The Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) announced today the release of a Memorandum and Analysis concerning duplicate reimbursements of salary and leave in certain hiring grants administered by the DOJ’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office). The OIG issued a Management Advisory Memorandum after five separate audits of COPS Hiring Recovery Program grant recipients between November 2012 and December 2014 identified a total of $861,427 that appeared to constitute duplicate reimbursements for salary and leave. The OIG’s Memorandum advised the COPS Office of the potential that the duplicate funding may be systematic and may also apply to grants made under the separate COPS Hiring Program, and the OIG made two recommendations to help the COPS Office identify additional duplicate reimbursements in prior awards, and to help prevent similar duplicate reimbursements in the future.
The COPS Office responded to our OIG Memorandum, and we have conducted an analysis of this response; both the response and our analysis are also being released today. The OIG’s analysis notes that while the COPS Office’s response described several enhanced controls that it implemented over the past 5 years, it did not identify any actions that the COPS Office would take to identify and remedy additional duplicate reimbursements in its previously awarded grants.
The memorandum, response, and analysis can be found on the OIG’s website at the following link: https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2015/a1517.pdf.