The Clinton Administration's Law Enforcement Strategy:

U.S. Department of Justice

The Clinton Administration’s Law

Enforcement Strategy:

Combating Crime with Community

Policing and Community Prosecution

Taking Back Our Neighborhoods

One Block at a Time

March 1999

Executive Summary

“We have seen the impact of more police. We've seen the impact of the prevention programs; the

penalties; the efforts to get guns out of the hands of criminals. And we've seen greater peace of mind

coming, probably more than anything else, from the presence of the police on the street, in the neigh -

borhood, in a preventive, cooperative fashion.”

– President Clinton

January 14, 1999

President Clinton and Attorney General Reno, working with state, local and tribal law enforcement officials and others,

have launched an unprecedented effort to help America’s communities fight crime. Over the course of the past six years,

the

Clinton

Administration has worked to unite federal, state, tribal and local crime-control efforts, direct new resources

into local efforts for crime fighting and crime prevention, and work hand in hand with local law enforcement and local

communities. Six years into this strategy, crime has dropped to its lowest level in a quarter of a century.

Community policing has been at the core of this effort and the Administration has worked quickly and effectively to

fund community police officers, training, technical assistance and other support for community policing initiatives

nationwide. To date, the Administration has paid for more than 92,000 new police officers and expects to meet the goal

of funding 100,000 new police officers ahead of schedule and under budget. Community police officers are now at work

in communities across the country making America’s streets and neighborhoods safer. Police, residents and community

leaders in rural and urban areas alike credit community police strategies with success in reducing crime and improving

safety on the streets.

The success of community policing is an important milestone in the Administration’s deployment of its comprehen-

sive community crime control strategy. Two key steps lie ahead to meet the difficult challenges that crime and violence

continue to pose in many communities.

First, the Clinton Administration proposes a 21st Century Policing Initiative to add to community police forces, par-

ticularly in high crime areas, and to provide police with new technologies, equipment and information to fight crime on

the front lines.

Second, the Administration proposes to increase the number of prosecutors to help implement effective community

prosecution strategies that complement the work of community police officers. Community prosecution is already in use

in many neighborhoods around the country to strategically stamp out persistent problems that give rise to ongoing crime.

Community prosecutors work directly with community groups, strategically attack crime problems in the community and

support community law enforcement’s zero tolerance policies by prosecuting crimes they might not otherwise prosecute.

Now, with funding for up to 1000 new prosecutors each year for five years, communities will be able to use the powerful

tool of community prosecution to control and prevent crime.

Tremendous progress has been made in the fight against crime and violence. At the same time, many communities

still need additional resources to break the hold of gangs, illegal drug and gun trafficking, and violence. The

Clinton

Administration has laid the groundwork for a strong and effective community crime control strategy with community

policing and strong federal, state, and local partnerships to fight crime. Now, as the goal of a safer America is within

reach, it is essential to build on this effective strategy with stronger community policing, effective community

prosecution, and continued and reinforced commitment to work with our communities to fight crime.

resident Clinton, Attorney General Janet Reno

and others have led a historic effort to reduce

crime in our nation's communities. With funding

for 100,000 new community police officers, tougher

punishment for violent offenders, the Brady Act and

other laws to keep guns out of the hands of criminals,

the Violence Against Women Act, crime prevention

programs for our youth, and an unprecedented drive to

join the forces of federal, state, and local and tribal law

enforcement, the Administration's crime program is

proving effective. Crime rates have dropped to their

lowest level in 25 years.

A basic building block of the Administration’s

comprehensive community law enforcement strategy is

community policing. In just four and a half years, the

Administration has provided more than 11,000 agencies

with money for more than 92,000 new police officers

and is close to meeting the goal of funding 100,000 new

police officers ahead of schedule and under budget.

Across the country, an expanded number of community

police officers have been working together with block

watches, neighborhood patrols, high school guidance

counselors, probation and parole officers, religious

groups, and local businesses to take back the streets

from violent street gangs and drug dealers. Families

across America are safer in their homes and neighbor-

hoods.

With a strong community policing structure now in

place, the federal government is ready to take two

important next steps to advance our community crime

control strategy.

