[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 26 (Thursday, February 9, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2350-S2351]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
EXTENSION OF MORNING BUSINESS
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Thomas). The time for morning business has
expired.
Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I do not want to ask unanimous consent to
continue morning business if my friends are ready to go on the bill. I
do not want to do that. But, if they are in no hurry, I would ask
unanimous consent to continue for another 15 minutes.
Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, there others who are seeking time for
morning business, including myself.
How much more time does the Senator feel he needs?
Mr. BIDEN. About 15 minutes.
Mr. CRAIG. All right. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that we
be in morning business until 10:45 with 15 minutes allotted to the
Senator from Delaware and 15 minutes allotted to the Senator from North
Dakota, and the balance of the time for this side, until the hour of
10:45.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? Without objection, it is
so ordered.
The Senator from Delaware.
Mr. BIDEN. I thank my colleague from Idaho.
Mr. President, with the New York City community policing, since they
instituted community policing, murders have dropped 19 percent,
robberies have dropped 16 percent, burglaries went down 11 percent, and
auto thefts were reduced to 15 percent.
In Tampa, FL, police committed themselves to moving crack dealers off
the street corners and forged an unprecedented alliance with the
citizens of the community to achieve that. Through a combination of
standard buy-bust operations, new outreach to the community involvement
of other city agencies and local media, the dealers have been driven
off within a year and the streets within the targeted area returned to
normal.
In New Haven, CT, one of the most innovative police chiefs in the
Nation, Nick Pastore, with his aggressive community policing effort,
led to a 10-percent drop in serious crime in the year 1992, the last
time we have the figures.
Policing community techniques were introduced in the New York subway
system 4 years ago, and the results have been phenomenal. Robberies
have fallen by 52 percent. In the Inglewood section of Chicago,
community policing is credited with a 6-percent decrease in violent
crime last year.
The new anticrime law enacted last year targets $8.8 billion in funds
to State and local law enforcement to be used specifically to train and
hire 100,000 community police officers across the Nation. Like
community policing itself, this program works. Already, the Justice
Department has awarded almost 15,000 new officers to State and local
communities.
All of these are local officers with no Federal control, no Federal
mandate. These are local cops for which the Federal Government is
kicking in $70,000 per cop.
In short, in only the first 6 months following the passage of the new
crime law, almost 15,000 new police officers will be on the street. So
much for the critics who claim that the new crime bill would fund only
22,000 police officers in 6 years. We have almost 15,000 that will be
on the streets, new ones, in 6 months; not 22,000 in 6 years as our
critics say. In fact, the law will fund 15,000, as I said, in the first
6 months alone, and we will be well on the way by the time the first
year is over to surpassing the 20,000 mark.
The effectiveness of the cops program derives from its design. The
cops program is a result of setting a precise goal, and enacting in a
responsible program to achieve a precise goal. When he took office,
President Clinton called on us to put 100,000 more police on the
streets over the next 6 years.
To put it another way, we have roughly 530,000 local police officers
in all of America, State cops to town cops to county cops. At the end
of the process, there will be 630,000 cops on the streets of America.
Already, that number will be up by 15,000 at the end of the first 6
months.
So he asked us to put 100,000 cops on the street. We then designed a
program that funds that effort and that effort alone. The Federal
dollars were awarded for the sole purpose of hiring new police officers
so that in 6 year's time America will have 635,000 police doing
community policing.
The position of this program stands in stark contrast to the
Republicans' new law enforcement block grant which would spend roughly
the same amount of Federal funds--to be specific, $8.5 billion--without
guaranteeing a single, solitary additional cop back home. Read their
proposal. Money is sent, not like it is now directly to a police
department to hire a cop locally. Money will be sent to Governors back
in our home States. With that money the Governor, out of that $8.5
billion we are going to send to the Governors now--not to the police--
they will be able to hire or pay overtime to undefined law enforcement
officers, or to procure equipment, technology or other material that is
directly related to basic law enforcement functions, such as the
detection or investigation of crime or the prosecution of criminals.
That may sound fine on the surface. But let us look at it a little
bit closer. Let us call this what I call the first weakness of the
Republican change. I call it the officer loophole because the
Republicans do not define law enforcement officers as career officers
dedicated to enforcing the criminal laws, as it is defined in the Biden
crime bill. Indeed, the Republicans do not define law enforcement
officer at all in their new crime bill.
Let us call the second weakness what I call the equipment loophole.
The Republican proposal would fund any equipment or technology related
to law enforcement functions, and those functions are specifically
defined to include prosecution.
These two loopholes mean that the Governor of a State who will get
the money now--it will not go to your local police department. It is
the same old bureaucracy that is going to be set up. Right now all the
police department has to do, they do not have to go to get anybody's
permission. They can make an application. Once they check with their
local government, their local civilian officials and send an
application directly to the Attorney General of the United States, and
the Attorney General of the United States can send back directly the
money to hire those new local cops. But now we are going back to the
bad old days, which is the Governors sit there and say, This is what I
want to do with the money. Send me the money. I will take care of it.
The two loopholes I mentioned means that the State can spend all of
their money to hire prosecutors,
all their money to improve the court systems or anything related to
law enforcement. Arguably, the money could even be used to hire
officers to enforce the civil laws as well as the criminal laws in the
State. For example, the Governor could use the money to hire public
health officers; they could use the money to hire the public health
officers to inspect restaurants and businesses.
