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Report to the Chairman, Committee on the Judiciary, House of 
Representatives: 

United States Government Accountability Office: 

GAO: 

October 2005: 

Community Policing Grants: 

COPS Grants Were a Modest Contributor to Declines in Crime in the 
1990s: 

GAO-06-104: 

GAO Highlights: 

Highlights of GAO-06-104, a report to the Chairman, Committee on the 
Judiciary, House of Representatives: 

Why GAO Did This Study: 

Between 1994 and 2001, the Office of Community Oriented Policing 
Services (COPS) provided more than $7.6 billion in grants to state and 
local communities to hire police officers and promote community 
policing as an effective strategy to prevent crime. Studies of the 
impact of the grants on crime have been inconclusive. 

GAO was asked to evaluate the effect of the COPS program on the decline 
in crime during the 1990s. GAO developed and analyzed a database 
containing annual observations on crime, police officers, COPS funds, 
and other factors related to crime, covering years prior to and during 
the COPS program, or from 1990 through 2001. GAO analyzed survey data 
on policing practices that agencies reportedly implemented and reviewed 
studies of policing practices. GAO assessed: (1) how COPS obligations 
were distributed and how much was spent; (2) the extent to which COPS 
expenditures contributed to increases in the number of police officers 
and declines in crime nationwide; and (3) the extent to which COPS 
grants during the 1990s were associated with policing practices that 
crime literature indicates could be effective. 

In commenting on a draft of this report, the COPS Office said that our 
findings are important and support conclusions reached by others. 

What GAO Found: 

About half of the COPS funds distributed from 1994 through 2001 went to 
law enforcement agencies in localities of fewer than 150,000 persons 
and the remainder to agencies in larger communities. This distribution 
roughly corresponded to the distribution of major property crimes but 
less so to the distribution of violent crimes. For example, agencies in 
larger communities received about 47 percent of COPS funds but 
accounted for 58 percent of the violent crimes nationwide. From 1994 
through 2001, COPS expenditures constituted about 1 percent of total 
local expenditures for police services. 

For the years 1994 through 2001, expenditures of COPS grants by grant 
recipients resulted in varying amounts of additional officers above the 
levels that would have been expected without the expenditures. For 
example, during 2000, the peak year of COPS expenditures by grant 
recipients, they led to an increase of about 3 percent in the level of 
sworn officers—or about 17,000 officers. Adding up the number of 
additional officers in each year from 1994 through 2001, GAO estimated 
that COPS expenditures yielded about 88,000 additional officer-years. 
GAO obtained its results from fixed-effects regression models that 
controlled for pre-1994 trends in the growth rate of officers, other 
federal expenditures, and local- and state-level factors that could 
affect officer levels. 

From its analysis of the effects of increases in officers on declines 
in crime, GAO estimated that COPS funds contributed to declines in the 
crime rate that, while modest in size, varied over time and among 
categories of crime. For example, between 1993 and 2000, COPS funds 
contributed to a 1.3 percent decline in the overall crime rate and a 
2.5 percent decline in the violent crime rate from the 1993 levels. The 
effects of COPS funds on crime held when GAO controlled for other crime-
related factors—such as local economic conditions and state-level 
policy changes—in its regression models, and the effects were 
commensurate with COPS funds’ contribution to local spending on police 
protection. Factors other than COPS funds accounted for the majority of 
the decline in crime during this period. For example, between 1993 and 
2000, the overall crime rate declined by 26 percent, and the 1.3 
percent decline due to COPS, amounted to about 5 percent of the overall 
decline. Similarly, COPS contributed about 7 percent of the 32 percent 
decline in violent crime from 1993 to 2000. 

From 1993 though 1997, agencies that received and spent COPS grants 
reported larger changes in policing practices and in the subsets of 
practices that focus on solving crime problems or focus on places where 
crime is concentrated than did agencies that did not receive the 
grants. The differences held after GAO controlled for underlying trends 
in the reported use of these policing practices. From 1996 to 2000, 
there was no overall increase in policing practices associated with 
COPS grants. In its review of studies on policing practices, GAO found 
that problem-solving and place-oriented practices can be effective in 
reducing crime. 

www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-06-104. 

To view the full product, including the scope and methodology, click on 
the link above. For more information, contact Laurie Ekstrand at (202) 
512-8777 or ekstrandl@gao.gov. 

[End of section] 

Contents: 

Letter: 

Background: 

Results: 

Concluding Observations: 

Agency Comments and Our Evaluation: 

Appendix I: Objectives, Scope, and Methodology: 

Appendix II: Background on the COPS Program and Studies of the Impacts 
of COPS Grants on Crime: 

Appendix III: COPS Grant Obligation and Expenditure Patterns: 

Appendix IV: COPS Expenditures Led to Increases in Sworn Officers and 
Declines in Crime: 

Appendix V: COPS Expenditures Associated with Policing Practices That 
Crime Literature Indicates Are Effective in Preventing Crime: 

Appendix VI: Methods Used to Estimate the Effects of COPS Funds on 
Officers and Crime: 

Appendix VII: Methods Used to Assess Policing Practices: 

Appendix VIII: Comments from the Department of Justice: 

Appendix IX: GAO Contacts and Staff Acknowledgments: 

Bibliography: 

Tables: 

Table 1: Index of Crimes, 2002, as Reported by the FBI, Excluding 
Arson: 

Table 2: COPS Obligations, 1994 through 2001, by COPS Grant Categories 
and Types of Grant Programs: 

Table 3: Law Enforcement Agencies Reporting to the UCR and in Our 
Analysis Dataset: 

Table 4: COPS Grant Obligations 1994-2001, by COPS Grant Program: 

Table 5: Percentage Distribution of COPS Obligations and Crime from 
1994 through 2001, by Population Size Group: 

Table 6: Per Crime COPS Obligations, by Population Size Group and 
Category of Crime, 1994 through 2001: 

Table 7: Number of Agencies That Received at Least One COPS Grant 
Obligation, 1994-2001, by COPS Grant Program, and Year of First COPS 
Obligation: 

Table 8: Percentage of Agencies in GAO's Primary Analysis Sample That 
Received at Least One COPS Grant Obligation from 1994 through 2001, by 
Size of Population Served by Agencies: 

Table 9: Estimated Effect of COPS Expenditures on the Number of Sworn 
Officers Nationwide in Each Year, 1994-2001: 

Table 10: Estimated Percentage Change in Crime Rates from 1993 Levels 
Due to COPS Expenditures, 1994-2001, by Crime Type Category: 

Table 11: Mean Levels of Policing Practices in 1993 and 1997, by 
Category of Policing Practices and whether Agencies Received a COPS 
Grant between 1994 and 1997: 

Table 12: Mean Levels of Policing Practices in 1993 and 1997, by Size 
of Agency and whether Agencies Received a COPS Grant between 1994 and 
1997: 

Table 13: Difference in Mean Levels of Reported Policing Practices in 
1996 and 2000, by Category of Policing Practices and Timing of COPS 
Grant Expenditures: 

Table 14: Alternate Specifications of the Relationship between COPS 
Expenditures and Crime: 

Table 15: Means and Standard Deviations of Variables Used in Regression 
Models: 

Table 16: Parameter Estimates from Regressions of Officers Per Capita 
on COPS Hiring Grant Expenditures and Other Outside Funds (Standard 
Errors in Parentheses): 

Table 17: Parameter Estimates from Regressions of Crime Rates on COPS 
Hiring Grant Expenditures and Other Outside Funds (Standard Errors in 
Parentheses): 

Table 18: Parameter Estimates from Regressions of Index Crime Rates and 
Officers Per Capita on COPS Hiring Grant Expenditures and Other Outside 
Funds, by Population Size Category (Standard Errors in Parentheses): 

Table 19: Elasticities of the Impact of Police Officers on the Crime 
Rate: 

Table 20: Elasticity of Violent and Property Crime with Respect to 
Officers under Alternate Specifications of the Relationship between 
COPS Expenditures and Crime: 

Table 21: Estimated Per Capita Effect of COPS Expenditures on the 
Number of Officers: 

Table 22: Estimated Per Capita Growth of COPS Expenditures on Police 
Officers and Crime from 1993: 

Table 23: Categories of Policing Practices and Specific Items within 
Each Category in the Policing Strategies Survey: 

Table 24: Parameter Estimates from Regressions of Changes in Mean 
Number of Policing Practices and Category of Practices between 1993 and 
1997 on whether or Not Agencies Received COPS grant between 1994 and 
1997 and on Per Capita COPS Expenditures between 1994 and 1997 
(Standard Errors in Parentheses): 

Table 25: Categories of Policing Practices and Specific Items within 
Each Category in the National Evaluation of COPS Survey: 

Table 26: Parameter Estimates from Regressions of Changes in Mean 
Number of Policing Practices and Category of Practices between 1996 and 
2000 on Whether or Not Agencies Received COPS grant Between 1997 and 
2000 and on Per Capita COPS Expenditures between 1994-1996 and 1997- 
2000 (Standard Errors in Parentheses): 

Figures: 

Figure 1: Total, Violent, and Property Crime Rates per 100,000 Persons, 
as Reported in the Uniform Crime Reports, 1970-2001: 

Figure 2: Estimated Effects of COPS Grant Expenditures on the Number of 
Sworn Officers, 1991-2001: 

Figure 3: Annual Percentage Changes in the Violent Crime Rate from 
1993: Total Change and Estimated Change Due to COPS Grants: 

Figure 4: Reported Levels of Policing Practices in 1993 and 1997 in 
Agencies That Did and Did Not Receive COPS Grants, by Category of 
Policing Practice: 

Figure 5: Violent Crimes and Violent Crimes Reported to the Police, as 
Reported in the National Criminal Victimization Survey and Including 
Homicides from the Uniform Crime Reports, 1990-2001: 

Figure 6: Total Index, Violent, and Property Crime Rates per 100,000 
Persons, 1990-2001: 

Figure 7: Annual Expenditures of COPS Grant Funds, by Year: 
Figure 8: Number of Agencies That Spent COPS Funds, 1994 through 2001: 

Figure 9: Reported Levels of Policing Practices in 1993 and 1997 in 
Agencies That Received and Did Not Receive COPS Grants, by Size of 
Population Served: 

Abbreviations: 

AHEAD: Accelerated Hiring, Education, and Deployment: 

BJA: Bureau of Justice Assistance: 

BJS: Bureau of Justice Statistics: 

COPS: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services: 

DLEA: Directory of Law Enforcement Agency: 

DOJ: Department of Justice: 

FAST: Funding Accelerated for Smaller Towns: 

FBI: Federal Bureau of Investigation: 

FIPS: Federal Information Processing Standards: 

LLEBG: Local Law Enforcement Block Grants: 

MORE: Making Officer Redeployment Effective: 

NCHS: National Center for Health Statistics: 

NVCS: National Crime Victimization Survey: 

OJP: Office of Justice Programs: 

ORI: originating agency identifier: 

UCR: Uniform Crime Reporting: 

UHP: Universal Hiring Program: 

VCCLEA: Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994: 

United States Government Accountability Office: 

Washington, DC 20548: 

October 14, 2005: 

The Honorable F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr.: 
Chairman: 
Committee on the Judiciary: 
House of Representatives: 

Dear Mr. Chairman: 

Provisions of the Public Safety Partnership and Community Policing Act 
of 1994, Title 1 of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act 
of 1994 (VCCLEA), authorized appropriations of $8.8 billion for fiscal 
years 1995 through 2000 for grants to states and local communities to 
increase the hiring and deployment of community police officers and to 
promote nationwide the concept of community policing--an approach to 
policing that involves the cooperation of law enforcement and community 
residents in identifying and developing solutions to crime problems--as 
an effective strategy to improve public safety.[Footnote 1] To 
administer the grants, in October 1994, the Attorney General created 
the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS). 

According to its Director, the COPS Office was responsible for "one of 
the greatest infusions of resources into local law enforcement in our 
nation's history,"[Footnote 2] and in a report to Congress the former 
Attorney General linked increases in COPS-funded officers to declines 
in crime. By the summer of 2000, the former Attorney General reported, 
the COPS Office had awarded more than $7.6 billion in grants to more 
than 12,000 local law enforcement agencies--primarily municipal, state, 
and county police and sheriff's departments whose officers have general 
arrest powers--and funded over 105,000 community policing officers. The 
report claimed that the funded officers led to an increase in the 
number of police officers that was well above what would have been 
expected in the absence of the passage of VCCLEA, and it cited research 
that showed that increased police presence led to reductions in crime. 
As evidence that these officers led to reductions in crime, the report 
showed that the average number of violent crimes per police department 
declined as the number of COPS-funded officers increased. 

A study funded by the COPS Office and released in 2001, which attempted 
to control for some of the other factors that could influence crime 
rates and also be correlated with the distribution of COPS funds, 
concluded that COPS grants contributed to the reduction in crime in the 
1990s.[Footnote 3] You previously asked us to review this study, and we 
reported that its methodological limitations were such that the study's 
results should be viewed as inconclusive.[Footnote 4] 

In response to our assessment of the results of the study that we 
reviewed, you asked us to undertake an independent evaluation of the 
impact of COPS grants on the decline in crime that occurred during the 
1990s. This report provides results from our evaluation of interrelated 
questions about COPS funds, officers, crime, and policing practices. 
Specifically, regarding COPS funds: (1) From 1994 through 2001, how 
were COPS obligations distributed among local law enforcement agencies 
in relation to the populations they served and crimes in their 
jurisdictions, and how much of the obligated amounts did agencies 
spend? Regarding officers and crime: (2) To what extent did COPS grants 
contribute to increases in the number of sworn officers and declines in 
crime in the nation during the 1990s? Regarding policing practices: (3) 
To what extent were COPS grants during the 1990s associated with police 
departments adopting policing practices that the crime literature 
indicates could contribute to reductions in crime? 

To address our reporting objectives, we created and analyzed a database 
consisting of 12 years of data on local law enforcement agencies for 
the years 1990 through 2001. We included data from the Department of 
Justice's (DOJ) Office of Justice Programs (OJP) on federal law 
enforcement grant obligations and expenditures (including COPS grants); 
the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) Uniform Crime Reporting 
(UCR) Program on crime and sworn officers; the Department of Commerce's 
Bureau of Economic Analysis on local economic conditions such as 
employment rates and per capita income; and the National Center for 
Health Statistics and U.S. Census Bureau's estimates of demographic 
characteristics of local populations--such as their age, race, and 
gender composition. The UCR crime data that we used are data on crimes 
reported to or known by the police and reported to the UCR Program. The 
crimes in the UCR are based on the FBI's crime index. The index crimes 
include the violent crimes of murder and non-negligent manslaughter, 
forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault as well as the property 
crimes of burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson. The 
FBI reports that there is limited reporting of arson offenses to the 
UCR Program by law enforcement agencies. We therefore excluded arson 
crimes from our analysis.[Footnote 5] 

Prior to developing and using the database to address our objectives, 
we assessed the reliability of each data source, and in preparing this 
report, we used only the data that we found to be sufficiently reliable 
for the purposes of our report. We also assessed possible biases in our 
estimates of the effects of COPS funds on crime arising from our use of 
UCR data on reported crimes. We concluded from our analysis that our 
estimates of the impacts of COPS funds are likely to understate the 
effect of COPS funds on crime. (See app. I for a more detailed 
discussion of our approach, methods, and database construction.) 

To describe how COPS grant funds were distributed and spent, we 
analyzed data on COPS obligations to and expenditures by local law 
enforcement agencies, comparing them with several characteristics of 
the agencies that received COPS funds, such as population size and 
crime levels. 

To assess the possible relationships between COPS expenditures and 
changes in the number of officers and rates of crime, we analyzed data 
on the agencies that reported complete crime and officer data for at 
least 1 year from 1990 through 2001 using a two-stage regression model 
of these relationships. In the first stage, we estimated the 
relationship between the variation in the timing and amount of 
agencies' expenditures on COPS grants that were for hiring officers and 
changes in the number of officers. In the second stage, we estimated 
the relationship between changes in COPS expenditures and changes in 
crime rates using fixed-effects regression models. We used the results 
from these two sets of regressions to calculate the amount of the 
change in crime (from the second stage) due to changes in officers 
(from the first stage). As the relationship between officer levels and 
crime rates may reflect a complex causal relationship, we used COPS 
hiring grants as a statistical instrument to help to identify the 
relationship between officers and crime. In both sets of regression 
models, we used agency and year fixed effects to control for unobserved 
sources of variation among agencies (within a given year) and within 
agencies (over time). We also included variables to measure agencies' 
pre-1994 trends in the growth of crime rates and officers. These 
controls allowed us to compare agencies that had similar, pre-COPS 
trends in these variables, thereby reducing further the differences 
among agencies that are not due to COPS expenditures. To control for 
economic factors that may be related to crime--such as employment and 
income--we included measures of local economic conditions, and to 
control for changes in the composition of local populations that could 
be correlated with crime, we included measures of age and race 
composition of local populations. Finally, to control for changes in 
state-level practices that could affect crime rates, such as changes in 
state incarceration rates or state sentencing policy, we included state-
by-year fixed effects in our regression models. (See app. VI for 
additional details about our regression models.) 

To address the relationship between COPS grants and changes in policing 
practices, we analyzed data from two surveys of nationally 
representative samples of local law enforcement agencies on policing 
practices that they reportedly implemented in various years from 1993 
to 2000. The first survey--the Policing Strategies Survey--was 
administered in 1993 and 1997 to provide information on the development 
and implementation of community policing.[Footnote 6] The second 
survey--the National Evaluation of COPS Survey--was administered in 
1996 and 2000.[Footnote 7] We identified and analyzed practices that 
are associated with problem-solving, place-oriented approaches to 
policing, community collaboration efforts, and the use of crime 
analysis. We assessed changes in the levels of reported practices 
between agencies that spent COPS grants over particular periods with 
those that did not receive or spend COPS grant funds. To control for 
the underlying trends in reported policing practices, we estimated 
fixed-effects regression models of the effects of COPS grants 
expenditures on changes in reported policing practices. To assess the 
possible relationship between policing practices and crime, we analyzed 
systematic reviews of the effectiveness of policing practices in 
reducing crime to identify the types of policing practices that have 
been judged to be effective in preventing crime. (See app. VII for 
details about the surveys and our analytic methods.) 

In addition, we reviewed relevant economic and criminological 
literatures that addressed issues related to estimating models of the 
effects of federal grant funds on crime rates. We spoke with officials 
at the Department of Justice about the operation of the COPS program, 
and we also spoke with researchers about our approach and methods. We 
reviewed our approach and methods with a group of experts in the field 
of policing and crime. The group consisted of criminologists, 
economists, statisticians, and criminal justice practitioners, and was 
convened for us by the National Research Council of the National 
Academies to enable participants to offer their individual views as 
experts in the field. 

We conducted our work between January 2004 and August 2005 in 
accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. 

Background: 

Established in October 1994 by the Attorney General to implement the 
administration of community policing grants under VCCLEA, the Office of 
Community Oriented Policing Services announced it first grant programs 
in 1994. Prior to its establishment, in December 1993 the Department of 
Justice awarded community policing grants to hire officers under the 
Police Hiring Supplement.[Footnote 8] 

The COPS Office distributed grants in a variety of program funding 
categories. Hiring grants, which required agencies to hire new officers 
and at the same time to indicate the types of community policing 
strategies that they intended to implement with the grants, was the 
largest COPS grant program category in terms of the amounts of grant 
funds obligated.[Footnote 9] The hiring grants paid a maximum of 
$75,000 per officer over a 3-year period (or at most 75 percent of an 
officer's salary) and generally required that local agencies cover the 
remaining salary and benefits with state or local funds. From 1994 
through 2001, more than $4.8 billion in COPS obligations (or about 64 
percent of COPS obligations over this period) were in the form of 
hiring grants. The Making Officer Redeployment Effective (MORE) grant 
program, which provided funds to law enforcement agencies to purchase 
equipment, hire civilians, and redeploy existing officers to community 
policing was the second largest COPS grant program, obligating more 
than $1.2 billion. Additional COPS grant programs provided funds for 
specific innovations in policing and for a variety of other purposes. 

Each year the COPS Office was required to distribute half of the grant 
funds to agencies in communities whose populations exceeded 150,000 
persons and half of the grant funds to agencies in communities with 
populations of 150,000 or fewer persons.[Footnote 10] 

In the applications for hiring grants, the COPS Office requested 
agencies to indicate the types of community policing practices that 
they planned to implement with their grants. The various practices 
related to community policing included practices such as identifying 
crime problems by looking at records of crime trends and analyzing 
repeat calls for service, working with other public agencies to solve 
disorder problems, locating offices or stations within neighborhoods, 
and collaborating with community residents by increasing officer 
contact with citizens and improving citizen feedback. These types of 
policing practices also corresponded with general approaches to 
policing. For example, problem-solving policing practices may rely on 
crime analysis tools to help to identify crime problems and develop 
solutions to them. Place-oriented practices attempt to identify 
locations where crime occurs repeatedly and to implement procedures to 
disrupt these recurrences of crime. By collaborating with community 
residents, agencies attempt to improve citizen feedback about crime 
problems and effectiveness of policing to address these problems. 

In 2000, DOJ reported that COPS-funded officers helped to reduce crime 
and reported that the drop in crime that occurred after 1994 was more 
than what would have been expected in the absence of the passage of 
VCCLEA and the creation of the COPS Office.[Footnote 11] The report 
suggested that COPS had achieved its goal of funding 100,000 officers, 
and through increases in officers and the practice of community 
policing, the COPS program was credited with reducing crime. However, 
while COPS may have funded 100,000 officers, it was not apparent that 
the funded officers had resulted in new officers having been hired. 
Researchers at the Urban Institute reported in 2000, for example, their 
estimates that by 2003, the COPS program would have raised the level of 
police on the street by the equivalent of 62,700 to 83,900 full-time 
equivalent officers.[Footnote 12] They also indicated that it was 
unclear whether the program would ever increase the number of officers 
on the street at a single time by 100,000.[Footnote 13] 

The COPS Office-funded study of the effect of COPS grants on crime in 
over 6,000 communities from 1995 through 1999 that had received COPS 
grants concluded that COPS grants were effective in reducing 
crime.[Footnote 14] The study also reported that COPS grants that 
encouraged agencies to implement a variety of innovative strategies to 
improve public safety had larger impacts on reducing violent and 
property crime than did other COPS grant types.[Footnote 15] However, a 
study released by the Heritage Foundation, which was based upon an 
analysis of county-level data, was unable to replicate the findings of 
the COPS Office-funded study.[Footnote 16] Specifically, the Heritage 
study found no effect of COPS hiring grants on crime rates, but it did 
find that the COPS grants for specific problems--such as gangs, 
domestic violence, and illegal use of firearms by youth--were 
associated with reductions in crime. In addition, we questioned whether 
the sizes of the effects of COPS grants on crime that were reported in 
the COPS Office-funded study were large enough to be significant in a 
practical sense and whether they could accurately represent the 
expected returns on the investment of billions of dollars.[Footnote 17] 

Assessing the contribution of COPS funds to the decline in crime during 
the 1990s presents challenges for evaluators. Nationwide, crime rates 
began to decline in about 1991, before the COPS program announced its 
first grant programs in 1994 (fig. 1). Hence the factors other than 
COPS grants that were responsible for precipitating the decline in 
crime could have continued to influence its decline throughout the 
1990s. Researchers have pointed to a number of factors that could have 
precipitated the decline in crime, including increased use of prison as 
a punishment for violent crimes, improved economic conditions, and the 
subsiding of violence that accompanied the expansion of drug markets. 
To the extent that any of these factors are correlated with the 
distribution of COPS grants, they could be responsible for impacts that 
have been attributed to COPS grants. 

Figure 1: Total, Violent, and Property Crime Rates per 100,000 Persons, 
as Reported in the Uniform Crime Reports, 1970-2001: 

[See PDF for image] 

[End of figure] 

Prior studies of the impact of COPS grants on crime have correlated 
COPS funds with crime rates, controlling for other factors that could 
influence crime rates. The authors of the prior studies describe 
various mechanisms by which COPS grants may affect crime, but their 
statistical models do not explicitly take these mechanisms into account 
in estimating the effects of the grants. By identifying and explicitly 
modeling mechanisms through which COPS funds could affect crimes--such 
as increasing the number of sworn officers on the street who are 
available for patrolling places or contributing to changes in policing 
practices that may be effective in preventing crime--the possibility of 
a spurious relationship between inputs (such as COPS funds) and 
outcomes (such as crime) can be minimized. (For additional background 
information, see app. II.) 

Results: 

Our analysis showed that from 1994 through 2001, COPS obligated more 
than $7.32 billion to 10,680 agencies for which we were able to link 
Office of Justice Programs financial data on COPS obligations to the 
records of law enforcement agencies.[Footnote 18] About $4.7 billion 
(or 64 percent) of these obligations were in the form of hiring grants. 
About half of these funds went to agencies serving populations of 
150,000 or fewer persons and about half was distributed to agencies 
serving populations of more than 150,000 persons. This distribution 
roughly corresponds to the distribution of index crimes across the two 
size categories of jurisdictions. However, in relation to violent 
crimes, the share of COPS funds distributed to larger jurisdictions was 
smaller than the share of violent crimes that they contributed to the 
national total. For example, agencies serving populations of more than 
150,000 persons contributed about 58 percent of all violent crimes 
reported to the UCR during this time period while receiving about half 
of all COPS funds. To be specific, the smallest agencies--those serving 
populations of fewer than 10,000 persons--received an average of $1,573 
per violent crime reported to UCR. Agencies serving populations of more 
than 150,000 persons received about $418 in COPS funds per violent 
crime. 

By the end of 2001, the COPS grantee agencies in our sample had spent 
about $5 billion (or 68 percent of the $7.3 billion obligated to them) 
from 1994 through 2001. Annually, the total amount of COPS expenditures 
made by grantees increased each year from 1994 until 2000, and then 
declined, while the number of agencies that drew down COPS funds peaked 
in 1998 at about 7,600 and declined to about 6,000 in 2001. From 1994 
through 2001, a total of about 10,300 agencies spent COPS funds. The 
maximum number of agencies spending funds in any given year occurred 
during 1998, when about 7,600 agencies spent funds. From 1998 through 
2000, the amount of COPS expenditures per person in the jurisdiction 
served by an agency increased from about $4 to about $4.80. COPS 
expenditures amounted to an annual average of about 1 percent of total 
expenditures for police services by local law enforcement agencies from 
1994 through 2001. This contribution varied by year. For example, in 
1999 and 2000, COPS expenditures were about 1.5 percent of total local 
police expenditures. (See app. III for a further discussion of COPS 
obligations and expenditures.) 

For the years 1994 through 2001, we infer from our estimates that COPS 
hiring grant expenditures contributed to increases in sworn officer 
levels above the levels that would have been expected without these 
funds. The additional number of sworn officers stemming from these 
funds varied over the years, and it increased from 1994 though 2000 and 
declined in 2001 (fig. 2). For example, for 1997 we estimate that COPS 
funds contributed about 14,000 additional officers in that year--or 
about 2.4 percent of the total number of sworn officers nationwide--and 
for 2000, COPS funds contributed about 17,000 additional officers--or 
about 3 percent of the total number of sworn officers nationwide. For 
all years from 1994 through 2001, we estimate that COPS expenditures 
paid for a total of about 88,000 additional officer-years over this 
entire period, where the total number of officer-years equals the sum 
of the number of officers due to COPS grant expenditures in each year. 
An officer-year refers to the number of officers in a given year that 
we could attribute to COPS expenditures, and the additional officers in 
a given year attributable to COPS expenditures represent a net addition 
to the stock of sworn officers.[Footnote 19] Using the results from our 
regression estimates of the effects of COPS expenditures on the level 
of sworn officers, we set the values for COPS expenditures to zero to 
predict the level of officers absent COPS funds. The difference between 
this number and the actual number of sworn officers yields the number 
of officers due to COPS expenditures. Our analysis also shows that 
apart from the COPS hiring and COPS MORE grants, other COPS grant types 
did not have a significant effect on officer strength. (See app. IV for 
more detailed information about the results of our analysis of COPS 
expenditures on officers.) 

Figure 2: Estimated Effects of COPS Grant Expenditures on the Number of 
Sworn Officers, 1991-2001: 

[See PDF for image] 

[End of figure] 

We estimate that the COPS grant expenditures contributed to the 
reduction in crime in the 1990s independently of other factors that we 
were able to take into account in our analysis. Other factors that 
could have contributed to the reduction in crimes in the 1990s that we 
took into account included federal law enforcement expenditures other 
than COPS grants, local economic conditions and changes in population 
composition, and changes in state-level policies and practices that 
could be correlated with crime, such as incarceration and sentencing 
policy. Specifically, from our model of the effect of changes in sworn 
officers on crime, we estimate that a 1 percent increase in the number 
of sworn officers per capita would lead to a 0.4 percent reduction in 
the total number of index crimes. Through their effects on changes in 
officers in a given year, COPS expenditures led to varying amounts of 
declines in crime rates over the years from 1994 through 2001. For 
example, the 2.4 percent increase in sworn officers due to COPS 
expenditures in 1997 was responsible for about a 1.1 percent decline in 
the total index crime rate from 1993 to 1997, while the roughly 3 
percent increase in officers due to COPS expenditures in 2000 was 
responsible for about 1.3 percent decline in the total index crime rate 
from 1993 to 2000. Put into another context, the total crime rate 
declined from 5,904 per 100,000 persons in 1993 to 4,367 per 100,000 
persons in 2000, or by about 26 percent. Of this 26 percent drop, we 
attribute about 5 percent to the effect of COPS. From our analysis of 
violent crimes, we estimated that declines in the violent crime rate 
due to COPS expenditures also varied with the level of officers due to 
COPS funds. The declines in violent crime rates attributable to COPS 
increased from about 2 percent in 1997 to 2.5 percent in 2000, where 
both of the amounts of decline attributable to COPS expenditures are 
based upon comparisons with the 1993 violent crime rate (fig. 3). We 
further estimate that at its peak in 1998, COPS accounted for about a 
1.2 percent decline in the property crime rate. 

Figure 3: Annual Percentage Changes in the Violent Crime Rate from 
1993: Total Change and Estimated Change Due to COPS Grants: 

[See PDF for image] 

[End of figure] 

Our estimates of the impacts of COPS expenditures on the broad 
categories of crime are supported by our findings from our crime-type- 
specific regression models. We find significant reductions due to COPS 
expenditures for the crimes of murder and non-negligent manslaughter, 
robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, and motor vehicle theft. Our 
analysis of larceny indicates that while the relationship between COPS 
funds and larceny is a negative one, it is not statistically 
significant, nor is the effect of COPS on rape statistically 
significant. Further, we estimated the effects of COPS grants on the 
total crime rate under various assumptions about lags between the 
receipt of COPS grants and expenditures of COPS funds. The estimates 
for the amount of the decline in the total crime rate that we report 
here--for example, the 1.3 percent of the decline in crime from 1993 to 
2000--are among the smallest effects that we estimated from our various 
models. Under different assumptions about lags associated with COPS 
expenditures, the amount attributable to COPS could be as high as 3.2 
percent. Interestingly, the 1.3 percent decline in the index crime rate 
that we attribute to COPS expenditures in 2000 is on the same order of 
magnitude as the contribution of COPS expenditures to total local 
spending on police. In 2000, for example, COPS expenditures accounted 
for about 1.5 percent of total local police expenditures. We further 
find that factors other than COPS expenditures account for the majority 
of the decline in the crime rate. (See app. IV for more detailed 
information about the results of our analysis of COPS expenditures on 
crime.) 

