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Office of Community Oriented Policing Services Grants
to the Pine Bluff, Arkansas Police Department

GR-80-01-007
February 1, 2001
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 to the Pine Bluff, Arkansas, Police Department. The purpose of the grants is to enhance community policing. The police department was awarded a total of $944,359 to hire 10 new police officers, and to redeploy the equivalent of 12.4 existing full-time officers from administrative duties to community policing.

We reviewed the police department's compliance with eight essential grant conditions. We found the following six conditions acceptable: grantee's budgeting practices, hiring of police officers, source of local matching funds, planning for retention of officer positions, officer redeployment, and community policing activities. However, we found weaknesses in the areas of reimbursement requests and grantee reporting as identified below. As a result, we recommend that $3,488 be put to better use. 1

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


Footnotes

  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.