PORK BARREL FOR POLICE
GAPAY, LES L.
PORK BARREL FOR POLICE LES L. GAPAY A major trend in the war against crime, financed by ever more millions of Federal dollars, is snowballing in the cities and states across the country without...
...The majors' organization pointed out, for example, that Miami, which had the highest crime rate in the country in 1970, had received no money from the state of Florida's LEAA kitty, through last fall...
...Many agencies, he said, were sitting on large sums of unexpended LEAA funds...
...Now he is director of the Police Foundation in Washington, which is studying various aspects of police operations...
...For one thing, a giant subsidy program, mainly to the police, is not what Congress intended when it created LEAA...
...LEAA funds can be used by police to pay for tuition for the school...
...Worse than that, the LEAA routinely funds—without question and on a large scale—unproven programs that it is still testing for effectiveness...
...Michael D. Maltz, an LEAA research official, wrote in a recent Police Chief magazine article that it is unclear how effective helicopters are in fighting crime...
...Funds could be used to create in every city which has minorities a police-community relations unit which would not only work but live in the ghetto neighborhoods to understand and deal more effectively with problems there...
...Conference of Mayors told the House committee that most LEAA grants have gone directly to states and that large cities have not received a just portion of the total...
...There is division within the LEAA itself on the funding...
...In addition, $9,000 above their salaries was paid to four of the state assistant attorneys general to prepare an Alabama law enforcement officer's handbook...
...He is worried about excessive police funding...
...The funds to police are continuing to skyrocket at the expense of the other criminal justice areas of courts and corrections...
...Some of them even use LEAA money to pay for their promotion costs...
...Juvenile offenders should have separate facilities from adult criminals in every city...
...The current fifty-fifty split between police and other justice areas is a "desirable spread," Coster believes...
...and Jefferson Parish, Louisiana...
...Since LEAA's responsibility is to improve the overall functioning of that system we intend to pay most of our attention—and to give most of LEAA's funds—to the police...
...One city, Kansas City, Missouri, recently doubled its fleet from three to six...
...Former policemen have started their own manufacturing or consulting firms to get in on the ground floor of the boom...
...Preliminary results do not show much effectiveness that a couple of extra police patrol cars could not provide for a fraction of the cost...
...LEAA officials estimate that almost eighty per cent of the agency's grants went to police areas in fiscal 1969 and have dropped to about fifty per cent now...
...The trouble is that both inside and outside law enforcement circles, officials have begun to question the effectiveness of much of the equipment that has been foisted on them in the last couple of years...
...Many of the companies have hired former lawmen as super-salesmen for their hardware...
...One such example is helicopters...
...LEAA officials today admit that too much was expended in the first years of the program for riot control equipment for police...
...Instead of funding tanks, guns, and gas for police, the bulk of the LEAA money could go into areas such as the training of police in the social problems which lead to crime...
...The police of Mount Vernon, New York, will discover that their new night-vision cameras with zoom lenses can spot not only black cats on an unlit street, but black citizens at home as well...
...Clearly, a better alternative is necessary...
...Pomona, California...
...Mostly because of LEAA funding (almost any city can get a grant for a police helicopter), the number of state and local law enforcement agencies with helicopters has jumped to 150, up from ninety in the past six years...
...Many new companies, including money-hungry firms in the dwindling defense industry, have entered the field, and existing suppliers have greatly broadened their lines...
...Since the LEAA was set up by Congress under the Safe Streets Act of 1968, the principal result has not been a reduction in crime but the proliferation of crime-fighting equipment into a fast-growing industry...
...A police chiefs association study found that some police helmets gave protection from flying objects but ignited at the touch of a cigarette...
...Halfway houses for parolees should be standard in each large community...
...A current study by the organization disclosed that some bullet-proof vests apparently are not as bullet-proof as the manufacturers claim...
...As it is, however, the LEAA is doing this indirectly by allocating a large percentage of the funds for police equipment and a smaller percentage for areas like court reform and corrections...
...In convention hospitality suites, salesmen (some of whom are former law enforcement officers) circulate among police officials and tout the latest developments from computers to night-vision scopes to cigars rigged with radio transmitters...
...The U.S...
...f In Kettering, Ohio, a small Dayton suburb, the police have bought two helicopters to keep an aerial watch on the town...
...Leonard defends the agency, claiming that any misuse of funds has been minimal...
...In some areas, there may be short-term statistical gains against crime as a result of added equipment or manpower that LEAA provides...
...Some critics of police use of helicopters say the matter could become a political issue, especially if they are equipped with television cameras, as some are...
...Conference of Mayors also offers some realistic suggestions...
