Some Des Plaines, Illinois, police officers have been suspended and are facing further ramifications for lying about DUI arrests in order to get grant money. The story is here. The Des Plaines Police Department was awarded $116,190.00 in taxpayer money for a DUI enforcement grant. The grant provided overtime funds to pay officers to pursue DUI enforcement. What obviously happened was that the officers claimed that DUI arrests not actually done pursuant to the grant were, in fact, arrests under the grant, so that they could get the additional overtime money that the grant would afford. Not only does padding the arrest statistics result in free overtime pay, those same padded statistics help get even more grant money down the road, because the grants are only going to be awarded if it can be shown that they are “effective”. The math is pretty simple: More Arrests = More Money.
The commanding officer overseeing the program “retired” as soon as this scandal came to light, and the other officers have been suspended for now. The police department won’t describe what happened. There is an internal investigation, which will be a complete whitewash and likely protected from public scrutiny. I love the quote from the Police Chief, “We want to put this behind us and move forward,”. I know many people who have been arrested for making a mistake who say the same thing, but they are forced to face consequences.
I doubt there will be much in the way of consequences here. An early retirement for the guy in charge, a “resignation” or two (so the officers can go be police officers somewhere else without having been fired or having this problem follow them), and a note or two in a few other officers’ private and protected employee files that mention a non-specific violation of “department policy”. It is not likely that the Des Plaines Police Department will ever call this what it is: fraud.
The problem is that many police agencies are vying for government grants for DUI enforcement from their state departments of transportation and NHTSA, as well as other agencies and interest groups. There is a lot of money at stake. The way to get the grant, and get the money, is to show that there is a need and that if the additional enforcement is paid for by a grant, it will yield results. The way to demonstrate results is to make arrests. That is why you will see people that blow well under the legal limit getting arrested at checkpoints or during saturation patrols. That arrest looks good on paper, regardless of what happens a year later when the case finally goes to trial. Every arrest gets reported as a DUI arrest and can be used in the application for more grant money. The money creates incentives and you get bad stops, bad arrests and bad statistics. The amount of money in the grabbag should not be tied to arrests.
Police officers don’t get paid enough. I don’t blame them for wanting to get paid more. But, if a regular person commits a fraud against the government they are going to jail. Money and justice have never worked well together. Law enforcement investigating their own is kind of a joke, too. The money incentives in the DUI enforcement game should be removed. Until that happens, More Arrests = More Money.