Our regression analysis of the Policing Strategies Survey data for 1993 
and 1997 indicate that receipt of a COPS grant and the amount of per 
capita COPS expenditures by agencies were associated with increases in 
the agencies' reported use of problem-solving and place-oriented 
policing practices but not crime analysis and community collaboration 
policing practices (fig.4). According to our review studies of the 
effectiveness of policing practices, problem-solving and place- 
oriented practices are among those that the crime literature indicates 
may be effective in reducing crime. With problem-solving practices, 
police focus on specific problems and tailor their strategies to them. 
Place-oriented practices include efforts to identify the locations 
where crime repeatedly occurs and to implement procedures to disrupt 
these recurrences of crime. Crime analysis includes the use of tools 
such as geographic information systems to identify crime patterns. 
Community collaboration includes attempts to improve or enhance citizen 
feedback about crime problems and the effectiveness of policing efforts 
to address them. In our regressions, we controlled for the underlying 
trends in the reported adoption of policing practices, agency 
characteristics, and local economic conditions. 

Figure 4: Reported Levels of Policing Practices in 1993 and 1997 in 
Agencies That Did and Did Not Receive COPS Grants, by Category of 
Policing Practice: 

[See PDF for image] 

[End of figure] 

Our analysis of the National Evaluation of COPS Survey--which measured 
practices in 1996 and again in 2000--showed that while COPS grantee 
agencies increased their reported use of all policing practices 
combined, these changes were not statistically significant in 
regressions that controlled for the underlying trends in the reported 
adoption of policing practices, agency characteristics, and local 
economic conditions. (See app. V for more detailed information about 
the results of our analysis of COPS expenditures and policing 
practices.) 

Concluding Observations: 

While we find that COPS expenditures led to increases in sworn police 
officers above levels that would have been expected without these 
expenditures and through the increases in sworn officers led to 
declines in crime, we conclude that COPS grants were not the major 
cause of the decline in crime from 1994 through 2001. Other factors-- 
which other researchers have attempted to sort out--combined to 
contribute more to the reduction in crime than did COPS expenditures. 
This is not surprising, as COPS expenditures--while a large federal 
investment in local law enforcement--made a comparatively small 
contribution to local law enforcement expenditures for policing. 

Nevertheless, our analysis shows that COPS grant expenditures did 
reduce crime during the 1990s. Our models isolate the effects of COPS 
expenditures from the effects of other factors. We cannot identify 
another variable that is correlated with changes in COPS expenditures, 
officers, and crime rates in local communities that would explain away 
our findings. Thus, we conclude that the results of our model are 
sound. Further, our results do not address whether the COPS program met 
its goals of putting 100,000 officers on the street--and the evidence 
suggests that while it funded more than 100,000 officers, it may have 
fallen short of achieving this goal. Still, through the increases in 
officers that we attribute to COPS expenditures, we find that COPS 
grants affected crime rates. Therefore, as a demonstration of whether a 
federal program can affect crime through hiring officers and changing 
policing practices, the evidence indicates that COPS contributed to 
declines in crime above the levels of declines that would have been 
expected without it. 

Our work cannot identify an optimum number of officers needed by any 
individual agency to maximize the effect of officers on reducing crime, 
nor can it identify the specific types of practices that agencies 
should adopt in particular settings. It is highly likely that there is 
indeed a point where additional officers no longer affect crime. The 
numbers of additional officers hired as a result of COPS were 
relatively small compared with the sizes of individual police agencies, 
and these small increases led to commensurate reductions in crime 
rates. Given resource constraints and competing priorities at all 
levels of government, it is probably unlikely that most police agencies 
would have the resources available to hire large enough numbers of 
officers to go past the point of diminishing returns. 

Agency Comments and Our Evaluation: 

We provided a draft of this report to the Attorney General for comment 
on September 13, 2005. In its written comments, the Office of Community 
Oriented Policing Services (COPS) drew upon information from both this 
report and our prior correspondence on the effects of COPS grants on 
crime. They said that we were careful and diligent in our research, and 
that our findings support conclusions reached by others and correspond 
with what local law enforcement leaders report. The COPS Office also 
expanded upon some of our main findings, which they characterized 
correctly. In their comments, the COPS Office introduced data and 
opinions about potential effects of the COPS grants that were beyond 
the scope of our work. We therefore cannot corroborate these 
statements. 

For example, in discussing our findings about the effects of COPS 
grants on sworn officers, the COPS Office introduced data about 
officers derived from the MORE technology grants and reports that 
42,058 (or 36 percent) of the 118,397 officers that the COPS Office has 
funded to date are derived from the MORE grants. Our work does not 
corroborate either of these figures. We point out in Appendix VI that 
our estimates of a total of 88,000 additional officer-years takes into 
account the effects of MORE grant expenditures. 

In their comments on our finding about changes in policing practices 
that resulted from COPS, the COPS Office points out that the aggregate 
counts of policing practices that we used in our analysis provide only 
a superficial measure of the level of community policing taking place. 
We acknowledged this point in appendix VII, but chose not to speculate 
on the extent to which police departments increased the amount of 
problem solving or other policing practices they engaged in. By 
speculating that agencies may have increased the quantity of a specific 
activity, the COPS Office provides only one view of what may have 
happened. Another view, proffered by policing researchers, is that 
there is little evidence to suggest that problem-solving policing was 
implemented with sufficient rigor in enough departments to have 
contributed to declines in violent crime during the 1990s. As they 
point out, problem-solving activities may have increased, and they may 
have contributed to declines in crime, "but we simply do not 
know."[Footnote 20] 

We are sending copies of this report to other interested congressional 
committees and the Attorney General. We will also make copies available 
to others upon request. In addition, the report will be available at no 
charge on GAO's Web site at http://www.gao.gov. 

If you or your staff have any questions concerning this report, please 
contact Laurie Ekstrand at (202) 512-8777 or by e-mail at 
Ekstrandl@gao.gov or Nancy Kingsbury at (202) 512-2700 or by e-mail at 
Kingsburyn@gao.gov. Contact points for our Offices of Congressional 
Relations and Public Affairs may be found on the last page of this 
report. Key contributors to this report are listed in appendix IX. 

Sincerely yours, 

Signed by: 

Laurie E. Ekstrand, Director: 
Homeland Security and Justice Issues: 

Signed by: 

Nancy R. Kingsbury, Managing Director: 
Applied Research and Methods: 

[End of section] 

Appendix I: Objectives, Scope, and Methodology: 

In response to a request from F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr., Chairman, 
Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, this report 
provides the findings of our evaluation of the impact of Community 
Oriented Policing Services (COPS) grants on the decline in crime that 
occurred during the 1990s. Our objectives were to address interrelated 
questions about COPS funds, officers, crime, and policing practices. 
Specifically, regarding COPS funds: (1) From 1994 through 2001, how 
were COPS obligations distributed among local law enforcement agencies 
in relation to the populations they served and crimes in their 
jurisdictions, and how much of the obligated amounts did agencies 
spend? Regarding officers and crime: (2) To what extent did COPS grants 
contribute to increases in the number of sworn officers and declines in 
crime in the nation during the 1990s? Regarding policing practices: (3) 
To what extent were COPS grants during the 1990s associated with police 
departments adopting policing practices that the crime literature 
indicates could contribute to reductions in crime? 

Overview of Our Approach and Methodology: 

To address our reporting objectives, we analyzed a database consisting 
of 12 years of data from 1990 through 2001 on local law enforcement 
agencies. To create this database--our primary analysis database--we 
obtained data from several sources, and we organized the data as a 
panel dataset in that it contained information on multiple law 
enforcement agencies over multiple years. For each agency, we obtained 
data on COPS and other federal law enforcement grant obligations and 
expenditures from the Department of Justice's (DOJ) Office of Justice 
Programs (OJP), and data on index crimes and the number of sworn 
officers from the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) Uniform Crime 
Reporting (UCR) Program. Index crimes include the violent crimes of 
murder and non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and 
aggravated assault, as well as the property crimes of burglary, larceny-
theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson.[Footnote 21] As shown in table 
1, in 2002, property crimes constituted 88 percent of the 11,877,218 
index crimes. Among violent crimes, robberies accounted for 3.5 percent 
of all index crimes, and aggravated assaults accounted for 7.5 percent. 

Table 1: Index of Crimes, 2002, as Reported by the FBI, Excluding 
Arson: 

Crime category: Index crimes[B]; 
Number: 11,877,218; 
Percentage of index crimes[A]: 100.0%. 

Crime category: Index crimes[B]: Violent crimes[C]; 
Number: 1,426,325; 
Percentage of index crimes[A]: 12.0%. 

Crime category: Index crimes[B]: Violent crimes[C]: Murder and non-
negligent manslaughter; 
Number: 16,204; 
Percentage of index crimes[A]: 0.1%. 

Crime category: Index crimes[B]: Violent crimes[C]: Forcible rape; 
Number: 95,136; 
Percentage of index crimes[A]: 0.8%. 

Crime category: Index crimes[B]: Violent crimes[C]: Property crimes[D]: 
Robbery; 
Number: Property crimes[D]: 420,637; 
Percentage of index crimes[A]: Property crimes[D]: 3.5%. 

Crime category: Index crimes[B]: Violent crimes[C]: Aggravated assault; 
Number: 894,348; 
Percentage of index crimes[A]: 7.5%. 

Crime category: Index crimes[B]: Property crimes[D]; 
Number: 10,450,893; 
Percentage of index crimes[A]: 88.0%. 

Crime category: Index crimes[B]: Property crimes[D]: Burglary; 
Number: 2,151,875; 
Percentage of index crimes[A]: 18.1%. 

Crime category: Index crimes[B]: Property crimes[D]: Larceny theft; 
Number: 7,052,922; 
Percentage of index crimes[A]: 59.4%. 

Crime category: Index crimes[B]: Property crimes[D]: Motor vehicle 
theft; 
Number: 1,246,096; 
Percentage of index crimes[A]: 10.5%. 

Source: Table 1 of Federal Bureau of Investigation, Crime in the United 
States, 2002, Uniform Crime Reports, Washington, D.C.: Department of 
Justice. Printed annually. 

Note: Although arson is part of the crime index, the FBI does not 
estimate the number of arson crimes for the nation as a whole, and 
consequently, it does not include an estimate for arson crimes in its 
table 1 of Crime in the United States. 

[A] Percentages for specific types of crime within a category may not 
add up to category totals because of rounding. 

[B] Sum of violent and property crimes. 

[C] Sum of murder and non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, 
robbery, and aggravated assault. 

[D] Sum of burglary, larceny theft, and motor vehicle theft. 

[End of table] 

We obtained data on some of the factors that the research literature on 
crime suggests are related to changes in crime. From the Department of 
Commerce's Bureau of Economic Analysis, we obtained data on local 
economic conditions--including employment rates and per capita income-
-and from the National Center for Health Statistics and the U.S. Census 
Bureau--we obtained data on demographic variables--including the 
percentage of the population aged 15 to 24, and the racial and gender 
composition of the population. 

We also analyzed data from two surveys of nationally representative 
samples of police departments on the policing practices that they 
reportedly implemented in various years from 1993 to 2000. We refer to 
the first survey as the Policing Strategies Survey, and it was 
administered in 1993 and again in 1997.[Footnote 22] We refer to the 
second survey as the National Evaluation of COPS Survey, as it was 
completed as part of the Urban Institute's national evaluation of the 
implementation of the COPS program, and we used the data from the 
surveys that were administered in 1996 and 2000. [Footnote 23] The 
multiple administrations of each survey allowed us to analyze changes 
in policing practices. Using agency and year identifiers, we matched 
and merged data from our primary analysis database with the agency- 
level records in each of the surveys. 

Prior to developing and analyzing our database, we assessed the 
reliability of each data source, and in preparing this report, we used 
only the data that we found to be sufficiently reliable for the 
purposes of our report. 

In addition, to identify policing practices that are considered to be 
effective in preventing crime, we analyzed reviews of research and 
evaluation literature. We also reviewed relevant economic and 
criminological literatures that addressed issues related to estimating 
models of the effects of federal grant funds on crime rates. We spoke 
with officials at the Department of Justice about the operation of the 
COPS programs, and we also spoke with researchers about our approach 
and methods. We reviewed our approach and methods with a group of 
experts in the field of policing and crime. The group consisted of 
criminologists, economists, statisticians, and criminal justice 
practitioners, and was convened for us by the National Research Council 
of the National Academies to enable participants to offer their 
individual views as experts in the field. 

We conducted our work between January 2004 and August 2005 in 
accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. 

Methods Used to Address the Flow of Funds Reporting Objective: 

To address our first objective, we analyzed OJP financial system data 
on grant obligations and expenditures and UCR data on the size of 
populations served by agencies and crimes occurring within the 
jurisdictions of the agencies that reported crime to the UCR. We used 
the OJP financial data to compute the amount of COPS funds obligated by 
COPS grants and the amount expended by local police agencies during the 
period from 1994 through 2001. To describe the overall COPS funding 
trends by grant type, we analyzed the universe of agencies in the OJP 
data that received any federal law enforcement grant during the period 
from 1990 through 2001, regardless of whether or not the agency 
received a COPS grant during the period and regardless of whether we 
were able to link the data from these agencies to records in the UCR. 
For the years from 1990 through 2001, the OJP data show that 13,332 
agencies received any federal law enforcement grant. For analyses of 
COPS funds by agency population sizes and for comparisons of funding 
levels with levels of violent and total index crime, we limited our 
analysis to the sample of agencies whose crime and population data we 
were able to link to the OJP data. This resulted in a sample of 11,187 
agencies in our primary analysis database. These 11,187 agencies 
accounted for 86 percent of the reported crimes in the UCR data that we 
received from the FBI. 

The COPS Office distributed grants in a variety of programs. To 
describe the amounts of COPS obligations and expenditures, we organized 
the COPS grant programs into four broader categories of grants, and we 
reported our results at the level of these broader categories. These 
four categories include: Hiring, Making Officer Redeployment Effective 
(MORE), Innovative, and Miscellaneous grants, and the specific grant 
programs within each category, along with obligated amounts from 1994 
through 2001 for each grant program and category, are shown in table 2. 

Table 2: COPS Obligations, 1994 through 2001, by COPS Grant Categories 
and Types of Grant Programs: 

COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Total, all grant 
programs; 
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $7.616; 
Obligations: Percentage of total: 100.0%. 

COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Hiring grant programs; 
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $4.863; 
Obligations: Percentage of total: 63.9%. 

COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Hiring grant programs: 
Police Hiring Supplement; 
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $0.143; 
Obligations: Percentage of total: 1.9%. 

COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Hiring grant programs: 
COPS Phase I; 
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $0.184; 
Obligations: Percentage of total: 2.4%. 

COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Hiring grant programs: 
AHEAD; 
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $1.245; 
Obligations: Percentage of total: 16.4%. 

COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Hiring grant programs: 
FAST; 
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $1.234; 
Obligations: Percentage of total: 16.2%. 

COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Hiring grant programs: 
MORE grants: Universal Hiring Program; 
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): MORE grants: $2.055; 
Obligations: Percentage of total: MORE grants: 27.0%. 

COPS grant category and types of grant programs: MORE grants; 
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $1.262; 
Obligations: Percentage of total: 16.6%. 

COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Innovative grant 
programs; 
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $0.418; 
Obligations: Percentage of total: 5.5%. 

COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Innovative grant 
programs: Advancing Community Policing; 
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $0.034; 
Obligations: Percentage of total: 0.5%. 

COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Innovative grant 
programs: COPS 311; 
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $0.005; 
Obligations: Percentage of total: 0.1%. 

COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Innovative grant 
programs: Distressed Neighborhoods Pilot Program; 
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $0.112; 
Obligations: Percentage of total: 1.5%. 

COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Innovative grant 
programs: Community Policing to Combat Domestic Violence; 
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $0.070; 
Obligations: Percentage of total: 0.9%. 

COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Innovative grant 
programs: Anti-Gang Initiatives; 
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $0.011; 
Obligations: Percentage of total: 0.1%. 

COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Innovative grant 
programs: Integrity Initiative; 
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $0.018; 
Obligations: Percentage of total: 0.2%. 

COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Innovative grant 
programs: Methamphetamine Initiative; 
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $0.089; 
Obligations: Percentage of total: 1.2%. 

COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Innovative grant 
programs: Problem Solving Partnerships; 
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $0.038; 
Obligations: Percentage of total: 0.5%. 

COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Innovative grant 
programs: School-Based Partnership Programs; 
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $0.031; 
Obligations: Percentage of total: 0.4%. 

COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Innovative grant 
programs: Youth Firearm Violence Initiative; 
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $0.009; 
Obligations: Percentage of total: 0.1%. 

COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Miscellaneous grants 
programs; 
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $1.073; 
Obligations: Percentage of total: 14.1%. 

COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Miscellaneous grant 
programs: COPS in Schools; 
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $0.533; 
Obligations: Percentage of total: 7.0%. 

COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Miscellaneous grant 
programs: Demonstration Sites Program; 
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $0.005; 
Obligations: Percentage of total: 0.1%. 

COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Miscellaneous grant 
programs: Miscellaneous; 
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $0.132; 
Obligations: Percentage of total: 1.7%. 

COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Miscellaneous grant 
programs: Technology Grants; 
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $0.207; 
Obligations: Percentage of total: 2.7%. 

COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Miscellaneous grant 
programs: Regional Community Policing Initiative; 
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $0.084; 
Obligations: Percentage of total: 1.1%. 

COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Miscellaneous grant 
programs: Small Community Grant Program; 
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $0.013; 
Obligations: Percentage of total: 0.2%. 

COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Miscellaneous grant 
programs: Tribal Grant Program; 
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $0.098; 
Obligations: Percentage of total: 1.3%. 

Source: GAO analysis of Office of Justice Programs financial data. 

[End of table] 

In our analysis, we compared the distribution of COPS obligations with 
the distribution of crimes contributed by agencies serving populations 
of 150,000 or fewer persons and those serving more than 150,000 
persons. We used UCR population to identify agency size and crimes. The 
UCR population may not reflect the population that agencies provided on 
the applications for COPS grants. Our analysis of the distribution of 
COPS funds describes the extent to which the distribution of funds is 
related to agency size--as measured by populations served--and the 
distribution of violent crimes. 

Methods Used to Address the Effects of COPS Expenditures on Officers 
and Crime: 

To assess the effects of COPS expenditures on the number of sworn 
officers and crime, we developed and estimated a two-stage regression 
model of these relationships. In the first stage, we estimated the 
relationship between per capita COPS expenditures and per capita sworn 
officer rates in the agencies included in our sample. The per capita 
measures were based upon the UCR population for the jurisdiction 
covered by an agency. In the second stage, we estimated the 
relationship between changes in per capita COPS expenditures and 
changes in crime rates per 100,000 persons. As the relationship between 
officer levels and crime rates may reflect a complex and interrelated 
causal relationship, we used COPS hiring grants as an instrument to 
help to identify the relationship between officers and crime. To use 
COPS hiring grant expenditures as an instrument for sworn officers, we 
made use of the fact that, unlike the purposes of other COPS grant 
types, the purpose of hiring grants was limited to hiring officers. 
Given the number of officers, variation in hiring grant expenditures 
should be uncorrelated with other changes in crime. From our regression 
results, we calculated the elasticity of crime with respect to officers 
or the effect of a 1 percent change in the levels of officers on the 
percentage change in crime. To assess the robustness of our results, we 
estimated several specifications of our crime rate regression and 
calculated the elasticities of crime with respect to officers for each 
specification. We estimated these equations separately for each type of 
index crime. We compared the range of our estimated elasticities with 
those in the published literature on officers and crime. To estimate 
COPS' contribution to the national decline in crime, we projected our 
sample results to the nation as a whole by weighting our results by the 
ratio of the total population in the United States to the population in 
the sample of agencies included in our analysis. 

In our regression models of the effects of COPS grant expenditures on 
officers and crime, we organized our primary analysis database as a 
panel dataset, and we limited our analysis to the 4,509 law enforcement 
agencies serving populations of 10,000 or more persons and that 
reported complete crime data for at least 1 year from 1990 through 
2001. The number of agencies that reported complete crime data and 
served populations of 10,000 or more persons varied over time, as in 
1990 about 23 percent of all agencies in the UCR data that we received 
from the FBI met these criteria, and in 2001 about 21 percent did. 
However, these agencies also reported the majority of crimes to the 
UCR. From 1990 through 2001, these agencies reported between 86.8 
percent and 88.8 percent of all index crimes in the UCR data that we 
received from the FBI. Because of data concerns with agencies serving 
populations of fewer than 10,000 persons, we omitted these agencies 
from our analysis. 

We used fixed-effects regression models to estimate the relationships 
among COPS expenditures, officers, and crime. Given that we included 
agencies based on the completeness of their crime data in each year, 
and agencies provided complete crime data in different numbers of years 
over our 1990 through 2001 analysis period, our models used an 
unbalanced panel approach. In all of our models, we expressed 
expenditures, officers, and crime in per capita amounts. The fixed- 
effects models provide estimates of the amount of change in our 
dependent variables--the per capita sworn officer rate and the per 
capita crime rates--that can be attributed to changes in the per capita 
COPS hiring grant expenditures, controlling for other factors that 
could also contribute to changes in the per capita sworn officer rate. 
Our models included agency and year fixed effects to control for 
unobserved differences between agencies and changes over time within 
agencies in factors that could contribute to declines in crime. We 
introduced state-by-year fixed effects into our regressions to control 
for factors occurring at the state level--such as changes in 
incarceration or state sentencing practices--that could affect crime 
rates. Further, we included in our models variables that classify each 
agency in categories based upon their pre-1994 trends in the growth of 
officers and crime. These growth cell variables allow us to make 
comparisons between agencies that were similar in their pre-COPS 
program trends but that varied in the timing and amount of COPS 
expenditures. Finally, we included in our models measures of other 
federal law enforcement grant programs that also provided funds to 
state and local law enforcement agencies for hiring officers and other 
crime-prevention purposes. Specifically, we included measures of the 
per capita expenditures on Local Law Enforcement Block Grants,[Footnote 
24] which local governments could use to hire law enforcement officers, 
pay overtime, purchase equipment, as well as several other purposes. 
Because of data limitations, we were unable to track amounts of the 
Edward Byrne Memorial State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance (Byrne 
Formula Grant Program)[Footnote 25] grants that went to local agencies. 
Byrne Formula Grant funds could be used to provide for personnel, 
equipment, training, technical assistance, and information systems, 
among other purposes. In addition to the formula grant program, there 
was also a Byrne discretionary grant program, and we included measures 
for these grants. 

In appendix VI, we provide the details about the specific models that 
we estimated and our methods for calculating elasticities of the 
relationship between changes in officers and changes in crime rates. 

Methods to Assess Changes in Policing Practices: 

To assess whether COPS funds contributed to changes in policing 
practices, we analyzed data from the Policing Strategies and National 
Evaluation of COPS surveys, two nationally representative surveys of 
local law enforcement agencies that asked about the types of policing 
practices that the agencies reported implementing in various years. In 
each survey, chief executives or their designees were presented a list 
of policing practices and asked to indicate whether their agency 
implemented the practice. We classified items in the surveys into four 
categories of policing practices corresponding to general approaches to 
policing identified in the criminal justice literature: problem-solving 
practices, place-oriented practices, community collaboration 
activities, and crime analysis activities. Problem-solving practices 
call for police to focus on specific problems and tailor their 
strategies to the identified problems. Place-oriented practices include 
attempts to identify the locations where crime occurs repeatedly and to 
implement procedures to disrupt these recurrences of crime. Community 
collaboration practices include improving citizen feedback about crime 
problems and the effectiveness of policing efforts to address these 
problems. Crime analysis includes the use of tools such as geographic 
information systems to identify crime patterns. These tools may help an 
agency support other practices for preventing crime, such as problem- 
solving and place-oriented practices. 

For each agency in a survey, we created a summary index of the number 
of such practices that agencies reportedly implemented in the years in 
which the surveys were administered. We then compared mean levels of 
reported practices between groups of agencies that participated in the 
COPS program and those that did not participate in the program. 

We used the data from the Policing Strategies Survey to make pre-and 
within-COPS program comparisons of changes in reported policing 
practices in 1993 and in 1997. Levels of reported practices among 
agencies that received COPS grants were compared with levels among 
agencies that were not funded by COPS grants over this period. We used 
the National Evaluation of COPS Survey to compare levels of practices 
in 1996 and 2000 between groups of agencies that received COPS grants 
and those agencies that were not funded by COPS over this period. In 
appendix VII, we provide additional details about the surveys and our 
methods for analyzing the survey data. 

To assess changes in reported practices in relation to participation in 
the COPS program, we estimated separate regression models of the 
effects of the receipt of a COPS grant and per capita COPS expenditures 
on changes in reported policing practices, controlling for various 
characteristics of agencies and underlying trends in the reported 
adoption of policing practices. 

To identify policing practices that may be effective in reducing crime, 
we analyzed six studies that provided summaries of research on the 
effectiveness of policing practices and activities on reducing crime. 
We chose to review studies that reviewed research, rather than 
reviewing all of the original studies themselves, because of the volume 
of studies that have been conducted on the effectiveness of policing 
practices. (See app. VII for a list of the studies that we reviewed and 
additional details on policing practices and crime.) 

Database Construction and Samples Used in Our Analyses: 

To construct our primary analysis database, which consisted of 12 years 
of data from 1990 through 2001 for law enforcement agencies that 
reported at least 1 complete year of crime data to the FBI's Uniform 
Crime Reporting Program, we obtained data from several sources and 
merge-matched information from these various sources to the level of 
the local law enforcement agency. The sources of data that we used to 
compile the annual observations from 1990 through 2001 on local police 
departments included: 

* Office of Justice Programs Financial Data--Annual data on the 
obligation and expenditures on each grant awarded by OJP. Obligations 
refer to the funds that are expected to be paid on a grant, and 
expenditures refer to the grant funds that have been paid to a 
recipient. Because OJP and the COPS Office share data on awards, the 
OJP data also included COPS grant obligation and expenditure amounts. 
We used data on grant obligation amounts to and annual amounts expended 
by each recipient of a community-oriented policing (or COPS) 
grant,[Footnote 26] and annual amounts of other federal local law 
enforcement grants expended both by agencies that received COPS funds 
and those that did not. We used information about place codes and OJP 
vendors to link these data to our other sources. 

* The UCR--Annual data files on the number of crimes and sworn officers 
reported by each agency to the UCR. The data on sworn officers 
represent the reported number of full-time officers in each agency on 
October 31 of each year. We analyzed the number of sworn officers per 
10,000 persons in the covered jurisdiction. We analyzed data on the 
violent crimes of murder and non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, 
robbery, and aggravated assault, and the property crimes of burglary, 
larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft. We analyzed the crime rate per 
100,000 persons in the covered jurisdiction for each type of crime, as 
well as the rates for all index crimes, violent crimes, and property 
crimes. We used the originating agency identifier (ORI) variable and 
place codes to link crime and officer data to other data 
sources.[Footnote 27] 

* Bureau of Economic Analysis (U.S. Department of Commerce)--Annual 
county-level estimates of per capita income and employment for each 
year from 1990 through 2001. We included in our analysis of officers, 
crime, and policing practices, measures of economic factors that are 
related to crime, such as the employment-to-population ratio and per 
capita income. We linked these data to agency-level data using place 
codes. Local economic conditions within each county are applied to each 
agency within a county. 

* National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) and U.S. Census Bureau-
-Annual estimates of the United States resident population for each 
county from 1990 through 2001. Data obtained include population totals 
and population breakdowns by gender, race, and age. Under a 
collaborative arrangement with the U.S. Census Bureau and with support 
from the National Cancer Institute, NCHS prepared postcensal population 
estimates for 2000 through 2001. The Census estimates of county 
population from 1990 through 1999 are updated to take into account 
these postcensal estimates. We included in our analysis of officers, 
crime, and policing practices measures of demographic factors that are 
related to crime, such as the percentage of total population in the 15- 
to-24 age group--an age group associated with high crime rates--and the 
racial composition of populations. We linked these data to agency-level 
data using place codes. 

* Law Enforcement Agency Identifiers Crosswalk (Bureau of Justice 
Statistics)--The crosswalk file provides geographic and other 
identification information for each record included in either the 
Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Reporting Program files 
or in the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) Directory of Law 
Enforcement Agencies (DLEA). The main variables each record contains 
are the UCR originating agency identifier number, agency name, mailing 
address, Census Bureau's government identification number, and Federal 
Information Processing Standards (FIPS) state, county, and place codes. 
We utilized FIPS codes to merge records from the crosswalk with OJP 
financial data and then used agency ORI codes to merge the crosswalk 
and financial data with crime data from the UCR. 

Data Used in Our Analysis of Obligations and Expenditures: 

To report on COPS obligations and expenditures, we first analyzed the 
amounts reported in OJP financial data before we merged the financial 
information onto the agency-level crime records in the UCR. In the OJP 
data, each record represents either an obligation or an expenditure 
amount, and an agency appears in the database each time it has either 
an obligation or an expenditure. The total amount of obligations for 
COPS grants for the 1990-through 2001-period in the OJP data was $7.62 
billion. 

Second, we linked the OJP financial data to agency information in the 
BJS crosswalk file. We used agency identifying information in the OJP 
financial data--such as FIPS state, county, and place codes--to link 
OJP records with agencies in the crosswalk file. This resulted in our 
identifying 13,332 agencies that had at least one record of an 
obligation in the OJP financial data. Of these, 10,680 (or 80 percent) 
received at least one COPS grant, and among the agencies that received 
COPS grants, the total amount of COPS obligations was $7.32 billion (or 
96 percent of all COPS obligation amounts). 

Third, to describe the distribution of obligations relative to agency 
population and crime, we selected agencies that reported complete crime 
data--12 months of crime data within a given year--in at least 1 year 
from 1990 through 2001, and we merged their records onto the records of 
the agencies for which we had OJP financial information. This last 
group contained 11,187 agencies, and 8,819 (or 78.8 percent) of these 
agencies received at least one COPS grant. The total amount of COPS 
obligations among these agencies was $6.01 billion (or 79 percent of 
the total amount of COPS obligations from 1994 through 2001). 

Data Used in Our Analysis of Officers and Crime: 

To analyze the impacts of COPS expenditures on officers and crime, we 
started with the UCR data and included in our samples agencies that met 
specific criteria. First, we identified and included agencies that 
reported at least 1 year of complete crime data--that is, 12 months of 
crime data in a given year--to the UCR from 1990 through 2001, and we 
included agencies only in the years in which they provided complete 
crime data. 