First, President Clinton and Vice President Gore are

committed to strengthening the community policing

program. Communities need more than a large number

of police officers; they need officers with additional

training, tools, and technologies to fight crime in the

21st century. The Clinton Administration has proposed

a new program, the 21st Century Policing Initiative, to

help communities meet this goal.

Second, with thousands of new police officers in

our neighborhoods and a new and important role estab-

lished for police in the community, it is time to bring

other key crime fighters into this new strategy. The

police and the community have made tremendous

progress working together. Now it is time to put more

prosecutors in the neighborhoods as part of our commu-

nity crime control strategy. The Clinton Administration

has proposed a new program to help communities

nationwide hire up to 1000 new prosecutors each year

for five years to implement community prosecution

strategies.

Stage I: Community Policing

Over the past two decades, forward-looking police

chiefs have built on ideas of criminal justice researchers

and policy makers, and the chiefs’ own experiences, to

develop a new approach to fighting crime in American

communities. These police chiefs recognized that when

police are isolated from the community they serve –

operating from the precinct station house or the patrol

car – they cannot make adequate gains in the fight

against crime. These chiefs came up with a new strategy

for law enforcement: community policing. Community

policing makes our communities safer by changing the

way police do business.

This is how community policing works:

• Community police officers really get to know the

community. They know the residents and business

people in the community, the bad guys (the drug pushers

and users, unlawful users and sellers of firearms, and

unlawful sellers and drinkers of alcohol, purse snatch-

ers, car thieves, gang leaders and others creating or

looking for trouble), and the good guys (members of

block and neighborhood associations, religious leaders,

drug and alcohol counselors, school guidance coun-

selors, youth mentors, judges and court personnel, pro-

bation and parole officers).

• Community policing officers use the new relationships

they develop in the community to stay ahead of crime

problems. They walk the beat, meet with neighborhood

watch organizations, handle citizen complaints, enforce

laws against prostitution, littering, vandalism, and

intoxication and address community concerns about

social disorder. Community police officers do not wait

until an abandoned home or business becomes a haven

for illegal drug, alcohol or firearms sales. Rather, they

work with the neighborhood and community groups to

either restore the property to some constructive commu-

nity use or level it to prevent a problem from develop-

ing or festering – and the mere presence of the commu-

nity police officer on the street deters crime.

• Community police help fight the fear of crime. We all

know that when residents are afraid to leave their

homes, the streets are available to drug dealers, gangs

and other criminals. In some ways, fear of crime can

undermine a community as badly as crime itself.

Community police officers create a sense of security by

being proactive and seeking the input of residents.

When citizens can communicate their fears to law

enforcement, police can proactively address the causes

of those fears.

• Community policing enlists residents in the fight

against crime. Neighborhood block watches, communi-

ty groups, teachers, local businesses and residents work

with police to identify and solve the problems in their

community. With the renewed presence of police and

the strong support of the community,

violent street gangs

and drug dealers can no longer control

corners, streets,

blocks and parks. The Administration’s leadership is

making this partnership a reality across the nation.

Laying the Foundation for Community

Policing Programs Nationwide

President Clinton came to office committed to

bringing community policing, and the neighborhood

revitalization that this crime strategy fosters, to commu-

nities nationwide. He proposed to fund 100,000 new

community police officers around the country and the

Administration expects to meet this goal by the end of

this fiscal year.

Safer Streets through Community Policing:

There have been six major grant programs for community

policing:

• PHSP – Through the Police Hiring Supplement

Program, DOJ awarded $150 million to 250 agencies,

demonstrating the need and opportunity to fund 100,000

police officers.

• COPS Phase I – Building on PHSP grant applications,

$200 million was awarded to 392 state, municipal,

county, and tribal enforcement agencies to hire more

than 2,600 additional officers and deputies.

• COPS AHEAD – Nearly $290 million in grants were

awarded to policing agencies serving communities with

more than 50,000 people to hire more than 4,000

additional community policing officers. To get police on

the streets faster, this program allowed interested

agencies recruit and hire new officers before they

received their grants.

• COPS FAST – This program streamlined the grant

application process for policing agencies serving

populations below 50,000. With a one-page application

form, it did away with bureaucratic paperwork and

provided over $404 million in grants to hire more than

6,200 community police officers and deputies.

