Legislation to Fund COPS Program Passes Senate

Sen. Biden’s amendment to the FY 2008 Budget Resolution to fully fund the successful COPS program passed the Senate with broad, bi-partisan support. This will provide state and local law enforcement agencies with critical resources to hire community policing and school resource officers, and to purchase new technologies to aid law enforcement in preventing and responding to acts of crime and terrorism.

“Crime isn’t a Democratic or a Republican issue – it affects all of us,” says Sen. Joe Biden. “And I’m very glad my colleagues from both sides of the aisle stood with me today to give our law enforcement officers the tools and resources they need to keep our neighborhoods safe.”

Senator Biden is the author of the 1994 Crime Law that is widely credited with helping to create the lowest crime rates in decades, and has been pushing to get this legislation passed, particularly in light of recent FBI statistics that show a steady increase in violent crime. Last summer the FBI released its 2005 Uniform Crime Reports and found that murders were up 3.4%.

Also, the Police Executive Research Forum recently released an updated examination of crime numbers from 56 cities around the country. They examined the two-year trends and found that total homicides were 10.6% higher in 2006 than they were in 2004. Homicide rates in major cities across America were even higher according to the study, which reported 20% increases in Baltimore, Charlotte, Charleston, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Newark, and Seattle, among others.

“I have been fighting for the COPS program for years because of its proven ability to reduce crime. In 1994 when we passed the Crime Bill, we had historically high rates of violent crimes. But because we put more cops on the streets, we were able to reduce these crimes to the lowest levels in a generation,” adds Sen. Biden.