Second, we excluded from our analysis agencies that the UCR classifies 
as "zero-population" agencies. To avoid double counting of citizens 
within geographic areas, the UCR program assigns population counts only 
to the primary law enforcement agency within each jurisdiction. 
Consequently, transit police, park police, university police, and 
similar agencies that are contained within these jurisdictions are 
assigned a value of zero for population. Because of the fact that 
jurisdictions among zero-population agencies overlap with primary 
agencies, calculation of precise per capita crime rates for these 
nonprimary agencies is problematic. Many state police agencies also 
enforce laws among populations that are policed by other local 
agencies, which also makes problematic calculating per capita crime 
rates for state police agencies. Additionally, given that state police 
agencies often have multiple substations in varied locations throughout 
the state, the correct allocation of the proportion of federal dollars 
to each substation is unknown. As a result, we excluded zero-population 
and state police agencies from our analysis. Further, we included in 
our analysis agencies whose crime records we were able to merge-match 
and link with OJP financial data about COPS and other federal law 
enforcement grant expenditures, as well as link with Bureau of Economic 
Analysis and Census data on economic and population characteristics. 

Overall, we identified 13,133 agencies that provided complete crime 
data for at least 1 year from 1990 through 2001, that were not zero- 
population agencies, and that we were able to link to our other data 
sources. For example, in 1990, we found 10,160 agencies out of 17,608 
that met our conditions. These 10,160 agencies represented 57.7 percent 
of the agencies that were included in the 1990 data that we obtained 
from the FBI, but they contained 93.2 percent of the crimes included in 
the 1990 data. That the agencies that we included in our sample in 1990 
represented about 58 percent of all agencies but 93 percent of all 
crimes indicates that most of the agencies that we omitted with our 
criterion of providing complete crime data within a year were small 
agencies that reported relatively small amounts of crime to the 
national total. For 2001, the 9,733 agencies that reported complete 
crime data and were not zero-population agencies represented 49.1 
percent of all agencies in the UCR data in 2001 and covered 94.8 
percent of all crimes (table 3). 

In our analysis of officers and crime, we further limited our sample to 
agencies that covered populations serving 10,000 or more persons. 
Complete crime data for agencies serving populations of fewer than 
10,000 persons were missing for a large percentage of agencies, and we 
determined that the data for these smaller agencies were unreliable for 
the purposes of this report. In 1990, we found 4,051 of agencies 
serving populations of 10,000 or more persons, which represented 23 
percent of the agencies included in the data that we received from the 
UCR for 1990 but also represented 86.8 percent of the crimes (table 3). 

Table 3: Law Enforcement Agencies Reporting to the UCR and in Our 
Analysis Dataset: 

Database: Uniform Crime Report data provided by the FBI. 

Number of agencies; 
Year: 1990: 17,608; 
Year: 1990: 100.0%; 
Year: 2001: 19,820; 
Year: 2001: 100.0%. 

Number of index crimes[A]; 
Year: 1990: 13,962,575; 
Year: 1990: 100.0%; 
Year: 2001: 11,092,578; 
Year: 2001: 100.0%. 

Database: Agencies in the UCR data that reported complete crime data in 
at least 1 year[B]: 

Number of agencies; 
Year: 1990: 12,168; 
Year: 1990: 69.1%; 
Year: 2001: 11,802; 
Year: 2001: 59.5%. 

Number of index crimes; 
Year: 1990: 13,456,345; 
Year: 1990: 96.4%; 
Year: 2001: 10,902,718; 
Year: 2001: 98.3%. 

Database: GAO primary analysis dataset--agencies reporting complete 
crime data in at least 1 year and not zero population agencies[B]. 

Number of agencies; 
Year: 1990: 10,160; 
Year: 1990: 57.7%; 
Year: 2001: 9,733; 
Year: 2001: 49.1%. 

Number of index crimes; 
Year: 1990: 13,010,329; 
Year: 1990: 93.2%; 
Year: 2001: 10,520,533; 
Year: 2001: 94.8%. 

Percentage of population in UCR data covered by agencies; 
Year: 1990: [C]; 
Year: 1990: 86.6%; 
Year: 2001: [C]; 
Year: 2001: 84.5%. 

Database: GAO dataset used in the analysis of officers and crime--from 
the primary analysis dataset, agencies serving populations of 10,000 
and more persons. 

Number of agencies; 
Year: 1990: 4,052; 
Year: 1990: 23.0%; 
Year: 2001: 4,247; 
Year: 2001: 21.4%. 

Number of index crimes; 
Year: 1990: 12,113,789; 
Year: 1990: 86.8%; 
Year: 2001: 9,797,096; 
Year: 2001: 88.3%. 

Percentage of population in UCR data covered by agencies; 
Year: 1990: [C]; 
Year: 1990: 76.6%; 
Year: 2001: [C]; 
Year: 2001: 76.8%. 

Source: GAO analysis of Uniform Crime Report data. 

[A] The number of index crimes reported in the data that we received 
from the FBI is less than the number of index crimes that appears in 
Crime in the United States: Uniform Crime Reports. For example, for 
2001, Crime in the United States reported a total of 11,876,669 index 
crimes, while the data that we received from the UCR reported 
11,092,578 index crimes. The totals reported in Crime in the United 
States are the estimated total numbers of index crimes in the nation. 
These totals are based upon the crime reports that the FBI receives 
from individual agencies and upon the methodology that the FBI uses to 
estimate crimes occurring in agencies that did not submit complete 
crime reports. The data that we received from the FBI contain the 
crimes actually reported by law enforcement agencies to the FBI. 

[B] "Complete crime data" means that an agency reported 12 months of 
crime data in a given year. 

[C] Not applicable. 

[End of table] 

Data Used in Our Analysis of Reported Changes in Policing Practices: 

To assess changes in reported policing practices, we analyzed data from 
two separate surveys of nationally representative samples of local law 
enforcement agencies. The surveys asked key officials at agencies about 
the types of policing practices that they reportedly used. Both surveys 
consisted of two administrations or waves of observations on the 
agencies in their respective samples. The first survey, the National 
Survey of Community Policing Strategies (or Policing Strategies 
Survey), was administered in 1993 and again in 1997. A total of 1,269 
agencies in the 1993 and 1997 samples responded to both waves of the 
survey. We limited our analysis to the 1,188 agencies that had complete 
data on each of the policing practices items that we included in our 
analysis and that we were able to link to our larger database on crime, 
officers, money, and economic conditions. These agencies amounted to 
about 94 percent of the agencies that responded to both waves of the 
survey. For comparability with our analysis of the effects of COPS 
grants on officers and crime, we limited our analysis to the sample of 
agencies that served jurisdictions with populations of 10,000 or more 
persons. 

The second survey, which we call the National Evaluation of COPS 
Survey, was conducted by the National Opinion Research Center for the 
Urban Institute in its national evaluation of the implementation of the 
COPS program.[Footnote 28] Of the 1,270 agencies that responded to both 
the 1996 and 2000 administrations of the survey, we were able to link 
the data from 1,067 agencies to our larger database on crime, officers, 
money, and economic conditions. We restricted our analysis to agencies 
that served jurisdictions having populations of 10,000 or more persons, 
and we excluded from our analysis state police agencies and other 
special police agencies. (See app. VII for more information about the 
sample of agencies that we analyzed.) 

Reliability and Validity of the Data That We Used: 

Prior to developing our database, we assessed the reliability of each 
data source. To assess the reliability of the various data sources, we 
(1) performed electronic testing for obvious errors in accuracy and 
completeness; (2) reviewed related documentation, including data 
dictionaries, codebooks, and published research reports that made use 
of the data sources; and (3) worked closely with agency officials to 
identify any data problems. When we found discrepancies (such as 
nonpopulated fields or what appeared to be data entry errors) we 
brought them to the agencies' attention and worked with them to correct 
the discrepancies before conducting our analyses. We determined that 
the data were sufficiently reliable for the purposes of our report. 

In our regression analysis of the effects of COPS expenditures on 
crime, we use the UCR reported crime rates as our dependent variables. 
Crimes reported to the UCR are those brought to the attention of law 
enforcement agencies and subsequently reported to the UCR, or reported 
crimes. Reported crimes are a subset of all crimes committed, which is 
the sum of reported crimes plus crimes that are not reported to the 
police. Our ultimate interest, however, lies in determining whether 
COPS expenditures affected the crime rate for all crimes, whether or 
not they were reported to the UCR. This raises issues related to 
analyzing reported crimes to learn about all crimes. 

Because data on all crimes--reported and unreported--committed within 
local jurisdictions are unavailable in national data systems, we use 
the data on reported crimes. The nature of the relationship between 
reported crimes and all crimes therefore determines whether the results 
of our analysis of COPS expenditures on reported crime would lead to 
biased estimates of the effects of COPS expenditures on all crimes. 
Under certain circumstances, it is possible that our analysis of the 
effects of COPS on the reported crime rate could lead to overestimates 
of the effect of COPS on the crime rate for all--reported plus 
unreported--crimes. This would lead us to overstate the effect of COPS 
in reducing crime. 

Several conditions could lead to overestimates of the effects of COPS 
expenditures on reducing crime. If the reported crime rate and the 
crime rate for all crimes diverge, we would attribute to COPS a larger 
reduction in crime than is warranted. If these crime rates diverge, the 
reported crime rate would either decline at a faster rate or increase 
at a slower rate than the rate for all crimes, and our analysis of the 
effects of COPS on the reported crime would reveal either larger 
declines or smaller increases than would occur if we had data on the 
rate for all crimes. A divergence between the reported crime rate and 
rate for all crimes could arise for either or both of two reasons: 
Citizens do not report all of the crimes they experience to the police, 
or the police do not record and send to the UCR all of the crimes that 
citizens report to them. 

To assess whether citizens decreased the rate at which they reported 
crimes to the police, we reviewed data from the National Crime 
Victimization Survey (NCVS). These data are drawn from a nationally 
representative sample of households and are gathered independently of 
the police agencies that report crime to the UCR. They therefore 
provide a measure of crime that is independent of the reporting 
practices of police agencies. Respondents in the NCVS are asked about 
their experiences as victims of crimes. If respondents were victims of 
crime, they are asked if they or others reported the criminal 
victimization to the police. Using the NCVS data, it is possible to 
assess whether the rate at which citizens report crimes to the police 
has changed over time. These data show that during the 1990s, victims 
generally increased the rate at which they reported crimes to the 
police. As figure 5 shows, the decline in violent crime over the decade 
was steeper for all crimes reported in the survey than for the violent 
crimes reported to the police. Consequently, because the rates diverged 
rather than converged, victims' practices of reporting of crime to the 
police during the 1990s are not likely to lead us to overestimate the 
effects of COPS grants on the crime rate. 

Figure 5: Violent Crimes and Violent Crimes Reported to the Police, as 
Reported in the National Criminal Victimization Survey and Including 
Homicides from the Uniform Crime Reports, 1990-2001: 

[See PDF for image] 

[End of figure] 

For police recording practices to lead to overestimates of the effects 
of COPS grants on crime, it would be necessary for the agencies that 
received COPS grants to decrease the rate at which they recorded and 
reported crimes to the UCR. Research on police recording practices 
suggests that agencies are unlikely to underreport serious crimes, such 
as murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. Other studies found, 
second, that as police agencies adopt computer technology and become 
more sophisticated in recording crimes, they became more likely to 
increase the rate at which they included all citizen-reported crimes to 
the UCR.[Footnote 29] As COPS MORE grants provided funds for 
technology--such as laptop computers in police cars--that would have 
increased the level of sophistication within agencies, COPS grantee 
agencies would be more likely to report a larger percentage of the 
crimes that citizens drew to their attention. Consequently, changes in 
police reporting practices that stem from COPS grants and lead to 
increases in police reporting of crimes to the UCR are likely to lead 
us to underestimate the magnitude of effects of COPS grants on reducing 
crime. 

Two other conditions that could affect our estimates include the 
following: (1) Criminals who commit the crimes that are not reported to 
the police are unresponsive to the effects of COPS expenditures, and 
(2) as the number of police increase, the number of reported crimes 
increases, independently of the true crime rate. 

If criminals who commit crimes that go unreported to the police are 
unresponsive to police presence, then we would overestimate the effects 
of COPS on crime only if criminals changed their behavior to victimize 
more persons who would be unlikely to report crimes to the police. This 
appears to be an unlikely occurrence, as the NCVS data show a 
convergence between the total number of criminal victimizations, 
especially for violent crimes, and the number of crimes reported to the 
police. 

Second, if the size of the police force systematically affects the 
willingness of victims to report crime to the police or a police 
department's likelihood of recording and reporting to the UCR crime 
victims' reports, then these changes could lead to biased estimates of 
the impact on the crime rate. However, if changes in reporting 
behaviors occurred as the result of the COPS program, the likely impact 
on our estimates of the effect of COPS grants on crime through their 
effects on the number of officers is that we would underestimate the 
effects of the grants on crime.[Footnote 30] 

Given these considerations, our analysis of the effects of COPS 
expenditures on crime is more likely to underestimate than overestimate 
the effect of COPS funds on changes in the true crime rate. 

[End of section] 

Appendix II: Background on the COPS Program and Studies of the Impacts 
of COPS Grants on Crime: 

Established in October 1994 by the Attorney General to implement the 
administration of community policing grants under the Violent Crime 
Control and Law Enforcement Act (VCCLEA) of 1994,[Footnote 31] the 
Office of Community Oriented Policing Services announced its first 
grant program in November 1994. Prior to its establishment, in December 
1993 the Department of Justice began making community policing grants 
to state and local law enforcement agencies that the COPS Office 
monitored. In 1993, DOJ awarded community policing grants under the 
Police Hiring Supplement Program, which was established by the 
Supplemental Appropriations Act of 1993 (P.L. 103-50 (1993)). The 
grants made under this program were funded by DOJ's Bureau of Justice 
Assistance.[Footnote 32] 

Two goals of the COPS Office were to advance community policing by 
providing funding for 100,000 community policing officers and to 
promote the practice of community policing, an approach to policing 
that involves the cooperation of law enforcement and the community in 
identifying and developing solutions to crime problems. COPS attempted 
to achieve these goals by providing law enforcement agencies with 
grants to hire officers, purchase equipment, and implement innovative 
policing practices. 

COPS and Other Local Law Enforcement Grants Distributed throughout the 
1990s: 

According to our analysis of Office of Justice Programs data, from 1994 
through 2001, the COPS Office distributed more than $7.6 billion in 
grants. Grants were made in a variety of grant program funding 
categories. Table 2 in appendix I contains more information about these 
funding categories. The largest amount of COPS grant funds obligated-- 
about $4.8 billion, or 64 percent of the total--was in the form of 
hiring grants. These grants required agencies to hire new officers and 
at the same time to indicate the types of community policing strategies 
that they intended to implement. Hiring grants paid a maximum of 
$75,000 per officer over a 3-year period (or at most 75 percent of an 
officer's salary) and generally required that local agencies cover the 
remaining salary and benefits with state or local funds. Hiring 
programs authorized under VCCLEA and administered by the COPS Office 
included the Phase I program, which funded qualified applicants who had 
applied for the Police Hiring Supplement but were denied because of the 
limited funds available; COPS AHEAD (Accelerated Hiring, Education, and 
Deployment) for municipalities with populations 50,000 and above; and 
COPS FAST (Funding Accelerated for Smaller Towns) for towns with 
populations below 50,000. In June 1995, Phase I, COPS AHEAD, and COPS 
FAST were replaced by the Universal Hiring Program. 

The next largest grant category was the Making Officer Redeployment 
Effective (MORE) grant program, which provided funds to law enforcement 
agencies to purchase equipment and hire civilians, with the goal of 
expanding the amount of time spent on community policing. COPS 
obligated more than $1.3 billion--or about 17 percent of total 
obligations--as MORE grants. Additional COPS grant programs provided 
funds for specific innovations in policing. For example, the Distressed 
Neighborhoods Pilot Project grants provided funds to communities with 
high levels of crime or economic distress to hire officers and 
implement a variety of strategies to improve public safety, and the 
Methamphetamine Initiative provided funds to state and local agencies 
to support a variety of enforcement, intervention, and prevention 
efforts to combat the methamphetamine problem. About $418 million--or 
about 5.5 percent of the total--was obligated under these innovative 
grant programs. The COPS Office also provided grants for a variety of 
other purposes, including funding to meet the community policing 
training needs of officers and representatives of communities and local 
governments (through a network of Regional Community Policing 
Institutes), and grants to law enforcement agencies to hire and train 
school resource officers to help prevent school violence and improve 
school and student safety (the COPS in Schools Program). Over $1 
billion--or about 14 percent of total obligations--was obligated among 
these miscellaneous grant programs. 

In each year, the COPS Office was required to distribute half of the 
grant funds to agencies in communities whose populations exceeded 
150,000 persons and half of the grant funds to agencies in communities 
with populations of 150,000 or fewer persons.[Footnote 33] 

During the 1990s, other federal law enforcement grant programs also 
provided funds to state and local law enforcement agencies for hiring 
officers and other crime prevention purposes. The Edward Byrne Memorial 
State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance (Byrne Formula Grant 
Program)[Footnote 34] was a variable pass-through grant program 
administered by the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA). According to 
our analysis of data that we obtained from OJP, from 1990 through 2001, 
the Byrne Formula Grant Program distributed between $415 million and 
$520 million in grants. States were required to pass through to local 
jurisdictions amounts of funding based upon a variable pass-through 
formula. Byrne Formula Grant funds could be used to provide for 
personnel, equipment, training, technical assistance, and information 
systems, among other purposes. According to an evaluation of the Byrne 
formula grant program, about 40 percent of Byrne subgrant funds--the 
amounts passed through the states to local jurisdictions--were for 
multijurisdictional task forces.[Footnote 35] In addition to the 
formula grant program, there also was a Byrne discretionary grant 
program. According to an official at the Bureau of Justice Statistics 
(BJS), a large percentage of the Byrne discretionary funds were 
targeted for specific programs. 

The Local Law Enforcement Block Grant (LLEBG) Program was also 
administered by BJA.[Footnote 36] The LLEBG grant funds amounted to 
about an average of $475 million per year from 1996 through 2000. 
According to BJS officials, these funds were allocated by a formula 
based upon violent crimes as reported in FBI's crime index. LLEBG funds 
were available to local governments for hiring law enforcement 
officers, paying overtime, purchasing equipment, as well as several 
other purposes. According to the Urban Institute's evaluation of the 
implementation of the COPS program, agencies that received COPS grants 
reported using both Byrne and LLEBG funds to support their transitions 
to community policing.[Footnote 37] 

Additional grant programs that provided funds to local law enforcement 
agencies included the Juvenile Accountability Incentive Block Grants, 
Weed and Seed Grants, and several Office on Violence Against Women 
grants, according to a BJS official. 

Debates over whether the COPS Office Met Its Goals for Officers and 
Promoted Community Policing: 

The amount of COPS funding was more than sufficient to fund the federal 
portion for 100,000 officers. According to the Attorney General's 
report, from 1994 through 2000, the COPS Office awarded more than 
30,000 grants to over 12,000 law enforcement agencies and funded more 
than 105,000 community policing officers.[Footnote 38] However, a 
research report by the Heritage Foundation questioned how effective the 
COPS Office had been in putting 100,000 officers on the 
street.[Footnote 39] The study analyzed trends in the number of 
officers and concluded that the COPS program had not added 100,000 
additional officers above historic trends. In its review of the COPS 
Office's performance for the fiscal year 2004 budget, the Office for 
Management and Budget (OMB) indicated that by 2002, COPS grants funding 
was sufficient for almost 117,000 officers, a number that exceeded the 
program's original commitment to fund 100,000 officers.[Footnote 40] At 
the same time, OMB acknowledged that fewer than 90,000 officers had 
been hired or redeployed to the street. OMB reported that the COPS 
Office counted 88,028 COPS-funded officers on duty as of August 2002-- 
or about 75 percent of funded officers. In their report of October 2002 
on the COPS program, researchers at the Urban Institute updated earlier 
estimates of COPS-funded officers.[Footnote 41] They projected that 
over the years from 1994 through 2005, COPS-funded officers would add 
between 93,400 and 102,700 officers to the nation's communities on a 
temporary basis, but that not all of these officers would be available 
for service at any one point in time. They further estimated that the 
permanent impact of COPS, after taking into account postgrant attrition 
of officers and civilians, would be between 69,100 and 92,200 officers. 

In addition to promoting the hiring of officers, the COPS Office sought 
to promote community policing. COPS hiring grant applications asked 
agencies to report the types of practices that they planned to 
implement with their grants, such as identifying crime problems by 
looking at records of crime trends and analyzing repeat calls for 
service, working with other public agencies to solve disorder problems, 
locating offices or stations within neighborhoods, and collaborating 
with community residents by increasing officer contact with citizens 
and improving citizen feedback. In 2000, the Attorney General reported 
that 87 percent of the country was served by departments that practiced 
community policing.[Footnote 42] 

Studies that have addressed the extent to which the COPS Office grants 
caused the spread of community policing suggest that COPS grants 
accelerated the adoption of these practices but did not launch the 
spread of community policing. The Police Foundation's study of 
community policing practices during 1993--1 year before the COPS Office 
began making grants--indicated that the practice of community policing 
was fairly widespread, especially in larger police 
departments.[Footnote 43] The Police Foundation researcher reported 
that 47 percent of the agencies surveyed in 1993 reported that they 
either were in the process of adopting or had adopted community 
policing, but that 86 percent of municipal agencies with more than 100 
sworn personnel were either in the process of implementing or had 
implemented community policing. In their evaluation of the 
implementation of the COPS program, Urban Institute researchers 
credited COPS with promoting community policing, but the researchers 
concluded that COPS funds seemed to have fueled movements that were 
already accelerating rather than have caused the acceleration. In a 
later report, they pointed out that for large agencies, the problem- 
solving practices that they examined were already widespread by 1995, 
and almost no COPS grantees reported adopting problem-solving practices 
for the first time between 1998 and 2000.[Footnote 44] 

Some of the types of practices that agencies planned to implement with 
their COPS grants correspond with approaches to policing that recent 
reviews of policing practice suggest are effective in preventing crime. 
[Footnote 45] For example, our review of policing practices indicates 
that problem-solving policing and place-oriented policing practices-- 
such as those in which officers attempt to identify the locations where 
crime occurs repeatedly and to implement procedures to affect crime-- 
are among the types of practices that research has demonstrated to be 
effective in preventing crime. These practices were among the types 
that agencies could implement with their COPS grants. 

Debates about COPS' Contribution to the Decline in Crime in the 1990s: 

In 2000, the Attorney General reported that COPS-funded officers helped 
to reduce crime.[Footnote 46] The Attorney General's report to Congress 
asserted that the drop in crime that occurred after 1994 was more than 
would have been expected in the absence of the passage of VCCLEA and 
the creation of the COPS Office. As evidence of the impact of COPS 
grants on crime, it proffered the inverse relationship between 
increases in the per agency number of police officers and decreases in 
the per agency levels of violent crimes. 

Studies of the impact of COPS grants on crime that attempted to take 
into account factors other than just the underlying trends in crime 
were released in 2001. A COPS Office-funded study examined the impact 
of COPS grants on local crime rates in over 6,000 communities from 1995 
through 1999.[Footnote 47] Analyzing changes in crime rates in 
communities that had received COPS grants, the study concluded that 
COPS hiring grants were effective in reducing crime and that COPS 
grants for innovative policing practices had larger impacts on reducing 
violent and property crime than did other types of COPS grants. 
However, a study released by the Heritage Foundation, which was based 
upon the analysis of county-level data, was unable to replicate the 
findings of the COPS-funded study.[Footnote 48] Specifically, the 
Heritage study found no effect of COPS hiring grants on crime rates, 
but it found that grants for specific problems--such as gangs, domestic 
violence, and illegal use of firearms by youth--were associated with 
reductions in crime. In addition, our review of the COPS-funded study 
found that its methodological limitations were such that the study's 
results should be viewed as inconclusive.[Footnote 49] 

The inconclusiveness of the findings of studies was reflected in OMB's 
assessment of the performance of the COPS program. According to OMB, 
although the COPS Office used evaluation studies to assess whether its 
grants had an impact on crime, the results of the findings were 
inconclusive, and OMB rated the COPS program as "Results Not 
Demonstrated" in 2004 using its Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART). 

Issues in Assessing the Contribution of COPS Grants to the Decline in 
Crime in the 1990s: 

Assessing whether COPS funds contributed to the decline in crime during 
the 1990s is complicated by many factors. Nationwide, the decline in 
crime began before 1993, which was before the COPS program made its 
first grants. According to the FBI's data on index crimes--the violent 
crimes of murder, rape, aggravated assault, and robbery and the 
property crimes of burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft--the 
decline in the overall index crime rate, as well as the property and 
violent crime rates started as early as 1991 or 1992 (fig. 6).[Footnote 
50] 

Figure 6: Total Index, Violent, and Property Crime Rates per 100,000 
Persons, 1990-2001: 

[See PDF for image] 

[End of figure] 

As COPS grants cannot be the cause of the start of the decline in crime 
rates, the other factors that led to the decline in the crime rate 
could also have affected the decline in crime during the period that 
the COPS Office made its grants. Factors such as a downturn in handgun 
violence, the expansion of imprisonment, a steady decline in adult 
violence, changes in drug markets, and expanding economic opportunities 
are among those suggested as related to the decline in crime-- 
especially violent crime--in the 1990s. To the extent that these 
factors also are correlated with the disbursement of COPS funds, this 
increases the challenges involved in isolating the effects of COPS 
grants. 

Other federal funds for local law enforcement could also have 
contributed to expanding the number of police officers and contributed 
to declines in crime. If the distribution of non-COPS funds such as 
LLEBG and Byrne grants is correlated with that of COPS funds, and if 
research does not take these funds into account, a study could 
attribute some of the effect on crime of these other grant funds to 
COPS grants. 

COPS grants were distributed in ways that make rigorous evaluations of 
their causal impacts difficult to implement. Receipt of a COPS grant 
was not randomly assigned; therefore, it is difficult to determine 
whether the agencies that received grants are the same ones that, in 
the absence of the grant, would have experienced reductions in crime. 
The amount of funding certain agencies receive may also relate to the 
agency's ability to combat crime. For example, certain police chiefs 
may be more capable than others at acquiring funds and also more up-to- 
date on policing methods. This underlying capacity of an agency to 
organize policing, rather than the receipt of a particular grant, would 
then be the cause of a crime decline as opposed to a particular grant. 
Additionally, COPS grants were fairly widespread throughout police 
departments and the nation as a whole. This distribution of grants 
leaves relatively few unfunded agencies to serve as comparison groups 
against which to assess the performance of the agencies that received 
COPS grants. The roughly 12,000 agencies that the former Attorney 
General reported received COPS grants by 2000 represent about 61 
percent of the agencies that reported crime to the Uniform Crime 
Reports. 

The mechanisms by which COPS funds could affect crime have not been 
explicitly examined. For example, the two prior studies that we cited 
did not examine whether COPS grants potentially affect crime through 
changes in police officers or through changes in policing practices, 
both of which may have been affected by COPS funds. Additional officers 
may affect crime by increasing police presence, by increasing arrests 
that lead to incapacitation of offenders, or by deterring offenders by 
increasing the likelihood of capture. Changes in policing practices 
toward problem-solving or place-oriented practices that focus police 
resources on recurring crime problems could also lead to reductions in 
crime. 

Appropriate methodologies from research on crime have been developed to 
address issues that could confound efforts to assess the impacts of 
COPS grants on crime rates. For example, if COPS grants are to affect 
crime through their impacts on the number of officers, then isolating 
the effects of increases in officers on crime presents a challenge in 
assessing the direction of the relationship between officers and crime. 
If additional officers are hired in response to increases in crime 
rates, then it could appear that crime causes officers. Alternatively, 
if additional officers lead to reductions in crime below the levels 
that they would have been without the officers, then it would appear 
that officers caused changes in crime. To isolate the causal effect of 
COPS grants, researchers employ the use of instruments for causal 
variables. One suggestion in the research literature for an instrument 
for police officers is COPS hiring grants.[Footnote 51] To the extent 
that COPS hiring grants buy only officers, COPS hiring grants can be 
used as an instrument for the actual number of police officers and 
therefore be used to estimate the relationship between crime and police 
officers in a way that takes into account the possibility of this 
simultaneous relationship. 

Second, particular forms of statistical models take advantage of 
information about the variation in the amount and timing of COPS grants 
among agencies to assess how changes in the number of sworn officers 
and crime rates are associated with these two sources of variation. 
These fixed-effects regression models use a panel of data--or repeated 
observations on the same units, in this case, police agencies, over 
several time periods--to assess the effects of changes in the number of 
sworn officers and crime rates that are associated with variation in 
the timing and amount of COPS grant expenditures. These regression 
methods also allow for the introduction of controls for unobserved 
preexisting differences between units (agencies) and differences over 
time within units. Incorporating each agency's underlying trajectories 
(or growth rate trends) in crime rates and sworn officers into the 
modeling of the effects of COPS funds allow for explicit comparisons 
within groups of agencies sharing similar trajectories, which helps to 
control for potential biases associated with preexisting 
trends.[Footnote 52] By identifying and explicitly modeling the 
mechanisms through which a program could have its effects--such as COPS 
funds leading to increases in the number of officers and their effects 
on crime--the possibility of a spurious relationship between inputs 
(such as COPS funds) and outcomes (such as crime) can be minimized. 

[End of section] 

Appendix III: COPS Grant Obligation and Expenditure Patterns: 

This appendix addresses how COPS obligations were distributed among 
local law enforcement agencies in relation to the populations they 
served and the crimes in their jurisdictions. It also addresses how 
much of the obligated amounts agencies spent. Specifically, it covers 
(1) the amount of COPS obligations between 1994 and 2001, (2) the 
distribution of grant funds to larger and smaller agencies relative to 
total index and violent crimes, (3) the number of agencies in our 
sample that received COPS grants, (4) the amounts of COPS expenditures, 
and (5) the amount of these expenditures relative to total local law 
enforcement expenditures. 

Smaller Agencies Received Larger Amounts of COPS Obligations per Crime 
than Did Larger Ones: 

Our analysis showed that from 1994 through 2001, COPS obligated more 
than $7.32 billion to 10,680 agencies for which we were able to link 
OJP financial data on COPS obligations to the records of law 
enforcement agencies.[Footnote 53] As shown in table 4, about $4.7 
billion (or 64 percent) of these obligations were for hiring grants. 
Equipment and redeployment grants made under the MORE category of 
grants amounted to about $1.2 billion (or about 17 percent) of total 
obligations. 

Table 4: COPS Grant Obligations 1994-2001, by COPS Grant Program: 

COPS grant program category: Total, all grants; 
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars)[A]: $7.32; 
Obligations: Percentage of total[B]: 100.0%. 

COPS grant program category: Hiring grants; 
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars)[A]: $4.69; 
Obligations: Percentage of total[B]: 64.1%. 

COPS grant program category: MORE grants; 
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars)[A]: $1.22; 
Obligations: Percentage of total[B]: 16.7%. 

COPS grant program category: Innovative grants; 
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars)[A]: $0.42; 
Obligations: Percentage of total[B]: 5.7%. 

