December 14, 1998

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T H E W H I T E H O U S E

December 14, 1998

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PRESIDENT CLINTON AND VICE PRESIDENT GORE:
SUPPORTING COPS, PROTECTING COMMUNITIES

We know that today's crime fighters need not only the confidence of their communities, but they also need tools that are more advanced than criminals. These COPS MORE grants will help us build stronger, safer communities for the future.

Vice President Al Gore
December 14, 1998

Today at the White House, Vice President Al Gore will announce $93 million in COPS MORE grants to enable police districts to buy technologically advanced crime fighting tools, such as laptop computers and crime mapping technology. The Vice President will also discuss crime statistics released by the Department of Justice showing a further decrease in crime during the first six months of this year.

Giving Law Enforcement The Tools They Need To Fight Crime. Today, the Vice President will announce $93 million in Community Oriented Policing Services -- Making Officer Redeployment Effective (COPS MORE) grants. These grants enable police agencies to buy new equipment and technology, and can also be used to hire civilians for administrative tasks so that officers can spend time on the beat rather than behind a desk. COPS MORE funding will be used in a variety of ways, including:

In Guilford County, North Carolina, COPS MORE will fund a computer-aided dispatch system to map crime, deploy officers more quickly, and help officers fill out reports on the spot;

In New Haven, Connecticut, these funds will help create an automatic vehicle location system, so dispatchers know exactly how long it will take for police to arrive on the scene;

In Davenport, Bettendorf, and Scott County, Iowa, these grants will enable law enforcement to perform instant background checks without returning to headquarters.

Overall, the COPS program has funded the addition of 92,000 officers in communities nationwide -- well ahead of schedule and under budget to reach the Administration's goal of 100,000 more officers by the year 2000.

Providing Critical Training For Law Enforcement Nationwide. The Vice President will also announce that the Justice Department will provide crime mapping training to any law enforcement agency in the country that wants it. Training will be coordinated through the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) and the COPS office. Mapping training information will be available electronically as well as through the Department of Justice's 33 Regional Community Policing Institutes and five National Enforcement and Corrections Technology Centers. The Vice President will also discuss a new report just released by DOJ's National Institute of Justice and the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) called "Crime Mapping Case Studies: Successes in the Field," detailing case studies of how crime mapping has made concrete differences in communities' efforts to fight and deter crime.

A Record Of Accomplishment -- Crime Rates Continue To Fall. Statistics released by the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program indicate a 5 percent decline in serious crime in the first six months of 1998 compared with the first half of 1997. This decrease builds on the sixth straight year of decreasing rates of serious crime -- the longest decline since the 1950's.