Despite the fact that New York City remains the safest big city in America, according to the FBI’s preliminary Uniform Crime Report for 2008, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly are outraged that the Justice Department is not allocating the city COPS funding from the stimulus package.
A spokesperson for the mayor explained that the COPS funding, which is an acronym for Community-Oriented Policing Services, began in the early 1990s. It is a federal grant program to allow localities to hire more police officers.
New York City had been allocated different amounts every year – historically, seven percent – and, said the spokesperson, “This year, because of the stimulus package, there should be a lot of money for COPS grants.”
If the pattern had continued, he explained, the city would have received $70 million, but rather, it was announced that NYC would not be getting any funds.
“The decision to deny New York City funding from the COPS grant program is disappointing, to put it mildly,” said Bloomberg. “To punish our police department because they have driven down crime with fewer resources shows the backwards incentive system that is sometimes at work in Washington . . . The attacks on New York City were attacks on the nation and we should be receiving strong federal support for the NYPD to fight terrorism in the nation’s largest city.”
Kelly agreed, saying, “After two successful terrorist attacks at the heart of the nation’s financial center, there should be substantial and continuing federal support for the NYPD in its counterterrorism and conventional crime fighting missions. We shouldn’t be penalized for succeeding on both counts, and mainly on our own dime, over the last seven and a half years."
