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NEW GAME: $4b Obama stimulus changes strategic landscape |
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Tuesday, 20 January 2009 |
Just months ago, PROTECT struggled to get Senate appropriators to put $30 million into the child exploitation fight. Suddenly, there's $4 billion on the table, and the game has changed.
The U.S. House Economic Recovery Plan is short and sweet when it comes
to Justice Department spending on law enforcement: $3 billion in state and local law
enforcement assistance through the Byrne Justice Assistance Grants
(Byrne JAG) program and another $1 billion to the Community Oriented
Policing Services (COPS) program.
The Senate has yet to weigh in, but the plan reflects President Obama's
priorities and should be an indicator of where the fast-moving process
is headed.
As anyone who's ever seen a municipal police department buy planes and
helicopters for their drug wars knows, if you give many cops enough federal dollars, they can "stimulate the economy" like sailors on shore leave.
That's all the more reason to make sure anti-child exploitation and
child rescue are made the priority... for the Justice Department, Governors, Attorneys General and the law enforcement community at large.
Most of the thousands of local governments and law enforcement agencies
lining up for this assistance won't be thinking about child
exploitation. Too many are oblivious to the metastacizing cancer all
around them. Many won't have what it takes to scramble and deploy
technology quickly. Some just have other priorities. But those are problems worth having.
The strategic landscape has now changed.
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