COPS grant program category: Miscellaneous grants; 
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars)[A]: $1.00; 
Obligations: Percentage of total[B]: 13.7%. 

Source: GAO analysis of Office of Justice Programs financial data. 

Note: Table 2 in appendix I identifies the specific grant programs that 
we classified into these four categories of grants. 

[A] Amounts for each grant program category may not add up to total 
because of rounding. 

[B] The percentages may not add up to 100 percent because of rounding. 

[End of table] 

As shown in table 5, from 1994 through 2001, slightly more than half of 
the COPS obligations in the sample of agencies for which we were able 
to link OJP financial data to the records of agencies that reported 
crime and population to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting 
Program[Footnote 54] went to those agencies serving populations of 
150,000 or fewer persons and slightly less than half went to those 
agencies serving populations of more than 150,000 persons, roughly 
consistent with the requirements of COPS authorizing 
legislation.[Footnote 55] 

The largest agencies--those serving populations of 150,000 or more 
persons--accounted for more than half of all violent crimes reported to 
the UCR. Specifically, in our sample, these agencies accounted for 
about 58 percent of all violent crimes reported in the UCR from 1994 
through 2001. Their share of all violent crimes declined slightly from 
60 percent from 1994 through 1997 to 57 percent from 1998 through 2001. 
These agencies received about 47 percent of all COPS obligations, a 
share that is disproportionately small relative to their contribution 
to all violent crimes. However, as shown in table 5, the amount of COPS 
obligations going to agencies serving populations of 150,000 or fewer 
persons and those serving populations of more than 150,000 persons was 
about equal to the distribution of all index crimes occurring within 
these agencies. 

Table 5: Percentage Distribution of COPS Obligations and Crime from 
1994 through 2001, by Population Size Group: 

Population size group (number of persons): Fewer than 10,000; 
Percentage of total COPS obligations: 15%; 
Percentage of total crimes: 7%; 
Percentage of all violent crimes: 5%; 
Percentage of all property crimes: 7%. 

Population size group (number of persons): 10,000 to fewer than 25,000; 
Percentage of total COPS obligations: 13%; 
Percentage of total crimes: 11%; 
Percentage of all violent crimes: 8%; 
Percentage of all property crimes: 12%. 

Population size group (number of persons): 25,000 to fewer than 50,000; 
Percentage of total COPS obligations: 11%; 
Percentage of total crimes: 12%; 
Percentage of all violent crimes: 9%; 
Percentage of all property crimes: 13%. 

Population size group (number of persons): 50,000 to 150,000; 
Percentage of total COPS obligations: 15%; 
Percentage of total crimes: 22%; 
Percentage of all violent crimes: 19%; 
Percentage of all property crimes: 22%. 

Population size group (number of persons): Subtotal (150,000 or fewer); 
Percentage of total COPS obligations: 54%[A]; 
Percentage of total crimes: 52%; 
Percentage of all violent crimes: 41%; 
Percentage of all property crimes: 54%. 

Population size group (number of persons): More than 150,000; 
Percentage of total COPS obligations: 47%[A]; 
Percentage of total crimes: 48%; 
Percentage of all violent crimes: 58%; 
Percentage of all property crimes: 46%. 

Population size group (number of persons): Total; 
Percentage of total COPS obligations: 100%; 
Percentage of total crimes: 100%; 
Percentage of all violent crimes: 100%; 
Percentage of all property crimes: 100%. 

Source: GAO analysis of Office of Justice Programs financial and 
Uniform Crime Report data. 

[A] The subtotal for agencies serving 150,000 or fewer persons and 
those serving populations of more than 150,000 may not add to 100 
percent because of rounding. 

[End of table] 

Table 6 shows that law enforcement agencies serving the smallest 
populations received the largest amounts of COPS obligations on a per 
crime basis. For example, agencies serving populations of fewer than 
10,000 persons received, on average, $1,573 per violent crime reported 
from 1994 through 2001. By comparison, agencies serving populations of 
more than 150,000 persons received $418 per reported violent crime. 

Table 6: Per Crime COPS Obligations, by Population Size Group and 
Category of Crime, 1994 through 2001: 

Population size group: Fewer than 10,000; 
Ratio of total COPS obligations to total crimes: All index crimes: 
$146; 
Ratio of total COPS obligations to total crimes: Violent crimes: 
$1,573; 
Ratio of total COPS obligations to total crimes: Property crimes: $160. 

Population size group: 10,000 to fewer than 25,000; 
Ratio of total COPS obligations to total crimes: All index crimes: $78; 
Ratio of total COPS obligations to total crimes: Violent crimes: $844; 
Ratio of total COPS obligations to total crimes: Property crimes: $86. 

Population size group: 25,000 to fewer than 50,000; 
Ratio of total COPS obligations to total crimes: All index crimes: $61; 
Ratio of total COPS obligations to total crimes: Violent crimes: $625; 
Ratio of total COPS obligations to total crimes: Property crimes: $68. 

Population size group: 50,000 to 150,000; 
Ratio of total COPS obligations to total crimes: All index crimes: $47; 
Ratio of total COPS obligations to total crimes: Violent crimes: $404; 
Ratio of total COPS obligations to total crimes: Property crimes: $53. 

Population size group: More than 150,000; 
Ratio of total COPS obligations to total crimes: All index crimes: $67; 
Ratio of total COPS obligations to total crimes: Violent crimes: $418; 
Ratio of total COPS obligations to total crimes: Property crimes: $80. 

Population size group: Total; 
Ratio of total COPS obligations to total crimes: All index crimes: $69; 
Ratio of total COPS obligations to total crimes: Violent crimes: $525; 
Ratio of total COPS obligations to total crimes: Property crimes: $79. 

Source: GAO analysis of Office of Justice Programs financial and 
Uniform Crime Report data. 

Note: Ratios are computed as COPS obligations over the number of each 
type of crime. The ratio for all index crimes is not weighted by the 
contribution of violent and property crimes to the total. 

[End of table] 

Most Agencies Had Received Their First COPS Grant by 1996: 

As shown in table 7, of the 10,680 agencies included in our analysis, 
just under half (49 percent) had received at least their first COPS 
grant by 1995, and 71 percent had received at least their first grant 
by 1996. Of the 9,845 agencies that received at least one COPS hiring 
grant, 53 percent had received their first hiring grant by 1995, and 73 
percent had done so by 1996. 

Table 7: Number of Agencies That Received at Least One COPS Grant 
Obligation, 1994-2001, by COPS Grant Program, and Year of First COPS 
Obligation: 

Year of first COPS grant: 1994; 
At least one COPS grant: 241; 
Hiring grants: 241; 
MORE grants: 0; 
Innovative grants: 0; 
Miscellaneous grants: 0. 

Year of first COPS grant: 1995; 
At least one COPS grant: 4,989; 
Hiring grants: 4,988; 
MORE grants: 0; 
Innovative grants: 3; 
Miscellaneous grants: 1. 

Year of first COPS grant: 1996; 
At least one COPS grant: 2,319; 
Hiring grants: 1,965; 
MORE grants: 1,394; 
Innovative grants: 265; 
Miscellaneous grants: 255. 

Year of first COPS grant: 1997; 
At least one COPS grant: 825; 
Hiring grants: 750; 
MORE grants: 624; 
Innovative grants: 200; 
Miscellaneous grants: 17. 

Year of first COPS grant: 1998; 
At least one COPS grant: 910; 
Hiring grants: 941; 
MORE grants: 231; 
Innovative grants: 234; 
Miscellaneous grants: 18. 

Year of first COPS grant: 1999; 
At least one COPS grant: 803; 
Hiring grants: 605; 
MORE grants: 1,010; 
Innovative grants: 131; 
Miscellaneous grants: 1,339. 

Year of first COPS grant: 2000; 
At least one COPS grant: 241; 
Hiring grants: 141; 
MORE grants: 216; 
Innovative grants: 3; 
Miscellaneous grants: 678. 

Year of first COPS grant: 2001; 
At least one COPS grant: 352; 
Hiring grants: 214; 
MORE grants: 378; 
Innovative grants: 13; 
Miscellaneous grants: 476. 

Total number of agencies; 
At least one COPS grant: 10,680; 
Hiring grants: 9,845; 
MORE grants: 3,853; 
Innovative grants: 849; 
Miscellaneous grants: 2,784. 

Source: GAO analysis of Office of Justice Programs financial and 
Uniform Crime Report data. 

Note: The sum of agencies across specific COPS program categories does 
not equal the total number of agencies that received at least one COPS 
grant because some agencies may have received more than one type of 
COPS grant in the same year. 

[End of table] 

We estimated that about 67 percent of the agencies that reported 
complete crime data to the UCR for at least 1 year from 1990 through 
2001 received a COPS grant by 2001.[Footnote 56] The percentages of 
agencies that received COPS grants varied by the size of agencies, as 
measured by the size of the population in the jurisdictions served by 
the agencies. As table 8 shows, as the population served by the 
agencies increased, the percentage of agencies that received a COPS 
grant also increased. Among the largest agencies--those serving 
populations of more than 150,000 persons--about 95 percent received a 
COPS grant. By comparison, among agencies serving populations of fewer 
than 10,000 persons, about 61 percent in our sample of agencies 
received at least one COPS grant. 

Table 8: Percentage of Agencies in GAO's Primary Analysis Sample That 
Received at Least One COPS Grant Obligation from 1994 through 2001, by 
Size of Population Served by Agencies: 

Size of population served by agencies (number of persons): Fewer than 
10,000; 
Number of agencies: 7,940; 
Percentage receiving at least 1 COPS grant: 60.6%. 

Size of population served by agencies (number of persons): 10,000 to 
fewer than 25,000; 
Number of agencies: 2,673; 
Percentage receiving at least 1 COPS grant: 76.2%. 

Size of population served by agencies (number of persons): 25,000 to 
fewer than 50,000; 
Number of agencies: 1,127; 
Percentage receiving at least 1 COPS grant: 81.7%. 

Size of population served by agencies (number of persons): 50,000 to 
150,000; 
Number of agencies: 702; 
Percentage receiving at least 1 COPS grant: 85.2%. 

Size of population served by agencies (number of persons): More than 
150,000; 
Number of agencies: 185; 
Percentage receiving at least 1 COPS grant: 94.6%. 

Size of population served by agencies (number of persons): Total, all 
agencies[A]; 
Number of agencies: 13,133; 
Percentage receiving at least 1 COPS grant: 67.2%. 

Source: GAO analysis of Office of Justice Programs financial and 
Uniform Crime Report data. 

Note: GAO's primary analysis sample consists of 13,133 agencies that 
reported at least 12 months of crime data in at least 1 year from 1990 
through 2001. (See app. I.) 

[A] The sum of the agencies in each population size group does not add 
up to the total of 13,133 because data on the size of the population 
served were missing for 506 agencies. Among these 506 agencies, 276, or 
54.5 percent, received at least one COPS grant. 

[End of table] 

Total COPS Expenditures and Per Capita Expenditures Peaked in 2000, and 
Smaller Agencies Spent More than Larger Ones on a Per Capita Basis: 

By 2001, agencies had drawn down about $5 billion in COPS funds (or 
roughly 68 percent of all obligations awarded from 1994 through 2001). 
As figure 7 shows, total COPS expenditures increased annually from 1994 
to 2000. Total expenditures exceeded $900 million per year in each year 
from 1998 through 2001, and in 2000, they exceeded $1 billion. COPS 
hiring grant expenditures totaled $3.5 billion (or roughly 70 percent 
of the roughly $5 billion in hiring grant obligations made from 1994 
through 2001). Hiring grant expenditures peaked in 1998--exceeding $690 
million--and declined slightly in 1999 and 2000. 

Figure 7: Annual Expenditures of COPS Grant Funds, by Year: 
[See PDF for image] 

[End of figure] 

The number of agencies that spent COPS funds peaked in 1998 and 
declined thereafter, as figure 8 shows. In 1998, more than 7,500 
agencies were spending COPS funds. However, by 2001, the number had 
fallen to about 6,000. 

Figure 8: Number of Agencies That Spent COPS Funds, 1994 through 2001: 

[See PDF for image] 

[End of figure] 

COPS expenditures per population in the jurisdictions that spent funds-
-per capita expenditures--also increased as the total amount of COPS 
expenditures increased. Total per capita COPS expenditures peaked in 
2000 at $5.6 per person. Hiring grant expenditures per capita similarly 
peaked at $4.8 per person in 2000. The per capita expenditure amounts 
varied by size of agency, as smaller agencies generally spent more on a 
per capita basis than did larger agencies. Agencies serving populations 
of fewer than 10,000 persons spent about twice as much COPS grant 
monies on a per capita basis than did the larger agencies. For example, 
per capita COPS expenditures for agencies serving fewer than 10,000 
persons averaged $6.6 as compared with about $3.4 for agencies serving 
populations of more than 150,000 persons. 

COPS Expenditures Amounted to about 1 Percent of All Local Law 
Enforcement Expenditures: 

From 1994 through 2001, COPS expenditures amounted to about 1 percent 
of total local expenditures for nationwide police services, based upon 
BJS data on criminal justice expenditures and our analysis of OJP data 
on COPS grant expenditures.[Footnote 57] From 1994 through 2001, total 
local expenditures for police services increased from about $46 billion 
to $72 billion. During the years from 1998 through 2000, when COPS 
expenditures neared and then exceeded $1 billion per year, the 
contribution of COPS expenditures to local police expenditures 
increased to about 1.5 percent of total local expenditures for police 
services. 

[End of section] 

Appendix IV: COPS Expenditures Led to Increases in Sworn Officers and 
Declines in Crime: 

This appendix addresses our second reporting objective, which has two 
parts: determining the extent to which COPS grant expenditures 
contributed to increases in the number of sworn officers in police 
agencies, and determining the extent to which COPS grant expenditures 
led to reductions in crime through their effects on sworn officers. 

COPS Expenditures Led to Increases in Sworn Officers above Levels That 
Would Have Been Expected without Them and Were Responsible for about 
88,000 Officer-Years: 

We found that COPS hiring grants were significantly related to 
increases in sworn officers above levels that would have been expected 
without the expenditures, after controlling for economic conditions in 
the counties in which agencies were located, population composition, 
and preexisting trends in agencies in the growth rate of sworn 
officers. Further, the effects of COPS hiring grants were consistent 
across several different regression models, including those that 
controlled for state-level factors that could affect the size of local 
police forces--such as state-level differences in the amount of funding 
provided to local departments. Overall, the parameter estimates from 
our models indicate that each $25,000 in COPS hiring grant expenditures 
was associated with roughly an additional 0.6 officers in any given 
year.[Footnote 58] With the exception of MORE grants, no other types of 
COPS grant expenditures were associated with increases in officers. 

Using the results from our regression models, we calculated for each 
year from 1994 through 2001 the number of sworn officers nationwide 
that would have been on the street absent the COPS expenditures in each 
year. The difference between this amount and the actual level of sworn 
officers yielded the number of officers due to COPS expenditures in a 
given year. The number of officers due to COPS increased from 84 in 
1994 to 17,387 in 2000, and then declined to 12,226 in 2001 (table 9). 
The increase and decrease in the number of officers due to COPS 
followed the pattern of COPS expenditures, which peaked in 2000 and 
then declined (see fig. 7 in app. III). Adding up the number of 
officers due to COPS in each year across the years from 1994 through 
2001, we arrive at a total of about 88,000 sworn officer-years due to 
COPS expenditures. 

From 1997 through 2000, when COPS expenditures neared or exceeded $1 
billion per year, we estimated that the expenditures led to increases 
in sworn officers of between 2.4 percent and 2.9 percent above levels 
expected without them. In years prior to 1997, and in 2001, when COPS 
expenditures were lower, the percentage of officers due to COPS 
expenditures were lower than occurred from 1997 through 2000. 

Table 9: Estimated Effect of COPS Expenditures on the Number of Sworn 
Officers Nationwide in Each Year, 1994-2001: 

Year: 1994; 
Estimated number of officers due to COPS expenditures: 84; 
Percentage of total number of officers in the United States: 0.02%. 

Year: 1995; 
Estimated number of officers due to COPS expenditures: 1,916; 
Percentage of total number of officers in the United States: 0.35%. 

Year: 1996; 
Estimated number of officers due to COPS expenditures: 8,639; 
Percentage of total number of officers in the United States: 1.55%. 

Year: 1997; 
Estimated number of officers due to COPS expenditures: 13,897; 
Percentage of total number of officers in the United States: 2.42%. 

Year: 1998; 
Estimated number of officers due to COPS expenditures: 17,630; 
Percentage of total number of officers in the United States: 3.02%. 

Year: 1999; 
Estimated number of officers due to COPS expenditures: 16,415; 
Percentage of total number of officers in the United States: 2.72%. 

Year: 2000; 
Estimated number of officers due to COPS expenditures: 17,387; 
Percentage of total number of officers in the United States: 2.91%. 

Year: 2001; 
Estimated number of officers due to COPS expenditures: 12,226; 
Percentage of total number of officers in the United States: 2.05%. 

Total, officer-years[A]; 
Estimated number of officers due to COPS expenditures: 88,195; 
Percentage of total number of officers in the United States: b. 

Source: GAO analysis of Uniform Crime Report, Office of Justice 
Programs financial, Bureau of Economic Analysis, National Center for 
Health Statistics, and U.S. Census Bureau data. 

[A] The total number of officer-years due to COPS expenditures is the 
sum of the number of officers due to COPS in each year. We call this 
total the number of officer-years due to COPS expenditures. It is not 
directly comparable with estimates of the number of sworn officers on 
the street as a result of COPS funds or with estimates of the number of 
officers funded by the COPS Office. 

[B] Not applicable. 

[End of table] 

An officer-year is the number of officers in a given year that were 
associated with COPS expenditures. According to this measure, an 
individual officer--or person--might be included in our counts of 
officers due to COPS in several years. Therefore, our estimate of the 
total number of officer-years arising from COPS expenditures is not 
equivalent to the number of officers that the COPS Office reportedly 
funded, nor does it represent an estimate of the total number of 
officers as a result of COPS grants. For a given year, however, our 
estimate represents the number of COPS-funded officers on the street. 
(For additional details on the methods we used to estimate the effects 
of COPS expenditures on officers, see app. VI.) 

LLEBG Funds Also Contributed to Increases in Officer Strength: 

In addition to our findings of the effects of COPS expenditures on the 
level of sworn officers, we found that Local Law Enforcement Block 
Grants expenditures also contributed to increases in officers above 
levels expected without them. Our finding about LLEBG grants effects on 
sworn officers is consistent with interview and survey responses 
reported by Urban Institute researchers in their evaluation of the 
implementation of the COPS program.[Footnote 59] In their interviews 
with police chiefs, they found that the chiefs reported that they used 
LLEBG to supplement COPS funds. LLEBG grants could be used for a 
variety of purposes in addition to funding officers. 

COPS Expenditures Led to Reductions in Crime through Increases in 
Officers: 

Estimating the impact of COPS expenditures on changes in crime rates 
through their effects on the number of sworn officers, we found that 
COPS expenditures were associated with declines in crime rates for 
total, violent, and property crimes, as compared with their baseline 
levels in 1993, the year prior to the distribution of COPS grants. The 
amounts of decline in crime rates varied among crime types and across 
years. The variation in the decline in crime rates in various crime 
types arose from our estimates of the effects of changes in officers on 
crime rates, and the variation over time within crime types arose from 
the variation in COPS expenditures. For example, for the total crime 
rate, we found that the impact of COPS peaked in 1998, as for that 
year, we estimated that COPS led to a reduction in the total crime rate 
of almost 1.4 percent from the level of crime in 1993. From 1999 and 
2000, COPS expenditures of between $920 million and about $1 billion 
led to reductions in the total crime rate of about 1.3 percent, again, 
as compared with the 1993 level. In years prior to 1998 and in 2001, 
when COPS expenditures were lower than their levels in 1998 through 
2000, the declines in total crime arising from COPS expenditures also 
were less than 1.3 percent (table 10). 

Similarly, for violent and property crimes, we found that the amount of 
decline associated with COPS expenditures varied from year to year, and 
for both of these crime categories, the largest decline in crime 
occurred during 1998. COPS expenditures led to a decline in violent 
crime of almost 2.6 percent in 1998, compared with violent crime levels 
in 1993. For 1999 and 2000, COPS expenditures led to about a reduction 
of about 2.4 percent in violent crime, from the 1993 level. For 
property crimes, the impact of COPS expenditures from 1998 through 2000 
was between 1.1 percent and 1.2 percent, as compared to the 1993 level 
(table 10). 

Table 10: Estimated Percentage Change in Crime Rates from 1993 Levels 
Due to COPS Expenditures, 1994-2001, by Crime Type Category: 

Year: 1994; 
Crime category: Total crimes: -.01%; 
Crime category: Violent crimes: -.01%; 
Crime category: Property crimes: -.01%. 

Year: 1995; 
Crime category: Total crimes: -.16%; 
Crime category: Violent crimes: -.29%; 
Crime category: Property crimes: -.13%. 

Year: 1996; 
Crime category: Total crimes: -.70%; 
Crime category: Violent crimes: -1.29%; 
Crime category: Property crimes: -.60%. 

Year: 1997; 
Crime category: Total crimes: -1.11%; 
Crime category: Violent crimes: -2.05%; 
Crime category: Property crimes: -.95%. 

Year: 1998; 
Crime category: Total crimes: -1.39%; 
Crime category: Violent crimes: -2.57%; 
Crime category: Property crimes: -1.19%. 

Year: 1999; 
Crime category: Total crimes: -1.28%; 
Crime category: Violent crimes: -2.36%; 
Crime category: Property crimes: -1.10%. 

Year: 2000; 
Crime category: Total crimes: -1.34%; 
Crime category: Violent crimes: -2.48%; 
Crime category: Property crimes: -1.15%. 

Year: 2001; 
Crime category: Total crimes: -0.93%; 
Crime category: Violent crimes: -1.73%; 
Crime category: Property crimes: -.80%. 

Source: GAO analysis of Uniform Crime Report, Office of Justice 
Programs financial, Bureau of Economic Analysis, National Center for 
Health Statistics, and U.S. Census Bureau data. 

Note: All estimates of the magnitude of the impact of COPS on crime are 
made with respect to the level of crime in 1993, the baseline year for 
our comparisons. The crime rates in 1993 in the data in our sample were 
as follows: the total crime rate was 5,904 per 100,000 persons; the 
violent crime rate was 846 per 100,000 persons; and the property crime 
rate was 5,058 per 100,000 persons. 

[End of table] 

Our estimates of the impact of COPS expenditures on crime through their 
effects on the number of officers represent the effects of COPS 
expenditures on crime net of the effects of other factors that we 
controlled for in our model--including changes in economic conditions, 
population composition, and pre-COPS program trends in police agencies' 
growth rate of sworn officers and growth rate in crime. By controlling 
for pre-COPS program growth rates in officers and crime, we made 
comparisons between agencies within population size categories that had 
similar growth rates in officers and crime but which differed on the 
timing and amount of COPS expenditures. In addition, through the use of 
state-by-year fixed effects, we controlled for state-level factors that 
could affect crime rates, such as changes in sentencing policy or state 
incarceration. 

As our estimates of the impact of COPS expenditures on crime come, in 
part, from our estimates of the effects of changes in officers on 
crime, we compared our estimates of the effect of changes in officers 
on changes in crime with estimates of these effects that appear in 
recent research. We found that each 1 percent increase in sworn 
officers was associated with about a 0.4 percent decline in total 
crime, about a 0.8 percent decline in violent crime, and a slightly 
less than 0.4 percent decline in property crime. Our estimates of this 
relationship--the elasticity of crime with respect to officers--is 
consistent with estimates that appear in recent literature of the 
effects of changes in police officers on changes in crime rates. Others 
report elasticities that are similar to ours. For example, in a study 
that used COPS granted officers to estimate the effect of increases in 
officers on crime, the authors reported an estimated elasticity for 
violent crime of -0.99 (a 1 percent increase in officers led to a 0.99 
percent decline in violent crimes) and a property crime elasticity of - 
0.26.[Footnote 60] In another paper that used electoral cycles to 
estimate the effect of increases in officers on crime, the author 
provides a set of elasticities under different model 
specifications.[Footnote 61] The elasticity for property crimes was 
calculated to be about -0.3, and the elasticity for violent crimes was 
about -1.0. (See app. VI for more information on the methods that we 
used to calculate our elasticities and to estimate the impact of COPS 
expenditures on crime.) 

Various Specifications of Our Regressions Yielded Consistent Findings 
about the Effect of COPS Expenditures on Crime: 

While we found that COPS expenditures were associated with reductions 
in total crime and the violent and property crime categories, when we 
examined the effects of COPS expenditures on specific types of index 
crimes, we found significant reductions in murder, robbery, aggravated 
assault, burglary, and motor vehicle theft. We found a negative 
association between COPS expenditures and larceny, but this effect was 
not statistically significant. Finally, we found a positive but 
statistically insignificant association between COPS expenditures and 
rape. (See table 17 in app. VI.) 

Additionally, for agencies that served populations of 10,000 or more 
persons, we found that the effects of COPS expenditures on the total 
crime rate were consistent across agencies that served populations of 
varying sizes with the exception of agencies that served populations of 
between 25,000 and 50,000 persons. The magnitude of the effects tended 
to increase with the size of agencies, where agency size refers to the 
population served by the agency. In general, as the size of agencies 
increased, we found that the impact of COPS expenditures on the total 
crime rate also increased. For agencies serving populations between 
25,000 and 50,000, we observed a negative relationship between COPS 
expenditures and crime. However, the estimated effect was not 
statistically significant. (See table 18 in app. VI.) 

As there are uncertainties associated with formulated regression 
models, and point estimates derived from a single regression model can 
give misleading information, we estimated our regressions under 
different assumptions about how COPS expenditures could affect crime. 
Under the various models, we introduced lagged effects, nonlinear 
effects for COPS hiring grants, and effects for the year of receipt of 
COPS grants--to test whether the impact of COPS occurred in the years 
in which the money was spent. From the various specifications, we 
estimated the elasticity of crime with respect to officers. We found 
that the elasticity for total crimes ranged from -0.41 to -0.95. The 
elasticity that we used to calculate the impact of COPS on the decline 
in index crimes was -0.42, which is at the lower end of the range of 
elasticities that we estimated. Therefore, under assumptions different 
from the preferred specification about how COPS expenditures are 
related to officers and crime, we would arrive at a larger estimated 
impact of COPS on the decline in crime than we report above. Also, 
under the varying assumptions about how COPS expenditures are related 
to crime, we estimated elasticities of violent crimes with respect to 
officers and elasticities of property crimes with respect to officers. 
For violent crimes, the elasticities derived from these regressions 
ranged from -0.76 to -1.8. The elasticity that we used to estimate the 
impact of COPS on the decline in violent crimes was -0.8. This 
elasticity is at the lower end of the range of elasticities that we 
estimated, which implies that the impacts of COPS on violent crimes 
could be larger than the impacts that we reported. For property crimes, 
the range of estimated elasticities was from -0.35 to -0.80. (See table 
20 in app. VI.) 

In addition to our findings of the effects of COPS expenditures on 
crime, we found that LLEBG expenditures were consistently associated 
with declines in total crime rates and declines in the murder, rape, 
robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, and larceny crime rates. Only 
for motor vehicle theft did we not find a significant effect of LLEBG 
expenditures. However, because LLEBG grant funds are related to the 
levels of violent crime occurring within a jurisdiction, the 
relationship between LLEBG expenditures and crime may be one of 
bidirectional causality.[Footnote 62] By this, we mean because LLEBG 
grant amounts were determined in part on the levels of violent crime, 
violent crime in a community can be construed as a cause of LLEBG 
grants in addition to an effect of having received them. (See table 17 
in app. VI.) 

Factors other than COPS Expenditures Contributed Larger Amounts to the 
Reduction in Crimes, but COPS Contribution Was in Line with COPS 
Expenditures: 

The decline in crimes attributable to COPS expenditures accounted for 
at most about 10 percent of the total drop in crime from 1993 to 1998, 
and about 5 percent of the drop from 1993 to 2000. Therefore, various 
factors other than COPS expenditures were responsible for the majority 
of the total decline in crime during the 1990s. While in our regression 
models of the effects of COPS funds on crime, we were able to control 
for the effects of many factors that could be related to the decline in 
crime, we did not attempt to estimate the amount that each of these 
factors individually had contributed to the overall drop in 
crime.[Footnote 63] Rather, by isolating the amount by which crime 
rates declined because of COPS and comparing that amount with the total 
decline in crime from our 1993 baseline year, we calculated COPS 
contribution to the overall decline in crime. The amount of the total 
drop in crime not associated with COPS expenditures reflects the amount 
due to factors other than COPS. 

While COPS' contributions to the decline in crime rates did not account 
for the majority of the total drop in crime rates, the amounts of 
declines in crime rates attributable to COPS were on the same order of 
magnitude as were COPS expenditures' contributions to local law 
enforcement expenditures for police. From 1994 through 2001, COPS 
expenditures amounted to slightly more than 1 percent of total local 
expenditures for police services nationwide. As we found and reported, 
COPS expenditures were responsible for about a 1.4 percent decline in 
the total crime rate. 

[End of section] 

Appendix V: COPS Expenditures Associated with Policing Practices That 
Crime Literature Indicates Are Effective in Preventing Crime: 

This appendix addresses our third reporting objective: determining the 
extent to which COPS grant expenditures during the 1990s were 
associated with police departments adopting policing activities or 
practices that the crime literature indicates could contribute to 
reductions in crime. Specifically, it describes the results of our 
analyses of the relationships between COPS grant expenditures and 
changes in policing practices reported in two surveys of local law 
enforcement agencies, and it summarizes our assessment of studies that 
conducted systematic reviews of research on the effectiveness of 
various policing practices. Our analysis of the first of the two 
surveys of policing practices compares changes in reported policing 
practices between 1993 and 1997, that is, prior to the distribution of 
COPS grants and after many COPS grants had been distributed. In our 
analysis of the second survey, we compare changes from 1996 to 2000, or 
during the implementation COPS program. In addition, we provide a 
limited summary of our analysis of systematic reviews of evaluations of 
policing practices that could contribute to reductions in crime. (See 
app. VII for the details related to our methodology for analyzing 
policing practices.) 

Comparisons of Pre-and Within-COPS Grant Program Levels of Reported 
Policing Practices Show That COPS Grantee Agencies Reported Larger 
Increases than Non-COPS Agencies: 

Prior to the implementation of COPS grants, many local law enforcement 
agencies had adopted a number of problem-solving, place-oriented, crime 
analysis, and community collaboration policing practices. Problem- 
solving practices refer to efforts by the police to focus on specific 
problems and tailor their strategies to the identified problems. Place- 
oriented practices include attempts to identify the locations where 
crime repeatedly occurs and to implement procedures to disrupt these 
recurrences of crime. Crime analysis includes the use of tools such as 
geographic information systems to identify crime patterns. Community 
collaboration includes attempts to improve or enhance citizen feedback 
about crime problems and the effectiveness of policing efforts to 
address them. 

