[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 9]
[House]
[Page 12400]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1030
                         PASS THE COPS PROGRAM

  (Mr. COHEN asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Mr. COHEN. Madam Speaker, I join my colleagues in asking that we pass 
the COPS Program. I started my career after law school as the attorney 
for the Memphis Police Department, and I learned then that patrol was 
the major deterrent to crime.
  When I campaigned this year in the City of Memphis and met with the 
Afro-American Police Association, they came to me and the thing they 
asked me to do was to get more COPS dollars, saying that community 
policing was an effective tool in the fight against crime; that it 
wasn't just arresting, but it was knowing people in the community and 
encouraging them to find ways to interrelate to the police and have a 
better attitude.
  By working with my colleagues on the other side of the aisle and 
Ranking Member Smith, we came up with an amendment that will be part of 
the bill that will give Iraqi and Afghanistan veterans priority in the 
COPS Program so that when we bring our troops home we can have them 
effectively police our neighborhoods, just as they have been policing 
the neighborhoods in Baghdad.
  We need policemen and cops on the streets in our hometowns, in 
Memphis, Tennessee, to fight crime. We need them home today in our 
towns, and not in Baghdad. The COPS Program will help.

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