The Proposed Federal FY06 Budget Cuts

How Might They Affect Your Agency?

Federal grant money may have made the difference between justice and obscurity for dozens of Washington state serial murder victims. In 2001, then-King County Sheriff Dave Reichert transferred nine detectives to work full time on the Green River Task Force. Their work on the enormous amount of evidence increased the number of indictments against accused killer Gary Ridgway from four to 44 – and may not have been possible, if not for the federal money that had hired additional officers.

Law enforcement agencies nationwide have benefited from federal grants for nearly two decades. The Edward Byrne Memorial State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance Grant Program, established under the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988, and Local Law Enforcement Block Grants (LLEBGs), established in 1995, helped anti-crime efforts, especially those related to drugs. (The programs were combined in 2005 to create the Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant [JAG] program). And since 1994, the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program has helped agencies hire and redeploy officers, update technology, and target specific community problems, such as school and domestic violence.

The Bush Administration seeks to eliminate much of this funding. A Department of Justice (DOJ) document states crime (including violent crime) is at a 30-year low; neither the COPS nor the Byrne grants have demonstrated significant negative impacts on crime; and the COPS Law Enforcement Technology and Byrne Discretionary Grants “are earmarked in their entirety by the Congress, prevent[ing] targeting of assistance based on need or priority.” Further, separate DOJ audits allege some agencies misused their COPS funds. Although the 2006 budget won’t completely dissolve assistance to state and local law enforcement, many leaders think what’s left won’t be enough.

Federal funding in 2006

The IACP’s Capitol Report for February 9, 2005 reports that the proposed FY06 budget would cut $1.467 billion that had been available to state and local agencies in 2005, a 40 percent decrease. Both DOJ and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) programs would be affected.
Just one year after creating the Byrne Memorial JAG, the 2006 budget would completely eliminate it. Additionally, COPS would be cut by 80 percent: just $22 million in new funding would be combined with $96 million in holdover funds from FY04). Altogether, the programs would sustain losses of over 90 percent, the most precipitous drop since 2002. This brings the total amount cut to about $2.3 billion over the last few years.

Other DOJ funding eliminations include the Juvenile Accountability Block Grant, which received $55 million in FY05, and the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP), which received $305 million in FY05. A small $24 million cut was made in Violence Against Women grants, which would then be funded at $363 million. And, although the proposed budget would move the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) program from Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) to DOJ oversight, it would also cut HIDTA funding from $227 million to $100 million.

DOJ programs that did receive funding include $177 million “to help criminal justice professionals make better use of DNA evidence” and clear analysis backlogs. $58 million will help upgrade criminal records, and drug court funding would increase from $40 million to $70 million. These funds are part of the $2.4 billion that will also fund Project Safe Neighborhoods, the USA Freedom Corps, the Regional Information Sharing System (RISS), the AMBER Alert system, and initiatives to combat Internet crimes against children and human trafficking. Bush’s own COPS in Schools program, which has awarded $750 million to hire school resource officers since 1999, will also continue.

Although overall DHS funding increased by seven percent, the State Homeland Security Grant (SHSG) program would see a 25 percent cut, and the Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI) would be cut by over 7 percent – a 45 percent decrease from FY04. In addition, although states must distribute 80 percent of SHSG funds to local governments, the money can go toward any combination of police, fire, and emergency medical services needs. Moreover, the new budget would cut state allocations from 75 percent to 25 percent, and distribute funds based on the likely threat to states - so small rural agencies would likely receive no funding.

The impact

Gene Voegtlin, spokesman for the International Association of Chiefs of Police, says the cuts, if approved in their entirety, will be “devastating” for law enforcement agencies. “You’ll see significant decreases in anti-drug, school resource, and similar services,” he says. “Larger and wealthier communities may have the budgets to absorb these costs, but many local economies won’t.” An example of the contrast: the cuts’ minimal expected impact on the Corpus Christi (Texas) Police Department (CCPD)’s services – versus the potential demise of the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency (MDEA) and other states’ regional drug task forces.

The CCPD relied on COPS grants in the past, but its funding expired this year. Pat Eldredge, the agency’s senior grants administrator, says the COPS grants allowed the department to enhance its services. “These weren’t operations the city couldn’t afford,” she says. “Each year identified potential enhancements, then applied for funding to support them.” The enhancements included a water tank to replace the cotton-filled tank used to test ballistics. Additionally, federal funding placed new CCPD officers on the street, bought detectives new cars, and obtained hazardous materials safety equipment for special response and narcotics team members entering methamphetamine labs. “We’re not losing anything, because we never depended on this money,” Eldredge says. “Even though we’re no longer getting $200,000 a year in block grants, that just means purchasing less.”