Our analysis of the Policing Strategies Survey data for 1993--the year 
before COPS grants were distributed--indicates that surveyed agencies 
that received a COPS grant between 1994 and 1997 reported higher mean 
levels of the above policing practices than agencies that did not 
receive a COPS grant between 1994 and 1997. For example, in 1993, the 
mean number of all practices reported by grantee agencies was about 13 
out of a possible 38 practices, while the mean number of all practices 
reported by nongrantee agencies was about 11 practices. However, among 
the agencies that received a COPS grant between 1994 and 1997, there 
were larger increases in the mean level of all reported practices 
between 1993 and 1997 except for those related to crime analysis. COPS 
grantee agencies reported in 1997 an increase of about 3.5 practices 
overall, as compared with a mean increase of less than 2 practices by 
the agencies that did not receive COPS grants during this period. The 
largest differences between COPS grantees and nongrantee agencies in 
the reported increase in practices occurred for the problem-solving and 
place-oriented practices (table 11). 

Table 11: Mean Levels of Policing Practices in 1993 and 1997, by 
Category of Policing Practices and whether Agencies Received a COPS 
Grant between 1994 and 1997: 

Category of policing practice: Problem solving; 
COPS grantee agencies: 1993: 4.57; 
COPS grantee agencies: 1997: 5.80; 
COPS grantee agencies: Difference: 1.24; 
Agencies that did not receive a COPS grant: 1993: 4.16; 
Agencies that did not receive a COPS grant: 1997: 4.68; 
Agencies that did not receive a COPS grant: Difference: 0.52. 

Category of policing practice: Place oriented; 
COPS grantee agencies: 1993: 2.98; 
COPS grantee agencies: 1997: 4.21; 
COPS grantee agencies: Difference: 1.23; 
Agencies that did not receive a COPS grant: 1993: 2.38; 
Agencies that did not receive a COPS grant: 1997: 2.84; 
Agencies that did not receive a COPS grant: Difference: 0.47. 

Category of policing practice: Community collaboration; 
COPS grantee agencies: 1993: 3.48; 
COPS grantee agencies: 1997: 4.41; 
COPS grantee agencies: Difference: 0.93; 
Agencies that did not receive a COPS grant: 1993: 2.69; 
Agencies that did not receive a COPS grant: 1997: 3.45; 
Agencies that did not receive a COPS grant: Difference: 0.76. 

Category of policing practice: Crime analysis; 
COPS grantee agencies: 1993: 1.88; 
COPS grantee agencies: 1997: 1.93; 
COPS grantee agencies: Difference: 0.05; 
Agencies that did not receive a COPS grant: 1993: 1.66; 
Agencies that did not receive a COPS grant: 1997: 1.71; 
Agencies that did not receive a COPS grant: Difference: 0.05. 

Total; 
COPS grantee agencies: 1993: 12.90; 
COPS grantee agencies: 1997: 16.34; 
COPS grantee agencies: Difference: 3.44; 
Agencies that did not receive a COPS grant: 1993: 10.89; 
Agencies that did not receive a COPS grant: 1997: 12.69; 
Agencies that did not receive a COPS grant: Difference: 1.80. 

Source: GAO Analysis of Policing Strategies Survey, Office of Justice 
Programs financial, Bureau of Economic Analysis, National Center for 
Health Statistics, U.S. Census Bureau, and Uniform Crime Report data. 

[End of table] 

From a series of regression models of the effects of COPS grants on 
changes in policing practices, we found that both the receipt of a COPS 
grant, and the amount of per capita COPS expenditures by agencies were 
associated with increases in the levels of reported policing practices 
between 1993 and 1997. Our regressions control for the underlying trend 
in the reported use of policing practices, for differences in agency 
characteristics that could be associated with increases in reported 
levels of policing practices--such as the size of the jurisdiction--and 
changes in the economic and social characteristics of the county in 
which the agency was located. We estimated separate regressions of the 
effect of the receipt of a COPS grant and of the cumulative per capita 
amount of COPS expenditures on the levels of reported policing 
practices. 

Our regression models for estimating the effects of receipt of a COPS 
grant on the change in police practices between 1993 and 1997 show that 
agencies that received at least one COPS grant had significantly larger 
changes in the overall number of practices than did agencies that did 
not receive a COPS grant during this period. Specifically, according to 
our analysis of the survey data, the average number of practices 
increased by 2.9 over this period, and the receipt of a COPS grant 
accounted for 1.8 of this reported increase. Further, when we examined 
our results from separate regressions for the different categories of 
practices, we found that receipt of a COPS grant was associated with 
significant increases in reported levels of problem-solving and place- 
oriented practices, but was not related to changes in community 
collaboration or crime analysis practices. (See app. VII for details.) 

Our regression models further show that changes in practices were also 
associated with the cumulative amount of per capita spending on COPS 
grants. All other things being equal, a $1 increase in per capita 
spending was associated with an increase of 0.23 policing practices. As 
we found for the effects of the receipt of a grant on changes in police 
practices, these regressions also showed that the level of per capita 
spending on COPS grants was significantly associated with increases in 
problem-solving and place-oriented practices. However, per capita 
spending on COPS grants was also associated with increases in crime 
analysis practices. (See app. VII for details.) 

The Effects of COPS Grants on Agencies' Reported Increases in Policing 
Practices Differed across Agencies Serving Populations of Different 
Sizes: 

Receipt of a COPS grant was associated with increases in the overall 
adoption of policing practices among agencies serving populations of 
different sizes. Regardless of the size of populations served, agencies 
that received COPS grants adopted almost twice as many practices 
between 1993 and 1997 as agencies that did not receive COPS grants. 
However, in both years, agencies serving larger populations also 
reported higher mean levels of policing practices (table 12 and fig. 
9). 

Table 12: Mean Levels of Policing Practices in 1993 and 1997, by Size 
of Agency and whether Agencies Received a COPS Grant between 1994 and 
1997: 

Jurisdiction population (number of persons): 10,000 to fewer than 
50,000; 
COPS grantee agencies: 1993: 11.87; 
COPS grantee agencies: 1997: 15.14; 
COPS grantee agencies: Difference: 3.27; 
Agencies that did not receive a COPS grant: 1993: 10.12; 
Agencies that did not receive a COPS grant: 1997: 11.80; 
Agencies that did not receive a COPS grant: Difference: 1.68. 

Jurisdiction population (number of persons): 50,000 to 150,000; 
COPS grantee agencies: 1993: 14.58; 
COPS grantee agencies: 1997: 18.70; 
COPS grantee agencies: Difference: 4.12; 
Agencies that did not receive a COPS grant: 1993: 14.40; 
Agencies that did not receive a COPS grant: 1997: 16.81; 
Agencies that did not receive a COPS grant: Difference: 2.41. 

Jurisdiction population (number of persons): More than 150,000; 
COPS grantee agencies: 1993: 19.30; 
COPS grantee agencies: 1997: 22.82; 
COPS grantee agencies: Difference: 3.52; 
Agencies that did not receive a COPS grant: 1993: 19.00; 
Agencies that did not receive a COPS grant: 1997: 20.91; 
Agencies that did not receive a COPS grant: Difference: 1.91. 

Source: GAO Analysis of Policing Strategies Survey and Office of 
Justice Programs financial data. 

[End of table] 

Figure 9: Reported Levels of Policing Practices in 1993 and 1997 in 
Agencies That Received and Did Not Receive COPS Grants, by Size of 
Population Served: 

[See PDF for image] 

[End of figure] 

Our regressions of the effect of COPS expenditures on changes in 
reported levels of policing practices between 1993 and 1997, indicate, 
however, that the effects of receiving a COPS grant were larger in 
agencies in jurisdictions serving fewer than 50,000 persons and in 
jurisdictions serving more than 150,000 persons, than in agencies in 
jurisdictions serving populations of between 50,000 and 150,000 
persons. 

Reported Levels of Policing Practices among COPS Grantees Did Not 
Increase Overall from 1996 to 2000: 

Our analysis of the National Evaluation of COPS Survey data on policing 
practices in 1996 and in 2000 also showed that agencies that received 
COPS grants reported larger increases in the mean level of policing 
practices than did non-COPS grantee agencies, but that the effects were 
not statistically significant. The findings suggest that there was no 
continued overall increase in reported policing practices in the period 
from 1996 to 2000. 

Regardless of when agencies received COPS grants and made COPS 
expenditures, we found that COPS grantee agencies reported larger 
increases in policing practices between 1996 and 2000 than did the 
agencies that did not have COPS grants in these years. For example, for 
the agencies that received their first COPS grant in 1996 or before, 
the average increase in reported use of policing practices from 1996 to 
2000 was about 21 percent, and for the agencies that made COPS grant 
expenditures after 1996, the average increase in reported use of 
policing practices was about 17 percent. By contrast, for the agencies 
that had not made any COPS grant expenditures by 2000, there was about 
a 0.2 percent decrease in the reported use of policing practices from 
1996 to 2000, and for the agencies that did not make any COPS grant 
expenditures after 1996, there was about a 3 percent increase in the 
reported use of policing practices from 1996 to 2000 (table 13). 

Table 13: Difference in Mean Levels of Reported Policing Practices in 
1996 and 2000, by Category of Policing Practices and Timing of COPS 
Grant Expenditures: 

Category of policing practice: Problem solving and place oriented; 
Made COPS expenditures after 1996: 6.09; 
Made COPS expenditures after 1996: 1.00; 
Made COPS expenditures in 1996 or before: 6.08; 
Made COPS expenditures in 1996 or before: 1.45; 
Did not make COPS expenditures after 1996: 6.91; 
Did not make COPS expenditures after 1996: 0.11; 
Did not make COPS expenditures between 1994 and 2000: 7.08; 
Did not make COPS expenditures between 1994 and 2000: - 0.13. 

Category of policing practice: Community collaboration; 
Made COPS expenditures after 1996: 3.36; 
Made COPS expenditures after 1996: 0.53; 
Made COPS expenditures in 1996 or before: 3.42; 
Made COPS expenditures in 1996 or before: 0.56; 
Did not make COPS expenditures after 1996: 3.28; 
Did not make COPS expenditures after 1996: 0.47; 
Did not make COPS expenditures between 1994 and 2000: 3.33; 
Did not make COPS expenditures between 1994 and 2000: 0.38. 

Category of policing practice: Crime analysis; 
Made COPS expenditures after 1996: 1.67; 
Made COPS expenditures after 1996: 0.32; 
Made COPS expenditures in 1996 or before: 1.70; 
Made COPS expenditures in 1996 or before: 0.39; 
Did not make COPS expenditures after 1996: 1.87; 
Did not make COPS expenditures after 1996: -0.20; 
Did not make COPS expenditures between 1994 and 2000: 1.88; 
Did not make COPS expenditures between 1994 and 2000: -0.26. 

Total; 
Made COPS expenditures after 1996: 11.12; 
Made COPS expenditures after 1996: 1.86; 
Made COPS expenditures in 1996 or before: 11.21; 
Made COPS expenditures in 1996 or before: 2.38; 
Did not make COPS expenditures after 1996: 12.06; 
Did not make COPS expenditures after 1996: 0.38; 
Did not make COPS expenditures between 1994 and 2000: 12.30; 
Did not make COPS expenditures between 1994 and 2000: -0.02. 

Source: GAO analysis of National Evaluation of COPS Survey and Office 
of Justice Programs financial data. 

[End of table] 

Although we observed larger average increases in reported policing 
practices among agencies that spent COPS grant funds than among 
agencies that did not spend COPS grant funds, when we controlled for 
underlying trends in the reported adoption of policing practices and 
agency characteristics, we found that changes in per capita COPS 
expenditures made between the period preceding wave 1 of the survey 
(1994 through 1996) and the period following wave 1 of the survey (1997 
through 2000) were not associated with changes in reported overall 
policing practices between 1996 and 2000 (app. VII). This suggests that 
there was no continued overall increase in reported policing practices 
in the period from 1996 to 2000, as a function of COPS grant 
expenditures. 

Crime Literature Provides Evidence for Effectiveness of Some Policing 
Practices: 

Our analysis of six systematic reviews of evaluations of the 
effectiveness of various policing practices in preventing crime 
indicates that the current evidence ranges from moderate to strong that 
problem-oriented policing practices and place-oriented practices are 
either effective or promising as strategies for addressing crime 
problems. For example, problem-oriented approaches that focus on 
criminogenic substances such as guns and drugs appear to be effective 
in reducing both violent and property crimes. And hot spots approaches-
-place-oriented approaches that temporarily apply police resources to 
discrete locations where crime is concentrated at much higher rates 
than occur jurisdictionwide--have also been found to be effective in 
reducing crime. However, the magnitudes of the effects of these 
interventions are difficult to estimate, especially on citywide crime 
rates, as the interventions that were reviewed as effective generally 
were concentrated in comparatively small places. Further, the enduring 
nature of these interventions is not fully understood. It is not known, 
for example, how long the effects of a problem-or place-oriented 
intervention persist. In addition, some of the reviews point out that 
research designs undertaken to date make it difficult to disentangle 
the effects of problem-oriented policing from hot spots policing. There 
is suggestive, but limited, evidence that the combination of these 
practices may be more effective in preventing or reducing crime than 
any one strategy alone. 

In contrast to the findings on problem-oriented and place-oriented 
policing practices, there is little evidence in the literature for the 
effectiveness of community collaboration practices--such as increasing 
foot patrol, establishing community partnerships, and encouraging 
citizen involvement--in reducing or preventing crime. 

[End of section] 

Appendix VI: Methods Used to Estimate the Effects of COPS Funds on 
Officers and Crime: 

In this appendix, we describe the methods we used to address our 
reporting objective regarding the impacts of the COPS funds on officers 
and crime: determining (1) the extent to which COPS grant expenditures 
contributed to increases in the number of sworn officers in police 
agencies in the 1990s and (2) the extent to which COPS expenditures 
contributed to declines in crime in the 1990s through their effects, if 
any, on officers. 

Prior Literature on the Relationship between Officers and Crime 
Addresses Issues Relating to Estimating the Effects of COPS Funds on 
Crime: 

In examining the effect of COPS funds on crime, we estimate the impacts 
of the funds on crime through their impacts on officers. The effect of 
police on crime has a theoretical basis in the economics literature. 
Economic models posit that criminals weigh the gains from criminal 
activity against its costs--the possibility of arrest and 
incarceration. Anything that increases the probability of arrest, such 
as additional police, will thus deter criminal activity; we might call 
this the deterrence effect. A second effect stems from arrests 
directly. If criminals are arrested and incarcerated, they will not be 
able to commit street crimes; we might call this the incapacitation 
effect. 

The relationship between police and crime has been studied empirically, 
with mixed results. Several reviews of research that investigated this 
relationship have reported that a minority of papers find a significant 
negative relationship between increases in the number of officers and 
crime.[Footnote 64] However, these reviews also point out that many of 
the studies have methodological flaws. In a report to Congress on what 
works in crime prevention, Lawrence Sherman and others drew upon a 
limited body of research that addressed the methodological concerns and 
concluded that increases in the number of police officers work to 
prevent crime.[Footnote 65] 

One of the major methodological issues associated with estimating the 
relationship between police officers and crime is the issue of reverse 
causality. This issue revolves around determining how to disentangle 
the relationship between the number of police officers and crime, as 
municipalities having higher crime rates generally also have more 
officers. For example, Detroit has twice as many police per capita as 
Omaha and four times the violent crime rate, but it would be incorrect 
to conclude that the additional officers in Detroit were the cause of 
its higher crime rate than Omaha's.[Footnote 66] By simply comparing a 
municipality's police force and crime rate to those in other 
municipalities, one would incorrectly infer that Detroit's higher crime 
rate was caused by its additional police officers. 

Repeated observations on crime and police in a locality lead to a more 
robust research design by controlling for the time-invariant 
differences in rates of crime and police between areas. This is done by 
introducing fixed effects into regression models. Using this approach, 
the question that the analysis attempts to address becomes: Do we see 
the crime rate fall as the number of police rises? By controlling for 
the "baseline" crime rates in different areas, some researchers have 
estimated a negative relationship between police and crime.[Footnote 
67] 

However, if the rise in the number of police in a locality is a 
response to increasing crime rates, including fixed effects does not 
resolve the issue of reverse causality raised by the Detroit example. A 
next step is to introduce an instrument--for example, a variable that 
affects the size of the police force but that, given this size, does 
not affect crime. In one study, the researcher made use of the fact 
that the size of a police force increases before an election. If the 
only way that crime is affected by the election is through the number 
of police, then this approach can be used to estimate the relationship 
between crime and police. In this study, the researcher found that 
crime fell in several index categories before an election.[Footnote 68] 

A series of more recent papers that used instruments found a negative 
relationship between police and crime. Two studies used an increase in 
police presence because of a terrorist alert and showed declines in 
nonterrorist-related crimes within a single city. In a study of Buenos 
Aires, the researchers found that police stationed in response to a 
terrorist threat on Jewish centers caused a decline in automobile 
theft.[Footnote 69] In another paper, the researchers showed that crime 
fell in Washington, D.C., on days when the Department of Homeland 
Security increased the terror alert level.[Footnote 70] At the national 
level, researchers at the University of Maryland used the number of 
police officers granted through the COPS program as an instrument for 
the actual number of police and estimated negative relationships 
between increases in police officers and crime.[Footnote 71] 

Our Approach to Estimating the Effects of COPS Expenditures on Officers 
and Crime: 

We adopted a two-stage approach to estimating the effects of COPS 
expenditures on crime. Much as the University of Maryland researchers 
did, we used COPS funds as a source of variation to explain officers. 
However, while the University of Maryland researchers used officers 
granted by COPS funds, we used COPS expenditure amounts--the actual 
COPS dollars spent by agencies in given years--as the source of 
variation. We began with an analysis of the "first stage" and tested 
whether COPS funds had an effect on the number of officers. To the 
extent that hiring funds affected the number of police but did not 
affect crime in any other way, these funds would be a valid instrument 
for estimating the effect of officers on crime. We then estimated the 
"reduced form," or the relationship between COPS expenditures and 
crime. Using parameters estimated from these regressions, we are able 
to calculate the relationship between police and crime. 

This approach has limitations, however. For example, we learn very 
little about how agencies operate. If agencies were to use the 
additional officers to employ different police tactics, and were able 
to reduce crime, we would be unable to say whether it was the increase 
in officer numbers or tactics that was the true cause of the decrease. 
Thus, we would be unable to contribute to the question of whether 
increases in officer strength are either necessary or sufficient to 
reduce crime, without a change in police tactics. 

A second concern is that agencies that were more likely to take 
initiative in applying for and receiving COPS grants might be those 
that were also more effective in preventing crime. These agencies might 
also be those that achieved larger or more rapid declines in crime. If 
this were the case, we might incorrectly associate declines in crime 
with COPS grant expenditures because of other possible factors. To 
assess this potential, we estimated a regression that predicted whether 
an agency spent COPS funds in a given year from 1994 through 2001 based 
on demographic characteristics, economic conditions, and lagged 
property and violent crime rates. From the regressions, we predicted 
the probability of spending COPS grant funds--or the propensity of 
agencies to spend COPS funds. Whether or not an agency actually spent 
COPS funds, it received a propensity score, based upon the values of 
its characteristics in the model that predicated the probability of 
spending COPS funds. Agencies that actually spent COPS funds can then 
be compared to similar agencies--those with similar propensity scores-
-that did not spend COPS funds. We grouped agencies into five 
categories based on their propensity scores. Within each of these five 
categories, we compared the patterns of violent crime rates and 
property crime rates between the agencies that spent COPS funds and 
those that did not spend them. Our analysis showed that within these 
groupings of agencies having similar propensity scores, the agencies 
that actually spent COPS funds generally had larger declines in crime 
rates than did those that did not spend COPS funds. 

Another question is whether a drop in a specific crime type, such as 
automobile theft, in a certain locality is a net gain for society as a 
whole. For example, the rationality of criminals may lead them to 
respond to an increase in the number of police by moving to an area 
with fewer police or switching to a different type of crime.[Footnote 
72] In addition, there is the possibility that an increase in the 
number of police increases the reporting rate of crimes, and not the 
crimes themselves.[Footnote 73] This possibility, however, would lead 
us to underestimate the effects of COPS funds on crime, as discussed in 
appendix I. 

Model of the Effect of COPS Expenditures on the Number of Police 
Officers: 

Our main specification estimated the effect of COPS funds on officers, 
using the following control variables: 

[See PDF for formula] 

[End of formula] 

We included state-by-year fixed effects--represented by st--to correct 
for changes in crime policy at the state level, such as changes in the 
number incarcerated and changes in sentencing policy. We included 
agency fixed effects--represented by i--to capture time invariant 
differences across agencies, and time fixed effects--represented by t-
-to capture changes affecting the entire nation. 

Because of how the money was distributed, there may be some concern 
that our estimate of the effect of the COPS money on officers is 
biased. For example, it might be that agencies that received a 
disproportionate share of the money relative to their populations had 
the benefit of preexisting positive growth of numbers of officers, in 
addition to possible declines in crime. If the trends continued, we 
might be incorrectly associating increases in officers or decreases in 
crime with the amount of COPS money received, rather than these 
preexisting trends. 

To address this concern, we separated the agencies into four groups, 
based on the growth rate in both officers and crime during 1990-1993, 
when the COPS program was introduced. We constructed each combination 
of these groups, producing 16 cells. These cells were then "interacted" 
with each year and four population categories, for a total of 768 
effects. In essence, each agency was compared with another agency that 
had a similar "trajectory" of crime and officers in the pre-COPS 
period.[Footnote 75] These growth trends are represented by the 
(quartile of prior growth rates) expression in equation (1). 

Finally, to obtain estimates of the effects of COPS expenditures on 
officers relative to the average person in the United States, we 
estimated weighted regressions where the weights were the population 
served by an agency. 

Because of these effects, the parameters of interest, 1 though 4, are 
the effect of the COPS funds once other federal funds, demographic and 
economic conditions, time and agency fixed effects, and these "growth 
rate" effects are controlled for. 

Model of the Effect of COPS Expenditures on Crime: 

As with our methodology in estimating the effect of COPS funds on 
officers, we estimate the effect of COPS funds on crime. Our main 
specification used the following controls in the following equation: 

[See PDF for formula] 

[End of formula] 

The independent variables are identical to those defined for equation 
(1). The dependent variable (CRIMEit) is the UCR total--or index--crime 
rate. We also estimate separate equations for the crime rates of 
components of the crime index: murder and non-negligent manslaughter, 
forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny theft, 
and motor vehicle theft.[Footnote 76] Again, the parameters of interest 
are m1 through m4. 

As in equation (1), the economic and demographic covariates in equation 
(2) are represented by Xit; i, t, and st represent the agency, year, 
and state-times-year fixed effects; and we also include the pre-1993 
growth rate variables. 

The Implied Relationship between Police Officers and Crime: 

Unlike the other COPS grant types, COPS hiring grants were to be used 
specifically for hiring officers. Consequently, variation in the number 
of officers coming from COPS hiring grants should be unrelated to other 
changes in police expenditures. In this sense, it may be a valid 
instrument for officers. 

Using the coefficients of officers in equations (1) and (2), we 
calculated an estimate of the change in crime with respect to change in 
officers: (m1/1), m1 and 1 are the coefficients from equations (1) and 
(2). 

The elasticity is a measure of the percentage change in crime derived 
from a percentage change in police. We used coefficients of officers in 
equations (1) and (2) to calculate an estimate of the elasticity of 
crime with respect to officers in 1993: 

[See PDF for formula] 

[End of formula] 

To test the robustness of our estimates under different assumptions 
about how COPS grant expenditures are related to officers and crime, we 
estimated the elasticity of crime with respect to officers under a 
number of different specifications, as described in table 14. 

Table 14: Alternate Specifications of the Relationship between COPS 
Expenditures and Crime: 

Variable in specification: MORE, Innovative, and Miscellaneous COPS 
expenditures; 
1: Included; 
2: Included; 
3: Not included; 
4: Not included; 
5: Included. 

Variable in specification: LLEBG, Byrne discretionary, and other 
federal non-COPS expenditures; 
1: Included; 
2: Included; 
3: Not included; 
4: Not included; 
5: Included. 

Variable in specification: "Got grant" specification; 
1: Not included; 
2: Not included; 
3: Not included; 
4: Not included; 
5: Included. 

Variable in specification: Lagged values of MORE, Innovative, and 
Miscellaneous COPS expenditures; 
1: Not included; 
2: Not included; 
3: Included; 
4: Included; 
5: Not included. 

Variable in specification: Lagged values of LLEBG, Byrne discretionary, 
and other federal non-COPS expenditures; 
1: Not included; 
2: Not included; 
3: Included; 
4: Included; 
5: Not included. 

Variable in specification: Demographic and economic controls; 
1: Included; 
2: Included; 
3: Included; 
4: Included; 
5: Included. 

Variable in specification: Growth rate cells; 
1: Not included; 
2: Included; 
3: Included; 
4: Not included; 
5: Included. 

Variable in specification: Lagged value of Hiring grant expenditures; 
1: Not included; 
2: Not included; 
3: Included; 
4: Not included; 
5: Not included. 

Variable in specification: Quadratic term for Hiring grant 
expenditures; 
1: Not included; 
2: Included; 
3: Not included; 
4: Not included; 
5: Not included. 

Variable in specification: State by year fixed effects; 
1: Not included; 
2: Included; 
3: Included; 
4: Included; 
5: Included. 

Source: GAO analysis. 

Note: An "included" indicates that a variable was included in a 
specification. 

[End of table] 

Other than the "got grant" specification, all variables are as defined 
above. Including the "got grant" variable provides a test for whether 
the effects of COPS grants occurred in the year in which the money was 
actually spent--as we specified in equations (1) and (2)--or whether 
the announcement of a grant award led to changes in officers and, 
subsequently, crime. If the announcement of the award were more 
important than the actual expenditures, it would imply that estimates 
of the effect of changes in expenditures on officers or crime in 
equations (1) and (2) would overstate the effects. To address this, we 
added indicator variables for the year in which a grant was received. 
Additionally, the quadratic term for COPS hiring grant expenditures 
provides a test for nonlinear effects of COPS hiring grants on crime. 
This specification examines whether the effects of officers on crime 
diminish as the number of officers rises above certain levels. 

Data Used in Our Analysis: 

We use data on 4,247 police agencies that reported complete crime (12 
months of crime) in any year and that served populations of 10,000 or 
more persons. These agencies represented about 23 percent of the 
agencies that appeared in the UCR data that we received from the FBI. 
However, they also covered more than 86 percent of the crimes and they 
represented about 77 percent of the population in the UCR data that we 
received. Because of concerns about data quality, we restricted our 
sample to agencies that met these criteria of complete crime reporters 
and serving populations larger than 10,000 persons. Across years, the 
number of agencies that met these conditions varies, so our panel of 
data is unbalanced. We used grant expenditure data from the OJP 
financial data, which we linked to the crime and officer records of 
agencies. We included county level demographic and economic data from 
the Census Bureau, the National Center for Health Statistics, and the 
Bureau of Economic Analysis. (See app. I for more information regarding 
the construction of the dataset.) 

Table 15 provides the means and standard deviations of the variables 
included in the regression models. As shown in the table, the per 
capita expenditures derived from COPS hiring grants exceeded the per 
capita amounts from other federal grants. 

Table 15: Means and Standard Deviations of Variables Used in Regression 
Models: 

Variables: Officers per 10,000 persons; 
Mean: 20.31; 
Standard deviation: 12.37. 

Federal grant expenditures per capita: 

Variables: COPS hiring; 
Mean: 0.978; 
Standard deviation: 2.18. 

Variables: COPS MORE; 
Mean: 0.292; 
Standard deviation: 1.35. 

Variables: COPS innovative; 
Mean: 0.082; 
Standard deviation: 0.496. 

Variables: COPS miscellaneous; 
Mean: 0.003; 
Standard deviation: 0.043. 

Variables: Byrne discretionary; 
Mean: 0.045; 
Standard deviation: 0.471. 

Variables: LLEBG; 
Mean: 0.770; 
Standard deviation: 1.93. 

Crime rate variables (per 100,000 persons): 

Variables: Total index crime; 
Mean: 5,349; 
Standard deviation: 3,170. 

Variables: Murder; 
Mean: 8.7; 
Standard deviation: 10.9. 

Variables: Forcible rape; 
Mean: 38; 
Standard deviation: 31. 

Variables: Robbery; 
Mean: 247; 
Standard deviation: 317. 

Variables: Aggravated assault; 
Mean: 424; 
Standard deviation: 391. 

Variables: Burglary; 
Mean: 1,034; 
Standard deviation: 647. 

Variables: Larceny theft; 
Mean: 2,990; 
Standard deviation: 1,752. 

Variables: Motor vehicle theft; 
Mean: 608; 
Standard deviation: 593. 

Other control variables: 

Variables: Log per capita income; 
Mean: 10.12; 
Standard deviation: 0.33. 

Variables: Employment-to-population ratio; 
Mean: 0.631; 
Standard deviation: 0.453. 

Variables: Fraction of population aged 15 through 24; 
Mean: 0.141; 
Standard deviation: 0.027. 

Variables: Fraction of population nonwhite; 
Mean: 0.186; 
Standard deviation: 0.136. 

Source: GAO analysis of Uniform Crime Report, Office of Justice 
Programs financial, Bureau of Economic Analysis, National Center for 
Health Statistics, and U.S. Census Bureau data. 

[End of table] 

Explanation of the Results of Our Analysis: 

In this section, we discuss our regression analyses and describe how we 
arrived at the results that are discussed in this report. 

The Effect of COPS Expenditures on the Number of Police Officers: 

To arrive at the effects of COPS expenditures on officers, we estimated 
specifications for equation (1), as shown in table 16. With only the 
fixed effects, the models explain more than 90 percent of the variation 
in officer strength. In specification 1, we added only the COPS hiring 
grant expenditures per capita to the model that contained only the 
fixed effects. The effects of hiring grants are significant at the 1 
percent level, and the coefficient indicates that an additional dollar 
of hiring grant expenditures per capita changes the officer rate 
(measured per 10,000 persons) by 0.317. In specifications 2 through 5, 
we introduce various combinations of the growth rate cells, demographic 
and economic conditions, and the other grant types. Across 
specifications 2 through 5, the estimated coefficient on the hiring 
grant variable remains fairly consistent, ranging from 0.227 in 
specification 5 to 0.261 in specification 3, where the interpretation 
of the coefficient is the effect of a $1 increase in per capita COPS 
hiring grant on the per 10,000 person rate of officers. Specification 5 
presents our preferred specification, in that it includes all of the 
relevant controls. Using the coefficient on COPS hiring grant 
expenditures from specification 5, we calculate the effect of $25,000 
in COPS hiring grant expenditures in a given year to produce roughly 
0.6 additional officers in a given year.[Footnote 77] Finally, in 
addition to the COPS hiring grant expenditures, COPS MORE and LLEBG 
grant expenditures also consistently predict officer strength, as 
indicated by the MORE and LLEBG parameter estimates in specifications 2 
through 5. 

Table 16: Parameter Estimates from Regressions of Officers Per Capita 
on COPS Hiring Grant Expenditures and Other Outside Funds (Standard 
Errors in Parentheses): 

Variable: Hiring; 
1: 0.317 (0.055); 
2: 0.231 (0.025); 
3: 0.261 (0.047); 
4: 0.247 (0.028); 
5: 0.227 (0.025). 

