Crime Bill Contretemps: It’s All Politics

Pondering the effort by Congress’ new Republican majority to rewrite the federal crime bill, and deprive President Clinton of one of his major legislative victories of last year, most U.S. police chiefs would prefer to leave the legislation just the way it is.

More than 17,000 police officers have already been hired with the new money in the bill and more than 7,000 localities have already benefited. If the legislation is not rewritten to transform the funds into large block grants to state governments, and left as it is--with monies targeted on the hiring of more police officers--most police chiefs think they’ll not only get more money for more cops but they’ll get it a lot sooner.

The police chiefs’ view is good enough for us. On Tuesday the House passed the GOP bill. The Senate should reject it. If the Senate doesn’t, the President must veto it.

The 1994 bill contained funding for both crime prevention programs and recruitment and training of 100,000 new police officers over the next five years. There was a lot of criticism that many anti-crime programs in the measure were political pork, but few quarreled with hiring more police.

The Republicans contend their revision--calling for $2 billion in annual block grants to states and municipalities over five years--is not about denying funding for more officers. They say they want only to give local jurisdictions the flexibility to choose anti-crime programs tailored to their priorities--as opposed to Washington’s. On one level that’s a fair argument, and flexibility attracts many big-city politicians, including Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, whose commitment to hiring more officers for L.A. streets is unquestioned. And certainly in some instances (such as general urban aid) block grants can make sense. But history demonstrates--and police chiefs vividly recall--that there can be a host of problems when block grants are applied to law enforcement funding. In addition to the potential for abuse, there inevitably is political horse-trading that holds up funds. Meanwhile, localities and their citizens are the real losers.

Pardon our cynicism, but the only conclusion to draw in this contretemps is that it is less about good public policy than partisan politics. Washington shouldn’t be playing with people’s lives. Leave well enough alone.