A 1995 General Accounting Office study found that much of the $8.8 billion allocated under the 1994 crime law—that boasted the addition of 100,000 police officers on the streets by the year 2000—was being directed towards communities that didn't need it. With grants from the Justice Department's new Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS), 75 percent of new officers' salaries would be paid by the federal government for three years, after which local governments would have to foot the bill. But the GAO found that towns with fewer than 25 crimes per 1,000 people were just as likely to qualify for the grant as those with more than 75 crimes per 1,000.

Another audit in 1998 found nearly $20 million in fraud or otherwise questionable expenses. In a typical case, the city of Belle Glade, Florida, took a $596,104 federal grant earmarked for six new officers and instead used it to supplement the salaries and benefits of four veteran officers, diverting the rest for other purposes. In another, a clerk forged signatures and fabricated documents to receive, then pocket for personal use, a $47,000 COPS grant for a town that didn't even have a police department.

[Ed.: Well, it is called the crime bill, after all.]

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