• COPS UHP – The Universal Hiring Program expands

the hiring initiatives to transit, campus, park police,

agencies serving other special jurisdictions and commu-

nities without a police force. To date, over $4.2 billion

in grants have been awarded under UHP, paying for

more than 57,000 community policing officers and

deputies in communities across America.

• COPS MORE – This program will cut down on the

amount of paperwork and administrative tasks per-

formed

by veteran, trained officers so that they can

spend more time on the street and in America’s neigh-

borhoods. By providing money for new technologies

and equipment, such as mobile laptop computers, or to

hire civilians in administrative and support jobs, COPS

MORE put more officers on the beat. COPS has pro-

vided

over $775 million to more than 3,000 agencies

for the redeployment of more than 35,000 officers and

deputies.

Key Milestones in the Community Policing

Program:

• On July 2, 1993, President Clinton signed the 1993

Supplemental Appropriations Act which provided

$150 million for the Police Hiring Supplement

Program. This program made 250 awards to help

hire or rehire 2,023 law enforcement officers. The

Department of Justice was flooded with requests

from police departments interested in participating

in the program and could only fund one in ten grant

applications. The interest in the program demon-

strated the need for a much broader national effort.

• Congress passed the Violent Crime Control and

Law Enforcement Act (“the Crime Act”) in 1994

and authorized $8.8 billion over six years to fund

the 100,000 officers and support community

policing nationwide.

• Attorney General Janet Reno created the Office of

Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) in

the Department of Justice. The COPS Office has

provided money to over 11,000 communities to hire

community police officers, bringing the added

power of community policing to many of them for

the first time. Community police officers now

serve more than 88% of Americans nationwide.

• The Clinton Administration’s pledge to enable the

nation’s 19,000 law enforcement agencies to place

100,000 officers on the street has already allowed

local police forces to recruit, hire, train and deploy

to the streets over 46,000 new officers.

• By the end of FY 1999, the Clinton Administration

expects to fund the 100,000th community police

officer. These community police officers will have

increased the nation's police forces by about 18%

from 1994.

Placing Community Police Officers

on the Nation’s Streets

The idea of putting 100,000 new community police

officers on the street was visionary; the job of doing it

has been challenging. The Department of Justice has

met this challenge, reinventing the grant funding

process and putting police on the streets as soon as pos-

sible. By February 1999, the Department off Justice had

provided more than $5 billion in funding to police

departments for community policing.

Within weeks of the 1994 Crime Act’s passage, the

Department of Justice provided $200 million in com-

munity policing grants to 392 state, municipal, county,

and tribal enforcement agencies . These grants paid for

more than 2,600 additional officers and deputies for

those agencies.

Next, the Department of Justice cut through bureau-

cracy by having larger communities start recruiting and

hiring new officers while their grant applications were

being processed. The Department also developed a

clear, straightforward one-page application form for

smaller communities. To date, these smaller communi-

ties have received funding for more than 10,000 com-

munity police officers, and have not had to expend

resources on bureaucratic paperwork.

Hiring new police was just the first challenge. The

Department of Justice has worked closely with police

and sheriffs departments across the country to provide

A Dramatic Impact:

New COPS Officer Funded in America’s Biggest Cities

CITY NEW POLICE

NewYork City 6,517

Los Angeles 3,731

Chicago 1,212

Miami 1,184

San Diego 996

Houston 908

Philadelphia 834

District of Columbia 782

Oakland 685

Total Population Served by top 10 cities:

21,565,000, as of March, 1999.

the necessary training and technical assistance as they

bring on new officers in order to develop effective com-

munity police programs. The Department of Justice

helps local law enforcement agencies transition into

community policing, target specific crimes, work in

partnership with their communities, develop community

support for new policing strategies, and deploy new

strategies to target youth firearms violence, school vio-

lence, gangs, domestic violence and neighborhood-spe-

cific crime problems.

Finally, through COPS MORE, the Department of

Justice has paid to move 17,000 additional officers from

administrative tasks to the street. By paying for new

equipment, such as mobile laptop computers, and for

civilians to do administrative and support tasks, this

innovative program is a fast and efficient way to put

experienced officers into their communities where they

are needed most.

