July 31 Daily News editorial

Longview and Castle Rock city officials have got to be feeling lucky this week. The two cities were among the chosen few awarded federal Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) grants. The Longview Police Department is getting $663,984, enough to hire and pay three entry-level officers for three years. Castle Rock police get a $209,620 grant, which will fund one full-time officer for three years.

Just one in seven applicants nationwide received COPS funding this year. Thirty Washington cities were recipients. Notably, Seattle wasn’t among them. Other notable omissions from the list of roughly 1,000 grant recipients nationally were New York City, Pittsburgh, Phoenix and Houston.

The competition among cash-starved municipalities nationwide for a slice of the $1 billion in COPS funding was particularly fierce this year. Successful applicants had to have more than luck going for them. They likely were the law enforcement agencies that made the stronger arguments. That certainly appears to the case for Longview.

In 2008 the Longview City Council contracted the Police Executive Research Forum, a respected Washington, D.C.-based police consulting firm, to work with Chief Alex Perez in developing a plan to reduce the city’s crime rate to below the state average. Perez PERF produced a detailed plan for the department’s future staffing and funding needs. Perez believes that plan gave his department a competitive edge in the grant process. The chief also credited Longview police business manager Mary Chennault for shepherding the department’s grant application and letters of support from U.S. Rep. Brian Baird and U.S. Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell.

Clearly, Longview entered this competitive process well-prepared. As a result, the police department will be able to bring its total number of officers to 59, which is the level the PERF report recommended for the city. Perez told Daily News reporter Amy M.E. Fischer that he expected the COPS funding to arrive in September or October, after which the city will hire the three new officers “as quickly as we can.”

This is very good news. Just six months ago, when PERF issued its report, there seemed little likelihood that the city could find the resources needed to act on the report’s recommendations for some time. Federal assistance to local law enforcement had been on the decline for many years. Indeed, the federal government pretty much went AWOL from the fight against street crime following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Federal assistance to local law enforcement shrank by more than $2 billion between 2002 and 2009. This year’s $1 billion funding boost for COPS is first really significant increase for the program in eight years. And it’s most welcome in Longview, Castle Rock and other communities targeted for grants.