While President Bush's proposed budget calls for increases to homeland security, it is at the expense of other law enforcement funding streams.
An all-purpose law enforcement grant program that the Metro, Henderson and North Las Vegas police departments use is among the proposed budget casualties, while a grant that funds a drug task force would be cut by more than 50 percent if the budget goes forward.
Two other police grant programs are being merged, the federal government told police last week, and funds available through that channel have been cut by 30 percent.
In previous years some of the money has gone to pay for gang intelligence efforts, fighting methamphetamine, surveillance equipment, police radios, mental health court and drug court.
"These are things that have really helped us," Metro Police Deputy Chief Mike Ault said. "They filled the funding voids for things we needed."
The cuts in police money will help boost the 2006-2007 Homeland Security budget by $2.4 billion to $34.2 billion, according to the White House.
One of the programs targeted to help pay for the increase in homeland security funding is Community Oriented Police Services, a program initiated by President Clinton that provides grants to tribal, state, and local law enforcement agencies to hire and train officers and purchase crime-fighting technology and police equipment.
The Edward Byrne Memorial State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance Grant and the Local Law Enforcement Block Grant, both broad-based, matching funds grants that help pay for police programs, are being combined, Ault said.
Police departments will no longer be required to match the federal government's contribution, but overall funds available are being cut by 30 percent.
Last year Metro Police was awarded more than $191,000 in Byrne funds to battle meth and other drugs and gather intelligence on gangs, Ault said.
A few years ago North Las Vegas Police used COPS grants to hire 25 new police officers, department spokesman Officer Tim Bedwell said. When the funding runs out the department will absorb the costs.
"Across the board, we've grown to rely on these grants over the years," Bedwell said.
Henderson Police last year received COPS money totaling almost $520,000 to pay for its anti-methamphetamine program and $16,000 in Byrne money for surveillance equipment, police spokesman Keith Paul said.
"Anything that would reduce in any way our ability to fight the problem with methamphetamine in this community would be unfortunate," Henderson Police Chief Michael Mayberry said.
If the cuts happen, the Clark County District Attorney's Office will also be effected.
District Attorney David Roger said his office uses $80,000 to $100,000 in Byrne grant money to pay the salary of an information technology worker and for audio visual equipment used in court.
"Certainly that will make a dent in our typical budget," Roger said. "We'll have to scramble" to find the money to absorb that employee's salary.
Another program facing possible funding cuts is the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) program. Since 2001 Las Vegas has received $1.4 million a year in federal funds as a part of HIDTA, but now that program could have its national budget slashed from $227 million to $100 million.
Las Vegas HIDTA Director Mike Hawkins, a former Metro Police deputy chief, said that the cuts to the program could cripple the Las Vegas task force made up of officers and agents of 13 local and federal law enforcement agencies.
"The biggest impact has been that this program has brought together federal and local law enforcement agencies into an arena where they can share information and attack a problem," Hawkins said.
George Togliatti, director of the Nevada Department of Public Safety, said that the sharing of information in the HIDTA program is exactly the type of model that the federal government should be striving for when it comes to homeland security. A more than 50 percent cut in the program in 2006 and the possibility of greater cuts in 2007 has Togliatti asking the Nevada Legislature to help fund the task force.
"We're going to have to redirect some resources if these cuts become a reality," Togliatti said. "It's been proven that there is a trickle down effect with drugs, and that people will commit other crimes in order to feed their habit."
The proposed 56 percent cut would drop Las Vegas' annual HIDTA funding to less than $700,000 a year, if the local task force survives. Since 2001 the local task force has received more than $6.5 million and has not yet received its $1.4 million budget for 2005.
The money goes to paying overtime for officers, purchasing equipment, drug buys, informant payments and administration. The salaries of the officers assigned to the HIDTA are paid by their parent agency.
HIDTA has grown from a focus on five regions in 1990 to a group of 28 task forces working across the country. The program mandates that a database is set up that both local and federal agencies have access to in order to focus resources.
Under Bush's proposal HIDTA task forces would shift to the Justice Department from the Office of National Drug Control Policy, and such a shift could curtail the effectiveness of the database for local authorities, Hawkins said.
Hawkins said that in his experience Justice Department programs and information are usually classified and it can take as long as a year to get local officers the clearances they need to gain access, which could make the current cooperative relationship difficult to maintain.
"Eighty percent of the manpower in the HIDTA comes from local law enforcement," Hawkins said.
Hawkins and Togliatti said they recognize that homeland security is the No. 1 priority for law enforcement, but said the loss of funding for HIDTA would be substantial.
"The big national drug organizations at the highest levels and the guy who lives next door selling baggies out his back door are taken care of," Hawkins said. "It's the mid-level dealers where there is a void that the HIDTA has the resources to fill."
Some of the additional money gleaned from HIDTA and other programs will flow into the homeland security budget.
The Urban Area Security Initiative, the homeland security grant program that distributes money directly to cities to prevent terrorist attack, is scheduled in 2006 to climb $135 million to $1.02 billion, according to Bush's budget.
Local emergency management officials said that they see the trend of allocating more and more money directly to cities instead of to states continuing.
"I think that the number of urban areas that receive money will continue to shrink," said Clark County Emergency Manager Jim O'Brien. "Places that got money in the past like Orlando and Memphis didn't get money in 2005, and I expect that we'll see a continuing focus on vulnerability."
Las Vegas will receive about $8.4 million in urban area funds in fiscal year 2005 down about $2 million from what the city got in 2004. Overall Nevada will receive $28 million in homeland security funding this year, a decrease from roughly $36 million in 2004.
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