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Office of Community Oriented Policing Services Grants to the Amtrak Police Department

Report No. GR-70-02-002
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 Amtrak Police Department (Amtrak). The purpose of these grants was to enhance community policing. Amtrak was awarded a total of $1,189,770 to hire 10 new police officers and redeploy the equivalent of 17.6 existing full-time police officers from administrative duties to community policing.

We found Amtrak to be in material non-compliance with COPS's grant requirements. We reviewed Amtrak's compliance with six essential grant conditions, including budgeting for local officer positions, hiring of additional officers, local match requirements, reimbursement requests, retention of officers, and the types of community policing activities that were being performed. We found weaknesses in two of the areas tested: hiring of additional officers and retention of officers. As a result of the deficiencies identified below, we question $750,000 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.


Footnotes

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