questioned about sources of training given to or planned for COPS-funded officers.[9] Results are displayed in table 4-3. Training at State academies and on the job training was most common for FAST agencies, followed by field training and inservice training. Field, on-the-job, and inservice training were the most common modes for AHEAD agencies. State and local training academies were the most common forms of formal curricula training for AHEAD officers. Approximately 5.6 percent of the FAST agencies did not intend to train their officers. The majority of these agencies (69 percent) indicated their COPS-funded officers were former sworn officers. Only 1.5 percent of the AHEAD agencies indicated they were not going to train their COPS-funded officers. Deployment progress As noted earlier, 68 percent of hiring grant agencies reported in the Wave 3 survey that all of their pre-1998 COPS officers were on the street in June 1998, and respondents expected all pre-1998 COPS officers to be on the street by June 2000.[10] The Wave 1 survey allowed a more detailed assessment of the speed with which agencies deploy COPS officers. Table 4-4 displays the distribution of months elapsed from hiring to hitting the street for FAST and AHEAD officers. Newly hired FAST officers hit the streets more quickly than did AHEAD officers. Nearly three-quarters of FAST officers were on the street or were expected to be on the street within 3 months of being hired. On average, FAST agencies reported 2.6 months between hiring and hitting the street. AHEAD agencies were somewhat slower, but three-quarters of their officers were in the field or were expected to be in the field within 6 months of hiring. AHEAD agencies reported an average of 4.5 months from hiring to hitting the street. Nearly all of the COPS-funded officers for both programs were in the field or expected to be in the field within a year of hiring. Thus, the results suggest that the overwhelming majority of agencies of all sizes deploy all their COPS-funded officers into field assignments within less than a year of hiring them. Community policing deployment strategies In addition to increasing levels of policing, the COPS program is intended to encourage community policing. Not surprisingly, 94 percent of the Wave 3 respondents reported one officer was being deployed to community policing for every officer hired. Of the others, 63 percent reported that more than half of the COPS-funded officers or the officers they replaced were deployed to community policing. The activities of funded officers are described in the next section, and chapter 6 describes the range of policing styles that COPS grantees described as community policing. The two major strategies for deploying officers into community policing are the direct deployment and "backfill" strategies. Direct deployment occurs when newly hired officers are deployed directly into community policing roles. The backfill strategy, which the COPS Office encouraged where appropriate, involves replacing existing patrol officers with the new hires and redeploying the experienced officers into community policing roles. Medium and large agencies have relied more heavily on the backfill strategy throughout the COPS program. Two-thirds or more of those agencies surveyed in both 1996 and 1998 indicated using the backfill strategy exclusively or in combination with direct deployment (see tables 4-5 and 4-6).[11] In contrast, Wave 1 results suggest that small agencies have made greater use of direct deployment (see table 4-5). The majority of FAST agencies surveyed in 1996 planned to deploy their new officers directly into community policing, while only about 38 percent planned a backfill strategy. Field observations by project staff suggest this reflects the fact that the new COPS officers were frequently the first community policing officers in those agencies. Survey data provide further support for that hypothesis. FAST agencies that reported doing community policing prior to 1995 showed a slight tendency to rely more on the backfill strategy than did FAST agencies that did not practice community policing prior to 1995; 41 percent of the former group and 34 percent of the latter group planned to utilize the backfill strategy.[12] At both Wave 1 and Wave 3, agencies utilizing a backfill deployment strategy were asked about the process of selecting, training, and redeploying officers into community policing. Wave 3 results indicate 86 percent of agencies had selected all of their backfilled community police officers and 72 percent had reassigned all of their backfilled officers to community policing by June 1998 (see figure 4-3). Moreover, respondents expected all backfilled community police officers to be redeployed as of June 2000 (see figure 4-4). In medium and large agencies, the processes of deploying new officers into the field and redeploying older officers into community policing occurred in tandem. As noted earlier, 85 percent of AHEAD agencies had hired and deployed their officers funded before 1996 to the street by October-November 1996. Likewise, table 4-7 shows that 90 percent of the AHEAD agencies employing the backfill strategy had selected, trained, and deployed community police officers by that time. Consistent results were obtained in the summer of 1998. By then, 68 percent of surveyed agencies had deployed all of their COPS officers funded before 1998 into the field and, as shown in figure 4-3, 72 percent of the agencies using the backfill strategy had redeployed all of their community police officers. Small agencies seem to progress more slowly in training and redeploying backfilled community police officers, based on results from the Wave 1 survey (see table 4-7). As of late 1996, 82 percent of FAST grantees had hired and deployed their new officers (see table 4-1), but only 61 percent of the FAST agencies using a backfill strategy had completed training and redeployment of backfilled community police officers.[13] Therefore, the Wave 3 results indicating that all backfilled officers will be redeployed as of June 2000 may not be generalizable to small agencies. Finally, the Wave 1 survey inquired about training modes for the redeployed experienced officers. Training modes for redeployed officers are displayed in table 4-8. Inservice and on-the-job training were the most common modes of training reported by both FAST and AHEAD agencies. AHEAD agencies relied much more heavily on inservice training than did the smaller FAST agencies. Roll-call training, field training by field training officers, and other forms of training were common as well. Agencies utilizing "other" forms of training reported sending officers to a variety of specialized seminars and courses, often conducted either outside the department (e.g., at State or local colleges, police academies, or conferences) or by outside specialists. During site visits conducted in 1998, research teams observed or were told about several successful training sessions conducted by COPS-funded Regional Community Policing Institutes. Officer Retention and Redeployment As explained in chapter 2, two key requirements for recipients of COPS hiring grants were retention of the officer positions after the 3-year grants expired and deployment of the hired officers into community policing. This section describes agencies' expectations about how they would cope with the retention requirement and their reports of the activities to which the COPS-funded officers were deployed. By June 1998, when our Wave 3 survey was conducted, only 21 percent of all COPS grants awarded by the end of 1997 had expired, and these accounted for only 18 percent of all COPS-funded officers. Therefore, while concern over retention costs loomed large in the minds of many grantee agencies, actual post-grant retention experience was too rare at that time to support meaningful statistical description. None of the respondents in our Wave 3 sample was aware of COPS-funded officers in their agencies whose grants had expired. Therefore, this section describes respondents' estimates of the likelihood that their agencies would retain their COPS-funded officer positions and their plans for doing so. Turnover and replacement during grant periods Although 54 percent of Wave 3 respondents reported that some of the original officers funded since 1994 under any COPS hiring program had left their agencies by the Wave 3 survey period (June 1998), 98 percent still retained all their COPS-funded positions.[14] Considering all officers funded under any hiring program, 46 percent of the medium and large local/county agency respondents reported that all of the officers were still with the agency as of the date of the survey in 1998 (table 4-9). For the 54 percent of the agencies that reported some officers were no longer with the agency, 92 percent indicated that those COPS-funded officers who had left had been replaced. For those agencies that reported the COPS-funded officers had not been replaced, 71 percent indicated they would replace the officer as soon as a qualified recruit was found. In all, approximately 98 percent of the agencies reported that the original officers had stayed through the grant period, had been replaced, or would be replaced when a suitable replacement was found. Not surprisingly, the turnover rate depended on the number of officers funded. According to table 4-9, agencies with 1 to 10 COPS-funded officers were more likely to report that all of them were still with the agency (62 percent). Only 36 percent of the agencies with 11-49 officers funded and 27 percent of agencies with more than 49 officers funded reported that all of them were still with the agency at the time of the survey in 1998. Retention after grant expiration We asked the respondents in our Wave 3 sample two sets of questions about postgrant retention. First, we asked them how certain they were that their agencies would retain their COPS-funded officers after their hiring grants expired. Second, we asked how their agencies planned to retain those officers. Multiple options were provided for the respondents to choose from, to allow for the possibility of different short- and long-term retention plans for different subsets of officers. We conducted the Wave 3 survey before the Justice Department announced the duration of the retention requirement: one local budget cycle after grant expiration. Approximately 66 percent of Wave 3 respondents reported they were "certain" their agencies would retain the COPS-funded officers when their grants expired, 24 percent indicated they were "almost positive" they would retain the officers, 6 percent were "pretty sure," and 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. As shown in table 4-10, about 52 percent stated they were uncertain about long-term retention plans. However, 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 (see chapter 2 for details), the persons authorized to speak to our interviewers on behalf of the agency may have been uncertain about what the requirement entailed. About 37 percent reported expecting the COPS-funded officers would be retained by "using positions that open up" (i.e., through attrition, indicating an intention to retain the COPS-funded officers but not the positions). About 20 percent reported expecting the COPS-funded officers would be retained by cutting back positions elsewhere, a plan that under some conditions would violate the nonsupplanting requirement (see chapter 2); and 5 percent agreed that the COPS-funded officers were likely to retain officers both through attrition and by cutting back 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. Time uses of COPS-funded officers One purpose of the COPS program was to increase officer time spent doing community policing. Addressing whether that happened directly would have required measurements of individual officers' time use before and after grant award, for representative samples of officers in representative samples of grantee and nongrantee agencies. That approach was impractical because of the large sample sizes needed to achieve adequate statistical power for any given department, the difficulty of obtaining preaward measurements, and the difficulties of multisite analyses using multiple agencies' reporting code systems. In chapter 6, we measure COPS program effects by comparing grantee and nongrantee agencies' use of community policing tactics before and after the launch of the COPS program and asking grantees about the role of COPS funds in starting or expanding the use of new tactics. Here, we report the results of an alternative approach to measuring how COPS-funded community policing officers spent their time.[15] We asked respondents approximately how much time their COPS-funded officers spent on a short but varied list of activities, some of which are--commonly considered "community" policing, while others are less clear. Specifically, we asked Wave 3 survey respondents about the planned uses of time by their COPS-funded officers. Respondents were read a list of possible assignments. They were asked to think about the specific duties of the officers deployed in the community, whether directly or through backfill, and whether, for the group as a whole, each assignment duty accounted for "little or none of their time," "some of their time," or "most or all of their time" which we designated "substantial." More agencies reported that COPS-funded officers were "spending most or all of their time doing" problem solving (43 percent) and working with community groups and residents (39 percent) than any other activity (see table 4-11). The activities next most commonly described in this way were routine patrol (32 percent), "squeezing in proactive work as time permits" (30 percent), and " 'zero tolerance' or 'quality of life' policing" (26 percent). Prevention was described this way by 13 percent. Virtually no agencies reported that their COPS-funded officers would spend "most or all" of their time on undercover, tactical, administrative, or technical assignments; however, 20 to 40 percent reported their COPS-funded officers spent "some" time on these activities.[16] As shown in table 4-12, the majority of grantees (58.3 percent) expect their COPS-funded officers to spend at least some of their time on prevention programs; however, only 12.9 percent expected prevention to occupy a substantial amount of time. Table 4-12 also shows that almost all of the agencies spend at least some of their time working with community groups (95.9 percent) and problem solving (95.5 percent). Less than 1 percent of agencies report spending little to no time on all three of these activities. As shown in table 4-11, 32.3 percent of agencies reported that their COPS-funded officers (or the redeployed community police officers they backfill for) spend "most or all" of their time on routine patrol. The meaning of this statistic depends on the departmental structure for delivering community policing. In generalist departments, where all officers are expected to incorporate community policing into their daily activities, routine patrol and community policing are intended to be indistinguishable. In specialist departments, where a specialized unit delivers all community policing, one would expect the COPS-funded officers to be assigned to those units. (Our generalist/specialist classification, which is derived from IACP (1997) departmental community policing structures, is explained more fully in chapter 6.[17]) As expected, agencies with specialized community policing structures were less likely than agencies with generalist structures to report that their COPS-funded officers spent most or all of their time on routine patrol.[18] As shown in figure 4-5 and table 4-13, "specialist" agencies were 15.5 points less likely than "generalist" agencies to report that their COPS-funded officers would spend substantial amounts of time on routine patrol duty (39.9 percent of generalists, 24.4 percent of specialists). Also, a higher percentage of the specialist agencies (34.7 percent) reported that their new officers spend "little to no time" on routine patrol, as opposed to 19.5 percent of the generalist agencies. If COPS-funded officers in specialist agencies are not doing as much routine patrol, one would expect them to do more core community policing activities: more partnership building, more problem solving, prevention, and quality-of-life policing where that is considered community policing. That is what specialist agencies report; 49.1 percent of the specialist agencies, as opposed to 36.3 percent of the generalist agencies, report spending "most or all" of their COPS-funded officers' time on problem solving. The trend is similar for other community policing objectives. More than 95 percent of the medium and large local/county agencies surveyed in Wave 3, whether generalist or specialist, acknowledged their COPS-funded officers would be "squeezing in" proactive work such as the core community policing functions at least some of the time. Moreover, about 30 percent reported they were doing so a substantial amount of the time (see table 4-14). During site visits, our teams frequently observed that instead of setting aside blocks of time for solving problems or building community partnerships, agencies encouraged officers to squeeze these tasks in between responses to calls. We observed a number of creative ways of making time for such activities. Examples included taking a few extra minutes for a walkby security check of nearby high-risk areas when responding to calls from a crime "hot spot" or offering the neighbors prevention advice or quick security checks before leaving the scene of a burglary call. These and other examples are described in a supplemental Issues Brief from this evaluation project (Maxfield, 1998). Respondents were asked how their agencies encourage the COPS-funded officers in the community to spend their time on community policing activities. Respondents were given a closed-end list and could choose as many methods of encouragement as needed. The most frequently named methods were: memos from headquarters (58.4 percent), reminders from supervisors (75.2 percent), including community policing in performance ratings (60.2 percent), supervisors' periodic monitoring of officers' daily journals (79.5 percent), and awards and recognition for community policing activities (67.3 percent). The most popular methods both involve contact with direct supervisors, as opposed to headquarters or other levels of management. Only two agencies did not report using any methods to encourage community policing activities. External effects of officers' activities Most agencies reported their COPS-funded activities affected other government agencies and community organizations.