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It was reported today that violent crimes were up last year, the first time since 2001. Violent crimes ( Murders, robberies and aggravated assaults) increased 2.5%, the largest percentage increase since 1991.
“Criminal justice experts said the statistics reflect U.S. complacency in fighting crime, a product of dramatic declines in the 1990s and the abandonment of effective programs that emphasized prevention, putting more police officers on the street and controlling the spread of guns.”
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,199096,00.html (AA,please notice this is a FOX NEWS article).
What put more officers on the street? Well, that would have been the COPs program, or officially the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. This program was a Clinton era bill that put over 100,000 police on the street and resulted in historically low crime rates.
In Bush’s first budget he eliminated funding for the program entirely. However, Democrats managed to restore some of the funding, albeit at a much lower rate than was funded during the Clinton administration.
The Bush administration targeted the COPs program for drastic cuts from the day they entered office, and have done everything they can to eliminate the program all together. Bush’s 2007 budget cuts the COPs program by 79%.
"We see that budgets for policing are being slashed and the federal government has gotten out of that business," said James Alan Fox, a criminal justice professor at Northeastern University in Boston. "Funding for prevention at the federal level and many localities are down and the (National Rifle Association) has renewed strength."
In fact, since the dark day of September 11, 2001, the Bush administration has cut critical law enforcement funding by 2.3 Billion dollars. They have cut the COPs program by 78%. They eliminated the Justice Assistance Grant (JAG) Program at the Department of Justice, the Law Enforcement Terrorism Prevention Program (LETPP) at the Department of Homeland Security.
In a press release dated February 6, 2006 The International Association of Chiefs of Police condemned the cuts, calling them devastating.
Many police departments are short staffed because members of the force are also National Guard and Reserve troops who are called away for the Iraq war.
The Republican Party calls itself the law and order party. Yet, when give a chance to step up and give the police and sheriffs in America the tools necessary to do the job, most importantly the labor force that is the bottom line in law enforcement, they cut the very programs that proved to be effective.
The chart shows the dramatic decline in violent crime shortly after the COPS bill was put into law.
She is exposed to the supply side of the equation. She could tell you how hard it is to recruit good people. The police departments across the valley are recruiting continuously and cannot get enough applicants.
Standards are high, and over a 20 year career, the rewards are quite good.
But it is a strenuous job with a potentially high burnout rate. And it does have a greater than average danger quotient. A lot of people who see only the "authority face" of the police are in for a real dose of reality when they go to the Police Academy. Paperwork, keeping your cool with nasty demanding citizens, maintaining respect for humanity despite a constant diet of the cruddy side of human nature, tough hours, court appearances on your own time for arrest you made - did I mention paperwork?
The report I saw on the T and V mentioned that the rise in the crime rate was greatest in the Midwest. Go figure - why is that?
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