Roy McKinney, MDEA director, is preparing for the worst: complete dissolution by March 2006, if the state can’t come up with funding. 70 percent of MDEA funding comes from the DOJ, specifically the Byrne grants; the balance comes from the state’s general fund. This year, although the MDEA will receive $1.7 million in Byrne JAG money, this is $800,000 short of the $2.5 million necessary to sustain the MDEA’s 28 agents and six prosecutors. Maine’s Commissioner of Public Safety is working with the governor to make up the shortfall, but if the legislature doesn’t appropriate the money, McKinney anticipates having to curtail operations and lay off all personnel. And, although a HIDTA exists in New England, McKinney doesn’t expect much support from it. “Its focus is federal, not state, drug enforcement,” he says. “We focus on the gap between federal and local efforts, the cases we can work that they can’t because they’re targeting regional traffickers. If no one works in that gap, a whole tier of distributors goes unimpeded.”

The situation is similar elsewhere in the nation. Gary Smith, Northfield (Minnesota) police chief, says regional drug task forces in his state also face elimination. “The loss of Byrne monies would also essentially kill all the state’s victim, advocacy, shelter, and a lot of [similar] programs,” he says. COPS cuts, too, have affected Smith’s and surrounding communities. “I’ve been lucky in that I’ve been able to keep my [community service officer] and evidence technician,” he says, noting also a troubling trend he’s seen in schools: a shift from proactive back toward reactive policing, owing in part to the lack of resources.

On a broader scale, one COPS-funded program, the Center for Problem-Oriented Policing (POP Center), could suffer if the DOJ cuts the pool of money set aside for special projects. That means resources that teach administrators how to work more efficiently will suffer. “We produce information valuable to all police departments, regardless of their staffing levels,” says Michael Scott, POP Center director. “In fact, in many cases, the fewer personnel, the more they need the information.” The POP Center has a total of 60 guides in print or in production. Their topics range from identity theft to crimes against tourists to false burglar alarms. “Our guides rely on published research, as well as police department reports on their own innovations. But because those innovations were in large part COPS-funded, these agencies’ knowledge base could dry up.”

Smith believes further that communities will see the results within 12 to 18 months “[There will be] more violent crime, fewer people entering police service, [and] more officer misconduct incidents. Releasing prisoners and reallocating [jail] space because of budget cutbacks will [mean] more drug dealers [and gang members] out [of the system], which will equal more community violence.”

Voegtlin argues that in a broad sense, crime fighting is like lawn mowing. “Federal grants allowed law enforcement agencies to combat crime, so rates decreased steadily,” he says. “But as funds dry up, agencies will have to pull back on the services their communities have come to expect, and this will make it easier for crime to increase again.” Scott adds that the federal government’s demands for agencies to focus on anti-terrorism could force them to return to reactive policing.

The grants’ true effectiveness

Contrary to popular opinion, statistical evidence doesn’t bear out that COPS in particular had very much to do with lower crime rates. Some experts point to pre-COPS decreases; others believe the strong economy had the most to do with the reduction. The General Accounting Office called “inconclusive” one DOJ report that COPS had helped reduce violent crime in major cities, and independent reports showed otherwise. Further, reports conflict over whether the program met its objective. The DOJ says 118,000 officers were hired, but the White House Office of Management and Budget says fewer than 90,000 were hired, and a 2002 University of Pennsylvania study estimated the number even lower at 82,000.

Also, as one USA Today article details, the Oklahoma City Police Department participated in no federal programs – but its crime rates dropped just as much as comparably sized cities that participated. Notably, it undertook a comprehensive analysis of problems the city was facing, and worked with the resources it had to address them. Worse, DOJ audits of only 3 percent of awarded grants alleged that although most agencies used their COPS grant money as intended, at least $277 million had been misspent: officers were never hired, hired officers weren’t retained, and some out and out abuse occurred, such as one Missouri police chief who used a COPS grant to give himself a raise.

Some lay blame partly on discretionary grants, which don’t require recipients to submit performance measures and thus indicate the program’s degree of success. However, COPS grants, which did require what Eldredge calls “extensive” performance measures, were the DOJ audits’ focus. The real problem, according to David Williams, vice president of policy at the Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW), was the earmarking. “It’s spending without checks and balances,” he says. “Most senators and representatives may be trying to do the right thing when they funnel money back to their own districts, but those who funnel too much prevent equitably distributed money across the nation, and that hurts everyone.” Voegtlin agrees with Williams. “The IACP opposes earmarking because it does detract from the positive effects for the law enforcement community as a whole,” he says. “It’s supposed to be a legislative tool, and it’s a boon for states whose senators are pro-law enforcement, but at what cost to other states?”

Williams believes government efforts to reduce pork – to consolidate community programs and generally improve efficiency, such as reorienting the HIDTAs under the DOJ – will ultimately improve everyone’s quality of life. “Bureaucracy thrives on regulation that reinforces its administrators’ job importance,” he says. “We can afford to cut $27 billion worth of pork and use that money to ensure a good program, like COPS, still does its job. Think of it this way: taxpayers provide those $27 billion, but the state they live in may get only $3 million back.”