Variable: MORE; 
1: [Empty]; 
2: 0.124 (0.043); 
3: 0.238 (0.090); 
4: 0.159 (0.054); 
5: 0.121 (0.043). 

Variable: Innovative; 
1: [Empty]; 
2: 0.0477 (0.050); 
3: -0.029 (0.075); 
4: 0.042 (0.054); 
5: 0.047 (0.050). 

Variable: Miscellaneous; 
1: [Empty]; 
2: 1.46 (1.20); 
3: 0.906 (1.30); 
4: 1.13 (1.28); 
5: 1.43 (1.19). 

Variable: Byrne; 
1: [Empty]; 
2: 0.001 (0.06); 
3: 0.169 (0.129); 
4: 0.148 (0.102); 
5: 0.0003 (0.06). 

Variable: LLEBG; 
1: [Empty]; 
2: 0.172 (0.05); 
3: 0.259 (0.065); 
4: 0.201 (0.049); 
5: 0.168 (0.049). 

Variable: Federal non-COPS; 
1: [Empty]; 
2: 0.056 (0.045); 
3: 0.022 (0.066); 
4: 0.033 (0.047); 
5: 0.053 (0.045). 

Variable: Demographic and economic covariates[A]; 
1: No; 
2: No; 
3: Yes; 
4: Yes; 
5: Yes. 

Variable: Population weights; 
1: Yes; 
2: Yes; 
3: Yes; 
4: Yes; 
5: Yes. 

Variable: Growth rate cells; 
1: No; 
2: Yes; 
3: No; 
4: Yes; 
5: Yes. 

Variable: State-by-year fixed effects; 
1: No; 
2: Yes; 
3: No; 
4: No; 
5: Yes. 

Source: GAO analysis of Uniform Crime Report, Office of Justice 
Programs financial, Bureau of Economic Analysis, National Center for 
Health Statistics, and U.S. Census Bureau data. 

Notes: Officers per capita is measured in terms of officers per 10,000 
persons; all expenditure variables are in per capita amounts. All 
regression specifications include agency and year fixed effects. Bold- 
face parameter estimates and standard errors indicate that a parameter 
estimate is statistically significant at the 5 percent level using 
robust standard errors. 

[A] Demographic and economic covariates include log per capita income, 
employment to population ratio, percentage of population between 15 and 
24 years of age, and percentage of population that is nonwhite. 

[End of table] 

Effect of COPS Expenditures on Crime: 

Our reduced-form estimates of the effects of COPS expenditures on 
crime, the result of our estimating equation (2) appear in table 17. 
This first column (labeled "Officers") repeats the results from 
specification 5 of table 16. The other columns of table 17 show the 
parameter estimates for the effects of hiring grants and outside funds 
on the crime rate for index crimes and separately for type of index 
crime (except for arson). With the exception of rape, COPS hiring grant 
expenditures per capita have a negative effect on index crime rates and 
the crime rate for each type of index crime. Further, while the 
direction of the effect of the hiring grant variable on the larceny 
rate is negative, the effect is not significant at the 5 percent level. 
LLEBG expenditures have a negative and significant effect on all crime 
types. The other grant fund types have a negative effect on some crime 
types. 

We estimated the effect of COPS hiring grant expenditures on index 
crimes to be -29.19. In other words, $1 in COPS hiring grant 
expenditures per capita translates into a reduction of almost 30 index 
crimes per 100,000 people. 

Table 17: Parameter Estimates from Regressions of Crime Rates on COPS 
Hiring Grant Expenditures and Other Outside Funds (Standard Errors in 
Parentheses): 

Variable: Hiring; 
Officers: 0.227 (0.025); 
Index: -29.19 (6.67); 
Murder: - 0.133 (0.028); 
Rape: 0.128 (0.075); 
Robbery: -4.94 (1.07); 
Assault: -2.77 (1.08); 
Burglary: -8.01 (1.33); 
Larceny: -4.18 (3.05); 
Motor vehicle: -9.26 (3.44). 

Variable: MORE; 
Officers: 0.121 (0.043); 
Index: -17.14 (6.55); 
Murder: -0.083 (0.031); 
Rape: 0.008 (0.063); 
Robbery: -2.80 (0.919); 
Assault: -1.72 (0.86); 
Burglary: -2.04 (1.14); 
Larceny: -6.91 (3.43); 
Motor vehicle: 
-3.58 (1.51). 

Variable: Innovative; 
Officers: 0.047 (0.050); 
Index: -88.25 (17.80); 
Murder: - 0.219 (.081); 
Rape: -0.102 (.255); 
Robbery: -8.45 (2.13); 
Assault: - 9.71 (3.80); 
Burglary: -17.62 (4.81); 
Larceny: -23.30 (11.5); 
Motor vehicle: -28.8 (6.77). 

Variable: Miscellaneous; 
Officers: 1.43 (1.19); 
Index: -123.7 (18.79); 
Murder: 1.13 (.887); 
Rape: 2.37 (2.31); 
Robbery: 41.2 (29.74); 
Assault: - 13.56 (33.27); 
Burglary: -90.61 (36.15); 
Larceny: -121.8 (101.4); 
Motor vehicle: 57.51 (46.98). 

Variable: Byrne; 
Officers: 0.0003 (0.06); 
Index: 11.72 (16.03); 
Murder: -.099 (.069); 
Rape: -0.388 (.280); 
Robbery: .270 (1.61); 
Assault: 7.01 (1.33); 
Burglary: -0.172 (3.87); 
Larceny: 10.16 (10.14); 
Motor vehicle: -5.25 (3.39). 

Variable: LLEBG; 
Officers: 0.168 (0.049); 
Index: -73.13 (10.60); 
Murder: -0.365 (.051); 
Rape: -0.784 (.132); 
Robbery: -13.07 (1.68); 
Assault: -16.00 (2.09); 
Burglary: -16.06 (2.31); 
Larceny: -15.2 (3.87); 
Motor vehicle: -11.59 (2.20). 

Variable: Federal non-COPS; 
Officers: 0.053 (0.045); 
Index: 22.96 (9.14); 
Murder: .027 (.038); 
Rape: .082 (.090); 
Robbery: 2.25 (1.07); 
Assault: 1.57 (1.34); 
Burglary: 1.34 (1.60); 
Larceny: 10.40 (5.07); 
Motor vehicle: 7.28 (1.90). 

Source: GAO analysis of Uniform Crime Report, Office of Justice 
Programs financial, Bureau of Economic Analysis, National Center for 
Health Statistics, and U.S. Census Bureau data. 

Notes: All regressions include agency and year fixed effects, state-by- 
year fixed effects, and growth rate cells. Additionally, regressions 
include log per capita income, employment over population ratio; 
percentage of county population aged 15 to 24; and percentage nonwhite. 
Officers are per 10,000 persons; all grant expenditures are per capita 
amounts. Observations are weighted by the population of the agency to 
obtain the national effect. Bold-face parameter estimates and standard 
errors indicate that a parameter estimate is statistically significant 
at the 5 percent level using robust standard errors. 

[End of table] 

The Effects of Different Population Sizes across Agencies: 

Given the variation in per capita COPS expenditures that occurred 
across agencies serving populations of different sizes, we explored 
whether COPS hiring grants had different effects on crime rates based 
on the size of the population served by agencies. We stratified 
agencies into four population size groups: those serving populations of 
between 10,000 and 25,000 persons; between 25,000 and 50,000 persons; 
between 50,000 and 150,000 persons; and more than 150,000 persons. We 
found that the effect of the hiring grant was consistent across all 
population categories less than 150,000, but insignificant in the 
population category of more than 150,000 persons. We found that 
negative effect of COPS hiring grants on index crime rates ran across 
all population size categories. However, the effects of hiring grants 
were largest in the 50,000 to 150,000 population category, and 
insignificant in the 25,000 to 50,000 population category (table 18). 

Table 18: Parameter Estimates from Regressions of Index Crime Rates and 
Officers Per Capita on COPS Hiring Grant Expenditures and Other Outside 
Funds, by Population Size Category (Standard Errors in Parentheses): 

Grant: Hiring; 
Population: 10,000 to fewer than 25,000: Officers: 1: .180 (.019); 
Population: 10,000 to fewer than 25,000: Index: 2: -10.11 (4.74); 
Population: 25,000 to fewer than 50,000: Officers: 3: .288 (.032); 
Population: 25,000 to fewer than 50,000: Index: 4: -8.79 (10.00); 
Population: 50,000 to fewer than 150,000: Officers: 5: .245 (.034); 
Population: 50,000 to fewer than 150,000: Index: 6: -39.1 (10.1); 
Population: More than 150,000: Officers: 7: .095 (.074); 
Population: More than 150,000: Index: 8: -31.5 (15.2). 

Grant: MORE; 
Population: 10,000 to fewer than 25,000: Officers: 1: .043 (.021); 
Population: 10,000 to fewer than 25,000: Index: 2: 2.86 (2.32); 
Population: 25,000 to fewer than 50,000: Officers: 3: .027 (.027); 
Population: 25,000 to fewer than 50,000: Index: 4: -14.67 (13.25); 
Population: 50,000 to fewer than 150,000: Officers: 5: .102 (.069); 
Population: 50,000 to fewer than 150,000: Index: 6: 3.79 (14.16); 
Population: More than 150,000: Officers: 7: .053 (.148); 
Population: More than 150,000: Index: 8: -35.2 (24.0). 

Grant: Innovative; 
Population: 10,000 to fewer than 25,000: Officers: 1: - .007 (.043); 
Population: 10,000 to fewer than 25,000: Index: 2: - 19.94 (20.67); 
Population: 25,000 to fewer than 50,000: Officers: 3: - .058 (.137); 
Population: 25,000 to fewer than 50,000: Index: 4: -28.8 (36.9); 
Population: 50,000 to fewer than 150,000: Officers: 5: .036 (.052); 
Population: 50,000 to fewer than 150,000: Index: 6: -87.7 (23.3); 
Population: More than 150,000: Officers: 7: -.043 (.130); 
Population: More than 150,000: Index: 8: -108 (48.32). 

Grant: Miscellaneous; 
Population: 10,000 to fewer than 25,000: Officers: 1: - .282 (.360); 
Population: 10,000 to fewer than 25,000: Index: 2: -379 (179); 
Population: 25,000 to fewer than 50,000: Officers: 3: -.338 (.692); 
Population: 25,000 to fewer than 50,000: Index: 4: -473 (234); 
Population: 50,000 to fewer than 150,000: Officers: 5: -.996 (.574); 
Population: 50,000 to fewer than 150,000: Index: 6: -145 (231); 
Population: More than 150,000: Officers: 7: 4.79 (1.97); 
Population: More than 150,000: Index: 8: -161 (368). 

Grant: Byrne; 
Population: 10,000 to fewer than 25,000: Officers: 1: -.010 (.074); 
Population: 10,000 to fewer than 25,000: Index: 2: -7.87 (12.74); 
Population: 25,000 to fewer than 50,000: Officers: 3: .440 (.516); 
Population: 25,000 to fewer than 50,000: Index: 4: -4.37 (55.52); 
Population: 50,000 to fewer than 150,000: Officers: 5: -.084 (.084); 
Population: 50,000 to fewer than 150,000: Index: 6: 24.88 (29.91); 
Population: More than 150,000: Officers: 7: .173 (.153); 
Population: More than 150,000: Index: 8: 40.2 (26.5). 

Grant: LLEBG; 
Population: 10,000 to fewer than 25,000: Officers: 1: .010 (.013); 
Population: 10,000 to fewer than 25,000: Index: 2: -23.08 (6.87); 
Population: 25,000 to fewer than 50,000: Officers: 3: .032 (.046); 
Population: 25,000 to fewer than 50,000: Index: 4: -141.3 (18.28); 
Population: 50,000 to fewer than 150,000: Officers: 5: -.012 (.069); 
Population: 50,000 to fewer than 150,000: Index: 6: -109 (15.6); 
Population: More than 150,000: Officers: 7: .492 (.176); 
Population: More than 150,000: Index: 8: -90.4 (22.6). 

Grant: Federal non-COPS; 
Population: 10,000 to fewer than 25,000: Officers: 1: .031 (.016); 
Population: 10,000 to fewer than 25,000: Index: 2: - 1.177 (4.74); 
Population: 25,000 to fewer than 50,000: Officers: 3: - .087 (.113); 
Population: 25,000 to fewer than 50,000: Index: 4: 20.06 (16.79); 
Population: 50,000 to fewer than 150,000: Officers: 5: -.016 (.096); 
Population: 50,000 to fewer than 150,000: Index: 6: 36.06 (13.03); 
Population: More than 150,000: Officers: 7: .045 (.127); 
Population: More than 150,000: Index: 8: 11.4 (32.6). 

Source: GAO analysis of Uniform Crime Report, Office of Justice 
Programs financial, Bureau of Economic Analysis, National Center for 
Health Statistics, and U.S. Census Bureau data. 

Notes: All regressions include agency and year fixed effects, state-by- 
year fixed effects, and growth rate cells. Additionally, regressions 
include log per capita income, employment over population ratio; 
percentage of county population aged 15 to 24; and percentage nonwhite. 
Officers are per 10,000 persons; all grant expenditures are per capita 
amounts. Observations are weighted by the population of the agency to 
obtain the national effect. Bold-face parameter estimates and standard 
errors indicate that a parameter estimate is statistically significant 
at the 5 percent level using robust standard errors. 

[End of table] 

Calculations of the Elasticity of Crime with Respect to Officers: 

As COPS hiring grants were to be used only to hire officers, we 
explored their use as an instrument to predict the effect of officers 
on crime. Assuming that COPS grants were used in that way, our 
preferred specification from our regressions crime on COPS hiring 
grants and other outside funds would produce estimates of the 
elasticity of crime with respect to officers that are shown in table 
19. 

To assess the degree to which the elasticities that we calculated were 
in line with those appearing in the economics of crime literature, we 
compared our elasticities with those estimated by Evans and Owens 
(2004), Levitt (1997), Levitt (2002), and Klick and Tabarrok (2005). 
Our estimates are in line with those in the literature (table 19). 

Table 19: Elasticities of the Impact of Police Officers on the Crime 
Rate: 

Elasticity: Estimate: Average crime rate 1993; 
Murder: 1: 11; 
Rape: 2: 40; 
Robbery: 3: 311; 
Assault: 4: 484; 
Burglary: 5: 1183; 
Larceny: 6: 3173; 
Motor vehicle: 7: 703. 

Elasticity: Estimate: Levitt 1997[A]; 
Murder: 1: -1.98; 
Rape: 2: -0.27; 
Robbery: 3: -0.79; 
Assault: 4: -1.09; 
Burglary: 5: -0.05; 
Larceny: 6: - 0.43; 
Motor vehicle: 7: -0.50. 

Elasticity: Estimate: Levitt 2002; 
Murder: 1: -0.91; 
Rape: 2: -0.03; 
Robbery: 3: -0.45; 
Assault: 4: 0.40; 
Burglary: 5: -0.20; 
Larceny: 6: - 0.14; 
Motor vehicle: 7: -1.70. 

Elasticity: Estimate: Evans and Owens 2005[B]; 
Murder: 1: -0.84; 
Rape: 2: -0.42; 
Robbery: 3: -1.34; 
Assault: 4: -0.96; 
Burglary: 5: -0.59; 
Larceny: 6: -0.08; 
Motor vehicle: 7: -0.85. 

Elasticity: Estimate: GAO (this report); 
Murder: 1: -1.04; 
Rape: 2: 0.28; 
Robbery: 3: --1.36; 
Assault: 4: -0.49; 
Burglary: 5: -0.58; 
Larceny: 6: -0.11; 
Motor vehicle: 7: -1.12. 

Elasticity: Estimate: Klick and Tabarrok 2005; 
Motor vehicle: 7: -0.30. 

Elasticity: GAO aggregate elasticity, by crime category: Index: -0.42. 

Elasticity: GAO aggregate elasticity, by crime category: Violent: -
0.78. 

Elasticity: GAO aggregate elasticity, by crime category: Property: -
0.36. 

Source: GAO analysis of Uniform Crime Report, Office of Justice 
Programs financial, Bureau of Economic Analysis, National Center for 
Health Statistics, and U.S. Census Bureau data. 

Notes: Estimates are derived from the parameter estimates in tables 16 
and 17. The average police count per 10,000 in 1993 is 19.38. Crime is 
per 100,000. 

[A] Levitt's (1997) elasticities are taken directly from his regression 
specification. Levitt calculates elasticities for a range of alternate 
specifications that are not reported here. 

[B] Evans and Owens' (2005) elasticities were evaluated at the same 
mean level of crime as were GAO's. 

[End of table] 

In addition, Evans and Owens report aggregate point elasticities for 
violent and property crimes of -0.99 and -0.26, respectively, and 
Levitt reports aggregate point elasticities for violent and property 
crimes of -0.44 and -0.50, respectively. Our aggregate elasticities for 
violent and property crimes fall between these two sets of estimated 
point elasticities. 

Equations (1) and (2) depend on certain assumptions about the way that 
COPS hiring grant expenditures and other outside funds affect officers 
and crime. For example, the specifications reported previously only 
allow the effect of the federal funds to affect crime 
contemporaneously. However, it may take a certain amount of time for 
the expenditures to have an effect on either officers or crime, as it 
may take a certain amount of time for new officers to become fully 
acclimated to a department, or to become proficient in their duties. To 
explore the robustness of our findings under varying assumptions about 
how COPS hiring grant expenditures could affect officers and crime, we 
recalculated our elasticities after estimating our regressions under 
the specifications outlined previously in table 20. We report the 
elasticities that we calculated from these various regression models 
(in the last three rows of the table). The elasticities for index 
crimes range from -0.41 to -0.95; those for violent crimes range from - 
0.76 to -1.8; and those for property crimes range from -0.35 to -0.8. 
The elasticities that we report in our results all fall at the lower 
end of the range of elasticities that we estimated. 

Table 20: Elasticity of Violent and Property Crime with Respect to 
Officers under Alternate Specifications of the Relationship between 
COPS Expenditures and Crime: 

Variables in specification: MORE, Innovative, and Miscellaneous COPS 
expenditures; 
1: Included; 
2: Included; 
3: Not included; 
4: Not included; 
5: Included. 

Variables in specification: LLEBG, Byrne discretionary, and other 
federal non-COPS expenditures; 
1: Included; 
2: Included; 
3: Not included; 
4: Not included; 
5: Included. 

Variables in specification: "Got grant" specification; : Included1: Not 
included; 
2: Not included; 
3: Not included; 
4: Not included; 
5: Included. 

Variables in specification: Lagged values of MORE, Innovative, and 
Miscellaneous COPS expenditures; 
1: Not included; 
2: Not included; 
3: Included; 
4: Included; 
5: Not included. 

Variables in specification: Lagged values of LLEBG, Byrne 
discretionary, and other federal non-COPS expenditures; 
1: Not included; 
2: Not included; 
3: Included; 
4: Included; 
5: Not included. 

Variables in specification: Demographic and economic controls; 
1: Included; 
2: Included; 
3: Included; 
4: Included; 
5: Included. 

Variables in specification: Growth rate cells; 
1: Not included; 
2: Included; 
3: Included; 
4: Included; 
5: Included. 

Variables in specification: Lagged value of Hiring grant expenditures; 
1: Not included; 
2: Not included; 
3: Included; 
4: Not included; 
5: Not included. 

Variables in specification: Quadratic term for Hiring grant 
expenditures; 
1: Not included; 
2: Included; 
3: Not included; 
4: Not included; 
5: Not included. 

Variables in specification: State by year fixed effects; 
1: Not included; 
2: Included; 
3: Included; 
4: Included; 
5: Included. 

Variables in specification: Elasticity; 
1: Not included; 
2: Not included; 
3: Not included; 
4: Not included; 
5: Not included. 

Elasticity: Violent crimes; 
1: -1.17; 
2: -.76; 
3: -1.8; 
4: -.81; 
5: -.76. 

Elasticity: Property crimes; 
1: -.51; 
2: -.35; 
3: -.80; 
4: -.37; 
5: -.35. 

Elasticity: Index crimes; 
1: -.61; 
2: -.41; 
3: -.95; 
4: -.44; 
5: -.41. 

Source: GAO analysis of Uniform Crime Report, Office of Justice 
Programs financial, Bureau of Economic Analysis, National Center for 
Health Statistics, and U.S. Census Bureau data. 

Note: An X indicates that a variable was included in a specification. 

[End of table] 

Estimating the Net Number of Officers Paid for by COPS Expenditures: 

We used our regression results to derive estimates of the net number of 
officers paid for by COPS grant expenditures separately for each year. 
By net number of officers, we refer to the increase in the number of 
officers on the street attributable to COPS net of attrition. For 
example, if at the beginning of a year, there were 100 officers on the 
street, while during a year COPS grants were responsible for hiring 10 
officers and 5 officers left the force, the net number of officers due 
to COPS would be 5. 

To obtain the total number of officer-years due to COPS expenditures, 
we summed the number of officers across years. Table 21 presents the 
estimated number of officers that COPS expenditures funds paid for in 
each year. In column 1 we present the actual number of per capita 
officers used in our regressions that generated the results in table 
21. Not shown in the table, but used in the calculation of the number 
of officers due to COPS expenditures are the per capita amounts of COPS 
expenditures, including COPS hiring, MORE, innovative, and 
miscellaneous grant expenditures. Column 2 presents our estimate of 
what the per capita number of officers would have been absent the COPS 
expenditures. Columns 3 and 4 show the number of officers per capita 
and the percentage of officers per capita explained by COPS 
expenditures. Column 5 presents our estimates of the number of officers 
in each year in the sample of agencies that we analyzed that were 
explained by COPS expenditures. To arrive at the number of officers in 
the United States due to COPS expenditures, we weighted the numbers in 
column 5 up to the U.S. population total (in column 6). On the basis of 
this analysis, in year 2000, for example, when they peaked, the COPS 
expenditures per capita were responsible for about 2.9 percent of the 
net increase in officers in the United States, or more than 17,000 
officers. Across all years, we estimate that COPS was responsible for 
an increase of about 88,000 officer-years during the years from 1994 
through 2001. 

Table 21: Estimated Per Capita Effect of COPS Expenditures on the 
Number of Officers: 

Year: 1991; 
Police per 10,000 population: Number: 19.32; 
Police per 10,000 population: Minus COPS funds: 19.32; 
Police explained by COPS funds: Per capita: 0; 
Police explained by COPS funds: Percentage difference: 0; 
Number of police in: Sample: 0; 
Number of police in: United States: 0. 

Year: 1992; 
Police per 10,000 population: Number: 19.32; 
Police per 10,000 population: Minus COPS funds: 19.32; 
Police explained by COPS funds: Per capita: 0; 
Police explained by COPS funds: Percentage difference: 0; 
Number of police in: Sample: 0; 
Number of police in: United States: 0. 

Year: 1993; 
Police per 10,000 population: Number: 19.38; 
Police per 10,000 population: Minus COPS funds: 19.38; 
Police explained by COPS funds: Per capita: 0; 
Police explained by COPS funds: Percentage difference: 0; 
Number of police in: Sample: 0; 
Number of police in: United States: 0. 

Year: 1994; 
Police per 10,000 population: Number: 19.65; 
Police per 10,000 population: Minus COPS funds: 19.65; 
Police explained by COPS funds: Per capita: 0.003; 
Police explained by COPS funds: Percentage difference: 0.02; 
Number of police in: Sample: 64; 
Number of police in: United States: 84. 

Year: 1995; 
Police per 10,000 population: Number: 20.55; 
Police per 10,000 population: Minus COPS funds: 20.47; 
Police explained by COPS funds: Per capita: 0.07; 
Police explained by COPS funds: Percentage difference: 0.35; 
Number of police in: Sample: 1,407; 
Number of police in: United States: 1,916. 

Year: 1996; 
Police per 10,000 population: Number: 20.71; 
Police per 10,000 population: Minus COPS funds: 20.39; 
Police explained by COPS funds: Per capita: 0.32; 
Police explained by COPS funds: Percentage difference: 1.55; 
Number of police in: Sample: 6,210; 
Number of police in: United States: 8,639. 

Year: 1997; 
Police per 10,000 population: Number: 21.05; 
Police per 10,000 population: Minus COPS funds: 20.54; 
Police explained by COPS funds: Per capita: 0.51; 
Police explained by COPS funds: Percentage difference: 2.42; 
Number of police in: Sample: 10,085; 
Number of police in: United States: 13,897. 

Year: 1998; 
Police per 10,000 population: Number: 21.18; 
Police per 10,000 population: Minus COPS funds: 20.54; 
Police explained by COPS funds: Per capita: 0.64; 
Police explained by COPS funds: Percentage difference: 3.02; 
Number of police in: Sample: 12,900; 
Number of police in: United States: 17,630. 

Year: 1999; 
Police per 10,000 population: Number: 21.61; 
Police per 10,000 population: Minus COPS funds: 21.02; 
Police explained by COPS funds: Per capita: 0.59; 
Police explained by COPS funds: Percentage difference: 2.72; 
Number of police in: Sample: 12,153; 
Number of police in: United States: 16,415. 

Year: 2000; 
Police per 10,000 population: Number: 21.15; 
Police per 10,000 population: Minus COPS funds: 20.53; 
Police explained by COPS funds: Per capita: 0.62; 
Police explained by COPS funds: Percentage difference: 2.91; 
Number of police in: Sample: 13,335; 
Number of police in: United States: 17,387. 

Year: 2001; 
Police per 10,000 population: Number: 20.89; 
Police per 10,000 population: Minus COPS funds: 20.46; 
Police explained by COPS funds: Per capita: 0.43; 
Police explained by COPS funds: Percentage difference: 2.05; 
Number of police in: Sample: 9.535; 
Number of police in: United States: 12,226. 

Total; 
Number of police in: Sample: 65,688; 
Number of police in: United States: 88,195. 

Source: GAO analysis of Uniform Crime Report, Office of Justice 
Programs financial, Bureau of Economic Analysis, National Center for 
Health Statistics, and U.S. Census Bureau data. 

[End of table] 

Estimating the Number of Crimes Reduced by COPS Expenditures: 

On the basis of our analysis of the increase in officers attributable 
to COPS expenditures, we estimated the amount of crime that could be 
attributable to COPS, given the estimated effect of COPS expenditures 
on officers. On the basis of our analysis of the number of officers due 
to COPS expenditures and our estimated elasticities of crime with 
respect to officers, we can estimate the number of crimes associated 
with COPS expenditures through the increase in officers attributable to 
these expenditures. In table 22, we show our calculations of the 
decline in crime attributable to COPS for each year, compared with the 
1993 levels of crime, the pre-COPS baseline year. 

Columns 1 through 3 of table 22 give the average crime rates per 
100,000 persons in the agencies in our sample. Columns 4 through 6 give 
the percentage change from 1993 in crime rates for each category of 
crime. Columns 7 though 9 report data on officers. Column 7 reports the 
growth in the officer rate from 1993 due to the change in COPS 
expenditures. Column 8 presents the growth (from column 7) as a 
percentage change from 1993. Columns 9 through 11 provide estimates of 
the percentage change in crime rates from 1993 using the elasticities 
shown in table 22. Finally, columns 12 through 14 provide the estimated 
amount of change in crime rates from 1993 that arise from COPS 
expenditures. 

Table 22: Estimated Per Capita Growth of COPS Expenditures on Police 
Officers and Crime from 1993: 

Year: 1991; 
Average number of crimes[A]: Violent: 1: 868; 
Average number of crimes[A]: Property: 2: 5519; 
Average number of crimes[A]: Total: 3: 6387. 

Year: 1992; 
Average number of crimes[A]: Violent: 1: 854; 
Average number of crimes[A]: Property: 2: 5235; 
Average number of crimes[A]: Total: 3: 6090. 

Year: 1993; 
Average number of crimes[A]: Violent: 1: 846; 
Average number of crimes[A]: Property: 2: 5058; 
Average number of crimes[A]: Total: 3: 5904; 
Number of officers[C]: Predicted[D]: 7: 19.38. 

Year: 1994; 
Average number of crimes[A]: Violent: 1: 816; 
Average number of crimes[A]: Property: 2: 4973; 
Average number of crimes[A]: Total: 3: 5789; 
Percentage change in crime[B]: Violent: 4: -3.55%; 
Percentage change in crime[B]: Property: 5: -1.68%; 
Percentage change in crime[B]: Total: 6: -1.95%; 
Number of officers[C]: Predicted[D]: 7: 19.38; 
Number of officers[C]: Percentage change: 8: .02; 
Expected percentage change in crime due to COPS funds: Violent: -.01; 
Expected percentage change in crime due to COPS funds: Property: -.01; 
Expected percentage change in crime due to COPS funds: Total: 11: -.01; 
Change in crime per 100,000 persons: Violent: 12: -.09; 
Change in crime per 100,000 persons: Property: 13: - .25; 
Change in crime per 100,000 persons: Total: 14: -.34. 

Year: 1995; 
Average number of crimes[A]: Violent: 1: 784; 
Average number of crimes[A]: Property: 2: 4919; 
Average number of crimes[A]: Total: 3: 5703; 
Percentage change in crime[B]: Violent: 4: -7.33%; 
Percentage change in crime[B]: Property: 5: -2.75%; 
Percentage change in crime[B]: Total: 6: -3.42%; 
Number of officers[C]: Predicted[D]: 7: 19.45; 
Number of officers[C]: Percentage change: 8: .37; 
Expected percentage change in crime due to COPS funds: Violent: -.29; 
Expected percentage change in crime due to COPS funds: Property: -.13; 
Expected percentage change in crime due to COPS funds: Total: 11: -.16; 
Change in crime per 100,000 persons: Violent: 12: -2.08; 
Change in crime per 100,000 persons: Property: 13: 
-5.90; 
Change in crime per 100,000 persons: Total: 14: -8.01. 

Year: 1996; 
Average number of crimes[A]: Violent: 1: 723; 
Average number of crimes[A]: Property: 2: 4718; 
Average number of crimes[A]: Total: 3: 5440; 
Percentage change in crime[B]: Violent: 4: -14.54%; 
Percentage change in crime[B]: Property: 5: -6.72%; 
Percentage change in crime[B]: Total: 6: -7.86%; 
Number of officers[C]: Predicted[D]: 7: 19.70; 
Number of officers[C]: Percentage change: 8: 1.65; 
Expected percentage change in crime due to COPS funds: Violent: -1.29; 
Expected percentage change in crime due to COPS funds: Property: -.60; 
Expected percentage change in crime due to COPS funds: Total: 11: -.70; 
Change in crime per 100,000 persons: Violent: 12: -9.56; 
Change in crime per 100,000 persons: Property: 13: 
-27.11; 
Change in crime per 100,000 persons: Total: 14: -36.75. 