...Some police officials are concerned that nightsticks meant to disable, kill instead, and that most bomb-handling devices cannot smother anything but small pipe bombs...
...More LEAA funds could go into the area of court reorganization, to determine the causes of court delays and recommend ways to reduce them...
...Of those totals, LEAA's grants to police, courts, and corrections have risen from $29 million in fiscal 1969 to $600 million for fiscal 1972...
...Les L. Gapay, staff writer for a major national daily, was formerly on the staff of Congressional Quarterly in Washington...
...But the agency, as Rogovin contends, remains no more than a giant subsidy program...
...But the biggest problem is that of the LEAA funds that have been spent since 1968, most of the money has gone for purely police purposes...
...While continuing the nationwide funding in huge amounts, the LEAA is making its own study of helicopter effectiveness in combating crime...
...Compliance with the standards will be voluntary...
...A Louisiana official, talking of "Big Bertha," says defensively that "Ramsey Clark signed the grant himself...
...Of the police total, about sixty per cent ($14 million) was used for equipment purchases in 1969, and about forty per cent (about $120 million) will be used for equipment in 1972...
...Helicopter companies, losing out on the Vietnam market as the war winds down, boast of the effectiveness of their craft in helping to cut crime and note instances of crooks actually being caught after being spotted from the air...
...His articles have appeared in The Nation and The New Republic...
...the company points this out in brochures advertising the academy...
...The U.S...
...As it is, LEAA has not proven it contributes to controlling crime...
...Charles H. Rogovin resigned last year as LEAA administrator in a dispute over this authority...
...An official of the Federal General Accounting Office charged that most of the $860 million Congress appropriated over the last three years for the LEAA did not even reach its target...
...Most of the money is given in blocs to states...
...Each craft is complete with radio, searchlights, siren, and public address system...
...He said political considerations dominated the selection of consultants, planners, and vendors of goods and services, and influenced the distribution of grants...
...As a result, the manufacturers are attempting to promote their use in police operations...
...Manufacturers set up elaborate displays of equipment at police conventions and offer a hard sell...
...Helicopter companies park their craft outside some law enforcement convention halls and give free rides to prospective customers...
...Manufacturers' promotion is a big part of the whole police equipment business...
...Once found mainly on big-city police forces, helicopters are now fighting crime in towns like Topeka, Kansas...
...The troopers refer to it affectionately as "Big Bertha...
...Many of them believe it would have been wiser to spend more of the Federal funds on courts, correction systems, and social programs to prevent crime...
...As Rogovin has said, what the LEAA needs to do is to provide leadership in this area and develop some comprehensive planning in the fields of police work, courts, and correctional reform, rather than merely handing out money willy-nilly...
...Thus, although the percentage for the police share of the funds is dropping, the dollar total still is skyrocketing...
...The heavy emphasis on police, the National Urban Coalition warned in a study, "could cause a serious dislocation in the entire system of criminal justice...
...PORK BARREL FOR POLICE LES L. GAPAY A major trend in the war against crime, financed by ever more millions of Federal dollars, is snowballing in the cities and states across the country without much public notice...
...For example, Smith & Wesson, the gun and riot-control equipment maker, operates a police academy to train public and industrial police in the use of various types of equipment...
...Funds could be used to study alternatives to jailing for first or minor offenders...
...He suggested that LEAA funds be frozen until the program is revamped...
...He contended that the helicopter is the "post-computer status symbol for some police departments," adding that manufacturers are active in looking for non-military markets...
...Funds could be used to set up in-prison lawyers and law libraries for inmates...
...It was one of the first Federal grants to police under the LEAA...
...Much of the blame lies with the LEAA, which has doled out money for new equipment with almost no questions asked...
...The chairman of the advisory planning board of one area was paid as "a regional field coordinator" while retaining his full-time job as mayor of Enterprise, Alabama...
...At the House hearing, the attorney general of Alabama, William J. Baxley, called the LEAA state program "the biggest pork barrel of them all...
...And we are seeing the same phenomena as we had in the defense and aerospace areas," he adds, pointing to the waste of funds on programs such as police helicopters for criminal patrols which have yet to be proven effective...
...Others don't agree...
...f In one small rural area in Ohio, the police last year spent $230,000 for patrol cars, guns, uniforms, gas masks, and a myriad of riot control equipment, even though the area has never had a riot...
...The police have a video-tape camera they can take aloft in the choppers if they want to record a capture, or possibly even a crime, on film...
...The great demand for the helicopters has spurred the International Association of Chiefs of Police to open a helicopter training school in Alabama, funded by an LEAA grant...
