If crime is up, why is federal funding for local law enforcement down?

What police departments hear from Washington are vague claims that the federal programs that once offered billions of dollars to cities, townships and counties to hire officers and equip them are now deemed to be "ineffective" or have "outlived their usefulness."

Such excuses are really just bureaucratese for, "We've found other priorities for the money." In the past couple of years, the White House has steered federal money increasingly toward programs in the broadly defined "homeland security" arena at the expense of local police.

For example, the administration asked Congress for an 8 percent decrease in discretionary spending for the Justice Department for fiscal 2007, cutting grants to state and local law enforcement programs by $1.1 billion. One of those programs is called COPS, for Community Oriented Policing Services, and it was the vehicle through which communities added officers to their forces in large numbers beginning in the mid-1990s.

But because COPS was a popular Clinton administration program, it immediately fell under the scalpel when the Bush administration hit Washington in 2001. Annual funding was cut in half and money diverted to technology and other purposes rather than personnel.

Although most money for U.S. law enforcement comes from state and local sources -- only 1 percent comes from the federal government -- these cuts are being protested in Congress and by local officials who find themselves under pressure to make ends meet while they're confronted with crime statistics headed upward.

Nationally, murder and manslaughter rose last year by 4.8 percent, the largest percentage increase in 15 years, according to FBI statistics. In Pittsburgh, the jump was huge -- 37 percent -- from 46 homicides in 2004 to 63 in 2005. To meet this threat, many communities want to maintain their current forces in the face of rising costs, or even put more officers on the streets. Unfortunately, money from Washington isn't available for those purposes any longer.

Deciding how federal funds are used is all a matter of priorities. Unfortunately, the Bush administration has demonstrated it has far greater skill in spending money than in using it wisely.

New hardware is fine as far as it goes, but it doesn't put cops on the street -- solving crimes, protecting the public and creating a greater sense of hometown security.