Year: 1997; 
Average number of crimes[A]: Violent: 1: 697; 
Average number of crimes[A]: Property: 2: 4593; 
Average number of crimes[A]: Total: 3: 5290; 
Percentage change in crime[B]: Violent: 4: -17.61%; 
Percentage change in crime[B]: Property: 5: -9.19%; 
Percentage change in crime[B]: Total: 6: -10.40%; 
Number of officers[C]: Predicted[D]: 7: 19.89; 
Number of officers[C]: Percentage change: 8: 2.63; 
Expected percentage change in crime due to COPS funds: Violent: -2.05; 
Expected percentage change in crime due to COPS funds: Property: -.95; 
Expected percentage change in crime due to COPS funds: Total: 11: -
1.11; 
Change in crime per 100,000 persons: Violent: 12: -15.48; 
Change in crime per 100,000 persons: Property: 13: 
-43.86; 
Change in crime per 100,000 persons: Total: 14: -59.47. 

Year: 1998; 
Average number of crimes[A]: Violent: 1: 649; 
Average number of crimes[A]: Property: 2: 4313; 
Average number of crimes[A]: Total: 3: 4962; 
Percentage change in crime[B]: Violent: 4: -23.29%; 
Percentage change in crime[B]: Property: 5: -14.73%; 
Percentage change in crime[B]: Total: 6: -15.96%; 
Number of officers[C]: Predicted[D]: 7: 20.02; 
Number of officers[C]: Percentage change: 8: 3.30; 
Expected percentage change in crime due to COPS funds: Violent: -2.57; 
Expected percentage change in crime due to COPS funds: Property: -1.19; 
Expected percentage change in crime due to COPS funds: Total: 11: -
1.39; 
Change in crime per 100,000 persons: Violent: 12: -19.67; 
Change in crime per 100,000 persons: Property: 13: 
-55.74; 
Change in crime per 100,000 persons: Total: 14: -75.58. 

Year: 1999; 
Average number of crimes[A]: Violent: 1: 588; 
Average number of crimes[A]: Property: 2: 3947; 
Average number of crimes[A]: Total: 3: 4535; 
Percentage change in crime[B]: Violent: 4: -30.50%; 
Percentage change in crime[B]: Property: 5: -21.97%; 
Percentage change in crime[B]: Total: 6: -23.19%; 
Number of officers[C]: Predicted[D]: 7: 19.97; 
Number of officers[C]: Percentage change: 8: 3.04; 
Expected percentage change in crime due to COPS funds: Violent: -2.36; 
Expected percentage change in crime due to COPS funds: Property: -1.10; 
Expected percentage change in crime due to COPS funds: Total: 11: -
1.28; 
Change in crime per 100,000 persons: Violent: 12: -19.26; 
Change in crime per 100,000 persons: Property: 13: 
-54.57; 
Change in crime per 100,000 persons: Total: 14: -74.00. 

Year: 2000; 
Average number of crimes[A]: Violent: 1: 568; 
Average number of crimes[A]: Property: 2: 3799; 
Average number of crimes[A]: Total: 3: 4367; 
Percentage change in crime[B]: Violent: 4: -32.86%; 
Percentage change in crime[B]: Property: 5: -24.91%; 
Percentage change in crime[B]: Total: 6: -26.03%; 
Number of officers[C]: Predicted[D]: 7: 20.00; 
Number of officers[C]: Percentage change: 8: 3.18; 
Expected percentage change in crime due to COPS funds: Violent: -2.48; 
Expected percentage change in crime due to COPS funds: Property: -1.15; 
Expected percentage change in crime due to COPS funds: Total: 11: -
1.34; 
Change in crime per 100,000 persons: Violent: 12: -20.19; 
Change in crime per 100,000 persons: Property: 13: 
-57.22; 
Change in crime per 100,000 persons: Total: 14: -77.59. 

Year: 2001; 
Average number of crimes[A]: Violent: 1: 561; 
Average number of crimes[A]: Property: 2: 3845; 
Average number of crimes[A]: Total: 3: 4406; 
Percentage change in crime[B]: Violent: 4: -33.69%; 
Percentage change in crime[B]: Property: 5: -23.98%; 
Percentage change in crime[B]: Total: 6: -25.37%; 
Number of officers[C]: Predicted[D]: 7: 19.81; 
Number of officers[C]: Percentage change: 8: 2.21; 
Expected percentage change in crime due to COPS funds: Violent: -1.72; 
Expected percentage change in crime due to COPS funds: Property: -.80; 
Expected percentage change in crime due to COPS funds: Total: 11: -.93; 
Change in crime per 100,000 persons: Violent: 12: -14.08; 
Change in crime per 100,000 persons: Property: 13: 
-39.90; 
Change in crime per 100,000 persons: Total: 14: -54.10. 

Source: GAO analysis of Uniform Crime Report, Office of Justice 
Programs financial, Bureau of Economic Analysis, National Center for 
Health Statistics, and U.S. Census Bureau data. 

[A] Average number of crimes per 100,000 for the agency; means are 
weighted by population. 

[B] Percentage change in crime from 1993. 

[C] Column 7 is the predicted level in the number of officers from only 
a change in COPS funds from 1993; column 8 is the percentage change 
from 1993. 

[D] Predicted number of officers due to growth in COPS funds, from base 
1993 level of officers of 19.38 per 10,000 persons. 

[End of table] 

[End of section] 

Appendix VII: Methods Used to Assess Policing Practices: 

Our objective in assessing policing practices was to determine the 
extent to which COPS grant expenditures were associated with police 
departments' adoption of policing activities or practices that may have 
contributed to reduction in crime during the 1990s. To determine 
whether COPS grants were associated with changes in policing practices, 
we analyzed data from two national surveys of local law enforcement 
agencies on the policing practices that they reportedly implemented in 
various years from 1993 to 2000. In addition, we analyzed systematic 
reviews of research on the effectiveness of policing practices in 
preventing crime. 

Methods to Address Changes in Policing Practices: 

To address whether COPS grants were associated with changes in policing 
practices that may be associated with preventing crime, we analyzed 
data from the two administrations of the Policing Strategies Survey (in 
1993 and 1997) and two of the four administrations of the National 
Evaluation of COPS Program Survey (in 1996 and 2000). Because the 
purposes of the surveys differed, each used different samples of 
agencies (with some agencies appearing in both surveys). The Policing 
Strategies Survey drew a sample representative of all municipal police, 
county police, and county sheriff agencies in the United States with 
patrol functions and with more than five sworn officers in 1992, and 
the National Evaluation of COPS Program Survey drew a sample that was 
representative of all law enforcement agencies believed to be in 
existence in the United States that had received, or were eligible to 
receive a COPS grant. Each survey provided respondents in police 
agencies with lists of items that identified specific types of policing 
practices, and respondents were asked whether they had implemented each 
of the practices on the list. Survey responses were obtained from 
knowledgeable officials within each agency, such as the police chief or 
the chief's designee. The number of items related to policing practices 
differed between the two surveys. 

We classified items in the surveys into four categories of policing 
practices corresponding to general approaches to policing identified in 
the criminal justice literature: problem-solving practices, place- 
oriented practices, community collaboration activities, and crime 
analysis activities. Problem-solving practices call for police to focus 
on specific problems and tailor their strategies to the identified 
problems. Place-oriented practices include attempts to identify the 
locations where crime occurs repeatedly and to implement procedures to 
disrupt these recurrences of crime. Community collaboration practices 
include improving citizen feedback about crime problems and the 
effectiveness of policing efforts to address these problems. Crime 
analysis includes the use of tools such as geographic information 
systems to identify crime patterns. These tools may help an agency 
support other practices for preventing crime, such as problem-solving 
and place-oriented practices. 

Three social science analysts with research experience in criminal 
justice independently reviewed the list of policing practice items in 
each survey and placed each item in one of the four categories or 
determined that the item did not fit in any of the four categories. 
Following initial classification, the analysts met to discuss and 
address any inconsistencies in their classification of items. 

After classifying practices, we created an index to represent the total 
number of problem-solving, place-oriented, community collaboration, and 
crime analysis practices, and we gave each agency that responded to 
both waves of a survey a score equal to the number of these practices 
that the agency reportedly implemented in the survey years. We also 
identified, for each agency, the number of practices in each of the 
four categories. 

We then analyzed the levels and changes in reported practices within 
each survey. Our analysis focused on the differences in levels of 
practices reported by agencies that received COPS grants and those that 
did not receive them. To assess the influence of COPS grant 
expenditures on reported practices, we analyzed changes in reported 
practices as a function of the per capita amounts of COPS dollars spent 
by agencies. For agencies that did not receive COPS grants, we set 
their per capita COPS expenditure amounts to zero. 

A limitation of our analysis is that the surveys did not ask explicitly 
about the extent to which each listed practice was implemented by law 
enforcement agencies. Thus agencies that report that they had 
implemented a specific practice may vary considerably, from sporadic 
use of the practice among a subset of officers in the agency to more 
frequent use of the practice throughout the agency. 

Characteristics and Analysis of the Policing Strategies Survey: 

The Policing Strategies Survey was administered in 1993 and again in 
1997. The Police Foundation administered the 1993 wave of the survey, 
and ORC Macro International, Inc. and the Police Executive Research 
Forum administered the 1997 wave of the survey.[Footnote 78] The 
sampling frame for both the 1993 and 1997 waves consisted of 11,824 
local police and sheriffs' departments listed in the Law Enforcement 
Sector portion of the 1992 Justice Agency list developed by the U.S. 
Bureau of the Census. In constructing the sampling frame, state police 
departments, special police agencies, agencies that did not perform 
patrol functions, and agencies with fewer than five sworn personnel 
were excluded from the larger list of all law enforcement agencies. A 
total of 2,337 police and sheriffs' departments were selected to be in 
the main sample for the 1993 survey, and surveys were mailed to 2,314 
of them after 23 agencies were found to be out of scope before the 
surveys were mailed.[Footnote 79] Follow-up mailings and facsimile 
reminders were sent to nonrespondents. The overall response rate for 
the 1993 survey was 71.3 percent. All of the agencies in the first 
sample were then selected for participation in the 1997 survey. The 
survey employed a multiphased data collection approach, using postal 
mail for the first phase, followed by facsimile reminders, a second 
mailing, and computer-assisted telephone interviewing for 
nonrespondents. The response rate for the 1997 survey was 74.7 percent. 
A total of 1,269 agencies were present in both the 1993 and 1997 
surveys. The sample was a stratified random sample with probability of 
inclusion varying by the number of sworn personnel (5-9; 10-49; 50-99; 
and 100 or more sworn personnel).[Footnote 80] 

We identified agencies in the Policing Strategies Survey that responded 
to both waves of the survey and had complete data on each of the 
policing practices items, and of these, we were able to link the data 
from 1,188 agencies to our larger database on crime, officers, money, 
and economic conditions.[Footnote 81] For comparability with the 
analyses of the effects of funding on officers and crime, we limited 
our analysis to those agencies serving jurisdictions with populations 
of 10,000 or more persons. This resulted in usable data on 1,003 
agencies. 

We used the Policing Strategies Survey data to compare reported changes 
in the types and levels of policing practices that occurred during the 
COPS program with pre-COPS levels of practices. The analyses reported 
in this appendix are weighted to adjust for the sample design effects. 
The findings are generalizable to all municipal police agencies, county 
police agencies, and county sheriff agencies in the United States with 
patrol functions and serving jurisdictions with populations of 10,000 
or more persons. 

We used 38 items on policing practices from the Policing Strategies 
Survey. We combined 12 practices pertaining to increasing officer 
contact with citizens and improving citizen feedback into a community 
collaboration index. We used 6 items on the crime analysis units within 
police departments to create our index of crime analysis. We combined 8 
practices pertaining to increasing enforcement activity or place 
management in buildings, neighborhoods, or other specific places into 
an index of place-oriented practices. And we compiled the data on 12 
items that reflected organizational efforts to reduce or interrupt 
recurring mechanisms that may encourage crime into a problem-solving 
practices index. The classification of items from the Policing 
Strategies Survey into our four indexes of types of policing practices 
is shown in table 23. 

Table 23: Categories of Policing Practices and Specific Items within 
Each Category in the Policing Strategies Survey: 

Community collaboration: 

* Agency uses foot patrol as a specific assignment; 
* Agency uses foot patrol as a periodic expectation for officers 
assigned to cars; 
* Agency uses citizen surveys to determine community needs and 
priorities; 
* Agency uses citizen surveys to evaluate police service; 
* Patrol officers conduct surveys in area of assignment; 
* Patrol officers meet regularly with community groups; 
* Supervisors maintain regular contact with community leaders; 
* Agency has permanent, neighborhood-based offices or stations; 
* Agency has mobile, neighborhood-based offices or stations; 
* Patrol officers make door-to-door contacts in neighborhoods; 
* Patrol officers develop familiarity with community leaders in area of 
assignment; 
* Patrol officers assist in organizing community. 

Crime analysis: 

* Agency has a decentralized crime analysis unit/function; 
* Agency has a centralized crime analysis unit/function; 
* Supervisors manage crime analysis for geographic area of 
responsibility; 
* Geographically based crime analysis made available to officers at the 
beat level; 
* Patrol officers conduct crime analysis for area of assignment; 
* Agency has means of accessing other city or county databases to 
analyze community or neighborhood conditions. 

Place-oriented practices: 

* Agency designates some officers as "community" or "neighborhood" 
officers; 
* Agency uses building code enforcement as a means of helping remove 
crime; 
* Agency has landlord/manager training programs for order maintenance 
and drug reduction; 
* Command or decision-making responsibility tied to neighborhoods or 
beats; 
* Patrol officers enforce civil and code violations in area; 
* Fixed assignment of patrol officers to specific beats or areas; 
* Agency uses other regulatory codes to combat drugs and crime; 
* Agency has beat or patrol boundaries that coincide with neighborhood 
boundaries. 

Problem-solving practices. 

* Agency prepares agreements specifying work to be done on problems by 
citizens and police; 
* Specific training provided to officers for problem identification and 
resolution; 
* Training for citizens in problem identification or resolution; 
* Patrol officers teach residents how to address community problems; 
* Interagency involvement in problem identification and resolution; 
* Line supervisors elicit input from officers/deputies about solutions 
to community problems; 
* Multidisciplinary teams to deal with special problems such as child 
abuse and neglect; 
* Specialized problem-solving unit; 
* Patrol officers work with citizens to identify and resolve area 
problems; 
* Citizens work with police to identify and resolve community or 
neighborhood problems; 
* Organization has been redesigned to support problem solving efforts; 
* Patrol officers work with other city agencies to solve neighborhood 
problems. 

Source: Policing Strategies Survey, 1993 and 1997. 

Note: Each individual item is coded dichotomously (yes/no) to indicate 
whether an agency implemented the specific practice. 

[End of table] 

The Policing Strategies Survey provided us with an opportunity to 
assess changes in reported policing practices using a pre-COPS grant 
and within-COPS grant program framework. The 1993 administration of 
this survey occurred several months prior to the distribution of the 
first COPS grants, while the 1997 administration occurred after COPS 
grants had been made to about 75 percent of the agencies in the sample. 
To implement the pre-within examination of the effects of COPS grants 
on policing practices, we first compared the levels of practices in 
1993 and 1997 between the group of agencies that had received a COPS 
grant by 1997 and the group that had not received a COPS grant by 1997. 

Second, we estimated separate regressions of the effect of the receipt 
of a COPS grant and of the cumulative per capita amount of COPS 
expenditures on the levels of reported policing practices. To assess 
the extent to which COPS grant expenditures were associated with 
changes in reported policing practices, we estimated regressions of the 
changes in reported policing practices that occurred within agencies as 
a function of the cumulative per capita amount of COPS grant 
expenditures that they made during the years from 1994 through 1997. We 
used two-factor fixed-effects regression techniques, which allowed us 
to control for unobserved characteristics of agencies and underlying 
trends in the adoption of policing practices. We also controlled for 
economic conditions and population changes in the localities in which 
the agencies were located. In addition, we used weighted regressions to 
address nonresponse patterns and the probability with which the 
original sampling units were drawn. 

Our regression equations show that both the receipt of a COPS grant and 
the amount of per capita COPS expenditures by agencies were associated 
with increases in the levels of reported policing practices between 
1993 and 1997. Agencies that received at least one COPS grant had 
significantly larger changes in the overall number of practices than 
did agencies that did not receive a COPS grant during this period. 
Specifically, of the roughly 2.9 average increase in the number of 
practices reported by agencies over this period, the receipt of a COPS 
grant accounted for 1.8 of the increase in the reported increase in 
practices. Further, when we examined our results from separate 
regressions for the different categories of practices, we found that 
receipt of a COPS grant was associated with significant increases in 
reported levels of problem-solving and place-oriented practices, but 
was not related to changes in community collaboration or crime-analysis 
practices (table 24). 

Table 24: Parameter Estimates from Regressions of Changes in Mean 
Number of Policing Practices and Category of Practices between 1993 and 
1997 on whether or Not Agencies Received COPS grant between 1994 and 
1997 and on Per Capita COPS Expenditures between 1994 and 1997 
(Standard Errors in Parentheses): 

Independent variable in model: Regression 1: Received COPS grant; 
Changes in policing practices from 1993 to 1997: All 38 practices: 1.78 
(.732); 
Changes in policing practices from 1993 to 1997: Problem- solving: .76 
(.284); 
Changes in policing practices from 1993 to 1997: Place-oriented: .78 
(.245); 
Changes in policing practices from 1993 to 1997: Crime analysis: .01 
(.180); 
Changes in policing practices from 1993 to 1997: Community 
collaboration: .25 (.273). 

Independent variable in model: Regression 2: COPS expenditures per 
capita; 
Changes in policing practices from 1993 to 1997: All 38 practices: .226 
(.080); 
Changes in policing practices from 1993 to 1997: Problem-solving: .076 
(.034); 
Changes in policing practices from 1993 to 1997: Place-oriented: .086 
(.034); 
Changes in policing practices from 1993 to 1997: Crime analysis: .041 
(.017); 
Changes in policing practices from 1993 to 1997: Community 
collaboration: .023 (.026). 

Source: GAO analysis of Policing Strategies Survey, Office of Justice 
Programs financial, Bureau of Economic Analysis, Census, and Uniform 
Crime Report data: 

Notes: All regressions include agency and year fixed effects and 
changes in county level demographic variables (percentage of persons 
aged 15 to 24, percentage nonwhite, and percentage employed) between 
1993 and 1997. Observations are weighted to take into account response 
rates and the probability at which the original sampling units were 
drawn. Bold-face parameter estimates and standard errors indicate that 
a parameter estimate is statistically significant at the 5 percent 
level. 

[End of table] 

Our regression models further show that changes in practices were also 
associated with the cumulative amount of per capita spending on COPS 
grants. All other things being equal, a $1 increase in per capita 
spending was associated with an increase of 0.23 policing practices. As 
we found for the effects of the receipt of a grant on changes in police 
practices, these regressions also showed that the level of per capita 
spending on COPS grants was significantly associated with increases in 
problem-solving and place-oriented practices. However, per capita 
spending on COPS grants was also significantly associated with 
increases in crime analysis practices. 

Characteristics and Analysis of the National Evaluation of COPS Survey: 

The National Evaluation of COPS Survey was conducted by the National 
Opinion Research Center for the Urban Institute in its national 
evaluation of the implementation of the COPS program.[Footnote 82] The 
sampling frame for the survey consisted of 20,894 law enforcement 
agencies believed to be in existence between June 1993 and June 1997 
who had either received a COPS grant during 1995 or appeared to be 
potentially eligible for funding but remained unfunded through 1995. 
The list of COPS grantees was obtained from applicant records from the 
grants management database from the COPS Office, and included those 
agencies that had been funded from the following programs: FAST, AHEAD, 
Universal Hiring Program, and MORE. The list of potentially eligible 
grantees was derived from the FBI's UCR and National Crime Information 
Center data files. The sampling frame was stratified by COPS grantee 
status (Not Funded, FAST or AHEAD, Universal Hiring Program (UHP), 
MORE), and by population (jurisdictions with populations of fewer than 
50,000 persons and those with populations of 50,000 or more persons), 
and agencies in each stratum were sampled at a different rate in order 
to select a representative sample of law enforcement agencies.[Footnote 
83] A total of 2,098 agencies were selected to be in the 
sample.[Footnote 84] 

Telephone interviews with agency representatives were conducted in 1996 
(wave 1) and 2000 (wave 4).[Footnote 85] A total of 1,471 agencies 
responded to wave 1 of the survey in 1996, for a 77 percent response 
rate.[Footnote 86] In 2000, all wave 1 respondents were recontacted, 
and interviews were completed with 1,270, or 86 percent, of the target 
agencies. 

We were able to link the data from 1,067 of the agencies that responded 
to both of these waves of the survey to our larger database on crime, 
officers, money, and economic conditions.[Footnote 87] For 
comparability with the analyses of the effects of funding on officers 
and crime, we excluded from our analysis state police agencies, and 
other "special" police agencies, as well as law enforcement agencies 
serving jurisdictions with populations of fewer than 10,000 persons. 
This resulted in usable data on 724 agencies. 

We used the National Evaluation of COPS Survey to compare levels of 
practices in 1996 and 2000 between groups of agencies that received 
COPS grants and those agencies that were not funded by COPS over this 
period, and to assess changes in reported practices in relation to per 
capita COPS expenditures. The analyses reported in this appendix are 
weighted to adjust for nonresponse and the multiple counting of 
agencies that received more than one COPS grant. The findings are 
generalizable to all law enforcement agencies in the United States 
serving jurisdictions with populations of 10,000 or more persons. 

We used 19 items on policing practices from the National Evaluation of 
COPS Survey, and we classified these items into the same 4 categories 
of practices as we did with the Policing Strategies Survey data (table 
25). However, because of the shortage of items covering place-oriented 
practices, for analysis purposes we combined these 3 items with the 7 
problem-solving items into one index of problem solving and place 
oriented practices. 

Table 25: Categories of Policing Practices and Specific Items within 
Each Category in the National Evaluation of COPS Survey: 

Community collaboration: 

* Regular community meetings to discuss crime; 
* Surveys of citizens to determine general community needs and 
satisfaction with agency; 
* Clean-up/fix-up projects with community residents; 
* Considering neighborhood values in creating solutions or planning 
projects; 
* Varying styles of preventive patrol (e.g., bike patrol, walk-and-talk 
patrol); 
* Joint projects with local businesses to reduce disorder or petty 
crime; 

Crime analysis: 

* Analyzing crime patterns using computerized geographic information 
systems; 
* Officers analyze community residents' comments to identify recurring 
patterns of crime and disorder on their beats; 
* Officers analyze and use crime data to identify recurring patterns of 
crime and disorder on their beats. 

Place-oriented practices: 

* Joint projects with community residents to reduce disorder such as 
loitering or public drinking; 
* Beat or patrol boundaries that coincide with neighborhood/community 
boundaries; 
* Alcohol, housing, or other code enforcement to combat crime and 
disorder. 

Problem-solving practices; 
* Designating certain recurring patterns as "problems" or "projects" 
requiring nontraditional responses; 
* Analyzing problems with business or property owners, school 
principals, or property managers or occupants; 
* Analyzing problems with probation/parole officers or others who 
monitor offenders; 
* Using agency data to measure effects of responses to problems; 
* Using citizens' input to measure effects of responses to problems; 
* Document problems, projects, analyses, responses, failures, and 
successes in writing; 
* Making sure problems stay solved. 

Source: National Evaluation of COPS Survey, 1996 and 2000. 

Note: Each individual item is coded dichotomously (yes/no) to indicate 
whether an agency implemented the specific practice. 

[End of table] 

Unlike the Policing Strategies Survey, which provided a pre-COPS and a 
within-COPS measure of policing practices, both observations (in 1996 
and 2000) on policing practices in the National Evaluation of COPS 
Survey occurred while the COPS program was making grants. This 
complicates our analysis, as in 1996 there were agencies that had 
already received and spent COPS funds, and to the extent that COPS 
expenditures were associated with the adoption of policing practices, 
the level of such practices that they reported in 1996 would reflect 
their experiences with COPS grants. Some of these agencies continued to 
spend COPS funds throughout the years from 1996 through 2000. However, 
some of the agencies that spent COPS funds in 1996 ceased to spend them 
during the intervening years before 2000. A third group of agencies 
consists of those that had not received their first COPS grant in 1996 
but had received a grant before 2000. This third group is analogous to 
our group of agencies that received COPS grants in the Policing 
Strategies survey, with the exception that while members of this group 
received their first COPS grant after the first administration of the 
National Evaluation survey in 1996, their practices in 1996 could have 
been influenced by the COPS program indirectly. A final group of 
agencies is those that did not receive a COPS grant before the 1996 
administration of the survey or during the years from 1997 through 
2000. 

Because the effects of experience with COPS grants before and after 
1996 could differ, we chose to make two types of comparisons. First, we 
examined the mean changes in policing practices from 1996 to 2000 for 
each of the following groups of agencies: (1) agencies that made 
expenditures on COPS grants in 1994 through 1996, (2) agencies that 
made expenditures on a COPS grant in 1997 through 2000, (3) agencies 
that made no expenditures on a COPS grant after 1996, and (4) agencies 
that made no expenditures on a COPS grant in 1994 through 2000. These 
mean comparisons allowed us to see whether changes in practices were 
associated with receipt of a grant in either the early period of the 
program (through 1996) or when the program was more fully implemented 
(1997 through 2000). 

We then examined whether the level of COPS expenditures between the two 
administrations of the survey were associated with changes in practices 
between 1996 and 2000 by regressing the change in practices on the 
change in cumulative per capita COPS expenditures between the period 
preceding wave 1 of the survey (1994 through 1996) and the period 
following wave 1 of the survey (1997 through 2000). As with the 
Policing Strategies Survey, we used two-factor fixed-effects regression 
techniques, which allowed us to control for unobserved characteristics 
of agencies and underlying trends in the adoption of policing 
practices. We also controlled for economic conditions and population 
changes in the localities in which the agencies were located. In 
addition, we used weighted regression to address the complex design of 
the National Evaluation of COPS Survey. We estimated separate 
regressions of the effect of the receipt of a COPS grant and of the 
cumulative per capita amount of COPS expenditures on the levels of 
reported policing practices. 

There were no significant differences in the overall adoption of 
policing practices associated with changes in per capita spending on 
COPS grants (table 26). 

Table 26: Parameter Estimates from Regressions of Changes in Mean 
Number of Policing Practices and Category of Practices between 1996 and 
2000 on Whether or Not Agencies Received COPS grant Between 1997 and 
2000 and on Per Capita COPS Expenditures between 1994-1996 and 1997- 
2000 (Standard Errors in Parentheses): 

Independent variable in model; 
Changes in policing practices from 1996 to 2000: All 19 practices; 
Changes in policing practices from 1996 to 2000: Problem-solving and 
Place-oriented; 
Changes in policing practices from 1996 to 2000: Crime analysis; 
Changes in policing practices from 1996 to 2000: Community 
collaboration. 

Changes in COPS expenditures per capita between 1994-1996 and 1997- 
2000; 
Changes in policing practices from 1996 to 2000: .056 (.032); 
Changes in policing practices from 1996 to 2000: .030 (.021); 
Changes in policing practices from 1996 to 2000: .011 (.008); 
Changes in policing practices from 1996 to 2000: .016 (.008). 

Source: GAO analysis of National Evaluation of COPS Survey, Office of 
Justice Programs financial, Bureau of Economic Analysis, Census, and 
Uniform Crime Report data: 

Notes: All regressions include agency and year fixed effects and 
changes in county level demographic variables (percentage of persons 
aged 15 to 24, percentage nonwhite, and percentage employed) between 
1996 and 2000. Observations are weighted to take into account sample 
design effects. Bold-face parameter estimates and standard errors 
indicate that a parameter estimate is statistically significant at the 
5 percent level. 

[End of table] 

Methods to Review Policing Practices: 

To determine whether the certain types of policing practices may be 
effective in reducing crime, we analyzed systematic reviews of research 
studies on the effectiveness of policing practices. 

How We Selected Studies: 

We identified six studies that provided summaries of research on the 
effectiveness of policing practices on reducing crime. We chose to 
review studies that reviewed research, rather than reviewing all of the 
original studies themselves, because of the volume of studies that have 
been conducted on the effectiveness of policing practices. We reviewed 
the following studies: 

* Braga, Anthony. "Effects of Hot Spots Policing on Crime," Annals, 
AAPSS, vol. 578 (November 2001), pp. 104-125. 

* Eck, John. "Preventing Crime at Places" in Sherman, L., et al. (eds.) 
Preventing Crime: What Works, What Doesn't, What's Promising: A Report 
to the United States Congress. Washington, D.C.: National Institute of 
Justice, 1998. 

* Eck, John, and Edward Maguire. "Have Changes in Policing Reduced 
Violent Crime? An Assessment of the Evidence." in Blumstein, A., and J. 
Wallman, eds., The Crime Drop in America. United Kingdom: Cambridge 
University Press, 2000. 

* Sherman, Lawrence. "Policing for Crime Prevention," in Sherman, L., 
et al. (eds.) Preventing Crime: What Works, What Doesn't, What's 
Promising: A Report to the United States Congress. Washington, D.C.: 
National Institute of Justice, 1998. 

* Skogan, Wesley, and Kathleen Frydl. "The Effectiveness of Police 
Activities in Reducing Crime, Disorder, and Fear," in Skogan, W., and 
K. Frydl, (eds.) Fairness and Effectiveness in Policing: The Evidence, 
Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, pp. 217-251, 2004. 

* Weisburd, David, and John Eck. "What Can Police Do to Reduce Crime, 
Disorder, and Fear?" Annals, AAPSS, Vol. 593 (November 2004), pp. 42- 
65. 

A limitation of basing our work on reviews is that we did not assess 
the original studies, but rather we relied on the descriptions and 
assessments as provided by the authors of the reviews. Sometimes the 
reviews did not cite specific information about the strength of the 
methodology of the underlying studies that were included in reviews. 

How We Reviewed Studies: 

We developed a data collection instrument to capture systematically 
information about the methodologies of the reviews, the types of 
policing practices reviewed, findings about each type of practice, and 
the reviewers' conclusions about the effectiveness of a particular 
practice or group of practices in reducing crime. Each research review 
was read and coded by a social science analyst who had training and 
experience in reviewing research methodologies. This analyst recorded, 
for each practice discussed in the research review, (1) the types of 
crimes against which the practices were used (e.g., all crimes, violent 
crimes, property crimes, disorder); (2) whether the practice was 
generally effective in reducing crime, had no effect in reducing crime, 
or the impact was ambiguous; (3) whether there was displacement of 
crimes away from the areas where the practices were used; and (4) 
whether there were negative effects of the practices (e.g., complaints 
against the police or the diversion of resources from other policing 
activities). A second, similarly trained analyst then read the reviews 
and verified the accuracy of the information recorded by the first 
analyst. We then summarized the findings about each practice from the 
data collection instruments prepared for each of the six reviews. Some 
practices were discussed in only one review, while others were 
discussed in more than one review. 

