Government Technology - August 2007 - (Page 22)

it’s earmarked specifically for homeland security, according to Flynn. “What those of us in law enforcement noticed in the years after the 9/11 attacks — particularly when the congressional funding started making its way to local government via the states in 2003 — was that at the same time funding was expanding dramatically in some cases for homeland security equipment and programs, at the same rate or even more rapid rate, funding for criminal justice generally, and law enforcement specifically, was dramatically being scaled back,” he said. Police are in a position to provide homeland security intelligence, Flynn continued, but they’re so tied up with their core responsibilities that they Crime Fact: can’t develop relationships with the In cities with populacommunity. tions of 25,000 to “By removing our ability to con50,000, the violent sistently interact with them to buy crime rate rose by bunkers or explosion detection more than 8 percent vehicles — or whatever the hell — from 2004 through you’re removing from us our ability the ﬁrst six months of 2006. In towns with to develop street-level intelligence about ongoing suspicious condipopulations between 10,000 and 25,000, the tions,” he said. “The same people homicide rate went up who want to tell us about drug dealers will tell us about terrorists if more than 6.5 percent they trusted us and knew us. over the same period. “Our position is the core missions Source: International Association of police and fire are the same regardof Chiefs of Police less of the cause,” he continued. “The police respond to threats, try to prevent threats through the development of intelligence, and they have to have both a tactical and strategic capability. Fire departments deal with HAZMAT incidents and fires and explosions. Who the hell cares who did it?” The Bush administration submits a yearly budget that hacks away at COPS funding. For the most part, Congress restored some of that funding before those budgets became law, but the COPS hiring grants and MORE grants disappeared altogether. Overall, COPS grants and State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance grants, the two main pots of federal justice money, fell from $4.4 billion in 2001 to $2.5 billion in 2006. As of May 2007, the fiscal 2007 justice funding was still up in the air. Congress has fought to keep justice funding levels near what they were for 2006, fending off the administration’s attempt to cut back again. “The question is will the money be there,” said Gary Cooper, vice president of Research and Consulting for CJIS GROUP. “We see authorizing bills, but as far as money is concerned, it’s just smoke and mirrors. Until you appropriate it, it doesn’t mean anything.” Alarming Trends Along the way, violent crime began to rise again. Between 2004 and mid-2006, the murder rate reached a 20-year high in Cincinnati and a 16-year high in Fairfax County, Va., according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report (UCR). In Boston; Richmond, Calif.; Virginia Beach, Va.; and Springfield, Mass., the murder rate was at a 10-year high. In 2005, robbery and aggravated assault increased to a 14-year high. In a 2005 National Crime Victimization survey, attempted robbery with injury was up by nearly 36 percent. Even in Seattle, where violent crime is usually low, there was a 25 percent increase in gun crimes. Robbery is also up in many parts of the country, according to a report by the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF). UCR statistics for 2005 showed arrests of juveniles for robbery increased by more than 11 percent and were deadlier. Youths look for iPods and use a technique called “rat packing,” where the robbers use their cell phones to call their mates and coordinate when to swarm on Billions in 9/11 Grants Unspent A USA Today report in June said that nearly one-third of homeland security grants doled out to states since 9/11 remained unspent. The report said that nearly $5 billion of the $16.04 billion approved by Congress from 2002 to 2007 remained in federal coffers, which suggests to the Bush administration that the federal government is dishing out money faster than states can spend. Reasons for the backlog vary, according to the report and in some cases equipment has been back-ordered, in other cases money has been allotted for multiyear projects, such as upgrading communications systems. Some states said some of the money is unspent because communities can’t come up with the matching funds required to spend the federal money. AUG_07 a victim. Particularly alarming to police is the fact that many of the victims were shot without provocation after the robberies, according to the PERF report. It’s the inner cities where gangs are resurging, and the mixture of youth and guns is creating a volatile mix. With a decreasing police presence, the seeds for more violence get planted, police say. “The problem is when we are not available in public spaces, citizen fear increases, which undermines community confidence in cities and sometimes their economic viability, and that’s happening in a lot of midsize cities,” Flynn said. “It’s less of a factor in a New York or a Chicago than it is in a Springfield or a Rochester, [N.Y.].” Those larger cities, Flynn said aren’t as dependent on federal grants because they can tap more indigenous resources. “The burden really falls heaviest on what I’d call the ‘cruiserweight’ cities. The cities between 100,000 and 300,000 population are the ones that had the biggest overall spikes in violence over the last five years.” In many of those cities, the attrition rate of officers — through retirement, layoffs and deployment to war — creates an increased burden. Cities such as Minneapolis, Boston and Detroit employ fewer officers than at the beginning of the decade. The Richmond, Calif., Police Department experienced a 25 percent drop in police officers. Minneapolis, which has been forced to cut 140 officers since boosting the number to 938 in the late ’90s, conversely has seen a rise in robberies by about 20 percent. Detroit is down 1,000 officers, and Richmond and Boston — two of the cities with the biggest jump in violent crime — have fewer officers than they did in the ’90s. “We’re not being alarmists, but we do believe it’s prudent to intervene before one enters a crisis, not after the crisis has occurred,” Flynn said, adding the rising trend in violent crime is undeniable. “I’m not going to attribute the crime to law enforcement capacity directly, but I will say that again, nationwide there has been a significant decrease in the number of officers working since the functional ending of the COPS program and with the resultant or coincidental fiscal difficulties of states and cities.” Nobody is willing to say police can prevent rising crime rates, but they do say spending dwindling resources rushing from call to call instead of community policing detracts from the ability to use intelligence from the community and focus on high-priority areas. It also undermines the community’s feeling of safety and trust. 22 http://www.govtech.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Government Technology - August 2007

Contents Point of View The Big Picture The Last Mile Letter to the Editor GT Spectrum Up Close Vanishing Act Way Back Machine Fast Track to Nowhere Best of Both Worlds Texting 911? GIS to Go Neighborhood Watch Two Cents Products Signal: Noise Government Solutions

Government Technology - August 2007

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