...It proposes Federal guidelines so that high crime areas will receive an adequate share of a state's funds...
...LEAA has always considered the police to be the major part of the criminal justice system," Coster wrote in an article last spring in Police Chief magazine...
...LEAA appropriations by Congress have shot up faster than for any other agency—from $63 million in fiscal 1969 (its first year) to $699 million for fiscal 1972...
...Says Rogovin: "The public's lack of interest in improving just those parts of the criminal justice system in which real impact on crime might be made—for example, corrections—has discouraged the kind of investment in the correctional system which might, in the long run, make a real difference...
...Court workloads could be eased by taking traffic cases away from judges and setting up a separate non-criminal system within local bureaucracies to deal with them...
...Instead of spending money for more guns and tear gas for prison guards, LEAA funds on a massive scale could be used to expand rehabilitation programs and facilities in prisons...
...The manufacturer boasts that at night the cameras can "spot a black cat walking on an unlit street...
...The police bought the frame and engine for the truck and then they themselves constructed the heavily armored truck body...
...In Mount Vernon, New York, police use a closed-circuit television system to survey the town's main business district day and night...
...The administrative structure, originally operating with three men as administrators, has been abolished, and former Assistant Attorney General Jerris Leonard is its new head...
...The craft cost from $40,000 to $150,000 each...
...Thus: f In Louisiana the state police on occasion roll out what they call their riot truck, completely equipped with peepholes for guns and a trap door in the floor for a quick exit if needed...
...At a Congressional hearing on the LEAA, Rogovin testified that the Federal agency has almost no direction or goals, fails to provide leadership to the state and local agencies it funds, and is in effect only "a giant subsidy program...
...Part of the problem is that the state agencies which administer the LEAA funds succumb to public law-and-order pressures by allocating funds for state and local projects which can be readily visible—such as riot control equipment, guns, and vehicles...
...the 'copters and cameras can invade a citizen's privacy...
...That 1968 grant, authorized by the then Attorney General, was for $5,344.58 to the Louisiana state police for "partial fabrication" of the riot truck, called a tank by some state residents...
...The two Kettering helicopters were purchased by LEAA funds with matching local money as a pilot program for the state of Ohio...
...It has been used, among other occasions, during an assault on a Black Panther headquarters...
...Tampa, Florida...
...But, LEAA's director Leonard says he fears a program in which the Federal Government would direct states and cities how to use their funds...
...LEAA claims it is trying to iron out some of its administrative problems...
...that LEAA money be granted directly to large cities, and that requirements for local matching funds be abolished to insure that cities with financial crises can participate...
...The few studies that have been made of all this new equipment for which the LEAA continues to give out grants have not been especially positive...
...Apparently, police chiefs and other local officials still have that same attitude...
...Many prisons' rehabilitation programs consist of the manufacture of license plates...
...Unless some basic changes are made in the LEAA program, the pork barrel approach will not only continue, but police eventually will patrol above every city with helicopters equipped with closed circuit television to see into every backyard and through every window...
...Funds could be used to set up systems separate from the current court procedures to deal with so-called victimless crimes such as prostitution and drunkenness...
...Patrol helicopters fly mainly over high crime areas, many of them black ghettos...
...All of this fancy crime-fighting equipment was financed by the Federal Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, an arm of the Justice Department which gives grants to local police, courts, and correction agencies as part of its war on crime...
...He told his subordinates by telephone to "take anything you can get...
...Coster recalls that as police chief he was out of Bloomington the day the word arrived from Washington in 1968 that police departments could apply for grants for equipment...
...There are a lot of holes in the hardware area," admits Clarence Coster, the agency's associate director and former police chief of Bloomington, Minnesota...
...Meanwhile, the 40,000 or more law enforcement agencies in the country with total budgets of about $4.4 billion a year will continue to spend almost $700 million annually (including LEAA funds) on equipment as if this were an answer to the causes of crime...
...There are other types of heavy promotion...
...Most of the grants to police have added up to a blank check for unproven, fancy equipment and uniforms...
...work release projects should be made a standard item in all jails and prisons...
...Alcoholics could be sent to treatment centers instead of jails...
...There is a lot of money coming into the criminal justice area," he says...
...To set some standards, the LEAA recently began funding a study by the Bureau of Standards, but it will take about two years before results are available on all the equipment on the market...
...But in the long run, what is needed is an extensive overhaul of the criminal justice system as it exists...
...In recent House testimony on LEAA funding, Alabama's state auditor said that one $200,000 LEAA grant was used to provide university education for sons and friends of high-ranking officials in the state Department of Public Safety...
Vol. 36 • March 1972 • No. 3