The Research Literature Shows That Some Policing Practices May be 
Effective in Reducing Crime: 

Our analysis of six systematic reviews of evaluations of the 
effectiveness of various policing practices in preventing crime 
indicates that the current evidence ranges from moderate to strong that 
problem-oriented policing practices and place-oriented practices are 
either effective or promising as strategies for addressing crime 
problems. For example, problem-oriented approaches that focus on 
criminogenic substances such as guns and drugs appear to be effective 
in reducing both violent and property crimes. And hot spots approaches-
-place-oriented approaches that temporarily apply police resources to 
discrete locations where crime is concentrated at much higher rates 
than occurs jurisdictionwide--have also been found to be effective in 
reducing crime. However, the magnitudes of the effects of these 
interventions are difficult to estimate, especially on citywide crime 
rates, as the interventions that were reviewed as effective generally 
were concentrated in comparatively small places. Further, the enduring 
nature of these interventions is not fully understood. It is not known, 
for example, how long the effects of a problem-or place-oriented 
intervention persist. In addition, some of the reviews point out that 
research designs undertaken to date make it difficult to disentangle 
the effects of problem-oriented policing from hot spots policing. There 
is suggestive, but limited, evidence that the combination of these 
practices may be more effective in preventing or reducing crime than 
any one strategy alone. 

In contrast to the findings on problem-oriented and place-oriented 
policing practices, there is little evidence in the literature for the 
effectiveness of community collaboration practices--such as increasing 
foot patrol, establishing community partnerships, and encouraging 
citizen involvement--in reducing or preventing crime. 

[End of section] 

Appendix VIII: Comments from the Department of Justice: 

U.S. Department of Justice:
Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS): 

October 4, 2005: 

VIA FACSIMILE and ELECTRONIC MAIL: 

Ms. Laurie E. Ekstrand:
Director, Homeland Security and Justice: 
United States General Accountability Office: 
Washington, DC 20548: 

Dear Ms. Ekstrand: 

The COPS Office thanks the GAO for the opportunity to respond to their 
interim and final reports on the effects of COPS Office funding. 

The findings from these studies are important. They show that COPS 
grants resulted in significantly greater numbers of law enforcement 
officers, are associated with increasing the community policing 
capacity of law enforcement agencies and have produced significant 
reductions in violent and property crimes. They support the conclusions 
reached by others [NOTE 1] and correspond with what local law 
enforcement leaders report. The GAO was careful and diligent in their 
research, examining multiple statistical models, controlling for a 
large number of relevant variables and reviewing their analyses with 
the National Research Council. 

Reduction in Crime: 

The GAO found that COPS funding resulted in declines in the rates of 
total index crimes, violent crimes and property crimes. Specifically, 
the GAO found that the decline in crimes attributable to COPS 
expenditures accounted for 10% of the total drop in crime from 1993 to 
1998 and approximately 5% of the drop from 1993 to 2000, including 
"significant reductions due to COPS expenditures for the crimes of 
murder and non-negligent manslaughter, robbery, aggravated assault, 
burglary and motor vehicle theft." GAO data estimates that those 
reductions amounted to 200,000 to 225,000 fewer index crimes from 1993 
levels, consisting of about one-third violent crimes and two-thirds 
property crime. 

A key finding is that these reductions in crime were found to be in 
line with the amount of COPS funds expended. COPS funds amounted to 
about one percent of all local law enforcement expenditures. The amount 
of the reduction in crime attributable to COPS funding grants is 
commensurate with and to be expected when compared to that amount. A 
significant finding that cannot be overlooked is that, according to the 
GAO, for every one dollar in COPS hiring grant expenditures per capita, 
there was a reduction of almost 30 index crimes per 100,000 persons. 
For MORE grants and innovative grant programs, the GAO estimated the 
impact to be 17 and 88 crimes per 100,000, persons respectively. 

It should also be noted that the GAO itself points out that the results 
of the study are more likely to underestimate the magnitude of the 
effect of COPS grants on reducing crime, rather than overestimate it. 
In addition, the GAO selected effect sizes (elasticities) for the 
impact of COPS grants on hiring by which to calculate the impact of 
COPS grants on the decline in crime, that are at the lowest end of the 
ranges that they estimated. Thus, under slightly different assumptions 
about the statistical models, the impact of COPS grants on violent and 
property crime would be even larger than the impacts reported. 

Significant Increase in Officers on the Beat: 

To date, the COPS Office has provided funding for 118,397 officers and 
internal reports show 104,150 of these officers have been deployed to 
the Nation's streets to combat crime. In addition, a comprehensive 
study conducted by the Urban Institute estimates that between 1994 and 
2005 the COPS Office would add between 93,400 and 102,700 additional 
officers .z The GAO reports that COPS Office grants were significantly 
related to increases in sworn officer levels above that which would 
have been expected without these expenditures after controlling for a 
large number of relevant factors. Specifically, the GAO estimates that 
COPS Office grants have resulted in a minimum of 88,000 additional 
officer-years, above and beyond what would have been expected in the 
absence of COPS funds. 

The GAO points out that it would be incorrect to interpret this total 
number of officer-years as a measure of the overall increase in the 
number of sworn officers that resulted from COPS funds, and is not 
directly comparable to the number of sworn officers on the street as a 
result of COPS funds or with estimates of the number of officers funded 
by the COPS Office. However, it is important to clarify one point 
regarding the number of officers funded by the COPS Office. Of the 
118,397 officers that the COPS Office has funded to date, 76,339 are 
for the direct hiring of community policing officers and 42,058 of them 
are derived from the statutorily created MORE technology program. The 
MORE technology program is designed to save officer time through the 
purchase of time-saving law enforcement technology such as report 
writing software, records management systems, in-car computers, etc. 
This time-savings then allows officers to be redeployed to the street 
to engage in additional community policing activities. Thus, the 42,058 
officer equivalents[NOTE 3] funded by the MORE program would not be 
expected to show up in aggregate counts of the number of officers hired 
by local law enforcement such as those used by GAO in their analysis. 

Significant Increase in Practice of Community Policing: 

It is well accepted that community policing strategies have a strong 
effect on addressing crime problems. The GAO found that agencies that 
received COPS grants had larger increases in the average levels of 
reported use of problem solving, place-oriented and community 
collaboration practices than did the agencies that did not receive a 
COPS grant. This finding is supported by a great deal of anecdotal 
evidence [NOTE 4] and research that documents the acceleration in the 
adoption of community policing activities as a result of COPS funding. 
[NOTE 5] This has resulted in a fundamental shift in the way that law 
enforcement agencies conduct business, and has resulted in a safer 
America. 

GAO data shows that the average level of reported use of problem- 
solving practices increased by about 35 percent, as compared to about 
30 percent by non-grantees. The increase in place-oriented practices 
among COPS grantee was about 32 percent, as compared to about 13 among 
non-grantees. Problem solving relies on developing proactive solutions 
by identifying and responding to crime and social disorder problems 
through systematic processes. Place-oriented practices identify 
locations where crime occurs and implements procedures to disrupt those 
recurrences of crime and social disorder. By collaborating with the 
community, local law enforcement improves citizen feedback about crime 
problems and the effectiveness of policing to address these problems. 

While the GAO research does provide some evidence on the effects of 
COPS grants on community policing, it is important to point out that 
the aggregate counts, such as those used by the GAO in their analysis, 
of the number of community policing activities that law enforcement 
agencies engage in, provide only a superficial measure of the level of 
community policing taking place. For example, through their COPS grant, 
a law enforcement agency may have greatly increased the amount of 
problem solving they engage in and, at the same time, may not have 
greatly increased the absolute number of different types of community 
policing related activities they conduct. These types of increases in 
the quantity of a specific activity may very well represent great 
enhancements in their community policing capacity but would not be 
reflected in the GAO's analyses. 

We thank the GAO for their careful examination of COPS Office grant 
programs and for the opportunity to respond to this report. 

Sincerely, 

Signed by: 

Carl R. Peed: 
Director: 

cc: Richard P. Theis:
Acting Director, Audit Liaison Office: 
Justice Management Division: 

William J. Sabol, Ph.D.
U.S. Government Accountability Office: 
Room 6W13/Mail Stop 6Q26H:
441 G Street, NW: 
Washington, DC 20548: 

NOTES: 

[1] Evans, W. N. and E. Owens. "Flypaper COPS" College Park, Maryland: 
University of Maryland. Available online. 2005; Koper, Christopher, et 
al. Putting 100,000 Officers on the Street: A Survey-Based Assessment 
of the Federal COPS Program, Washington, DC: The Urban Institute, 2002; 
Zhao, J. and Q. Thurman. A National Evaluation of the Effect of COPS 
Grants on Crime from 1994 to 1999. Report submitted to the Office of 
Community Oriented Policing Services, Washington, DC: U.S. Department 
of Justice, December 2001; Zhao, J. and Q. Thurman, Funding Community 
Policing to Reduce Crime: Have COPS Grants Made A Difference From 1994 
to 2000. Report submitted to the Office of Community Oriented Policing 
Services, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, December 2004; 
Zhao, J., M. Scheider, and Q. Thurman. 2003. "A National Evaluation of 
the Effect of COPS Grants on Police Productivity (Arrests) 1995-1999." 
Police Quarterly 4: 387-409. 

[2] Koper, Christopher, et al. Putting 100,000 Officers on the Street: 
A Survey-Based Assessment of the Federal COPS Program, Washington, DC: 
The Urban Institute, 2002. 

[3] The COPS Office estimates that for every 1,824 hours saved over the 
course of a year, as a direct result of the technology, produces the 
equivalent of one additional officer. 

[4] Promising Strategies from the Field: A National Overview. Office of 
Community Oriented Policing Services: U.S. Department of Justice, 2003; 
Promising Strategies from the Field: Community Policing in Smaller 
Jurisdictions. Office of Community Oriented Policing Services: U.S. 
Department of Justice, 2003; Promising Strategies from the Field: 
Spotlight on Sheriffs. Office of Community Oriented Policing Services: 
U.S. Department of Justice, 2003. For more information see 
www.copsreportsfromthefield.org. 

[5] Johnson, C. and J. Roth, The COPS Program and the Spread of 
Community Policing, 1995-2000. Washington, DC: The Urban Institute, 
2003. 

[End of section] 

Appendix IX: GAO Contacts and Staff Acknowledgments: 

GAO Contacts: 

Laurie E. Ekstrand (202) 512-8777; 
Nancy R. Kingsbury (202) 512-2700: 

Acknowledgments: 

In addition to those named above the following individuals made key 
contributions to this report: William J. Sabol, Tom Jessor, David R. 
Lilley, Benjamin A. Bolitzer, George H. Quinn, Jr., and Grant M. 
Mallie. Others contributing included David P. Alexander, Harold J. 
Brumm Jr., Scott Farrow, Kathryn E. Godfrey, Adam T. Hatton, Ronald La 
Due Lake, Terence C. Lam, and Robert Parker. 

[End of section] 

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FOOTNOTES 

[1] P.L. 103-322 (1994), 42 U.S.C. § 3796dd. The act contained other 
provisions to address violent crime, such as those encouraging states 
to increase the use of incarceration for violent offenders, enhancing 
penalties for gang crimes, and expanding the number of federal offenses 
punishable by death.

[2] Frazier, Thomas, C., "Introduction from the Director," in Attorney 
General, Report to Congress: Office of Community Oriented Policing 
Services, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, 2000.

[3] Zhao, J., and Q., Thurman. A National Evaluation of the Effect of 
COPS Grants on Crime from 1994 to 1999. Report submitted to the Office 
of Community Oriented Policing Services, Washington, D.C.: U.S. 
Department of Justice, December 2001.

[4] We reported our review of this study in GAO, Technical Assessment 
of Zhao and Thurman's 2001 Evaluation of the Effects of COPS Grants on 
Crime, GAO-03-867R (Washington, D.C.: June 13, 2003).

[5] Because of the limited reporting of arson, the FBI also excludes 
arson from its published tables containing national estimates of index 
crimes. See Federal Bureau of Investigation, Crime in the United 
States, Uniform Crime Reports, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of 
Justice, published annually.

[6] The first survey was the National Survey of Community Policing 
Strategies, and it was administered in 1993 and 1997. The Police 
Foundation administered the 1993 wave of the survey, and ORC Macro 
International, Inc. and the Police Executive Research Forum 
administered the 1997 wave of the survey. Both surveys used the same 
sampling frame. In the remainder of this report, we refer to the two 
waves of this longitudinal survey as the Policing Strategies Survey.

[7] The second survey was the National Evaluation of the COPS Program 
survey, which was conducted by the National Opinion Research 
Corporation for the Urban Institute in its evaluation of the 
implementation of the COPS program. It was a nationally representative 
sample of law enforcement agencies that were contacted in 1996 and 
again in 2000. In the remainder of this letter, we refer to this second 
survey as the National Evaluation of COPS Survey.

[8] The Police Hiring Supplement Program was established by the 
Supplemental Appropriations Act of 1993 (P.L. 103-50 (1993)). The 
grants made under this program were funded by DOJ's Bureau of Justice 
Assistance. In this report, when we refer to COPS grants, we include 
both the grants made under the Police Hiring Supplement and the 
community policing grants authorized under VCCLEA.

[9] Hiring programs authorized under VCCLEA and administered by the 
COPS office included the Phase I program, which funded qualified 
applicants who had applied for the Police Hiring Supplement but were 
denied because of the limited funds available; COPS AHEAD (Accelerated 
Hiring, Education, and Deployment) for municipalities with populations 
of 50,000 and above; and COPS FAST (Funding Accelerated for Smaller 
Towns) for towns with populations below 50,000. In June 1995, Phase I, 
COPS AHEAD, and COPS FAST were replaced by the Universal Hiring Program.

[10] Of funds available in any fiscal year, up to 3 percent could have 
been used for technical assistance or for evaluations or studies 
carried out or commissioned by the Attorney General. The requirement to 
allocate the funds by size of agency population applies to the 
remaining funds in any fiscal year (42 U.S.C. § 3793 (a)(11)(B)). In 
addition, COPS had to meet a national coverage requirement to ensure 
that no state received less than 0.5 percent of total funding.

[11] Attorney General, Report to Congress: Office of Community Oriented 
Policing Services, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, 2000.

[12] Roth, Jeffrey, et al., National Evaluation of the Implementation 
of the COPS Program, Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Justice, 
August 2000.

[13] In a 2002 report, the Urban Institute researchers updated their 
estimates of the number of officers due to COPS and reported an 
estimate of a permanent increase of between 69,100 and 92,200 officers 
post-2005, taking into account post-grant attrition of officers. Koper, 
Christopher, et al., Putting 100,000 Officers on the Street: A Survey- 
Based Assessment of the Federal COPS Program, Washington, D.C.: The 
Urban Institute, 2002.

[14] Zhao and Thurman, 2001.

[15] The authors of the COPS Office-funded study revised their report 
to take into account criticism presented by reviews, and in 2004, they 
released their final report on the effect of COPS grants on crime. In 
their final report, they updated their findings through 2000, and their 
results were comparable to what they reported in their initial report. 
Zhao, J., and Q. Thurman, Funding Community Policing to Reduce Crime: 
Have COPS Grants Made a Difference from 1994 to 2000? Report submitted 
to the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, U.S. Department 
of Justice, July 2004.

[16] Muhlhausen, D., Do Community Oriented Policing Services Grants 
Affect Violent Crime Rates (Washington, D.C.: The Heritage Foundation, 
May 25, 2001).

[17] GAO Technical Assessment of Zhao and Thurman's 2001 Evaluation of 
the Effects of COPS Grants on Crime, GAO-03-867R (Washington, D.C.: 
June 13, 2003).

[18] The amount obligated to these agencies was 96.1 percent of the 
$7.6 billion total in COPS obligations reported in the Office of 
Justice Programs financial data.

[19] An officer-year is not equivalent to the total number of officers 
or full-time officer equivalents hired as a result of COPS funds; nor 
is it equivalent to the total number of officers funded by COPS grants. 
Across years, the COPS funds may have paid for the same person. In 
counting officer-years, this person would be counted one time for each 
year in which we estimated that COPS funds paid for the position.

[20] Eck, John, and Edward Maguire, "Have Changes in Policing Reduced 
Violent Crime? An Assessment of the Evidence." In Blumstein, Alfred, 
and Joel Wallman (eds.), The Crime Drop in America, Cambridge: 
Cambridge University Press, 2000: p. 245.

[21] We excluded arson from our analyses because according to the FBI, 
there is limited reporting of arson offenses to the UCR Program by law 
enforcement agencies. Also because of the limited reporting of arson by 
law enforcement agencies, the FBI does not include estimates for arson 
in its published tables that contain offense estimates, including its 
table 1, which reports its estimates of index crimes for the nation as 
a whole.

[22] Rosenthal, Arlen M., and Lorie Fridell. National Survey of 
Community Policing Strategies Update, 1997, and Modified 1992-1993 Data 
[Computer file] . Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social 
Research (ICPSR) version. Calverton, Maryland: ORC Macro International, 
Inc. [producer] , 2002. Ann Arbor, Michigan: ICPSR [distributor] , 
2002. In the remainder of this report, we refer to the two 
administrations of this longitudinal survey as the Policing Strategies 
Survey.
-Title I of the 1994 Crime Act, Washington, D.C.: National Institute of 
Justice, August 2000. In the remainder of this report, we refer to the 
two administrations of this second longitudinal survey as the National 
Evaluation of COPS Survey.

[23] The second survey was conducted by the National Opinion Research 
Center for the Urban Institute in 1996 and 2000 as part of the National 
Institute of Justice-funded implementation evaluation of the COPS 
program. See Roth, J., et al., National Evaluation of the COPS Program-

[24] Local Law Enforcement Block Grant Program (LLEBG), as authorized 
by the Omnibus Consolidated Rescissions and Appropriations Act of 1996. 
(P.L. 104-134.)

[25] 42 U.S.C. § 3750 et seq. The Byrne Formula Grant Program was a 
variable pass-through grant program administered by the Bureau of 
Justice Assistance. States were required to pass through to local 
jurisdictions amounts of funding based upon a variable pass-through 
formula.

[26] In this report, COPS grants refer both to DOJ grants awarded 
through the Police Hiring Supplement Program and the COPS Office's 
community policing grants authorized under the Violent Crime Control 
and Law Enforcement Act of 1994.

[27] We used Federal Information Processing Standards codes (or FIPS 
codes), which identify named population places and are issued by the 
National Institute of Standards and Technology.

[28] See Roth, Jeffrey., et al., National Evaluation of the COPS 
Program--Title I of the 1994 Crime Act.

[29] Lynch, James P., "Exploring the Sources of Non-response in the 
Uniform Crime Reports." Paper presented at the Annual Meetings of the 
American Society of Criminology Research Conference, November 19, 2003.

[30] Levitt uses three methods to estimate the bias associated with 
changes in reporting practices in efforts to estimate the effects of 
changes in the size of the police force on crime rates. He concludes 
that ignoring this effect will lead researchers to understate the 
benefits associated with increases in the size of the police force. See 
Levitt, Steven D., "The Relationship between Crime Reporting and 
Police: Implications for the Use of Uniform Crime Reports," Journal of 
Quantitative Criminology, Vol. 14, No. 1,1998: pp. 61-81.

[31] P.L. 103-322 (1994), 42 U.S.C. § 3796dd.

[32] In this report, when we refer to COPS grants, we include both the 
grants made under the Police Hiring Supplement and the community 
policing grants authorized under VCCLEA.

[33] Of funds available in any fiscal year, up to 3 percent were 
available for use for technical assistance or for evaluations or 
studies carried out or commissioned by the Attorney General. The 
requirement to allocate the funds by size of agency population applies 
to the remaining funds in any fiscal year (42 U.S.C. § 3793 
(a)(11)(B)). In addition, the COPS Office had a national coverage 
requirement to ensure that no state received less than 0.5 percent of 
total funding.

[34] 42 U.S.C. § 3750 et seq.

[35] Dunworth, Terence, Peter Haynes, and Aaron J. Saiger, National 
Assessment of the Byrne Formula Grant Program, Washington, D.C.: 
National Institute of Justice Research in Brief, June 1997.

[36] Local Law Enforcement Block Grant Program, as authorized by the 
Omnibus Consolidated Rescissions and Appropriations Act of 1996 (P.L. 
104-134).
-Title I of the 1994 Crime Act, Washington, D.C.: National Institute of 
Justice Research Report, August 2000.

[37] Roth, Jeffrey A., et al., National Evaluation of the COPS Program-

[38] Attorney General of the United States, Report to Congress: Office 
of Community Oriented Policing Services, Washington, D.C.: U.S. 
Department of Justice, September 2000.

[39] Davis, Gareth, et al., "The Facts about COPS: A Performance 
Overview of the Community Oriented Policing Services Program," 
Washington, D.C.: The Heritage Foundation, September 25, 2000.

[40] Executive Office of the President, Performance and Management 
Assessments: Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2004, 
Washington, D.C.: White House, 2003.

[41] Koper, Christopher S., et al., Putting 100,000 Officers on the 
Street: A Survey-Based Assessment of the Federal COPS Program, 
Washington, D.C.: The Urban Institute, October 2002.

[42] Attorney General of the United States, Report to Congress, 2000.

[43] Wycoff, Mary Ann, Community Policing Strategies: A Comprehensive 
Analysis, Washington, D.C.: The Police Foundation, November 1994.

[44] Johnson, Calvin C., and Jeffrey A. Roth, The COPS Program and the 
Spread of Community Policing, 1995-2000. Washington, D.C.: The Urban 
Institute, June 2003.

[45] Skogan, Wesley, and K. Frydl, "The Effectiveness of Police 
Activities in Reducing Crime, Disorder, and Fear," in Skogan, W., and 
K. Frydl, (eds.) Fairness and Effectiveness in Policing: The Evidence, 
Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, pp. 217-251, 2004.

[46] Attorney General of the United States, Report to Congress, 2000.

[47] Zhao, J., and Q. Thurman, A National Evaluation of the Effect of 
COPS Gants on Crime from 1994 to 1999. Report submitted to the Office 
of Community Oriented Policing Services, Washington, D.C.: U.S. 
Department of Justice, December 2001. In 2004, Zhao and Thurman 
released a revised report on the impacts of COPS grants on crime 
covering the years from 1994 through 2000. In their 2004 report, the 
estimated effects of hiring grants were larger and the estimated 
effects of innovative grants were smaller than they reported in 2001.

[48] Muhlhausen, David. Do Community Oriented Policing Services Grants 
Affect Violent Crime Rates (Washington, D.C.: The Heritage Foundation, 
May 25, 2001).

[49] Our review of this study was reported in GAO, Technical Assessment 
of Zhao and Thurman's 2001 Evaluation of the Effects of COPS Grants on 
Crime, GAO-03-867R (Washington, D.C.: June 13, 2003).

[50] Although arson is included in the crime index, the FBI reports 
that it excludes arson crimes from its estimates of national crime 
totals because of limited reporting of arson by law enforcement 
agencies to the UCR.

[51] Evans, William N. and Emily Owens. "Flypaper COPS," College Park, 
Maryland: University of Maryland. Available online at 
www.bsos.umd.edu/econ/evans/wpapers/Flypaper%20COPS.pdf, 2005.

[52] This methodology was implemented by Evans and Owens (2005).

[53] The amount obligated to these agencies was 96.1 percent of the 
$7.6 billion total in COPS obligations reported in the OJP financial 
data.

[54] The population data that we used in our analysis came from the 
UCR, and they may not reflect the population information that agencies 
submitted to the COPS Office on their applications.

[55] Each year, the COPS Office was required to allocate half of its 
grant funds in each year to agencies serving populations of 150,000 or 
fewer persons and half to agencies covering populations of more than 
150,000 persons.

[56] According to our definition, an agency reports complete crime data 
if its reports to the UCR contain crime data for all 12 months within a 
year.

[57] This includes total expenditures for jurisdictions with agencies 
that received COPS grants as well jurisdictions with agencies that did 
not receive COPS grants.

[58] Our estimate of the effect of COPS expenditures on officers is 
consistent with those in the research conducted by Evans and Owns, who 
used COPS hiring grants to estimate the relationship between changes in 
sworn officers and crime. They estimated that each $25,000 in COPS 
hiring grant expenditures produced an additional 0.7 of an officer in a 
given year. Evans and Owens, "Flypaper COPS," 2005.

[59] Roth, Jeffrey, et al. National Evaluation of the COPS Program, 
2000.

[60] Evans and Owens, "Flypaper COPS," 2005.

[61] Levitt, Steven D. "Using Electoral Cycles in Police Hiring to 
Estimate the Effect of Police on Crime: Reply" American Economic 
Review, September 2002, 92(4), pp. 1244-50. Justin McCrary found that 
Levitt's original estimates of the effect of officers on crime suffered 
from a computation error. Levitt was able to confirm his results after 
correcting the error using an alternative instrument. See McCrary, 
Justin, "Do Electoral Cycles in Police Hiring Really Help Us Estimate 
the Effect of Police on Crime: Comment." American Economic Review. June 
2002, 92(4), pp. 1236-43.

[62] According to officials at the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the 
formula for determining LLEBG grant amounts is based in part upon the 
level of violent crime occurring within a jurisdiction. By comparison, 
there was no requirement for COPS funding to be related to violent 
crime. Therefore, without an instrument to isolate the relationship 
between LLEBG expenditures and crime rates, we cannot conclude that the 
estimated effects of LLEBG expenditures on crime would hold if we were 
able to isolate statistically the causal direction of effects.

[63] Some of the factors associated with the crime drop have been 
discussed in Blumstein and Wallman (2002). See Blumstein, A., and J. 
Wallman (eds.), The Crime Drop in America, Cambridge, United Kingdom: 
Cambridge University Press, 2000.

[64] For example, see: Marvell, Thomas, and Carlisle Moody. 
"Specification Problems, Police Levels, and Crime Rates," Criminology 
1996, 34. pp. 609-46. Eck, John, and Edward Maguire, 2000. "Have 
Changes in Policing Reduced Violent Crime? An Assessment of the 
Evidence." in A. Blumstein and J. Wallman, eds., The Crime Drop in 
America. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. pp 207-65.

[65] Sherman, Lawrence, 1998. "Policing for Crime Prevention," in 
Sherman, L., et al. (eds.) Preventing Crime: What Works, What Doesn't, 
What's Promising: A Report to the United States Congress. Washington, 
D.C.: National Institute of Justice, Chapter 8.

[66] Levitt, Steven D. "Using Electoral Cycles in Police Hiring to Help 
Estimate the Effect of Police on Crime." American Economic Review, 87 
(1997): 270-290.

[67] See, for example, Levitt (1997) and Marvel and Moody (1996).

[68] McCrary (2002) found that Levitt's estimation of standard errors 
suffered from a computational error. Levitt (2002) was able to confirm 
his results when the error was corrected by using an alternative 
instrument--the number of municipal workers and firemen. McCrary, 
Justin. "Using Electoral Cycles in Police Hiring to Estimate the Effect 
of Police on Crime: Comment." American Economic Review. June 2002, 
92(4), pp. 1236-43. Levitt, Steven D. "Using Electoral Cycles in Police 
Hiring to Estimate the Effects of Police on Crime: Reply" American 
Economic Review, September 2002, 92(4), pp. 1244-50.

[69] Di Tella, Rafael, and Ernesto Schargrodsky. "Do Police Reduce 
Crime? Estimates Using the Allocation of Police Forces after a 
Terrorist Attack." American Economic Review. March 2004, 94(1). pp. 115-
133.

[70] Klick, Jonathan, and Alexander Tabarrok. "Using Terror Alert 
Levels to Estimate the Effect of Police on Crime." Journal of Law and 
Economics, April 2005, vol. XLVIII.

[71] Evans, William N., and Emily Owens. "Flypaper COPS," College Park, 
Maryland: University of Maryland. Available online 
www.bsos.umd.edu/econ/evans/wpapers/Flypaper%20COPS.pdf, 2005.

[72] Cook, Philip, "The Clearance Rate as a Measure of Criminal Justice 
System Effectiveness," Journal of Public Economics, Vol. 11, 1979, pp. 
135-142.

[73] Swimmer, Eugene, "The Relationship of Police and Crime: Some 
Methodological and Empirical Results," Criminology, Vol. 12, 1974: pp. 
293-314.

[74] Because Byrne formula grants are passed through states to local 
agencies and the methods to track the amount of Byrne dollars going to 
local agencies are unreliable, we were unable to include Byrne formula 
grant amounts in our models. Moreover, according to an Abt Associates 
evaluation of Byrne formula grants, about 40 percent of the amounts 
passed through the states to local law enforcement agencies went to 
multijurisdictional task forces, thereby further complicating the task 
of tracking Byrne discretionary grant expenditures to local law 
enforcement agencies. See Dunworth, Terence, and Aaron J. Saiger, 
National Assessment of the Byrne Formula Grant Program: Where the Money 
Went--An Analysis of State Subgrant Funding Decisions Under the Byrne 
Formula Grant Program, Report 1, Washington, D.C.: National Institute 
of Justice Research Report, December 1996.

[75] This approach was proposed by Evans and Owens (2005).

[76] We excluded arson from our analysis, because of limited reporting 
of this crime to the UCR, as indicated by the FBI. (See app. I.)

[77] Bearing in mind that the officer strength is per 10,000 in the 
population, we arrive at this result by the following calculation: 
(25,000)*(.227/10,000) = 0.57 officers.

[78] The 1993 survey was designed to provide information on what was 
occurring and what needed to occur in the development and 
implementation of community policing. The 1997 survey was designed to 
provide information on the most current practices and trends in 
community policing. See: A. Rosenthal et al, Community Policing: 1997 
National Survey Update of Police and Sheriffs' Departments, ORC Macro 
and Police Executive Research Forum, Washington D.C.: National 
Institute of Justice, April 2001.

[79] Agencies were considered out of scope if they had fewer than five 
sworn officers, no patrol function, or were a state police agency or 
other "special" police agency.

[80] When ORC Macro and the Police Executive Research Foundation drew 
the sample for the 1997 wave of the survey, they discovered that 
instead of excluding agencies with fewer than five sworn officers, the 
Police Foundation had used information on the agencies' total number of 
employees to select the agencies for the sampling frame and had 
excluded agencies with fewer than five employees. Thus some agencies 
were misclassified, and some were included that should not have been. 
In addition, the weights provided with the 1993 data were incorrect for 
agencies with 10 to 49 employees. ORC Macro and PERF were able to 
assign the appropriate weights retroactively to the 1993 sample and 
were able to exclude agencies with fewer than five sworn officers.

[81] These agencies represented about 94 percent of the agencies that 
responded to both waves of the Policing Strategies Survey.

[82] See Roth, Jeffrey, et al., National Evaluation of the COPS 
Program--Title I of the 1994 Crime Act.

[83] Roth, et al. note that they lacked population data for 4,208 
agencies in the sampling frame. For sample selection purposes, they 
treated the missing agencies as a separate stratum. However, because 
inspection indicated that a large majority served jurisdictions of 
fewer than 50,000 persons, these agencies were analyzed in that 
population category.

[84] Some agencies received more than one type of COPS grant and 
appeared in more than one stratum. The analyses were weighted to take 
into account the multiple probabilities of selection associated with 
each grant program.

[85] The National Evaluation also conducted two other waves of 
telephone interviews, in 1997 and 1998. However, for those surveys, 
only subsets of the original sample were contacted.

[86] The response rate is not equal to the number of completed 
interviews of the number of agencies because of the possibility of 
agencies appearing in multiple strata of the sample.

[87] These agencies represented about 84 percent of the agencies that 
responded to both waves 1 and 4 of the National Evaluation of COPS 
Survey

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