[19] These effects include: a greater demand on local agencies responsible for code enforcement, sanitation, and the like (83 percent); and greater demands on neighborhood or community associations, block groups, and local businesses (83.3 percent). These are consistent with the responses discussed above, that problem solving and partnership building were the activities on which agencies most commonly expected COPS-funded officers to spend substantial time. In addition, 65.6 percent reported that their activities placed greater demands on agencies that deal with violence in the home. This suggests that those agencies began giving domestic violence cases higher priority than previously. Effects on court caseloads were also reported by many agencies. Most reported an increase in misdemeanor caseloads (70.4 percent) and felony caseloads (43.6 percent). Fewer reported decreased caseloads for felonies (21.3 percent) and misdemeanors (32.3 percent). One-third of the respondents reported other effects as well.[20] These included a number of verbatim responses that we grouped as "criminal justice system strain" (50.1 percent); partnerships with other government and nongovernment agencies, schools, businesses, and other law enforcement agencies (29.3 percent); and agency self-improvement (9.3 percent). The effects of COPS-funded activities clearly extends beyond the grantee law enforcement agencies. Community policing strategies involve not only the traditional law enforcement agencies but agencies involved in code enforcement, nuisance abatement, domestic services, and so forth have reportedly experienced ripple effects. More felony and misdemeanor caseloads are increasing strain on the system: effects on courts, prosecution, prisons/jails, and probation and parole were reported by the majority of those reporting auxiliary effects. Chapter 6 describes several examples observed during site visits. Implementing COPS MORE The MORE program (Making Officer Redeployment Effective) took an alternative approach to increasing the quantity of community policing effort. Officer time was to be saved through productive use of new grant-funded information technology, civilians, and, in 1995 only, overtime. In turn, that time was to be redeployed to community policing activities. The MORE-funded resources also had other potential benefits to local agencies that could increase their effectiveness; while these no doubt played a role in local application decisions, they were statutorily not relevant to Federal funding decisions. The extent to which redeployment and other benefits were actually achieved depended on local progress in implementing the technology, hiring the civilians, and productively using newly deployable time of sworn officers. Technology was projected to increase available officer time because it would reduce the time officers spend writing reports, transporting reports, or doing other tasks, depending on the type of technology. Hiring civilians was expected to increase available officer time for community policing most directly because selected tasks or positions could be reassigned to civilians, thus freeing up sworn officers to be redeployed to community policing. Overtime was usually intended to pay officers to do community policing tasks such as teaching DARE classes only during the school year that, by nature, require less than a full-time officer. By statute, only applications that projected MORE funds would increase officer time available for community policing were considered. Agencies were required to project that the time saved by the use of the MORE-funded technology, civilians, and overtime would redeploy officers at least as cost effectively as the hiring program. COPS MORE funding and agency decisions to apply Larger agencies were more likely than smaller agencies to request and receive COPS MORE grants. As shown in table 4-15, this trend is much more pronounced for the MORE program than for the hiring grants. Of the agencies that serve jurisdictions of less than 25,000, 38.9 percent received at least one hiring grant, but only 5.4 percent received a MORE grant. Of the jurisdictions with populations exceeding 1 million, however, 53 percent received at least one MORE grant, while 77 percent received a hiring grant. This may reflect both large agencies' greater technology needs and the more adverse effects of both the 3-year $75,000 cap and the retention requirement for hiring grants in large jurisdictions facing higher salary structures. For each population category, table 4-15 also displays, separately for MORE and hiring grants, the mean award amounts per eligible agency and per grantee agency. Not surprisingly, the average sizes of both MORE and hiring grants increase with jurisdiction population. However, the concentration of awards in the very largest cities is striking. The average award to a grantee in a jurisdiction of more than 1 million in population exceeded the average award to a grantee in a jurisdiction of more than 500,000 but less than 1 million in population by a factor of 8.9 for COPS MORE and 6.6 for hiring grants. Concentration of COPS MORE funding. To compare the concentration of MORE and hiring funds more precisely, we ranked all grantees in order, from largest accumulated MORE awards to smallest and then computed the share of MORE dollars awarded to the agencies with the largest grants. Table 4-16 compares 1996-98 trends in this measure for MORE and for hiring grants, for local/county and for all MORE grantees. For all grantees, COPS awards through 1998 were, in fact, more highly concentrated for MORE grants than for hiring grants: the 1 percent of agencies with the largest MORE awards received 50 percent of total MORE dollars, while the 1 percent with the largest hiring awards received 43 percent of all hiring program dollars. The contrast between MORE and hiring concentration was even greater among local/county agencies; among them, 58 percent of the MORE funds went to the top 1 percent, compared to 39 percent of the hiring funds. Trends between 1996 and 1998 indicate that MORE awards became slightly less concentrated over time, while hiring awards became slightly more so. Among all agencies, the MORE share going to the largest 1 percent declined from 54 percent to 50 percent, while the top-bracket share of hiring awards rose from 37 percent to 43 percent. One very large 1995 MORE award to New York City Police Department accounts for the early high concentration of MORE funds among the largest local/county agencies. Types of resources supported by COPS MORE. In 1995, technology absorbed more than half of the COPS MORE funds, civilians slightly less, and overtime less than 10 percent according to COPS Office records. In 1998, Wave 3 survey results indicate that MORE grantees were still more likely to get funds for technology than for either of the other two resources (see figures 4-6a through 4-6c).[21] The fractions of MORE grantees with only technology grants was 29 percent for medium-sized agencies (with populations between 50,000 and 150,000), compared to 38 percent of large agencies and 45 percent of small agencies. In contrast, 22 percent of the medium-sized agencies had MORE grants for civilians only, similar to the 21 percent of smaller agencies, but more than the 8 percent of larger agencies. The combination of technology and civilians was most popular among the large agencies (44 percent), compared to 33 percent of medium and 14 percent of small agencies. Redeployment estimates by resource type. Title I required that each MORE grant increase sworn officer time allocated to community policing by at least as much per year as a hiring grant of the same amount. To implement this threshold requirement, the COPS Office asked agencies to estimate the amount of time that would be saved by MORE-funded resources and redirected into community policing. These were estimated in terms of FTEs, meaning the time needed to redeploy one full-time officer for a year, which the COPS Office standardized at 1,824 working hours. The application included a cost-effectiveness worksheet (CEW) to filter out MORE applications that failed to meet the threshold requirement. The CEW took applicants through several calculations, essentially to verify that each $100,000 in MORE funds would generate at least four FTEs of projected officer time.[22] On average, COPS MORE applications projected redeployment of 6.12 officers per $100,000 spent on technology, substantially higher than the 4.54 average for civilians or 4.92 for overtime. For civilians, the calculation was usually a straight one-to-one replacement of sworn officers, which would precisely meet the cost-effectiveness threshold of four FTEs per $100,000 of MORE funds if civilian and sworn salary and fringe benefits were equal. Because civilians' salaries and fringe costs are lower on average than officers' and some civilians were slated for positions intended to increase officers' productivity, the actual average projection for civilian awards was higher, 4.54 per $100,000. Overtime, which was an allowable use of MORE funds only for 1995 applications, was usually requested to support some community policing function during part of a work year, such as a part-time DARE instructor for just the school year. By comparing the part-year overtime cost to the full-year cost of a full-time officer, MORE overtime grants could be projected to yield more than four FTEs per $100,000, despite overtime premiums. The average was 4.92. For technology, which consumed the largest share of MORE funds, the projections were higher, an average of 6.12 per $100,000. However, they were also far more speculative. Much of the technology was so new or even nonexistent at the time that few working examples were in place to serve as guides for redeployment estimates. During site visits, many of the grant writers acknowledged that their projections were simply guesses. The lack of an experience base for projecting time savings was especially acute for mobile computing, which was the most common MORE-funded technology. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics 1997 LEMAS report (Reaves and Goldberg, 2000), 18 percent of municipal police agencies with more than 100 officers used car-mounted digital computers in 1997, and 59 percent used mobile computers. However, only 11 of the 454 municipal agencies in the LEMAS sample used them for wireless transmission of field reports, which was the application typically expected to save officer time. Recognizing that existing analyses provided little basis for estimating productivity increases from technology, the COPS Office provided guidance in the 1995 MORE application kit, in the form of an example: . . . for example, a mobile computer programmed for automated report generation might be shown to free up two hours in report writing per officer per eight hour shift. If officers using this technology were to engage in community policing during those two hours, the total amount of redeployment would equate to an increased community policing presence of one-quarter year of officer time. This example would exceed the cost-effectiveness threshold requirement of four FTEs per $100,000 for MORE grants as long as the computers cost less than $6,250 per unit. This is a generous allowance even including ruggedization and vehicle mounts but only if mounts and software are readily available. Agencies' projections turned out remarkably similar to this example. In a representative sample of 1995 MORE applications, we found the mean projected number of hours saved per 8-hour shift was between 1.8 and 2.6 hours, depending on the type of technology. Projections fell into this narrow range despite wide variation in agency size, local conditions, technology plans, rationale for the time savings, and projection formula used. Although a few large agencies actually carried out small-time studies, formulas of the following sort were more common: average time writing reports/year (all officers) = 7012.8 hrs./year x 70 percent savings of time = 4090 hrs. saved yearly / 2080 = 2.36 FTEs. The sparse available data calls into question large projections of saved officer time from mobile computers without wireless reporting. A National Institute of Justice (1993) report on a mobile computer project in Los Angeles Police Department found no change in the amount of time officers spent in investigation, report writing and approval, or travel activities in connection with report processing. Police supervisors reported no change in the amount of time they spent reviewing and correcting reports, and there was a slight increase in total clerical time spent on each report because the reports were entered manually into the mainframe computer. However, the report estimated that if the modem connection could be made to work (it was intermittently successful at the time of the project), a cost savings of $5.4 million in officer time could be achieved if officers used wireless transmission rather than traveling back to the station to file each paper report. A more recent study suggests that even time savings from wireless report transmission will be limited by the small percentage of officer time spent on report preparation (Frank, Brandl and Watkins, 1997). According to this study, only about 8 percent of Cincinnati officers' time is spent preparing reports. Even if the mobile computers saved all the report preparation time--a wildly implausible assumption--units costing $5,000 each (including software and transmission infrastructure) would save officer time only at the rate of 1.6 FTEs per $100,000. The fact that these numbers were not available until recently is reflected in the optimistic projections agencies made when predicting future FTE deployment. Technology accounted for 52 percent of MORE funds awarded through 1996. However, because of the high productivity estimates, it accounted for 59 percent of projected FTEs. From the start of COPS MORE, implementation of technology occurred more slowly than civilian hiring or overtime use. The GAO, in its 1996 survey, asked respondents to calculate the number of full-time equivalent positions their agencies had redeployed to community policing as a result of MORE grant funds spent in fiscal years 1995 and 1996. The agencies estimated that only about 40 percent of all FTEs redeployed through fiscal 1996 came as a result of equipment/technology purchases, even though this category had accounted for 52 percent of MORE funds awarded and 59 percent of projected FTEs through the calendar year. Some agencies reported they were unable to calculate redeployment because the equipment had not yet been purchased or had not been installed or it was too early in the implementation phase to calculate time savings. Later sections describe implementation progress since the GAO study. MORE-supported technologies The 1995 MORE application kit listed the following examples of items that were allowable technologies if they directly contributed to community policing: portable computers, automated booking systems, cellular telephones, local area networks, and geo-mapping systems. Cell phones were disallowed in 1996 and after. Other disallowed uses of MORE funds included surveillance cameras and beepers for undercover narcotics investigations, office furnishings, riot control equipment, weapons and ammunition, vehicles (including cars, bicycles, motorcycles, and mobile trailers), radios, pagers, uniforms, dogs, horses, bulletproof vests, Breathalyzers[Trade Mark], radar guns, video cameras, phone lines, voice mail systems, educational material (e.g., pamphlets, posters, or other literature), and televisions/VCRs. The technologies that were often funded by MORE '95 and subsequent years are described more fully in the following paragraphs. Table 4-17 shows the proportion of MORE grantees receiving each one in 1996 and 1998, for local/county agencies. Mobile computers. By far the most commonly awarded technology, COPS MORE had awarded mobile computer technology to 60 percent of technology grantees by 1996, and to 79 percent by 1998. These awards funded primarily two hardware configurations: (1) laptop or notebook computers, either carried by officers or mounted in vehicles, and (2) modular units, with separate keyboard, monitor, and CPU mounted in vehicles. Units permanently mounted in vehicles are most commonly used for so-called "MDT functions" after Mobile Data Terminals, which first came into widespread use in the 1980s. Examples of MDT functions are computerized dispatch; queries to automated databases, such as state vehicle registration, driver's license, and stolen auto files, and the FBI's National Crime Information Center (NCIC); and car-to-car and car-to-station messaging. MORE-funded mobile units not permanently mounted in vehicles, usually ruggedized laptops, were most commonly requested for automated field reporting, so that traffic, crime, and other reports could be completed on the mobile computers while officers maintained a field presence. Reporting software ranged from well-known word processing packages for writing narratives to elaborate locally developed software using menus to navigate through agency-specific reporting forms. Other functions envisioned by some departments include displays of computerized maps, state statutes, and mug shots. The most elaborate version of mobile computing technology is generally known as Mobile Computer Terminals (MCTs): vehicle-mounted mobile computers that combine the MDT functions with wireless automated field reporting from throughout the jurisdiction, so that officers can potentially save the time of returning to the station during their shifts to submit reports. At the time of our second round of site visits in 1998, no MORE grantees had fully functional departmentwide MCTs in use under this definition, although both the San Diego and Miami Police Departments were reportedly nearing the final stages of field testing. In a random sample of 1995 COPS MORE applications, each mobile computer deployed was projected to free up an average of 2.4 hours of officer time per shift. Management/administration computers. These desktop or mainframe computers had been awarded to 23 percent of MORE technology grantees by 1996 and to 45 percent by 1998. They are used to do basic administrative functions within the agencies--tasks such as correspondence, records management, payroll, keeping track of staff hours, etc. Some computers were used to develop new databases such as wanted notices and warrants and to computerize arrest reports previously filed on paper only. Among municipal police agencies with more than 100 officers, 98 percent used computers by 1993, according to LEMAS data (Reaves and Smith, 1995). For some of the smaller agencies, however, the MORE-funded computers were among the first in the agency and replaced typewriters. Some agencies also used the MORE-funded computers for desktop publishing tasks related to community policing, such as publishing community newsletters. In a representative sample of 1995 COPS MORE applications, implementation of the requested equipment was projected to increase officer productivity by an average of 2.6 hours per officer per 8-hour shift. Booking/arraignment technologies. MORE grants for various booking and arraignment technologies had been awarded to 10 percent of MORE technology grantees by 1996 and 12 percent by 1998. They are intended to reduce the time spent on this lengthy process--easily an hour or more in most jurisdictions. Two new technologies can speed this process. One is an automated fingerprint scanner, which scans fingerprints through a glass plate, transferring the data to fingerprint cards and sometimes sending the data through a modem to local and state fingerprint databases for identification. Remote video camera hookups allow a prisoner to be arraigned by a judge in another location, eliminating the need to transport the arrestee from the jail to the courthouse. In a representative sample of 1995 COPS MORE applications, the booking/arraignment systems requested were projected to free up an average of 2.6 hours per officers per shift. CAD systems. Computer-aided dispatch systems were awarded to 1 percent of MORE technology grantees by 1996 and 12 percent by 1998. They allow the computer to determine which vehicle is closest to the scene, give responding officers call histories for the call address, and allow agencies to keep track of various statistics such as call response time, time on problem-solving projects, and times that patrol vehicles are in service. In a representative sample of 1995 COPS MORE applications, CAD systems were projected to increase officer productivity by an average of 2.6 hours per officer per shift. Other items. This category included a geo-mapping system, and a reverse 911 system in which citizens can be automatically called by a computer system, and a variety of other technologies.