What can law enforcement do?

On a large scale, Williams believes the key to COPS and like programs’ success is to end earmarking. Barring term limits or changes to Congressional rules, however, Voegtlin says this is unlikely. The IACP has testified before the respective appropriations committees about earmarks’ detriments, but Voegtlin says many senators and representatives see the practice as a “birthright,” that it’s too firmly entrenched in Congressional culture.

In the meantime, the IACP is lobbying Congress to maintain the current grants, even at reduced spending levels. “We’re working with the House and Senate Appropriations Committees to drive home the situation’s impact,” says Voegtlin. “We’re finding that everyone understands the problem, but both our supporters and our detractors are telling us it’s just a tough budget year. In the past, the final budget has provided money to support programs, so although that’s not as likely this year, we’re optimistic.” Scott thinks one way to alleviate the problem in the future is for Congress to fund innovation and best practices. Smith agrees, adding incentives should be available for CALEA-accredited agencies.

On a local level, agencies can do plenty to prepare for the cuts. Policy changes may be most important. “Police departments will have to take a hard look at the services they provide,” says Scott. “They’ll have to ask hard questions about their own efficiency and effectiveness.” Response to false burglar alarms is one example. “On analysis, you might find you’re expending 15 to 20 percent of your resources on alarms that are false 98 percent of the time,” Scott explains. “Departments that send officers only to alarms where suspicious activity has been verified have seen the officers’ workloads drop by 90 percent.” In that regard, the federal cuts may be more an opportunity than a problem. “You may find that reallocating resources frees patrol time for other activities.”

Public relations may also help. Although the MDEA isn’t aggressively pursuing the spotlight, McKinney says his agents have become “more sensitive” to releasing information about their activities. “We weigh each opportunity to educate the public against the need to protect our investigations,” he says. “But when we can release information, we do.”

Agencies can also be creative with funding. The CCPD plans to fund future enhancements with the drug forfeiture money it receives from seizures in which it’s involved. Although both Eldredge and McKinney warn against depending on forfeitures - Eldredge says federal budget cuts could affect overall drug enforcement activities, and McKinney says forfeiture revenues fluctuate too much from year to year – these funds can work for some purchases. The MDEA, for example, determined it could fund about 2 to 3 percent of its operations this way. “We saw that forfeitures of no less than $80,000 were pretty constant, so we budgeted based on that number,” he says. “We worked it out with the legislature that any funds over that amount would pay for equipment one-time capital items like audiovisual surveillance equipment.”

Federal funding won’t completely go away, so agencies should do what they can to compete. “Smaller agencies with scarce resources should be concerned, because agencies that hire professional grantwriters have an advantage,” says Voegtlin. It may help to have an officer or administrator who is or can become an expert on grantwriting, but he acknowledges even this depends on agency resources. For her part, Eldredge recommends subscribing to an annual law enforcement grant publication, as well as the Federal Register and like state registers, that publish information on pending grants.

McKinney says not only the grants, but also the way Maine used them, made a difference. “Having a state-level task force avoided the duplication of effort other states saw with multiple county-level task forces,” he says. “Also, the Byrne grants required matching funds, and the state appropriated the match rather than make the task force rely on local forfeitures. This meant we could focus on trafficking without feeling pressured to make a lot of busts.”

Scott says administrators should also work with their broader communities to effect change. “Law enforcement is only one component of solving social problems leading to crime. Each community must identify its problems, then work with the people who can best address them. Police shouldn’t take full and exclusive responsibility for problems.” One example: drug enforcement, especially in rural areas. “The conventional way to combat drug problems is to find an operation, take it down, and arrest the offenders,” Scott says. “But there’s no end to this. Often, the more you look for, the more you find. Many states are thus looking at better chemical control, for instance legislating pseudoephedrine sales, which will decrease methamphetamine production without the high cost of enforcement. Ultimately, these cost savings will be better applied to long-term remediation, child welfare, and addict treatment services.”

The FY06 budget cuts aren’t yet in place, so there is time to think and to plan. “Our hope is that the state legislature will recognize the importance of enforcement in its drug control program,” says McKinney. “It goes along with prevention and treatment; without any one of those three, a drug control program will fail.” He hopes that, even if federal money returns to the MDEA, state lawmakers will find a way to appropriate money to expand operations and confront the states’ growing drug problem. “Federal revenue should augment operations, not support them. But it’s also important to recognize drug enforcement’s indirect impact on communities.” In the meantime, mitigation of recent criminal trends, including identity theft, Internet crimes against children, and human trafficking, are still funded in FY06. “There is no end to the number of problems modern police face,” Scott says. “And there will be a constant need for police to develop new and more effective responses to them.”