President Clinton fought for and signed a plan to help communities across the country move to community policing by funding the hiring and redeployment of 100,000 new police officers over five years. The Clinton-Gore Administration’s COPS initiative, passed as part of the 1994 Crime Bill, has provided more than 11,000 law enforcement agencies funding to hire or redeploy more than 100,000 police officers. In 2000, President Clinton won over $1 billion to help communities take the next step and hire up to 50,000 more police officers by FY 2005. The federal government has also made record investments helping local authorities fight crime — increasing funding for state and local law enforcement by more than 300 percent since 1993. Overall crime rates has dropped every year under President Clinton and Vice President Gore, the longest continuous drop on record and crime is now at a 26-year low.
This is the official Clinton White House version of the policy. Obama should see President Clinton’s 100,000 new police, and raise him with a proposal to fund a COPS initiative to increase police hiring by 150,000 or 200,000.
Maybe you think we don’t need more police on our streets right now. I disagree. If you look at Department of Labor employment statistics, the number of private security guards has increased very rapidly relative to police and sheriff employment. The most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics projection is that the ranks of public police officers will increase by 7,000 a year for the next ten years, while private security guards by 17,800 a year. This indicates the people are feeling insecure in this country.
I’d rather those numbers be, at minimum, reversed. Or even better, private security guard employment go down as more public police officers reduce the need for private security. Public safety is a basic public good that is best provided by the government. Police officers are union employees who are sworn to protect the constitution and the general public where they serve. Private security guards protect whomever those that pay them want to protect.
The politics of this is extremely good for Democrats. More police is broadly popular with the public, and it will be a very popular vote to run on for Congressional Democrats in 2010 and Obama in 2012. On the other hand, it divides Republicans, with the anti-tax/anti-government ideologues on one side, and moderates and populists on the other. Also, as mentioned above, nearly all police and sheriff deputies hired would be union members, strengthening a key part of the Democratic base.
This also would not be an expensive policy. If it costs, on average, $40,000 in federal matching funds for local governments for each new police hire, and we fund 200,000 new positiions, this comes to a mere $8 billion a year.
Much of that money would come right back to the government in income and social security taxes, so on net we may only be looking at $6 billion.
