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Office of Community Oriented Policing Services Grants
to the City of Pueblo, Colorado Police Department

GR-60-02-002
July 2002
Office of the Inspector General


EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The Office of the Inspector General, Audit Division, has completed an audit of grants awarded by the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) to the City of Pueblo, Colorado, Police Department (PPD). The purpose of the grants is to enhance community policing. The PPD was awarded a total of $2,392,500 to hire 24 new police officers and redeploy the equivalent of 23.7 existing full-time police officers from administrative duties to community policing.

We reviewed the PPD's compliance with seven essential grant requirements and found that the PPD complied with grant requirements with respect to budgeting for officers, retention of officer positions, officer redeployment, and community policing activities. We found weaknesses in three of the seven areas we tested: hiring of officers, source of matching funds, and reimbursement requests. In addition, although the PPD accepted a third Universal Hiring Program (UHP 3) grant award in the amount of $450,000, it had not incurred any expenditures related to this award and do not intend to draw down any of these funds. As a result of these deficiencies, we recommend $450,000 be deobligated and put to better use and we question $87,804 in grant funds received 1.

These items are discussed in detail in the Findings and Recommendations section of the report. Our audit objectives, scope and methodology appear in Appendix I.


Footnote

  1. The Inspector General Act of 1988 contains our reporting requirements for questioned costs and funds to better use. However, not all findings are dollar-related. See Appendix III for a breakdown of our dollar-related findings and for definitions of questioned costs and funds to better use.