WHY COPS MATTER

I recently met with Central Florida's chiefs of police and local
sheriffs for a frank discussion on our area's skyrocketing murder rate
and ongoing crime problem.

That problem is all over the evening news. The murder rate in Orlando
is up 122 percent, from 22 in 2005 to 49 homicides last year, and 73
percent of those murders are drug related. Robberies in unincorporated
Orange County are up 86 percent.

Whether elected or appointed, Republican, Democrat or Independent, all
of our local police chiefs and sheriffs agree we need more cops on the
street.

In January, I teamed up with New York City Congressman Anthony Weiner,
a Democrat from New York, and circulated a letter to my colleagues in
the U.S. House of Representatives, urging them to join us in pushing
for new funding for the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS)
program.

After reading the signatures of the 101 U.S. House members who signed
our letter, House Appropriations Committee leaders agreed to our
request and included $70 million in new funding that just passed both
chambers of Congress.

That $70 million translates into 900 new cops. It's the first new-hire
money for the program since 2004

The COPS program started in 1994 and is responsible for putting
120,000 cops on the street nationwide, including 774 cops in Central
Florida.

The program is simple. Once a local law-enforcement agency is approved
for a COPS grant, the federal government picks up the tab for new
police officers or sheriff's deputies for three years. The local
agency is then required to cover the full cost for at least one year.

A nonpartisan Government Accountability Office study concluded that
the decline in the number of violent crimes from 1994 to 2000 was
associated with increases in the number of cops on the street funded
by the COPS program.

Former Attorney General John Ashcroft correctly described the COPS
program as a "miraculous sort of success." In fact, more than 95
percent of law-enforcement officers hired by a COPS grant are still on
the street today. That makes COPS one of the most successful programs
in the history of the federal government.

So why did COPS fall out of favor in Washington?

Many of my Republican colleagues argued that the goal of the COPS
program was to put 100,000 new officers on the street, and that goal
was accomplished. But frankly, many of them didn't like the fact that
President Clinton came up with the idea.

Thank goodness Mr. Clinton didn't invent the light bulb, or I'd be
writing this column in the dark.

In its heyday during the 1990s, the COPS program was funded at $1
billion a year.

Tune in tonight. A few minutes spent watching the evening news tells
you it's time to bring COPS back.

Congressman Ric Keller, an Orlando Republican, serves on the House
Judiciary Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives.