With crime on the rise, law enforcement fights $1.1 billion funding cut...

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As Violent Crimes Rise, Law Enforcement Officials Battle $1.1 Billion Funding Cut
by William Douglas

WASHINGTON - With murder and other violent crimes on the rise in many American cities, local law enforcement agencies and elected officials are battling to stave off $1.1 billion in federal funding cuts proposed by President Bush.

There's no question that violent crime is up sharply. Murders and non-negligent manslaughter increased 4.8 percent nationwide in 2005, the largest jump in 15 years, according to a preliminary FBI report in June. Murders were up over 2004 rates by 76 percent in Birmingham, Ala., 44.1 percent in Charlotte/Mecklenburg County, N.C., 42 percent in Kansas City, Mo., and 38 percent in Cleveland.

At the same time, the Bush administration is cutting grants for state and local crime-fighting programs on the grounds that they've outlived their usefulness or under-performed. One such program is COPS, a Clinton-era initiative originally designed to hire 100,000 police officers nationwide.

Like many local law enforcers and crime analysts, Greenville, S.C., Police Chief W. L. Williams disagrees with the Bush administration's reasoning. His department received a $4.47 million COPS grant in May to improve radio communications so that police, fire and other emergency agencies in four counties can speak to one another. That fixes a glaring weakness exposed by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"COPS is working," Williams said of his department's grant. "This is a huge step for law enforcement in the state of South Carolina and something that could not be done on our own."

That's a local example of a national problem. Former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean, who chaired the bipartisan commission on the Sept. 11 attacks and made recommendations to prevent more of them, called the federal government's failure to solve such communications problems among emergency-response agencies a "scandal." Last December, his panel gave the White House and Congress an "F" for failing to adequately address this issue.

The rest of the article is at: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0822-06.htm