[23] Redeployment from time saved due to MORE-funded technologies: Agency projections As discussed previously COPS MORE grant applicants were required to include projections of officer full-time equivalents that would be saved through productivity increases and redeployment to community policing after the technology was implemented. Table 4-18 summarizes redeployment projections for MORE technology grants awarded through June 1998, according to COPS Office records. Projections are summarized by mutually exclusive combinations of technology. Because mobile and desktop computers accounted for such high proportions of all technology funded, all others--CAD, booking/arraignment systems, telephone reporting systems, and others--were grouped in an "other" category. The mobile computers only category accounts for 34 percent of all 16,870 projected FTEs funded through June 1998. From the inception of COPS MORE, the COPS Office screened out clearly inflated projections. Starting in 1996, the office credited only four FTEs per $100,000 toward its running count of officers funded, and it held grantees accountable for achieving only that number. Nevertheless, the accuracy of even the constrained estimates was unknown at the time of award. Technology implementation status Different technologies take different lengths of time to become operational, depending upon their complexity, the size of the project, and the novelty of the technology and applications. Small agencies that were funded for stand-alone computers for office work purchased the computers and software off the shelf. Agencies that purchased automated fingerprint devices encountered a delay as they checked to be sure the equipment would be compatible with State or other local systems as needed. Agencies installing mobile computer systems had even longer delays as they and their vendors crossed a number of technological barriers associated with this new technology. These are described more fully in appendix 4-A. We measured technology implementation status at three points in time: October 1996, September through October 1997, and June through July 1998. In October 1996, to help us plan site visits to agencies where we could observe the roles of MORE-funded technology in meeting COPS redeployment goals, we conducted a telephone survey of 31 randomly selected agencies with MORE awards for any type of technology. These agencies were selected because they had received official notice by April 1996 that their MORE '95 awards had been federally obligated and were therefore available for local use. Five months after clearance, of the 31 agencies in the sample, 18 had purchased at least some mobile computers, of which 11 reported having their mobile computers in use by at least some of the officers. A year later (September and October 1997) we collected data on the implementation timetables from 183 agencies to whom MORE funds had been awarded for mobile computers between September 1995 and September 1996. Portable computers were selected for study because they accounted for such a high share of projected FTEs. Most recently, in our Wave 3 survey, July-August 1998, we reinterviewed the local/county agencies in our sample that had received MORE grants in 1995 for any type of technology; these grantees had had the longest time periods to complete implementation. In the following pages, we first report their estimated implementation timetables for all types of technology and then explore the special case of mobile computing technology in more detail. Technologies other than mobile computing. To determine the status of technology implementation, we used the Wave 3 survey to estimate the percentage of fully implemented technology by jurisdiction size as of June 1998. Figure 4-7 shows the implementation status for the three most commonly awarded technology categories: mobile computers, desktop computers, and booking and arraignment systems. In the case of laptop and desktop computers, small agencies were most likely to report completion of full implementation. For booking and arraignment systems, large agencies were slightly ahead, with the small agencies not far behind. Small agencies may have had an easier time implementing mobile and desktop computers for two reasons. First, they had less equipment to procure, perhaps less complex procurement procedures to follow, and certainly fewer people to train. Second, larger agencies often had more complex visions for computer systems, which often required upgrading telecommunications technology and integrating the new computing technology with existing records management systems (see appendix 4-A). Figure 4-8 summarizes agencies' June 1998 reports of their actual and expected implementation progress between 1995 and 2000. Lines on the graph represent actual progress through June 1998 and expected completion dates thereafter. As figure 4-8 indicates, implementation speed depended on the technology type. More agencies reported that desktop computers and "all other" technologies (e.g., scanners, Global Positioning System car locators, digital cameras, in-car video recorders) were more fully complete at the time of the survey in 1998 than other types of technology. However, despite the off-the-shelf nature of the "all other" category, only slightly more than 60 percent of the agencies with those technology types reported having that technology fully implemented. For computer assisted dispatch (CAD), this number is only 30 percent, presumably for two reasons: CAD awards began later, and implementation requires adapting an off-the-shelf system to local call codes and dispatch procedures. Agencies were optimistic, though. More than 80 percent of the agencies expected their technology to be fully implemented by the end of 1998, and all expected the technology to be fully implemented by June 2000. We are remeasuring their actual and expected progress in our Wave 4 survey. Implementation of mobile computing technology. An examination of the implementation history for mobile computing technology helps both to explain the time path of implementation and to illustrate a persistent optimism concerning implementation schedules. In December 1996 (Wave 1 data collection completion) 27 percent of MORE grantees funded for mobile computers reported they had selected their equipment and had it in use. By the fall of 1997, this percentage had grown to 59 percent, and 83 percent had taken delivery of the equipment. At that time, 82 percent expected to have the equipment in operation 7 months later, by June 1998. In June 1998, however, our Wave 3 survey found that only 44 percent of MORE grantees funded for mobile computers described themselves as fully operational; the drop probably reflects new awards for mobile computers between fall 1997 and June 1998.[24] The Wave 2 survey of 1995 mobile computer grantees allowed us to estimate a more detailed timetable of agencies' implementation accomplishments within two years after award: figure 4-9 illustrates the agencies' progress in each of four common implementation milestones. Not all agencies planned to do all of the steps; for example, smaller agencies may not have had to go through a procurement step of releasing a request for proposals (RFP), and not all agencies planned a pilot test. Of the 88 percent of 1995 grantees that planned to release an RFP, 83 percent had done so within 2 years. By that time, 83 percent had their equipment delivered, 58 percent that planned pilot tests had completed them, and approximately 59 percent of the agencies had the equipment in use by the end users. Of 10 1995 MORE grantees selected for site visits on the basis of their reported success in implementing mobile computing technology, only two--Austin, Texas, and Racine, Wisconsin--had the majority of their mobile computers in full use when our visits occurred between February 1997 and June 1998. At that time, Austin was the most advanced operational agency among our sites in its automated report writing, with more than 500 reports per day being submitted by portable computers. The agency estimated the implementation of more than 200 mobile computers, each saving 1 hour of officer time per day, would save an estimated 42 FTE positions. This time savings was to be achieved through more efficient report writing and a reduction in supervisor time. Whether the computers saved this time as estimated could not be independently confirmed during our visit, but the agency had done a small before-after time study that yielded results consistent with projections. In Racine, the agency estimated its mobile computers would save an average of 1.5 hours per day per officer. At the time of our visit, the computers were used only for the MDT wireless access functions, which save officer time by eliminating the wait for the dispatcher to run license and registration checks from the patrol car. Running a large number of checks sometimes occurs in the course of a problem-solving project, but usually the time savings from wireless checks do not accrue in large enough segments to allow the officers to do other tasks. At that time the wireless access had had the benefit of encouraging officers to run more vehicle tag checks. The biggest redeployable time savings was expected from automated field reporting, which was planned for the future. The agency is setting up a system to take advantage of officer time saved--a loosely structured problem-solving operation which will work as a fourth shift. This shift will handle chronic problems and will be freed from answering calls. Three of the agencies we visited were pursuing wireless, or at least remote, field reporting with MCTs. Miami Police Department proceeded in stages, had the MDT functions operational by August 1997, and was recently reported to be testing wireless field reporting using Cellular Digital Packet Data technology. The San Diego Police Department (SDPD) was approaching operational status for its elaborate menu-driven field reporting software in several districts, with submission from within 1,000 feet of receiving towers outside district headquarters, using AERONET antenna cards plugged into the computer units. Using the SDPD reporting software, the San Diego School Police planned to save officer time by remote submission from their assigned schools to police headquarters over the school administration Wide Area Network (WAN). Unfortunately, the WAN was upgraded in a way that made it incompatible with the reporting software, and so reports were still being submitted by fax and interoffice mailing of diskettes at the time of our second visit. Mobile computing technology implementation is complex, and understanding it requires some specific background on its intended uses. These details are explained in appendix 4-A. Time savings and other effects of technology As explained in chapter 2, COPS MORE emerged as a resolution of two competing priorities: (1) advancing, through redeployment of time saved through enhanced productivity, the administration's goal of adding 100,000 officers to the Nation's sworn force, and (2) responding to some prominent local police and elected officials' pleas for new technology instead of additional police officers. Therefore, we wanted to measure both productivity increases and other local benefits and costs flowing from MORE-funded technology. Specifically, our Wave 3 survey included items to learn the following from COPS MORE technology grantees as of June-July 1998: 1. How many FTEs of sworn officer time are being saved from operational technology? 2. How many FTEs of sworn officer time are expected from technology when it becomes operational (which we expressed as a percentage of projected savings in the grant application)? 3. How are sworn officer time savings being measured? 4. What other local costs and benefits are expected from the MORE-funded technology? Summer 1998 was still early to assess the effects of MORE-funded technologies. Systems other than mobile and management/administrative computers were requested and funded too rarely to support detailed estimates. For the computers, the local knowledge base regarding their operation was sparse because few grantees had fully operational systems. The preliminary data available at that time suggested that redeployable officer time will fall short of projections and be difficult to measure but that other local benefits are already occurring. Based on Wave 3 survey data, we estimate that, as of June 1998, operational technology of all types yielded 15 percent of the 16,870 projected FTEs funded through December 1997. Grantees expected to receive another 34 percent of projections, so the funded technology would eventually yield 8,326 FTEs or 49 percent of total projections. Mobile computers alone, which accounted for about a third of total projections, were expected to yield only 31 percent of projections when all were fully operational. Only half of all MORE technology grantees reported having systems in place to measure redeployment when and if it occurs. In contrast, interviewees during site visits named and demonstrated a host of local benefits other than time savings from each of the various technologies. Examples included higher apprehension rates due to wider and faster information dissemination, safer officers when arrestees are arraigned in lockup by video instead of being transported between jail and court, and better relations with communities from such systems as Reverse 911, crime maps on agency Web sites, and "Are You Okay?" systems to check electronically on homebound citizens. Both productivity increases and local benefits from MORE-funded technology will be reexamined in our Wave 4 survey, which is being fielded in June 2000. The following subsections explain these Wave 3 findings in more detail. Time savings. In June 1998, COPS MORE technology grantees in our Wave 3 sample were asked to report the numbers of FTEs of increased productivity already being received from operational technology and, separately, the number of FTEs expected from other technology when it does become operational. Table 4-19 reports the results. Overall, total FTEs already accruing from operational technology and anticipated from future operational technology total 8,326, or 49 percent of the 16,870 projected FTEs reported in the COPS Office grants management database.25 Of the 49 percent, 15 percent was estimated to accrue from operational technology, while 34 percent was anticipated when the remaining technology became operational. Grantees with mobile computers and the mobile-desktop combinations report the least optimistic projections. Agencies in these two categories anticipate only 31 percent and 38 percent, respectively, of the FTEs they originally projected. This may indicate that agencies exaggerated their expectations in the beginning or that, as the technology becomes operational, they realized the FTE yield may not be as large as originally thought. Whether the remaining redeployment projections for MORE-funded technology will be met and whether the redeployment will increase the level of policing in communities are still in question. Few agencies have systems in place to measure time savings and redeployment. Further, whether any time savings will be applied to community policing depends on whether necessary management changes occur. The first stumbling block in measuring redeployment is that, in general, agencies were not measuring the time savings as of June 1998. In Wave 3, only 48 percent of the local/county MORE agencies surveyed indicated they had at least one measurement system in place. Among those, 55 percent had officers keeping a log or the agency tracks information provided by the officer; 53 percent used informal estimates; 41 percent analyzed dispatch records; 39 percent analyze assignment sheets or duty rosters; 31 percent conducted surveys; 23 percent had no specific record-keeping system; and 8 percent used other methods. The COPS office has since mounted technical assistance on this issue. Agencies report great confidence that sworn officer time is being saved already from operational technology and that further savings will accrue as the remaining technology comes on line--albeit in smaller amounts than projected in applications. As shown in table 4-20, 93 percent of MORE technology grantees reported that time savings were accruing. This statement was made by 88 percent of respondents with a measurement system in place and 99 percent of those without. Even with a system in place, accurately assessing the time savings and redeployment facilitated by mobile computer systems is difficult for at least two reasons. One is that labor-intensive time analyses with rigorous designs would be needed to measure time saved by writing reports in the field. Another is that in many situations accurate redeployment estimates require that even very small segments of officer time be accurately recorded throughout the day and combined into a time block for community policing activities in both the records and reality. Channeling saved officer time into proactive community policing will require management decisions about the best use of officers' time as well as training, supervision, and creative ways of allowing officers to set aside segments of time for community policing (see Maxfield, 1998, for examples). Additional costs and benefits from MORE-funded technology. Many MORE technology grantees experienced unexpected technology-related costs beyond the required match, benefits other than measurable productivity increases, or both. These are discussed next. In general, MORE technology grantees could not request COPS funding for a number of unexpected costs related to the technology. Examples include computer staff time, installation time, or training time. Many grants necessitated hiring or redirecting staff for installation and maintenance of equipment. The staff time needed for installation of the technology was often extensive. Some agencies had officers fill these roles, while others hired civilian specialists. Some agencies successfully used the MORE grant to fund consultants, or hired civilian computer personnel through the MORE program. This required sophisticated grant writing, however, as this time had to be shown as redeploying officers. Some larger agencies included the time of new or existing staff in the entire technology package. Staff or vendor time is also needed to maintain the new equipment. For example, maintenance on computers includes setting them up, fixing them or sending them for repair, backing up data when needed, upgrading the software, conducting virus checks. This cost is one which is not addressed in the COPS funding or the redeployment estimates. Some agencies experienced significant unexpected implementation costs. Depending on technology type, 23 percent to 27 percent of MORE technology grantees implementing the five most common technology categories reported unexpected implementation costs increased the local cost of their MORE grants by at least 10 percent over the match they had originally planned (see table 4- 21 for details). Not surprisingly, the likelihood the grantee would experience 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. That percentage 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. During interviews and site visits, staff members in MORE grantee agencies reported receiving benefits other than measurable increases in officer productivity from their MORE-funded technologies. The precise nature of these benefits depends on the type of technology. As reported earlier in this chapter, mobile computers were expected to save more time than any other technology, primarily by reducing travel time back and forth to police stations to file reports. Completing reports in the field, for example, from a public place such as a community policing substation in a mall or restaurant, produces an additional benefit of keeping officers in the public eye. By staying on their beats, officers can respond to calls for service more quickly. In addition, police officers can be more available for community policing functions. However, unless wireless transmission is part of the package, officers must either delay dissemination of the report (thereby, perhaps, delaying the start of an investigation) or take time to travel to headquarters to submit the report. Other potential benefits of writing reports with mobile computers include automated information retrieval, which is expected to save the time of reviewing supervisors and detectives. For agencies that use the mobile computers to bypass the dispatcher to do license and NCIC checks, the wait to receive this information may be much shorter than it was in heavy volume situations when the dispatcher or radio frequency is swamped. This produces an additional benefit in terms of officer safety. COPS MORE funded several different technologies intended to cut officers' "down time" associated with booking and arraignments. Depending on their implementation stage, several agencies expected or reported other benefits as well. One popular MORE-funded technology is a computerized fingerprint scanner. The scanners are intended to save officers' time by eliminating the need to complete multiple fingerprint cards. Because the scanner stores the image digitally, it eliminates the need to roll prints on separate cards for local, State, and FBI files, as well as disposition verification. Officers can also key in alphabetic fields only once. Grantees tended to choose scanners that were compatible with the Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS), which was developed by the FBI and is used by many State fingerprint repositories. Because AFIS stores and indexes all 10 prints taken from an arrestee, it increases investigators' chances of matching latent prints obtained at the scene of a crime. The Oak Park (Illinois) Police Department, one of our study sites, anticipated other benefits. One is nearly instantaneous electronic fingerprint checks against repositories in the FBI, State identification bureaus, and nearby localities--neighboring Chicago in Oak Park's case. The computer also allows the agency to easily enlarge and print the fingerprints for use in court displays and reduces the cost of doing fingerprint searches for recruit applications, school employees, and cab drivers. Another type of booking/arraignment equipment is closed circuit television between the lockup facility and the arraignment courtroom. Instead of transporting prisoners back and forth between the jail and courthouse, the Des Moines (Iowa) Police Department used MORE funding to purchase this equipment. With it in place, initial court appearances are done by video from within the lockup facility. This provides a time savings in transporting prisoners and, in fact, has allowed the agency to reassign two officers back to patrol. While it was not clear to our site team that the officers had been redeployed into proactive community policing, the system produced other benefits: reduced risk of injury to officers, reduced risk of prisoner escape from custody, and a lessening of the indignity offenders may feel as they are physically transported in public areas while handcuffed and in leg shackles. The Huntington Beach (California) Consortium was building an automated jail booking system to link the eight member agencies that deliver prisoners to the same jail. The Huntington Beach Police Department estimates that large time savings will accrue because arresting officers will "drop off the prisoner and run" instead of completing all six forms by hand at the station. Because the system has scanning capability, officers will no longer deliver forms, fingerprints, and photographs with the prisoner to the county jail. Additional benefits can accrue if access to all that information is shared across the region. COPS MORE funded two other technologies that can contribute directly to community policing: Reverse 911 and Guardian Alert. Reverse 911 is a telephone system that can be programmed to make broadcast calls to the community, notifying large numbers of residents about upcoming community meetings and providing them with crime prevention tips or warnings of incidents in their areas. It can also be helpful in calling residents when trying to locate a missing person. To meet the cost-effectiveness criteria, one department projected time savings from having the system rather than officers make calls to the community. This savings, of course, is only potential unless such calls are already being made, which was not observed on our field visit. The local benefits lie in enhancing the department's partnership-building effort while reducing its cost, enlisting citizens as "eyes and ears" in search of missing persons or criminals operating in an area, and perhaps encouraging greater use of crime prevention tips. The Guardian Alert system, also known as the "Are You Okay?" program, calls house-bound individuals to check on their well-being. It was in use in two of our visited sites, the Fort Worth and North Charleston Police Departments. If a participant fails to answer the phone, a police car is dispatched. As with Reverse 911, the time savings projections are potential unless the agency provided this service using officer calls before. But even in a setting where no time savings would accrue, the technology provides a benefit in the form of a new service to the community, which can be thought of as additional community policing. It is likely also to enhance agencies' partnership-building efforts. MORE-supported civilians As explained in chapter 2, agencies were allowed to request funding for up to $25,000 per civilian per year through the COPS MORE program. These civilians were to be hired specifically to redeploy sworn officers into community policing activities. The application instructions noted that "examples of permissible support resources include the replacement of sworn officers in administrative or clerical positions with nonsworn employees, programs utilizing volunteers in support of redeployment, additional administrative resources that increase officer presence in communities, or other systems that serve the goals of community policing." Each civilian COPS MORE grant was for 1 year, but the awards for civilians could be renewed for up to an additional 2 years. Dorothy Guyot (as quoted in Shernock, 1988) has categorized civilian positions in police departments based on the relationships between the civilian position and the sworn position that it replaces or, in our evaluation terms, redeploys. The categories are as follows: 1. Shedding support tasks from sworn officers to specialized civilians (e.g., administrative/clerical functions). 2. Replacing sworn personnel in existing positions (e.g., dispatchers, property room manager, or jail/corrections positions). 3. Placing civilians in specialist staff positions to improve officers' productivity (e.g., computer technician, crime analyst, or grant manager). 4. Staffing new community policing positions (e.g., domestic violence specialist, social worker, CPTED planner, community resource specialist, community service officers, or volunteer coordinator). Under the MORE civilian grant program, grantee agencies use civilians in all four of these ways. Our findings about their use are based on five sources of data: (1) grant databases from the COPS Office listing the numbers and amounts of civilian grants, (2) project visits to 30 sites, conducted in 1997, (3) short phone surveys conducted by U.I. staff in the summer of 1996; (4) a database of 1995 MORE grant applications coded and entered by the U.I. staff; and (5) Wave 3 survey data from June 1998. Civilian funding. By the end of 1995 MORE awards for civilians that had been mailed or obligated totaled $144.6 million funding 6,506 FTEs. These expenditures averaged $22,228 per civilian. As with the hiring programs, agencies were required to pay a 25-percent match for the funding. The MORE civilian funding was for 1 year only, but agencies were encouraged to request supplemental grants to retain their civilians for up to 2 years after the first grant expired. By the end of 1996, $51.1 million had been awarded as supplemental grants for civilians, 28 percent of the MORE civilian funding. As of June 1998, the amount of civilian funds had grown to $287,178,637, which was expected to support 12,975 FTEs. The New York City Police Department received $80.8 million, 56 percent of the MORE civilian funds awarded by the end of 1996. The Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department were the next highest civilian fund recipients with $6.1 million (4 percent) and $3.1 million (2 percent) in awarded grants by the end of 1996. The majority of agencies (73 percent) received funding for the FTE equivalent of one full- or part-time civilian. Nine agencies were awarded grants totaling 50 or more and these ranged up to a grant and supplement for 1,560 civilians for the New York City Police Department. Hiring civilians. Hiring civilians to redeploy officers is, in part, based on the idea that civilians are less expensive than sworn officers. Harring (1981) notes that New York City estimates that civilians cost from one-third to one-half the cost of a police officer, controlling for policing practices and other local conditions. Training for civilians is generally shorter, liability insurance requirements are fewer, and civilians don't necessarily wear uniforms, carry weapons, or require vehicles. Those who are not professionals often receive lower pay than officers and are not part of the police pension system. MORE funding of civilians provides modest encouragement for a trend toward civilianization of law enforcement that began more than two decades ago, according to Heininger and Urbanek (1983). Between 1990 and 1993, the number of full-time civilians employed by large municipal law enforcement agencies grew at an average annual rate of 3 percent, from 52,191 to 56, 412 (Reaves, 1992; Reaves and Smith, 1995). Between 1993 and 1997, the number of full-time civilians employed by large municipal law enforcement agencies grew at an average annual rate of 4 percent, from 56,412 to 63,458. According to the agencies sampled in June 1998, in the years from 1995 to 1998, from 40 to 50 percent of MORE-funded agencies reported they were already hiring civilians by the year they reported first hiring MORE-funded civilians, and more than half of the agencies reported they are currently recruiting to fill at least one or two civilian positions. Our site visits indicated that, in general, agencies progressed much faster in hiring civilians than in implementing MORE-funded technology. As in the technology projects, upon receiving notification of grant funding, many agencies experienced delays in project startup due to local factors. Besides the potential delays that affected all COPS programs, civil service tests were often required, which were subject to local scheduling. Training length varied widely because the positions varied widely. In June 1998, more than 80 percent of COPS MORE grantees funded for civilians reported they had completed their civilian hiring. As shown in figure 4- 10, this figure was approximately the same regardless of the civilian position: clerical, telephone reports, dispatch, and booking positions. All of the agencies expected to have hired all of their MORE-funded civilians for those four positions by the end of 1999. Replacing sworn with civilian staff. The following are examples of MORE-funded civilian assignments we found on our site visits, classified using the Guyot categories. Under the category of shedding support tasks are clerical/administrative and record maintenance positions. The most frequently found positions were clerical and administrative civilians (65 percent). The functions vary by agency, but common ones were typing, data entry, filing, scheduling duty hours, taking phone messages, and maintaining criminal records. The Austin Police Department at one time was burdened with a record maintenance backlog of 129,000 arrest sheets and 22,000 expungements that needed to be filed. With civilianization, the backlogs of arrest sheets and expungements were completely eliminated. The unit is much more efficient due to the use of technology, specifically computers and photo imaging. Civilians have become proficient at conducting a wide range of tasks (i.e., Brady Act clearance letters, public fingerprinting, and general clearance letters). The civilianization of the records department allowed a captain, lieutenant, and sergeant to return to field operations. Under the Guyot category of replacing sworn personnel in existing positions, one of the more common uses of civilians is as desk officers. For example, a small agency hired five civilian duty officers to staff the agency's front desk. They take walk-in reports, payments for bond and vehicle tow fees, answer the Crime Stoppers line, dispatch tow trucks, keep books on repossessed and abandoned cars, enter stolen item reports into NCIC, and secure the building at night. Plans were under way to train and use them to guard prisoners being held before being taken to the booking facility. Civilian desk or duty officers are also being deployed to new community policing stations or to substations. For example, in Fort Worth, Texas, seven control officers were hired to staff the front desks in the Neighborhood Patrol District stations. Another civilian use is dispatch duty. Typically the dispatch function has been one of the first to be transferred to civilians. In our sample of 1995 MORE grantees funded for civilians, 13 percent of the applications requested funds for civilian dispatchers. There has been some concern from the ranks of police about this transition. Many officers believe dispatchers do not understand the realities of the street experience and could therefore jeopardize the officers. The dispatchers also can have quite a bit of control over situations and officers. They can monitor a patrol officer throughout the shift, file reports on officers, and control who responds to which calls. One tactic large and small agencies alike are adopting is the use of alternative call responses, or differential response. Agencies are finding ways to sort incoming calls to selectively