Commentary
Over the last three decades, law enforcement entities have become increasingly dependent on federal grants to fund their day-to-day operations.
The U.S. Department of Justice, office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS), was born after President Bill Clinton signed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act (H.R. 3355) in 1994. Since that date, the COPS program has distributed approximately $14 billion in grant money to U.S. law enforcement agencies who have or are transitioning toward the inclusion of a COPS program within their agency.
You should think of these grants in the same way we think of federal education dollars. A school district receives federal dollars in exchange for adopting federally directed teaching objectives and initiatives….