Grant to bolster ranks of Pittsburgh police

By Brian Bowling
The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

PITTSBURGH — Hiring more cops doesn't guarantee community policing, but it's a prerequisite, said Pittsburgh police Chief Cameron McLay.

"If you keep a police department staffed at the level they need to respond to 911 calls, that's all you're going to get," he said.

Pittsburgh was one of relatively few police departments receiving grants in 2014 from a 1994 federal program set up to help cities implement community policing. Officials say community policing promotes collaboration between police and the community to prevent and solve crime and other public safety issues.

The city's budget doesn't allow the department to hire the number of officers it needs to implement community policing, McLay said. The $1.8 million grant will pay for 15 new officers this year and bring the city's force to more than 900 people for the first time since 2004.

"I think it's absolutely worthwhile," McLay said. "Community-oriented policing is not just a program, it's not just a group of officers you put out there, it's a philosophy."

Out of the 1,296 agencies that applied for funding last year, 215 won grants. The $123 million funded 944 positions of the 3,469 positions departments requested. The applicants said they would have sought funding for 8,069 positions but the program limits the amount they can request.

When Congress established it, the Community Oriented Policing Services handed out about $1 billion a year in hiring grants, with a goal of putting 100,000 more officers on American streets.

It funded other projects, such as technology improvements intended to give officers more street time and less time filling out paperwork.

Then in 2000, Congress cut the hiring grants to $481 million and funding dwindled to zero by 2006. In 2008, Congress put $20 million into the grant program and since then funding has fluctuated.

Last year, the program handed out $124 million for hiring officers. Congress earmarked $134.5 million for the hiring program in 2015.

The COPS program requires the local department to cover part of the cost. Pittsburgh estimated the total cost for 15 positions for three years at $2.97 million; the city will provide $1.1 million.

The Justice Department gave Pittsburgh's application a final score of 133.7. Half the score is based on a community's crime rate and fiscal need. The other half is based on its community policing plan.

The scores ranged from 206.67 for Moore, Okla., to 47.98 for Struthers, Ohio.

Moon, at 114.94, was one of the higher scoring Pennsylvania communities that didn't receive money.

Moon police Chief Leo McCarthy said the grant would have paid for two school resource officers. Since the department didn't get the money, it's working with the school district to split the cost to pay for one officer.

Since Moon has substantial resources and relatively low crime rates, he doesn't fault the Justice Department for sending the money elsewhere.

"I have written four COPS grants in the past. This is the first one I was not successful on," he said.

The grants helped Moon add 14 police officers, who remain on the force, and enabled it to have police spend more time in communities, he said.

Part of the program's funding problems have come from departments using grants to replace local funding, rather than to augment it, he said.

"You can't just use all these grants as a crutch and not budget," McCarthy said.

As a grant writer and a taxpayer, he agrees with critics who contend the money should be spent carefully.

"I like the program, but it's not perfect," McCarthy said.

Another reason for the decline in the program has been a shift in Washington from community policing to anti-terrorism following 9/11, McLay said. Though the two functions aren't inherently incompatible, the mindset of police departments also shifted, he said.

"Instead of seeing ourselves as members of the community, protecting the community, we now see ourselves as extensions of the government, looking for terrorists among our citizens," McLay said.

The 2014 grant to hire 15 officers is one step toward changing that, he said. As proposed, the officers would have all gone to Zone 5 in the city's East End.

His commanders are working on a plan that's more flexible than "just taking the first 15 cops out of the academy and dropping them into Zone 5," he said.

The city had placed 13 new officers in Zone 5, reassigning them from other areas to help patrol the higher-crime neighborhoods, but that caused gaps in policing other parts of the city, McLay said. They were redeployed last fall to their original assignments, he said.

Though Homewood remains a key focus, violent crime has escalated in other parts of the city that need beat cops, such as the North Side, he said.

"I'm asking them to not simply make it a Homewood plan," he said.

The COPS program's regulations capped Pittsburgh's request at 15 positions. The city's application, made before McLay became chief last fall, said Pittsburgh wouldn't have asked for more officers even if the cap were lifted.

McLay said he can't explain that, but a workload study estimating how many officers the city needs for an effective community policing program probably will have a higher number.

"I got a hunch," he said.

Copyright 2015 The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review