respond to calls in some less expensive way than immediate dispatch of a patrol car. In Austin, Texas, 10 MORE-funded civilians answer a phone line in which they take police reports on lower priority calls--many of which do not require a police unit to respond to the scene. One of the main uses for this system is to take reports over the telephone for crimes in which the chance of arrest is small because the perpetrator is long gone. Estimating that half of all calls can be handled by telephone at a savings of 78 officer minutes per call, the agency estimated that adding 10 civilian call response employees could save 20.8 sworn FTEs per year. The San Bernardino (California) Sheriff's Department has a similar program, the Telephone Reporting Unit (TRU), which is staffed with civilians hired with a COPS MORE grant. The sheriff's department did a followup analysis of deputy time savings due to the TRU. They estimate that the TRU saved 6.37 sworn FTEs in 1996, somewhat short of the 8.7 FTEs estimated in the application and the cost-effectiveness threshold for MORE applications, but certainly closer to the goal than some of the MORE-funded projects achieved at that time. One agency reported a secondary problem with alternative response: getting the information on the low-priority calls back to the precincts from which they came. Without this feedback, disorder patterns may be missed, and staff cannot address these problems. Civilians are also used as evidence technicians. COPS funding allowed the Oregon State Police (OSP) to hire 26 civilian evidence technicians who collect evidence, freeing up troopers to conduct investigations or work in the crime labs. In the crime labs, the evidence technician tasks generally include the processing of evidence, records keeping, lab cleanup, maintaining evidence in storage, and, when ordered by the court, destruction of evidence. This frees laboratory ("bench") technicians to do analysis. Since OSP acquired AFIS technology, the agency has received an increasing number of latent print "lift cards" from other agencies. The civilian evidence technicians run an increased number of them through the AFIS system. After attending an 80-hour evidence-handling training course developed by the agency--compared with 4 to 8 hours for rookies in the training academy--the evidence technicians began lifting fingerprints and collecting evidence at crime scenes. By the time of our site visit in January 1997, OSP considered this innovation a success that had freed up substantial, though unmeasured, sworn officers' time. Placement of civilians in specialist staff positions to improve officer's productivity, another Guyot category, is exemplified by use of civilians as computer specialists. Smaller agencies relied on inhouse sworn personnel with almost no training to install mobile computers. This was also true to some degree in the larger agencies, although training may have been more readily available. In many cases the agencies relied almost exclusively on vendors to plan and implement, leaving the agency in a vulnerable position. Some agencies used COPS funding effectively to get trained civilian personnel to develop mobile computer systems. The MORE technology application did not explicitly state that funding could be used for computer expertise, but some agencies creatively incorporated this in the funding package. In the civilian package, it was not easy to hire computer personnel unless redeployment was projected to occur directly. One agency that did this was Pocatello (Idaho) Police Department, which hired one crime analyst who also had computer expertise. Under the category of new community policing functions is the civilian position of community coordinator. A number of agencies created positions to assist specifically with the community policing function. A listing of duties for positions in this category include tasks such as: coordinate special community policing projects, gather data on the effectiveness of the community policing program, identify law enforcement problems and concerns and develop relationships with the community, coordinate volunteers, and serve as community resource specialists. In Fort Worth, a civilian was hired part time with MORE funds to coordinate a program called the Code Blue Neighborhood Watch. In Pocatello, a civilian coordinates the Neighborhood Watch program and has successfully recruited 464 people (in a town of only 50,000) to volunteer for the police department or to be Neighborhood Watch block captains. Distribution of civilians by June 1998. Agencies that reported all their MORE-funded civilians were assigned to a single position category were used to compute the distribution of civilians in the positions described above as of June 1998. The top three positions were clerical, dispatch, and telephone response: 43 percent reported civilians were in clerical positions, 34 percent of agencies reported civilians filled dispatch positions, and 26 percent reported civilians filled telephone response positions. Creating civilian positions. Civilians on COPS grants were intended to make officers available for redeployment to community policing, but some also took the opportunity to expand an activity by creating and filling a newly created position or to increase the total number of people in an existing position. For the top four positions with the highest frequencies of civilian assignment reported in table 4-22 (clerical, telephone reports, dispatch, and booking positions), 50 to 73 percent of the agencies reported a new position was created. Nine to twenty-three percent of the agencies reported civilians increased the total number of a position that had previously existed. Overall, 73 to 80 percent of the agencies indicated they had either created a new position or increased the total number of people in each existing position. Retention. As of the Wave 3 survey period in June 1998, 64 percent of MORE civilian grantees reported that all of the original civilians hired were still with the agency. Of the remaining 36 percent, 80 percent indicated that all of the hired civilians who had left had been replaced. Redeployment. Positions in the four Guyot categories raise different problems for estimating and measuring redeployment. Simple replacements are usually the easiest: redeployment occurs on a one-for-one basis (at lower hourly cost) if the civilian simply does what the sworn officer was doing. Measuring the savings from shedding routine tasks requires probability and time estimates for those tasks--for example, in what percentage of cases is evidence collected at the scene and, in those cases, how much time is spent on average. The situation is less straightforward if the introduction of civilians is part of a change in the way policing is done. For example, if 10-minute telephone call taken by civilians replaces a 60-minute car response by officers, then redeployment occurs on a six to one basis. Despite the range of ways in which civilians could allow officer redeployment, agencies tended to project one-to-one redeployment. An analysis of the 1996 COPS MORE grantee database found that for the 2,100 FTEs requested through civilian redeployment, approximately 2,085 civilian positions were requested, indicating the average redeployment across all agencies was approximately one-to-one. The redeployment estimates varied from 65 civilians providing an estimated 203 sworn officer FTEs in Washington, D.C., to 200 civilians providing 150 sworn FTEs in New York City. According to many sites, redeployment is planned to occur as civilians perform tasks that previously took officers' time, saving small segments of time from many officers. Ninety-six percent of all agencies in June 1998 reported that civilians saved sworn officers' time. As shown in table 4-23, this percentage was very high regardless of whether or not a measurement system was in place. Implementation of grants for overtime The MORE program awarded approximately $29.3 million in overtime grants in 1995 and 1996, which was about 6 percent of the 1995 MORE application. After 1995, MORE grants no longer funded overtime for three reasons: (1) many funded agencies felt the $75,000 limit coupled with time-and-a-half raised the implicit match too high, (2) some abuses were reported to the COPS Office (for example, overtime to officers nearing retirement to raise the salary used in pension calculations), and (3) overtime was not seen by the Justice Department as leaving a legacy. Redeployment from overtime. The requirement for agencies that wished to request overtime under COPS MORE was straightforward; that is, "Only the payment of overtime for officers actually engaging in increased levels of community-oriented policing activities during the funded overtime period will be funded." The difficulty in this approach for the COPS Office was it would only result in a temporary redeployment of officers. Sites were not required to indicate they would assume this cost after the grant funding expired. Agencies used Federal funds for up to 75 percent of an officer's overtime wage (including time-and-a-half). This overtime amount was not to include benefits. Agencies were asked to pay the remaining 25 percent of the wage as a match. Overtime funds were typically used to have officers conduct new or expanded community policing activities. Often the funds were for some period shorter than a calendar year (e.g., a school year for a school resource officer, evenings during a year for someone assigned to community meetings, or during the winter months to check on vacation homes left vacant). The 1995 COPS MORE database lists 323 overtime awards totaling $15.4 million, ranging from an award of $738 to the city of Lewisburg, West Virginia, to $4.7 million to the Houston (Texas) Police Department. Most overtime grants were small. Of the 323 awards listed, 219 (68 percent) estimated they would redeploy the equivalent of one or fewer FTEs. (An FTE could be less than one, because they are counted in terms of officer hours and could be a portion of one officer's time.) In general, overtime funds were used to do typical community policing tactics--conduct foot or bike patrols, attend community meetings, and teach DARE programs, which occur during the school year or on part of an average shift. For the overtime program the mean number of hours accounted for by one redeployed officer was 1,777, which is 47 hours short of the 1,824 hours that serves as the COPS Office standard for the full-time equivalent of one officer. However, theoretically overtime hours will more directly result in hours of community policing because overtime hours are counted after vacation, sick leave, and training hours. Benefits of overtime. Overtime was considered by most agencies to have some benefits in spreading community policing. In an Urban Institute survey of 21 randomly selected recipients of MORE grants for overtime, all agreed the overtime enhanced their community policing efforts and provided additional time to engage in community policing without interfering with 911 responses. All but four agencies responded that the overtime funding gave supervisors an incentive to encourage officers to engage in community policing, which allowed the agency to experiment with community policing as an innovation. Notes 1. The Wave 3 survey sampled only medium-sized and large local/county agencies with hiring grants but all sizes of large local/county agencies with MORE grants. However, some of these agencies also had hiring grants, and they were questioned about those hiring grants. The Wave 3 hiring data from these small MORE grantees are not used in this chapter because the results may not be representative of all small agencies with hiring grants, but they are used in chapter 5 to calculate national estimates of COPS officers hired by small agencies. 2. The Wave 3 survey included only municipal and county agencies, which received 77 percent of hiring awards through the end of 1997. 3. Wave 1 analyses indicated that although large agencies had greater numbers of new officers to hire and train, the ratio of new officers to agency size was greater for smaller agencies. To illustrate, 1995 AHEAD grantees were awarded an average of eight officers through the program, while FAST agencies were awarded one officer on average. Further, AHEAD agencies received a range of 1 to 321 officers, while FAST agencies received a range of only 1 to 10 officers. The number of officers awarded to FAST agencies averaged 20 percent of the size of the existing sworn force and had a median value of 10 percent of the size of the sworn force. Approximately 6 percent of FAST agencies doubled their force. Officers awarded to AHEAD agencies, in contrast, averaged 2 percent of the number of sworn officers (officers granted to each AHEAD agency were limited to no more than 3 percent of the agency's size at the time of application). If these patterns have held for post-1995 COPS hiring grants, they suggest that the process of assimilating new officers has been potentially more challenging for small agencies. 4. Unless otherwise noted, all tables and figures in this chapter based on survey data report weighted counts, means, or percentages. The survey weights are explained in the methodology appendix at the end of this report. 5. The sample of agencies consisted originally of 233 randomly selected FAST agencies and 213 randomly selected AHEAD agencies. For these analyses, 1 (0.4 percent) of the FAST agencies and 18 (8.5 percent) of the AHEAD agencies were excluded because at the time of the survey they no longer had their COPS grant. 6. The Wave 3 sample of large agencies was stratified by COPS grant status as of early 1996 (nongrantee, FAST/AHEAD, UHP, MORE). The estimates presented in this section are weighted to reflect the agencies' differing probabilities of selection (see the methodological appendix on the Wave 3 survey design). 7. Approximately 6 percent of both the FAST and AHEAD agencies had not hired their officers. This small group of agencies, 13 of the sampled FAST agencies and 11 of the sampled AHEAD agencies (1 AHEAD respondent did not know whether the approved officers had been hired), experienced delays that were at least triple the average time-to-hiring for agencies that had completed hiring. For the nonhiring FAST agencies, an average of 14.8 months had elapsed from the time their funds were obligated by the Department of Justice to the time of the interview. For nonhiring AHEAD agencies, this figure was 16.6 months. Six of these thirteen FAST agencies indicated they were waiting for approval of local matching funds. However, the remaining FAST and AHEAD agencies that had not hired their officers did not identify any predominant reasons for the delay; 1 of the 13 FAST agencies and 2 (18 percent) of the 11 AHEAD agencies indicated the process was moving on a normal schedule. Agencies that had not hired their officers were asked why the officers had not been hired. Interviewers and project staff characterized the responses using categories such as moving on a normal schedule, pending approval of local funds, and pending available space in training classes. The most frequent characterization of the 13 nonhiring FAST agencies was they were waiting for approval of local funds (46 percent). The most frequent characterization of the 11 nonhiring AHEAD agencies was they were waiting to complete their process of recruiting, selecting, and hiring officers (27 percent). 8. Suppose Agency A, a COPS grantee, hires an officer away from Agency B. No net increase in total sworn force size occurs unless Agency B replaces that officer with a new recruit not currently working at another agency. If Agency B is not a COPS grantee, the replacement obviously requires expenditure of local funds. Even if Agency B is a COPS grantee, the replacement would have to be made with local funds to avoid supplanting. 9. Most of the hired FAST and AHEAD officers were in training by the time of the Wave 1 survey (see table 4-1). Twelve percent of the FAST agencies that had hired their officers had not begun training by the time of the interview. However, 42 percent of the 26 agencies that had hired officers but had not begun training stated explicitly they did not plan to train the officers, and another nearly 12 percent indicated the officers were already trained. Thirty-one percent of the FAST agencies that had not begun training indicated the process was moving on a normal schedule (interviewers and project staff characterized responses about training delays using categories such as moving on a normal schedule, pending approval of local funds, and pending available space in training classes). Only 1 percent of the AHEAD agencies that had hired officers had not begun training them. 10. At Wave 1, interviewers questioned respondents about the date when COPS officers did or were expected to "hit the streets" without explicitly defining the phrase "hit the streets." Consequently, respondents could indicate new officers were on the street even if the officers were still in field training. For both FAST and AHEAD agencies, the modal response was officers hit the street during the same month they were hired (53 percent for FAST agencies and 16 percent for AHEAD agencies). These figures reflect a very fast deployment process, though this might be expected in the case of the smaller FAST agencies. However, the figures may indicate some respondents considered field training to be "hitting the streets." In other cases, the results may reflect respondent error. The Wave 3 analyses of officer deployment are based on survey items asking if COPS officers had begun their "first regular assignments as new officers." Hence, the Wave 3 figures on officers deployed into the field should be less likely to include officers in field training. 11. The Wave 1 and Wave 3 deployment questions were not completely comparable. The Wave 1 survey required respondents to choose from direct deployment, backfill, and "other" strategies; combination strategies were not offered as an alternative. 12. Fifty-three percent of the FAST agencies reported they did community policing prior to 1995. 13. Note that 80 percent of the backfill FAST agencies that had selected officers for redeployment had also provided the officers with community policing training and about 75 percent had redeployed the officers into community policing. 14. Some agencies had only one COPS-funded officer. 