Equipment as defined by the Republicans could include not merely
police equipment, which the new anticrime law already grants a portion
of funds to provide for new equipment, but it could--in this case, they
could use this money, which was heretofore only to
[[Page S2351]] be used to hire a cop, to buy computers for prosecutors
or judges or telephone booths or lighting or whatever the Governor
decided would relate to law enforcement functions. And 100 percent of
the Federal funds could be used for this equipment, or to fund
prosecutors, or to pay judge's salaries, without one single penny
having to go to hire an additional cop.
I support many of these functions. In the crime bill, for example, we
provide for a significant amount of money to the States to hire State
judges. We put in money for new equipment. But we segregate, in the
present crime law, almost $9 billion. It says you must hire a sworn
officer, that is somebody who is a criminal law enforcement officer.
That is all you can do with the money now.
This new law proposed by the Republicans will, in fact, guarantee
that we will not get 100,000 cops on the street. I am opposed to
replacing the program that guarantees 100,000 new cops on our streets
with the proposal that could spend over $8 billion in Federal funds,
without putting any new cops anywhere.
The Republican proposal suffers from an additional fatal flaw. It
requires no fiscal accountability or responsibility. I find this
fascinating. They are talking about tightening the budget, tightening
spending. Here they are going to take over $8 billion, with no
accountability, and send it back to the States. Why do we not just have
plain old revenue sharing? Why call this a crime bill? The bill uses a
formula to simply hand out Federal funds to officials, with no strings
attached and no accountability. That sounds great, does it not?
Well, the anticrime law requires that States and localities match
Federal grants with their own money. And this match requirement is not
born out of a lack of generosity on the part of the author of the bill,
me or anybody else who voted for it. The offer of $8.8 billion in
Federal funds to assist what is purely a State and local function can
hardly be characterized as not being generous. No, the reason I wrote
in a match was to require accountability, a match required born out of
experience.
I started my career as a county councilman, and I know how local
officials work. God bless them, they have a tough job. We would sit
there in budget meetings when I was a county official, councilperson,
and somebody would say, well we are going to buy a new park, or do this
in the park, or we are going to add two more police, and I or somebody
else would say, how much is that going to cost? I am not exaggerating
when I say the answer would come back that it will not cost anything.
Wait a minute, you just said we are going to hire two new cops. They
said, that is Federal money. That is Federal money, and it is not going
to cost anything. Well, it is my tax dollars.
So I found when a county or city has to put up some money for a
program, they think twice about whether or not they really want it.
Remember the allegations in the old LEAA Program, where police
departments are out buying Dick Tracy wristwatches, purchasing riot
control gear in small towns that never even thought about a riot? In
the LEAA Program, we went a long way to begin to work toward using our
money wisely. We built in three key concepts. We targeted law
enforcement to aid specific programs; required a match of one State or
local dollar for every three Federal dollars that we spend, and
required extensive State plans to explain what they are going to use
the Federal dollars for. We do not demand that they do anything, except
tell us what they are going to use them for.
The resulting law was what we called the Byrne Grant Program, which
is a predecessor to this crime bill, a fiscally responsible, well-run
program that continues today. The same concept marks the essential
elements of the anticrime law for 100,000 cops. In fact, we even
improve the Byrne concept in one respect. We permit localities, not
just Governors, to apply directly for the funds to ensure that the
money gets where it is most needed.
I think my Republican colleagues should go back and look at the
experience of LEAA before they pursue their proposal of block grants
for police and any other purpose. Their proposal is an $8.5 billion
giveaway of Federal dollars with no specific goals, with loopholes, and
loose language that would permit every cent to be spent without any
increase in police on the streets to show for our investment at the end
of the 5 years.
In contrast, the anti-crime law enacted last year, which was
bipartisanly constructed in the first instance, builds on the LEAA
lessons. It sets specific goals, provides a simplified application,
requires accountability for evaluation and matching requirements. In
addition, the matching requirement is set up so the local share
increases from year to year. In this way, we ensure that local dollars
are to be used responsibly.
I see my time is coming to a close. Those who say, wait a minute now,
Biden, under your bill that is now law, you required the States to kick
in money. I say, yes, that is right. They say, well, in our bill we do
not. Well, I ask a rhetorical question. This bill they are going to
offer is a block grant for 5 years. Say they go out and hire cops for
the local communities with block grant money and we pay for all of it
for 5 years; what happens at the end of 5 years? The Federal Government
is guaranteeing that we are going to take over local law enforcement
costs for the rest of eternity? Is that what we are saying? No. In 5
years, the mayor has to go back to the taxpayers and say, hey, now we
have 50 cops on the street, 10 are being paid for by Federal dollars.
We no longer have those Federal dollars. Now I have to raise your taxes
or cut the 10 cops.
Is it not wiser to make that decision at the front end, where you
have to go to the voters or your community and ask, do we want more
cops? The Federal Government will give us $70,000 to start off here, to
keep this cop for 5 years, and we are going to have to kick in probably
$50,000 over that 5-year period. At the end of the process, we have to
pick it up. What do you want to do? I think it is time we asked
citizens to be as responsible as legislators should be and are not.
That is, if you want to have more cops, it costs money, flat out. It
costs money.
The local officials should have the guts to go to their constituency
and stop talking about how tough they are.
Mr. CRAIG addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho [Mr. Craig] is
recognized.
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