Community Policing:

A Record of Success

There is already tremendous support across the

country for the Administration's community policing

initiative. The Department of Justice is working with

communities to help identify what works, what does not

work, and to help strengthen community policing pro-

grams across the country. Ongoing evaluation of this

initiative has shown that communities are now changing

the way they approach their crime problems. Already,

police, public officials and community residents credit

the program with helping to reduce crime and rebuild

communities in cities, counties and towns across the

United States:

High Praise for Community Policing

“I have to believe our drop in crime [49 percent

since 1992] is almost totally due to neighborhood

policing.”

– Chief Thomas Windham, Fort Worth, Texas.

“We reduced our crime over 22%. It is my true

feeling that we could not have accomplished that with-

out our community policing effort and COPS FAST

Program.”

– Police Director Thomas R. Maltese, North

Brunswick, New Jersey.

“The combination of uniform and civilian

personnel has lowered crime 48%.”

– Chief Rick L. Brown, Meredosia, Illinois.

“I credit neighborhood, community and problem-

solving policing strategies for the positive impact on

Miami and crime in this area. These strategies . . . are

largely responsible for our success.”

– Chief Donald Warshaw, Miami Florida.

“There used to be shootings here every day, and

you couldn’t go outside because of the gunfights . . .

The residents would be too frightened. Not now.”

– Minerva Armenta, 23-year resident of Orange

County, California.

Officers Funded in Select Rural

Communities

CITY NEW POLICE

Mississippi 2,991

Kentucky 1,034

Oklahoma 812

Kansas 668

New Mexico 609

West Virginia 568

Iowa 546

Alaska 239

March 1999

Stage II: The 21st Century Policing

Initiative and Community Prosecution

Programs

The Clinton Administration has laid a strong foun-

dation for a community crime control strategy through

community policing. With the groundwork laid, the

Administration is prepared to strengthen the community

policing program, build prosecutorial resources and

deploy effective community prosecution strategies.

The 21st Century Policing Initiative

With substantial new funding for community

police, the Administration has proposed a 21st Century

Policing Initiative to strengthen community police

forces and provide police with new technologies, equip-

ment and strategies to control crime in the 21st Century.

• Over the next five years, the proposed 21st Century

Policing Initiative will fund 30,000 to 50,000 new

community police to target high crime areas.

• The 21st Century Policing Initiative makes critical

improvements in radio technologies so that federal,

state, tribal and local law enforcement agencies can

communicate on the same frequencies. This will also

enhance their use of a newly developed system that

allows officers using hand-held units to enter and

receive data and images electronically right at the scene

of a crime.

• The 21st Century Policing Initiative includes fund-

ing to give police access to technology and the informa-

tion networks to identify suspects, locate fugitives, track

illegal gang activity, and solve crimes. These essential

crime-fighting technologies include crime mapping and

forecasting technologies, improved laboratory tech-

niques, such as DNA analysis, and upgraded criminal

history records and identification record systems.

• The 21st Century Policing Initiative includes essen-

tial resources to enhance the safety of law enforcement

officers. Police officers risk their lives on the line every

day to protect our communities. The Initiative continues

a vital program that provides bulletproof vests to state,

local and tribal governments for use by law enforce-

ment officers.

• The 21st Century Policing Initiative extends part-

nerships among law enforcement agencies, community

organizations and government agencies. With new fund-

ing, community partners can work together to tackle

juvenile crime, seniors can be recruited to help

police,

neighborhood residents can learn problem-solving

skills,

and police can work with corrections officials

to oversee

the reentry of ex-offenders into the community.

Funding the 21st Century Policing Initiative:

The President’s budget contains $350 million to help state,

tribal and local law enforcement agencies tap into new tech-

nologies that will allow them to fight crime more effectively.

The program has three elements:

• $100 million to fund a Crime Analysis Program for

research, technical assistance, and evaluation, including the

very useful crime analysis tool called computerized crime

mapping, allowing officers to pinpoint times and places

where crime “hot spots” can be attacked.