15. We asked about both COPS-funded officers to be deployed directly to community policing and more experienced officers to be redeployed from routine patrol to community policing and backfilled by new COPS-funded officers. 16. The fractions of time reported spent on each activity cannot be interpreted literally because they add up to so much more than full time. This occurred because we neglected to include a "soft check" to resolve such situations during the telephone interview. Nevertheless, we believe the reports offer an approximate guide to the relative importance of these activities in the routines of the COPS-funded officers. 17. "Specialists" include: --Specialized units: community policing is done by specialized designated community police officers or a community policing unit that normally does not respond to calls; also there are traditional response units. --Split-force units: within each sector or beat, both specially designated community police officers and traditional response officers operate. "Generalists" include: --Temporal units: designated community police officers are assigned to shifts where community policing is most needed and give that program highest priority but also respond to calls as needed. --Generalized units: instead of making special designations, all officers build community policing into their normal routines. --Mixture units: a mixture of community policing and traditional response units; officers rotate between the two on a preset schedule. 18. Agencies were categorized into either a specialized or generalized group, based on the respondents' self-definition. Respondents were asked to choose the "approach to delivering community policing" that best describes their agency's approach. Choices included definitions of specialized, temporal, generalized, split force, and mixture structures. Two dominant groupings emerged from those groups. The community policing structures were coded into two groups, based on the respondent's self-definition. The specialized group consists of specialized unit and split force definitions of community policing. The generalized group consists of temporal, generalized, and mixture structures for community policing: 50.3 percent of agencies reported using the generalized structure, and 47.6 percent of agencies reported using the specialized structure. 19. Respondents were given a closed-end list of options and could choose as many as needed. Options were: --Larger felony caseloads. --Larger misdemeanor caseloads. --Smaller felony caseloads. --Smaller misdemeanor caseloads but greater burdens on such agencies as homeless shelters and detox units. --Greater demands on agencies that deal with violence in the home. --Greater demands on local agencies responsible for code enforcement, sanitation, and the like. --Greater demands on neighborhood or community associations, block groups, and local businesses. 20. Almost 41 percent of respondents reported "other" (n=131), after recoding; almost 34 percent of respondents stated other (n=107). 21. For all of the 1998 MORE analysis, agencies were included only if they reported having a MORE grant and COPS Office records agreed. New MORE awards for overtime were phased out after 1995, although a few 1995 overtime grants were renewed. 22. Under the $75,000, 3-year cap, the maximum hiring grant would cover the Federal share of one officer for 3 years, an average of $25,000 per officer year. This is the equivalent of 4 officer years per $100,000 of grant funds if the officer's salary plus fringe benefits totaled at least $33,333 per year. 23. Types of technology included in the "other" category: digital photography, citizen notification systems, tracking devices, automated fingerprint identification system machines, telecommunications, scanning stations, records management, auto vehicle locators, photo-imaging systems, micro-cassette recorders, assorted software, in-car video recorders, digital-imaging systems, mugshot systems, surveillance technologies, court-reporting systems, crime analysis technology, transcription equipment, fax machines. 24. A decrease from 59 percent to 44 percent would occur if, for example, between the two survey waves, about one-third of grantees received new awards for mobile computers, and no grantees with old or new awards became fully operational. 25. Projections were accumulated over all MORE technology grants awarded between 1995 and 1998 to each member of our sample of 1995 MORE technology grantees, weighted and summed within the mutually exclusive categories of technology types awarded. References Frank, J., S.G. Brandl, and R.C. Watkins. (1997). "The Content of Community Policing: A Comparison of the Daily Activities of Community and 'Beat' Officers." Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategy and Management 20:716-728. Guyot, D. (1979). "Bending Granite: Attempts to Change the Rank Structure of American Police Departments." Journal of Police Science and Administration 7 (3):253-284. Harring, S. (1981). "Taylorization of Police Work--Prospects for the 1980s." Insurgent Sociologist 11 (4):25-32. Heininger, B.L., and J. Urbanek. (1983). "Civilianization of American Police: 1970-1980." Journal of Police Science and Administration 11 (2):200-205. IACP. (1997). Community Policing Deployment Models and Strategies. Unpublished paper prepared by the International Association of Chiefs of Police on behalf of the Community Policing Consortium. Alexandria, Virginia. Maxfield, M. (1998). Making Time: An Issues Brief from the National COPS Evaluation. Washington, D.C.: Urban Institute. National Institute of Justice. (1993). Toward the Paperless Police Department: The Use of Laptop Computers. (NCJ 143291) Research in Brief. Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice. Reaves, B. (1992). State and Local Police Departments, 1990. (NCJ 133284). Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice. Reaves, B., and P.Z. Smith. (1995). Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics, 1993: Data for Individual State and Local Agencies with 100 or More Officers. (NCJ 148825). Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice. Reaves, B., and A. Goldberg. (2000). Local Police Departments, 1997. (NCJ 173429). Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice. Shernock, S.K. (1988). "The Differential Significance of Sworn Status and Organizational Position in the Civilianization of the Police Communications Division." Journal of Police Science and Administration 16:288-302. --------------------------- Appendix 4-A. Implementing MORE-Funded Mobile Computing Technology Elizabeth Langston Mobile computing projects dominated the MORE technology grant program-- 74 percent of agencies receiving MORE funding for technology in 1995 requested mobile computers. Because of this we made a special effort to document the implementation of these projects through a survey of 185 agencies that received 1995 MORE funds for mobile computing projects. This telephone survey, conducted in the fall of 1997, asked agencies about their implementation and redeployment status and to describe the lessons learned from the experience. Other sources of information for this section include an analysis of 1995 MORE grant applications and visits to 10 sites that implemented mobile computer systems with 1995 MORE funding. This appendix addresses the following issues: --What was the intended design and function of the mobile computer projects? --What stage of implementation had the sites reached? --What infrastructure was required to implement the mobile computer systems? --Did implementation and redeployment proceed as expected? Agency Uses of Mobile Computers The term "mobile computing" here refers to computers in police vehicles or in the community--uses outside of the normal desktop function. Many law enforcement agencies install computer systems in vehicles, and others issue stand-alone portable laptop computers to officers. The technology used to do this varies. Laptop computers, mobile data terminals, mobile data computers, and handheld computers (recently on the market) are constantly modified to meet law enforcement needs. Mobile digital terminals have been available for many years and perform some of the functions now done by mobile computers. Because these technologies can be used in similar ways, it is helpful to discuss mobile computers in terms of the three main functions that they serve in law enforcement. Automated field reporting allows officers to complete incident and accident reports (as well as other administrative tasks) while in their communities. This is expected to save officer time and lead to more legible, accurate, and timely reports. Wireless access from the computer to the station allows officers to bypass the dispatcher to automatically check vehicle tags, driver's license numbers, NCIC, and State, as well as local criminal justice information systems databases for wanted persons and warrants. Wireless communication allows officers to send messages from car to car and car to dispatch. With portable computers, which are used as standalone computers, officers have access to e-mail and the Internet through modems or local area networks (LANs). Figure 4A-1 describes the planned functions of MORE-funded mobile computer technology, as described in a fall 1997 telephone survey. The majority of agencies (57 percent) plan to implement both field reporting and wireless access functions. Another 37.8 percent of the agencies plan to do reporting only, 1.4 percent plan to use the wireless access functions only, and 4.1 percent plan to do neither. In general, agencies plan to do both these functions using the same computer equipment. We visited 10 sites receiving 1995 MORE funding for mobile computers. Of these sites, six planned to do both, two planned to do reports only, and one was doing wireless access only. The tenth site, San Diego, had installed mobile data terminals in vehicles before the MORE funding was available. The police department used MORE funds to implement the report writing function. However, the agency found the computers needed for the report writing functions were not compatible with its existing MDT modems, so it programmed the wireless functions as well and purchased AERONET technology for report submission. In the other six sites which planned to do both, most started with the wireless access function and planned to install report writing in the future. Implementation Status Figure 4A-2 describes the planning and installation status of six common mobile computing technologies that use wireless access. Most agencies plan to eventually maintain a remote connection to the agency or a 911 center. In the fall of 1997, 17 percent of the agencies had already installed wireless access, and 39 percent had the incident/traffic report writing functions in the hands of most or all of the end users. Functions such as geographic information systems (mapping) and global positioning systems (which indicates vehicle and destination locations) are expected to be available in the future but are a long way from being universally implemented at this time. Many of the sites mentioned they hope officers will eventually take fingerprints from the vehicle and pull up mug shots to identify persons in the field. Agencies have the option of mounting the equipment in the vehicle or issuing it to the officer as a standalone computer to be used in the field. In our survey we found 57.2 percent of the agencies plan to mount the computer in the car, 36.2 percent plan to issue it as a stand-alone computer and 6.6 percent plan some other way of deploying the computer. Infrastructure Needs Wireless connectivity To allow officers to have wireless access (to bypass the dispatcher to check vehicle tags, driver's license numbers, etc.), a wireless link is required to connect the computer remotely to the necessary databases. Of our 10 initial sites (1995) and 3 additional sites (1996) receiving funding for mobile computing at the time of our first visit, wireless access was being successfully pursued in four sites--San Diego; Oregon State Police; Miami; and Racine, Wisconsin. Establishing the wireless link required extensive infrastructure and special equipment for the laptops. Data transmission over the wireless link can be accomplished in a variety of ways. If a department has an available frequency on its police radio system, the terminal device can be connected to the radio network via a separate mobile radio modem mounted in the vehicle, often in the trunk. However, upgrades are typically required for wireless transmission of full reports, mug shots, and other large electronic documents. One upgrade option for wireless connectivity is Cellular Digital Packet Data (CDPD) that uses a cellular modem to transmit data over the existing cellular network. Although CDPD utilizes the same basic infrastructure as the standard cellular phone network, it is based on an entirely different transmission protocol and is not available in many areas. Fresno County Sheriff's Department, in mid-California, selected CDPD for its data transmission system. This was intended to avoid the capital expenses required to build an infrastructure of transmitter sites and the accompanying maintenance costs. The department will use a system put in place by AT&T for commercial service. Other agencies considered this option but were concerned about the potential for price hikes under an arrangement with a commercial provider. In our mobile computer survey we found that the most commonly planned type of wireless connectivity was by radio frequency (40 percent), CDPD (26 percent), analog cellular (13 percent), undecided (14 percent), and other (8 percent). ("Other" included CAD, modem at docking station, cable, "loosely" and downloading at station, answers that suggest the question was not clear to all respondents.) We asked agencies that planned to connect their units to a central network if they had to upgrade their existing communication system to accommodate data transmission: 72 percent said yes, 26 percent said no, and 2 percent hadn't decided. We then asked what sort of upgrades were needed. Table 4A-1 describes the most commonly mentioned upgrades. "Some other way" included adding additional software or computer equipment, radios or radio modems for vehicles, a new CAD system, or new telephone equipment. Transmitting reports Agencies planning automated field reporting must find ways to transmit the reports to a central location for further processing, such as a supervisor's review or analysis. Automated field reporting is expected to save commuting time because reports are sent from the field, eliminating an officer's trip back to the station. However, a complete wireless/remote transfer of data in a paperless organization was not found in any of the sites. At present, data is expected to be downloaded mainly when officers return to their dispatch locations. At the time of our survey, 24 percent of the agencies planning this had not yet decided how to do this. Of those that had decided, multiple ways were planned including downloading the files at the station (86 percent) or printing paper copies (75 percent), as shown in table 4A-2. Infrastructure required to implement the reporting systems Some agencies are trying to integrate the new technology into a mature infrastructure. The new mobile computers must interact with expensive and extensive dispatch and records systems already in place and often years old. However, many agencies awarded funds for technologies were in varying stages of upgrading their records management and CAD systems. Our survey found in 59 percent of the agencies, the mobile computer project is part of a larger technical upgrade. Of these, agencies reported technology projects shown in table 4A-3. As an example of a typical situation involving technological change, in the Pocatello Police Department, a small municipal agency in Idaho, the records system was designed years ago using proprietary software. This ensured that the original vendor had to be called in to write programs to conduct crime analysis. As the agency adopted community policing, they were interested in conducting more sophisticated crime analysis and did not want to rely on the vendor. Independent of its COPS MORE funding for mobile computers, the agency purchased and installed a new records management system. The system upgrade was expected to facilitate the data collection functions of the new mobile computers, making it possible to download records from the new mobile computers, which would not have been possible with the old system. Implementation Status of the Mobile Computers Given the installation intricacies, a rather lengthy period of time can be expected to install the mobile computer systems, varying, of course, by the size and scope of the system. As mentioned previously in the body of this chapter, based on a telephone survey of agencies receiving 1995 MORE funding for mobile computers, in September 1997 approximately 59 percent were estimated to have the equipment in use by all or most of the end users. The same survey found that agencies receiving MORE funding for mobile computers estimated they would have their equipment in use by all or most of the end users in a mean time of 10.8 months after receiving the grant award, with estimates ranging from 0 to 32 months. As a cautionary note for further research, the site teams found it was extremely difficult to distinguish between efforts that had already been completed and efforts in the planning or developmental stages. The interviewees tended to discuss the functionalities of the equipment as though it were already installed and operational, perhaps out of enthusiasm for the vision of the finished project. Actual observation of the equipment in use was required to understand the implementation stage of the project, which often differed from the impressions left by phone and even onsite conversations. For our first round of site visits in January-March 1997, we visited 10 1995 MORE grantees that, based on a short phone survey, seemed to be ahead of other sites in the implementation process. (We visited three additional agencies with 1996 MORE funding in the second round of visits.) Of the 10 sites, only Austin, Texas, and Racine had the majority of their equipment in use. Four of the first round of agencies were conducting pilot tests or were in the installation process, and four were in the procurement stage. As reported earlier in the body of this chapter, agencies applying for 