The Office of Community Oriented Policing Services Methamphetamine Initiative

Audit Report 06-16
March 2006
Office of the Inspector General

Objectives The audit we completed of the COPS Meth Initiative pursued the following objectives: (1) assess the adequacy of the COPS Office’s administration of Meth Initiative grants and its monitoring of grantee activities; and (2) evaluate the extent to which grantees have administered the grants in accordance with applicable laws, regulations, guidelines, and terms and conditions of the grant awards. Scope and Methodology We performed the audit in accordance with the Government Auditing Standards issued by the Comptroller General of the United States, and accordingly included such tests of the records and procedures that we considered necessary. Generally, the audit covered the period from FYs 1998 through 2005. To accomplish our objectives, we conducted work at the COPS Office in Washington, D.C., including interviews with various officials and staff within the Administrative (Information Technology Department) Division, Grant Administration Division, Monitoring Division, Finance Division, and External Affairs Division. We also interviewed officials from other Department of Justice components, including the Office of Justice Programs and the Drug Enforcement Administration. Further, we obtained budgetary information from the Justice Management Division. We also attended the 2005 COPS Meth Conference to obtain background information and made contacts to obtain other relevant information, such as statistics on meth seizures from the DEA’s El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC). Subsequently, EPIC provided us with data for FYs 1998 through 2004. We also examined budget documents; grant manuals; correspondence; and historical information about the meth problem, policies, procedures, public laws, and related legislative history. We reviewed a judgmental selection of the COPS Office meth grant files for completeness and evidence of monitoring and analyzed results from 13 external audits of meth grants for any commonality among the findings. We selected grantees based on the dollars awarded, type of program funded, and geographic distribution.34 We conducted additional audit work at 6 of the 13 external grant sites to determine if the individual grant award objectives of the Meth Initiative had been established and met. Footnotes For a description of the grantees’ proposed use of grant funds, see Appendix IV.