Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz announced today the release of a report on the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services’ (COPS Office) COPS Hiring Program (CHP). The CHP is a competitive award program that provides funding to local law enforcement agencies to hire or rehire career law enforcement officers to increase community policing capacity and crime prevention efforts.
The DOJ Office of the Inspector General (OIG) found that CHP recipients struggle to hire or retain officers, both of which are CHP program requirements. Additionally, some CHP applicants submitted inaccurate or insufficiently supported information in their applications, and the COPS Office’s system of data validation did not consistently identify and flag these errors for additional review.
The OIG’s findings included the following:
- The COPS Office Would Benefit From Evaluating the Current State of the CHP. Hiring community policing officers is the fundamental metric of success for the CHP, but 60 percent of CHP recipients who responded to an OIG survey indicated that hiring was a challenge. We also found that CHP applications have declined and that program costs have shifted to CHP recipients since FY 2012. We believe that it would be beneficial for the COPS Office to initiate a review of these issues and the potential impact they may have on the continued success of the CHP.
- The COPS Office Should Strengthen its Review of CHP Application Data. The OIG found that the COPS Office made FY 2021 and 2022 CHP awards in accordance with statutory requirements to ensure a national distribution of funds, and we did not identify material concerns with the COPS Office’s monitoring of CHP awards. However, some CHP applicants submitted inaccurate or insufficiently supported information, and the COPS Office’s automated system of data validation did not consistently identify and flag errors for review. Also, the COPS Office’s current data validation process does not identify erroneous information submitted by smaller agencies.
The DOJ OIG made four recommendations to improve the COPS Office’s management of the COPS Hiring Program. The COPS Office concurred with all four recommendations.