1995 MORE funds estimated on average that mobile computers would save a mean of 2.4 hours per officer per 8-hour shift. This estimate varies as time saved depends upon the function of the portable computers. Activities where time savings are expected are concentrated in three areas. The report writing function is expected to decrease the amount of time officers need to complete reports (in part due to fewer corrections, elimination of duplicate data entries, and the use of "cut and paste" options). The relative speed of the two data entry methods (handwritten and computer) has not yet been tested and would be an interesting topic of study. One might expect that one of the most significant benefits of having officers enter reports into the computer would be reduced clerical time needed to key the data into the computer or file and process the paper reports. Because this clerical time savings is not counted in the redeployment estimates, it was rarely mentioned as a benefit, except in site visits. Secondly, laptops and MDTs are expected to reduce travel time to and from police stations. Most agencies plan to do reporting in the field. This can save time in a variety of ways. Officers will be asked to complete reports in the field, from the squad car or from a public place, such as a community policing substation in a mall or in a restaurant. Agencies stated this has the advantage of keeping the officer out in the public while completing reports. By staying within their beats, officers can respond to calls for service more quickly and serve a community policing function. In some agencies officers are asked to return to the station periodically to turn in reports. Time is saved if officers return only at the end of the shift with the reports already entered into the computer. In a few agencies this data transfer can be done in real-time via radio frequency, but this is not common. The third timesaving effect was through modernized and automated information retrieval. For agencies that use the laptops to bypass the dispatcher to do license and NCIC checks, the officers' wait to receive this information may be much shorter than it was in heavy volume situations when the dispatcher was swamped. During onsite visit ride-alongs, officers complained that during peak hours the wait for the dispatcher to return the calls could take up to 10 minutes. Redeployment procedures Once the time savings is realized, officers are expected to be deployed so they will conduct more community policing functions. We asked the agencies how the technology will cause redeployment. As shown in table 4A-4, 82 percent of the agencies reported planning to have each of the officers using the new technology spend their saved time doing community policing. This form of individual-level redeployment is much harder to monitor and measure than collective redeployment, in which small amounts of many officers' time saved are pooled to free up a few officers entirely for community policing. Only 14.5 percent of agencies reported they planned collective redeployment, in which assignments or patrolling structures are changed to free up specific officers for community policing assignments. Offsetting costs While the mobile computing technology is intended to save officer's time over the long run, there are a number of time costs to be expected during the transition. One is the technical staff time needed to install and maintain the computers. Another is the officer time required for training. In our survey, 52 percent of the agencies said they expected the system to take additional time during transition. The ways in which they expect it to take additional time are: training (46 percent), a learning curve/adjustment period (25.2 percent), installation (8.4 percent), software and computer maintenance (9.9 percent), and other (10 percent). --------------------------- 5. Putting 100,000 Officers on the Street: Progress as of 1998 and Preliminary Projections Through 2003 Christopher S. Koper and Jeffrey A. Roth, with Edward Maguire In this chapter we report a first national approximation of the effect of COPS grants on the level of policing resources hired and deployed throughout the United States. These resources include: (1) sworn officers hired under COPS hiring grants, and (2) productivity increases yielded by COPS MORE-funded resources, measured in terms of sworn officer full-time equivalents (FTEs). To estimate the effect on the national count of sworn officers, we combined our own Wave 3 survey data on hiring and retention with police employment data from the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR). To estimate the MORE-supported productivity increases, we used COPS grant award data and Wave 3 survey data. Our estimates were made for two points in time: June 1998, based on grants funded (i.e., awards announced) through 1997; and the 2000-2003 period, based on grants funded through May 12, 1999, when the White House announced fulfillment of the goal of funding 100,000 officers. Summary of Interim Estimates It is important to stress that the interim estimates, which appear in table 5-1, were prepared for early feedback to the U.S. Department of Justice, and the post-1998 projections in particular should be treated with extreme caution. We plan to update and revise them later in 2000. Hiring grant impact--cautions, assumptions, and interim estimates The hiring estimates are based primarily upon results from the Wave 3 survey conducted in June 1998. For COPS hiring grantees, the Wave 3 sample is representative only of municipal and county police agencies serving jurisdictions of more than 50,000, although smaller municipal/county hiring grantees that also received MORE grants were included in the sample as well. Therefore, the extrapolations we made as a first approximation for smaller agencies and other types of agencies are open to methodological question. We first used the Wave 3 survey data to estimate the number of COPS-funded officers who had been hired as of June 1998. By that time, the COPS Office had awarded 41,000 officers through pre-1998 hiring awards, and our survey results indicate that about 39,000 of these officers had been hired (table 5-1, panel 1, columns 1-2). As explained more fully in chapter 2, however, the net effect of COPS hiring grants on the number of sworn officers depends on a number of factors largely determined by local agencies' decisions; consequently, net effects may differ notably from the number of officers awarded or hired at a given time. At grant startup, these offsetting factors include agency delays in accepting awards, the speed with which funded officers are recruited and hired, delays in filling vacancies for non-COPS positions, and the extent of cross-hiring between agencies.[1] Based on a time series analysis of UCR police employment data through 1996, we estimate these startup factors generally prevent agencies from fully implementing COPS-funded staffing increases until more than a year after they receive the awards. In the longer term, offsetting factors include certain cuts in sworn force size approved by the COPS Office Legal Division as nonsupplanting and the rates at which the hired officers are retained through and after the 3-year grant period. We created preliminary estimates of such long-term factors based on the Wave 3 survey. When we collected the data in the summer of 1998, however, the required retention period had not been announced and relatively few hiring grants had expired. Recognizing that under these conditions retention expectations might be an imprecise predictor of future behavior, we used the data to construct a "best case" scenario in which grantees would retain 91 percent of their new hires indefinitely and a "worst case" scenario of 64 percent.[2] In 2000, we will update our retention rate estimates based on a Wave 4 survey, which emphasizes hiring and retention questions using a nationally representative sample with up to 2 years' additional chance of having experienced grant expiration after the duration of the retention requirement was known. The interim, net increase hiring estimates computed under these assumptions and cautions are shown in table 5-1 (panel 1, columns 1-3). We estimate that the 41,000 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 (panel 1, column 3). If we assume that the retention patterns expected by Wave 3 respondents for pre-1998 COPS officers continue into the future, then we can make tentative predictions about net increases that will result from post-1997 hiring awards. By May 1999, the COPS Office had awarded approximately 60,900 officers through hiring grants (panel 1, column 4). Under a maximum retention scenario, we project that these awards will produce a peak effect of 57,200 officers by the year 2001 and that after postgrant attrition, the permanent effect of the grants will stabilize at 55,400 officers by 2003 (panel 1, column 5). A minimum retention scenario, in contrast, suggests that the net impact of these awards will peak at 48,900 officers in the year 2000 but then decline to a permanent level of 39,000 officers by the year 2003 (panel 1, column 5). MORE grant impact--cautions, assumptions, and interim estimates As explained in chapter 2, COPS MORE grants for technology and civilians were intended to create time savings that enable agencies to keep existing officers in the field for greater periods of time. Under the MORE program, every 1,824-hour projected savings is treated as the FTE of one officer. However, there has been little, if any, experience base to guide the applicants or the COPS Office in making projections, and the actual MORE contribution of FTEs depends on the percentage of projections actually achieved. All our 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 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 22,400 FTEs through MORE grants for civilians and technology, and survey results indicate that grantees had redeployed 6,400 FTEs with these grants (panel 2, columns 1-2). At that time, however, many grantees had not fully implemented their grants. To illustrate, 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 (see chapter 4). Therefore, grantees were also asked to estimate future productivity increases they expected to achieve once all grants were fully implemented. Agencies that had greater experience with implementing their grants 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 agencies adjust their expected productivity gains downward as they gain more experience with implementing their grants (results from chapter 4 suggest this phenomenon is driven primarily by technology grantees). While we used those figures to compute best case and worst case interim estimates, we recognize that the worst case estimates are based on only a partial subsample with substantial implementation experience. This subsample is growing and becoming more representative over time, and so we plan to revise the estimates of MORE-supported productivity increases later this year using our Wave 4 survey data. Our interim estimates of COPS MORE effects on FTE officers appear in table 5-1 (panel 2, columns 1-3). 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 (panel 2, column 3). We project that if these implementation patterns hold for post-1998 MORE grants, the 39,600 FTEs awarded as of May 1999 (panel 2, column 4) will result in the redeployment of between 23,800 and 28,500 FTEs by the year 2002 (panel 2, column 5). These estimates should be treated cautiously, however, not only for the reasons discussed above but also because the survey estimates of final redeployment levels were subject to wide sampling variation. Combined projections for the first 100,000 funded By May 1999, the COPS Office had awarded approximately 100,500 officers and officer equivalents through hiring grants and MORE grants (table 5-1, panel 3, column 4). Upper bound projections based on June 1998 survey estimates of maximum officer retention and maximum officer redeployment suggest these awards will result in a peak national net increase of 84,600 officers by the year 2001 before declining somewhat and stabilizing at a permanent level of 83,900 officers by 2003 (panel 3, column 5). Lower bound projections based on estimates of minimum officer retention and minimum officer redeployment suggest the COPS-supported increase in the number of officers and FTEs deployed at any point in time will peak at only 69,000 officers in the year 2001 and decline to a permanent level of 62,700 by the year 2003 (panel 3, column 5). 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 to 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 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 on the street at a single point in time to 100,000 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 optimistic 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 pessimistic assumptions are more accurate, the program may require an additional 58,000 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 our Wave 4 survey later this year. In the sections that follow, we describe our methods for producing the interim estimates in more detail. Hiring Grants In an unpublished interim report, we computed national 1996 end-of-year estimates of gross and net additions of officers attributable to 1994 and 1995 COPS hiring grants. At that time, estimates based on our Wave 1 survey indicated that nearly 10,000 officers awarded under 1995 FAST and AHEAD grants had been hired as of the end of 1996. Furthermore, analysis of financial data from the Office of the Comptroller suggested that another 4,300 officers had been hired by that time with Police Hiring Supplement and COPS Phase I (PHS/Phase I) grants awarded in 1994 and Universal Hiring (UHP) grants awarded in 1995. A time series analysis utilizing COPS Office data on hiring awards and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) data on police employment suggested these gross additions of officers resulted in a real increase of approximately 9,650 officers net of offsetting factors and preexisting trends (we used the time series model to compute our updated estimates and present it below). This section updates our earlier findings by presenting gross and net estimates of officers added to the Nation's police agencies as of June 1998 through COPS hiring grants. In addition, we assess the longer term impact of these grants by estimating the number of COPS-funded officers likely to be retained after the expiration of their grants. Data and methodological overview Most of the hiring estimates are based on the Wave 3 survey of police agencies, which was conducted in June 1998. As discussed in the methodological appendix, the Wave 3 survey included a nationally representative sample of all large municipal/county agencies and a nationally representative sample of small municipal/county agencies that were 1995 MORE grantees. Respondents were asked about hiring, deployment, and retention of all officers who had been awarded to their agencies under COPS hiring grants as of the end of 1997, regardless of whether the agencies were originally sampled as hiring grantees. National estimates were generated by generalizing the survey results to the country's total population of police agencies. Technically, however, the Wave 3 survey sample is not a representative sample of all police agencies. The large-agency subsample represents county/municipal agencies in large and medium jurisdictions (i.e., populations of more than 50,000), including agencies that did not receive any COPS grants; however, the small-agency subsample represents only small municipal/county 1995 MORE grantees. Therefore, the small-agency component of our interim hiring estimates is based on the hiring grants that many small MORE awardees also received, and their hiring behavior may not be typical of all small agencies that received hiring grants. Nonetheless, generalizing these results to the full population of police agencies seems reasonable as a first approximation for several reasons. First, the small-agency MORE grantees were sampled independently of whether they had also received hiring grants. Consequently, both the large- and small-agency samples contain agencies that received early hiring grants (i.e., Phase I, PHS, and FAST/AHEAD grants) and/or later hiring grants (i.e., UHP grants), as well as agencies that received no hiring grants. Second, generalizing results from municipal/county agencies to all agencies seems reasonable since at least 77 percent of awarded COPS officers went to municipal/county agencies according to Cops Office records. Further, Wave 1 survey results from the fall of 1996 showed that municipal/county agencies and other types of agencies (e.g., State police agencies and public university police agencies) made very similar progress in hiring and deploying officers awarded to them through the FAST and AHEAD hiring programs.[3] Hence, we have no clear reasons for expecting county/municipal agencies to differ from other agencies with regard to their implementation of COPS hiring grants.[4] The other primary data source used to examine police staffing is a national time series database, which combines COPS Office hiring grant records with 8 years of data from the Police Employment Section of the FBI's UCR. This database was used to examine net changes in police staffing due to COPS hiring grants and is discussed in further detail below. Gross estimates of officers hired and on the street as of June 1998 Estimates of COPS officers hired and deployed to patrol duty as of June 1998 are based on the Wave 3 survey. Interviewers first asked respondents how many of their COPS-funded officers had started their "first regular assignments as new officers." Interviewers then questioned respondents about the status of those officers not yet serving in their first regular assignments (e.g., not hired, attending training academy). Because the survey questions covered hiring grants extending back to 1994--frequently multiple grants--interviewers did not ask respondents to provide specific numbers of officers hired and deployed. Instead, the hiring questions offered response categories of none, some but less than half, half, more than half but not all, and all of the awarded officers. For projection purposes, we operationalized the response categories as follows: none = zero; some but less than half = 25 percent of the officers; half = 50 percent of the officers; more than half but not all = 75 percent of the officers; and all = 100 percent of the officers. To illustrate, if a respondent reported that half of the agency's COPS officers were on assignment, then the number of officers on assignment for that agency was estimated as the number of officers awarded multiplied by 0.5.