• $125 million to improve police communications:

– making state and local public safety wireless

communications systems compatible with federal law

enforcement radio systems;

– building a nationwide network of criminal justice

information systems, giving state and local authorities

immediate access to information needed to help them on

the job;

– deploying a computerized system so that officers can

enter data electronically at the scene of a crime, accident,

or traffic stop, and receive responses without returning

to their vehicles.

• $125 million to bring the tools of 21st Century technology

to investigate and prevent crime:

– eliminating the backlog of 1 million convicted offender

DNA sample backlog at state and local crime labs;

– improving equipment to dramatically reduce the time

and cost of performing DNA analysis;

– improving the general forensic sciences capabilities

of state and local crime labs;

– upgrading criminal history, criminal justice and

identification record systems.

Community Prosecutors

and Community Prosecution

With a stronger and more effective police force in

place in communities nationwide, President Clinton

now proposes to increase the number of and enhance

the role of the prosecutors in our community crime-

fighting efforts. He has proposed a new program to help

communities nationwide hire as many as 1000 prosecu-

tors each year for five years and to build on community

policing programs with an effective prosecution strate-

gy: community

prosecution.

Community prosecution is being used in many

communities across the country to systematically com-

bat crime. In neighborhoods from Boston to Los

Angeles and Washington, D.C. to Indianapolis, prosecu-

tors are recognizing the importance of fighting crime

through stronger ties to the community. While prosecu-

tors have traditionally focused on the essential task of

convicting more serious offenders after they have com-

mitted crimes, community prosecutors add to that core

responsibility by working with the community to proac-

tively stamp out problems and stop new crime before it

starts. They look beyond the individual criminal case

and the individual defendant to see what they can do to

break the cycle of crime, get the menacing gang off the

street corner, shut down the crack house, and sever the

chain of illegal gun trafficking.

Community prosecution is strategic prosecution.

The typical prosecutor’s office makes thousands of

decisions each year on which cases to drop, investigate

further, plea bargain, or take to the jury. Most offices

are overwhelmed with massive case loads, and they

have precious little time to get the information they

need from the community. The addition of a community

prosecutor to an office creates a two-way flow of infor-

mation that typically has two results: better community

assistance in convicting the worst offenders, and more

prosecutions of cases involving “low level” crimes that

were previously dismissed. These prosecutions have a

sustained impact on community safety.

Now, with new prosecutors, district attorney offices

will be able to both continue to prosecute serious

crimes and use the powerful strategy of community

prosecution to control and prevent crime.

This is how community prosecution works:

• Community prosecutors learn how the community

operates. Community prosecutors work directly with

civic associations, neighborhood watch groups, business

groups and religious leaders to identify community public

safety needs and ways that the prosecutor’s office can

address these needs. The close ties that the prosecutor

develops with the community help in preventing and

prosecuting crime. For example, when an offense is

committed, a community prosecutor will already know

who is in the gangs, how the drug and gun traffickers

have divided up their territories and who is in conflict

with whom. The community can also act as an “early

warning system” to alert prosecutors to new communi-

ty-wide problems before they overwhelm the police and

justice system.

• Community prosecutors use all legal tools to attack

crime problems in the community. Community prosecu-

tors use civil nuisance actions to rid neighborhoods of

drug-dealing or prostitution on private property and take

control of abandoned buildings. They obtain stay-away

orders to deal with chronic offenders and drug dealers,

and civil injunctions against gangs. These seemingly

low-level actions have a powerful effect in preventing

crime.

• Community prosecutors adopt zero tolerance

policies. Community prosecutors enforce quality of life

laws to improve overall safety in a community and to

back up community policing strategies that emphasize

zero tolerance for criminal offenses. With

a community

prosecution strategy and new prosecutorial

resources,

district attorneys can enforce low-level ordinance viola-

tions that might not have been prosecuted in the past.

This makes the community more livable for residents,

businesses, schools and places of worship,

and sends the

“not here” message to would-be criminals.

• Community prosecutors leverage the work of the

prosecutor’s office. Creating a community-oriented

group within a prosecutor’s office leads to a more

strategic approach to crime–fighting. These additional

prosecutors help the entire office to prepare better cases

through contacts in the community. It gives them the

ability to contact more witnesses and conduct victim

impact state

ments

. All prosecutors can then systemati-

cally attack the roots of local crime problems.

