U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

 Community Oriented Policing Services

Grants to the Boston, Massachusetts Police Department

GR-70-98-017

September 11, 1998

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The Office of the Inspector General, Audit Division, has completed an audit of grants awarded by the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) to the Boston, Massachusetts Police Department (Boston). Boston received a total of $8,676,150 in COPS grant funds to hire 112 additional sworn police officers and redeploy 27.1 full-time-equivalent (FTE) sworn police officers to community policing under the Accelerated Hiring, Education and Deployment Program (AHEAD), the Universal Hiring Program (UHP), and the 1995 Making Officer Redeployment Effective Program (MORE 95).

Generally, we found that Boston properly managed its COPS grants; however, Boston did not develop a plan to document the redeployment of 27.1 FTEs to community policing resulting from its MORE 95 grant. The MORE 95 grant's redeployment condition requires grantees to develop a redeployment plan within 60 days of accepting the grant. Because Boston did not develop a redeployment plan, we question the entire MORE 95 grant of $276,150.

These items are discussed in the Findings and Recommendations section of the report. Our scope and methodology appear in Appendix II.

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