[5] If the respondent also indicated that half of the remaining officers (i.e., those not on assignment) were still being recruited, then the number of officers hired by the agency was calculated as the number estimated to be on assignment plus the product of 0.5 multiplied by the difference of the number awarded and the number estimated to be on assignment. This general question format and estimation technique was used for most of the hiring, deployment, and retention estimates highlighted throughout this chapter. We calculated national estimates of COPS officers hired by multiplying a survey-based estimate of the proportion of all awarded officers who had been hired by the known count of officers awarded according to COPS Office data as of the end of 1997.[6] The proportion of COPS officers hired was defined as the ratio of the mean estimated number of officers hired to the mean number of officers awarded.[7] In addition, 95-percent confidence intervals were constructed to show the most likely ranges for the true population estimates (formulas for the confidence intervals are presented in appendix 5-A). Using the method described in the preceding paragraph, we estimate that by June 1998, 97 percent of the officers awarded to large agencies and 94 percent of the officers awarded to small agencies had been hired (see table 5-2). Because the proportion point estimates were close to 1, we computed confidence intervals based on the logarithm of (1-p), where p is the proportion of officers hired. This computation method ensured that the upper bound of the confidence intervals did not exceed 1 (see appendix 5-A). By the end of 1997, the COPS Office had awarded 21,026 officers to large agencies and 19,946 officers to small agencies according to its grants management information system.[8] Combining these data with the hiring proportion estimates from the large- and small-agency samples leads to an overall estimate that 39,069 COPS-funded officers were hired by June 1998, with a statistical confidence interval of 38,634 to 40,000 officers. Using the same methodology employed for the hiring estimates, we then calculated that 81 percent of the officers awarded to large agencies and 85 percent of the officers awarded to small agencies were working in their first regular assignments by June 1998 (see table 5-2). Overall, therefore, we estimate that 34,131 new COPS-funded officers were on the street by June 1998, within a range of 33,380 to 36,104 officers. From gross to net increases in officers The estimate of 39,000 officers hired provides a measure of the gross impact of COPS hiring grants awarded through 1997. However, this gross increase in officers will be offset to some degree by a variety of factors. In the short term, COPS-funded staffing increases can be partially offset by factors like delays in the hiring of COPS-funded officers, delays in filling vacancies created by normal year-to-year turnover, and cross-hiring of officers among agencies.[9] An agency with n officers that receives a COPS grant for k officers, for example, may take a few years to reach the full (n+k) officer mark, or it may never reach the (n+k) staffing level. In the long term, staffing increases from COPS hiring grants may be diminished by nonretention of COPS-funded positions following the expiration of the 3-year hiring grants or certain sworn force cutbacks certified by the COPS Office Legal Division to be nonsupplanting. In other words, some of the growth in staffing achieved with COPS hiring grants may be temporary. Further, national data discussed below show that police agencies in general were growing in the years prior to the COPS program. Indeed, agencies sampled at Wave 3 grew on average from 1993 to 1997 whether or not they had COPS hiring grants.[10] Consequently, some of the growth in COPS-funded agencies might have occurred in the absence of the COPS program. In the following subsections, we assess the short-term impact of COPS hiring grants on police staffing after taking into account other factors and trends influencing police staffing throughout the country. We also take a special look at the issue of cross-hiring. In the next section, we examine long-term retention of COPS-funded positions using data from the Wave 3 survey. We then combine the results of these analyses to form preliminary projections of the net impact of all COPS hiring grants awarded through May 1999. All of these estimates will be updated in the future report on the Wave 4 survey. Time series analysis of COPS and net changes in police staffing, 1989-96. To analyze short-term net changes in police staffing through the early years of the COPS program, we combined data from 8 years of the police employment section of the FBI's annual UCR.[11] The UCR contains agency-level data on the number of employees serving in law enforcement functions with police agencies throughout the Nation. We divided the agencies into six types (e.g., local police, sheriffs), which were adopted from agency-type coding schemes used by both the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the COPS Office. The agency codes were used to exclude agencies that were ineligible for COPS grants. A preliminary analysis based on approximately 14,000 agencies that reported having at least one full-time officer for each year of the analysis revealed that these agencies expanded by 14.5 percent between 1989 and 1996 (see tables 5-3 through 5-5).[12] Although these agencies grew throughout the period, the largest year-to-year change was from 1994 to 1995, when they grew by 4.4 percent. These figures suggest that although police agencies grew in general during this period, early COPS hiring grants (PHS/Phase I and FAST/AHEAD) may have accelerated police growth. To examine this issue more rigorously, we estimated multiple time series models to determine whether recent changes in police employment could be causally attributed to COPS hiring grants net of other forces affecting police staffing levels during this time period. The data were organized by agency and year, so that each data point represents a single agency during a single year. We created the database using 11,809 agencies that were eligible for COPS funding and reported both officer counts (agencies had to report at least one full-time officer for each year) and counts of population served for each year from 1989 through 1996. Because we use lagged variables in our model (to be described below), our analysis focuses on staffing changes from 1991 through 1996. Our model predicts yearly changes in police staffing as a function of previous year COPS hiring grants and a number of other factors. The basic form of the model is: FTS i, t - FTS i, t -1 = a + b* X i, t + b2 * COPS award i, t-1 + e i, t where FTS i,t - FTS i,t-1 is the change in the number of full-time sworn officers for agency i from year t-1 to year t; b * X i,t represents the impact of a number of independent variables to be described below; b2 * COPS award i,t-1 represents the impact of COPS officers obligated to agency i at year t-1; a is a constant term; and e is an error term with standard properties.[13] There is an extensive literature on the determinants of police strength and police expenditures. Based on data available in the UCR, we incorporated a number of these determinants into our model. We hypothesized that changes in crime and population would impact local government decisions about police staffing levels with about a 1-year lag. Therefore, changes in both violent and property crime from t-2 to t-1 were computed and entered into the model, as were changes in population from t-2 to t-1.[14] In addition, indicator variables were developed to represent the nine regions of the country as defined by the FBI.[15] The level of urbanization of each jurisdiction was measured with one indicator variable showing if the jurisdiction was within a Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) and another indicating whether the jurisdiction was a central city within an MSA. Indicator variables were also developed for the agency types shown in the previous tables. However, tribal police agencies were dropped due to the small number reporting to the FBI, and both special and State police agencies had to be dropped from analysis because estimates of the populations they serve are not available in the UCR.[16] Finally, a series of yearly indicator variables were developed to capture unmeasured factors that may have impacted police staffing throughout the Nation during particular years of the study (the 1994 variable was omitted from the equation, so all the yearly indicators in the model are interpreted relative to 1994).[17] Table 5-6 presents the results of estimating our primary model. Holding other factors constant, we estimated that each COPS officer obligated to an agency in year t led to an increase of 0.73 officers on the force from year t to year t+1.[18] Inferences from this model should be considered preliminary, however, for a number of reasons. As shown in table 5-6, the models explained little of the variation in police staffing changes. Some of the predictors proved insignificant, and there are several other important determinants of police staffing that we have neglected here but may incorporate in future analyses. Further, we could only examine very short-term impacts from COPS grants with the available data.[19,20] Nonetheless, the results suggest that while COPS hiring grants produced meaningful short-term increases in police staffing, these effects were offset somewhat by other factors, such as delays in hiring the new officers, attrition of officers already on the force, and cross-hiring among agencies. However, it is not clear whether the "attrition" implied by the model represents permanent attrition, delays in the hiring process (i.e., implementation delays), or both. Our results suggest, for example, that a hypothetical 100-officer agency receiving a COPS grant for 10 officers in year t will, on average, increase its force to 107 by year t+1. Whether the agency will reach the intended 110 officer mark at some point after t+1 cannot be inferred from our time series because it extends only 1 year after the COPS program began. The agency may hire all of its COPS-funded officers but fail to replace other departing officers, in which case the agency will stay below the 110 officer target. On the other hand, an agency adding COPS-funded officer positions may be temporarily unable to keep pace with both COPS hiring and normal year-to-year attrition (e.g., because of training academy capacity constraints), in which case the agency may reach the 110 officer mark only after some further delay. At any rate, the currently available data suggest that even if COPS grants produce net staffing increases equal to 100 percent of their value, it takes more than 1 year on average for this full impact to be realized. Our future Wave 4 report will add post-1996 UCR data to examine this issue more closely. In the meantime, our existing survey data provide a preliminary basis for projecting the longer term impact of COPS hiring grants, and the projection is reported later in this chapter. In a later section, we combine the results from this time series analysis and the long-term retention analyses to produce national estimates of the short- and long-term effects on police staffing of all COPS hiring grants awarded through May 1999. Cross-hiring. The time series analyses presented in the previous section suggest that various forms of attrition and/or hiring delays partially offset gross additions of COPS officers. One form of officer attrition, which the COPS program may have accelerated unintentionally, is cross-hiring. As noted in chapter 4, cross-hiring occurs when an agency recruits officers directly from other agencies. Sixteen percent of the Wave 3 large agencies with hiring grants and 15 percent of the Wave 3 small agencies with hiring grants indicated they had or would recruit at least some of their officers directly from other agencies. This suggests some agencies, with or without COPS grants, lost officers to other agencies with COPS grants. Although cross-hiring was a common practice well before the COPS program, it may have accelerated as agencies recruited experienced officers to deploy their new COPS-funded hires to duty as quickly as possible. Regardless, cross-hiring reduces COPS' additions to the Nation's overall stock of police officers at least temporarily, and it may be a permanent offsetting factor if agencies losing officers to cross-hiring do not replace them. To illustrate the impact of cross-hiring with a very simple example, assume the universe of police agencies consists of two agencies, A and B, each having 100 officers. A COPS grant for 5 officers to agency A is intended to increase the national stock of police officers from 200 to 205. If, however, agency A recruits those 5 officers from agency B, then the total stock of police officers will remain at 200 until agency B replaces the 5 officers it lost. If agency B does not replace those 5 officers, then the total stock of police officers will remain at 200 and thus be no higher than before the COPS grant.[21] However, Wave 3 survey results suggest the number of cross-hires attributable to COPS grants has been relatively small. At the agency level, cross-hires were estimated by asking respondents how many of their COPS-funded positions had been or would be used to hire former sworn officers. Interviewers then asked how many of the former sworn officers were recruited from other agencies.[22] National estimates of cross-hired officers were computed by estimating the ratio of the mean number of estimated cross-hires to the mean number of awarded officers across all sampled agencies. Because the estimated cross-hire proportions were small, the 95-percent confidence intervals were calculated based on the log of p, where p is the proportion of awarded officers who were cross-hired. This ensured that the lower bound estimates were bounded at zero. Table 5-7 shows that cross-hires accounted for only 2 percent of the officers awarded to large agencies, leading to an estimate of approximately 400 cross-hirees for large COPS grantees. Although cross-hiring was somewhat greater among small agencies, we estimate that cross-hirees numbered less than 1,200 officers (about 6 percent of those awarded) for small COPS grantees. Long-term retention of COPS officers The time series model presented in table 5-6 examined the impact of COPS hiring awards made in 1994 and 1995 on police staffing through 1996. Because the data covered a period before any COPS hiring grants expired, the COPS effect estimated from that model should be viewed as an estimate of the short-term impact of COPS. As described earlier, the model may underestimate the temporary expansion of police officers caused by COPS hiring grants. In the long term, nonetheless, findings presented in chapter 4 indicate some COPS-funded positions will not be retained after the expiration of their grants, and this will reduce the permanent impact of COPS. At the outset of the COPS program, the COPS Office awarded grants on the condition that grantees plan a "good faith" effort to retain COPS-funded officers after the expiration of the grants. In April 1998, the COPS Office changed its procedures to require that applicants submit a written retention plan with their applications. Finally, in August 1998, the office developed a more specific criterion for the retention requirement by requiring grantees to retain COPS officers for at least one full budget cycle after the one in which the grant expires. Further, COPS-funded positions are meant to supplement, and not supplant, preexisting officer positions. In other words, a grantee is not to use COPS funds to replace local funds the grantee would otherwise have used for law enforcement. For instance, grantees should not use COPS funds to replace losses from normal year-to-year attrition. Nor should grantees cut existing positions to retain COPS-funded officers. If, for instance, an agency with a budgeted force of 100 officers receives a COPS grant for 5 officers, then the agency is expected to maintain a force of 105 officers. If this agency losses three officers to retirement after receiving the grant, the COPS Office expects the agency to replace those three officers as well as retain the five COPS-funded officers for at least a year, until completion of the following budget cycle. The Wave 3 survey instrument included a number of items to assess prospects for long-term retention of COPS positions. As explained in chapter 4, interviewers first inquired about COPS-funded officers who had already left the agency and found that agencies had begun and, in most cases, replaced nearly all officers who left before their grants expired.[23] Interviewers then asked respondents to agree or disagree with each of the following three statements, which were designed to measure nonretention, the retention of officers but not positions, and supplanting, respectively. --Despite a good-faith effort, unforeseen circumstances are likely to keep us from retaining all the positions. (Nonretention.) --We plan to retain all or most of the COPS-funded officers using slots that open up when other officers retire or leave the agency. (Retention of persons not levels.) --We plan to maintain all the community policing positions funded by the 1995 COPS grants, though we may have to cut some positions elsewhere to do it. (Supplanting.) Agreement with any of these statements suggests the respondent's agency will lose at least some of its COPS-funded staffing increase following the expiration of its grant(s). Because few surveyed agencies had expired grants at the time of the Wave 3 survey, their responses to the retention/supplanting items largely reflected expectations rather than actual experience. For this reason we did not require respondents to quantify the number or fraction of positions to be lost. We derived two sets of preliminary retention estimates from these items. We computed maximum retention (i.e., best case) estimates by assuming that any agency whose respondent agreed with one or more of the nonretention/supplanting items wou