Community prosecution programs are taking hold

throughout the country:

• In Washington, D.C., the United States Attorney

created a community prosecution unit in the

busy Fifth Police District. Two community

prosecutors review cases and warrants filed by Fifth

District police officers. They work with the police

to identify patterns of crime, meet regularly with

community groups, and they use every civil and

criminal law at their disposal to deal with problems

identified by the community. Working with them,

about 15 other prosecutors are assigned to handle

criminal cases in just the Fifth District neighbor-

hoods. These prosecutors prosecute all the cases in

their assigned neighborhood districts – from misde-

meanors to homicides. The result is that cases are

prioritized by how they fit into the Fifth District

“big picture” rather than using seriousness of the

crime as the sole criterion.

• In Portland, Oregon, the District Attorney has

assigned a “Neighborhood DA” to each of several

neighborhoods. The Neighborhood DAs work

closely with neighborhood groups to solve

problems identified by the community. They

organize citizen patrols, draft trespass ordinances

to keep charged drug dealers away from a neigh-

borhood pending trial, train landlords to identify

and screen out drug dealers, work with housing

inspectors to target properties used for drug

dealing, and enlist the aid of government agencies

to clean up crime-ridden areas. They coordinate

these actions with the District Attorney’s own tough

prosecution strategy to maximize the impact on

crime.

• In Lowell, Massachusetts, a community prosecutor

in the juvenile division convenes weekly meetings

with the principal of the local high school, juvenile

probation and parole officers, and the police gang

unit. He also maintains contact with the juvenile

drug treatment and education program leaders and

with juvenile offenders. As a result, because the

community is sharing information and keeping tabs

on them, juvenile offenders have done a better job

sticking to the terms of their probation and, when

they do not, probation revocation is now much

more likely.

• In Indianapolis, Indiana, assistant district attorneys

were placed in four police districts to work with

citizens’ groups and police officers on drug markets

domestic violence, and disorder crimes. As a result,

community groups are now helping to identify

crime “hot-spots” and observing key cases as they

move through the judicial process, police investiga-

tions are more thorough, and

the central office is

making more informed decisions

about who to

charge with crimes. The program is so popular with

citizens that it has been expanded to serve the entire

county.

Giving prosecutors a strategic edge:

The President’s budget contains $200 million for

additional community prosecutors and other prose-

cution activities. These prosecutors will:

– engage directly with residents and community

leaders to prioritize community needs;

– coordinate the work of other prosecutors in

the office to fight crime strategically;

– cultivate relationships and trust in the com-

munity that result in better witnesses, stronger

evidence and more convictions;

– enlist the community to work together with

the prosecutors so that criminals cannot “slip

through the cracks;” and

– use tactics that will prevent crime and reduce

local residents’ fear of crime.

This community prosecution strategy is not new. In

an earlier day, prosecutors practiced just this way – in

the community. But exploding crime rates and balloon-

ing caseloads have forced prosecutors to spend their

time in court, not in the community. Often, all a district

attorney needs to become more strategic and therefore

more effective is a small amount of money to free up

the time of existing prosecutors or to hire a few more

prosecutors. With resources to hire new prosecutors,

communities can again benefit from this law enforce-

ment strategy.

Community policing and other efforts have brought

crime down and also have given prosecutors over-

whelming caseloads. Now is the time to provide district

attorney’s offices around the country with resources and

staff to achieve the strategic benefits of community-ori-

ented prosecution. With new prosecutors who can back

up the work of community police and target crime at its

core, prosecutors can both prosecute their cases and

help break the cycles of crime and violence.

Conclusion

Crime rates overall have dropped to a 25-year low;

property crime is significantly lower; violent crimes

declined 20 percent in the last six years. The murder

rate is at its lowest level nationwide in 30 years. But the

Clinton Administration is not prepared to claim victory

and turn to other matters. Now is the time to press

ahead, and make greater gains in the fight against crime

and violence.

Communities are still badly in need of resources to

break the hold of gangs, illegal drug and gun trafficking

and violence on our streets. With stronger police agen-

cies and an expansion in community prosecution

resources, the promise of safety and security will

become a reality to more and more residents, neighbor-

hoods, towns, and cities in America. The goal of a safer

America is within reach.