Published February 1995 — Download PDF of the original newspaper column
Byrd's-Eye View By U.S. Senator Robert C. Byrd COPS: Fighting Crime on the Local Level
Thanks to a new federal initiative - the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program — 116 West Virginia communities recently received grants to help hire extra police officers to patrol their streets. The COPS program -- established in the 1994 Omnibus Crime Bill to enable local communities to expand their police forces and fight crime on the local level — was funded through my amendment to the Crime Bill that set up the Violent Crime Reduction Trust Fund. Through the latest COPS grants - a total of $5,327,620 was awarded -- nearly all of the West Virginia recipients will be able to hire one additional officer, with the exception of Morgantown and Parkersburg, which will be able to hire two new officers. These latest awards, intended for communities with populations of less than 50,000, are the second round of grants approved for West Virginia under the COPS program. Under the initial round, Huntington, Morgantown, Clarksburg, and the Boone County Sheriffs Department shared a $1.2 million grant to hire a total of sixteen new officers, including six each in Huntington and Clarksburg; three in Boone County; and one in Morgantown. The grants, which are awarded on a competitive basis, provide up to 75 percent of an officer's salary and benefits over a three-year period. The size of the grants is based, in part, on the salary levels in each community. Clearly, the battle against crime — the effort to reclaim our streets and to ensure that our communities are safe from those who would flaunt the laws of the land — must begin at the grassroots level. In our homes, parents must continue to teach their children the moral and spiritual values and respect for authority that will enable young Americans to grow into law-abiding adults. In our schools, our young students must understand respect for their teachers and for their peers, and school authorities should impose the discipline necessary to make schools safe havens for learning and teaching. In our towns and cities, local leaders must have the financial resources with which to maintain law and order. The COPS program helps to provide those much-needed resources, and serves as a signal that the local fight against crime has support on the national level. My hat is off to all of the West Virginia towns and cities that successfully competed for COPS grants, and, in so doing, will gain an extra measure of security in the years to come. February 22, 1995