| By Carnacki
One of the best programs under President Bill Clinton was the COPS program, sponsored in the Senate by our current Vice President Joe Biden. It put an additional 100,000 police on the streets and helped lower crime.
The Cheney-Bush administration cut the program, of course, because Republicans like to say government can't solve problems and then do everything to make that statement true.
President Barack Obama is putting money back into the COPS as part of the stimulus package.
From the Charleston Gazette:
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- The Dunbar and Huntington police departments are among 26 law enforcement agencies statewide to receive $5.1 million in federal grant money to bolster their ranks.
The money came from the government's Community Oriented Policing Services program, which is part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
Dunbar received $195,130 and Huntington received $698,860. That's enough to hire four officers in Huntington and one in Dunbar. Huntington received the most grant money in the state.
Huntington Police Chief W.H. Holbrook said the money would bring them up to a 105-member force.
"We feel like staffing is critical to providing our services to keep the crime rate down and we're excited [about the money] from that standpoint," he said.
Under Bush, money that could have went to fund police here went to highly expensive and ineffective programs to train police in Iraq. The number of departments seeking funds is a sign of how much departments were shortchanged by the Cheney-Bush administration.
Eighty-two agencies statewide applied for the money. Only 31 percent of them received money. Overall, $24,832,176 was requested to hire 174 officers in West Virginia.
Hopefully as our troops are withdrawn from Iraq, the money not squandered there can be invested into providing security here. |
