As a candidate in 2008, Barack Obama said he would fully fund a federal program called Community Oriented Policing Services.

Community oriented policing refers to a movement, expanded by President Bill Clinton's anti-crime law in 1994, that emphasizes crime prevention by getting officers out of their patrol cars to interact with citizens. The president's 2013 budget defines community policing as "proactive collaborative efforts and the use of problem-solving techniques to prevent and respond to crime, social disorder, and fear of crime."

The federal program offers grants for community oriented policing officers. Some of the money also goes to community policing in Native American communities and drug enforcement efforts to combat the manufacture and use of methamphetamine.

In his campaign promise, Obama didn't specify what it would mean to fully fund community policing. We searched government databases for contemporary definitions of the phrase "fully fund" and dredged up a press release from Rep. John Tierney, D-Mass., decrying 2007 cuts in funding by then-President George W. Bush. It says Tierney was calling for Bush to "fully fund the COPS program at the already approved $1 billion funding level."

In an April 2008 Democratic primary debate between Hillary Clinton and Obama, Clinton said she planned to bring back community policing the way it was under her husband. That would also mean at least $1 billion.

Finally in a 2010 letter to the U.S. House Appropriations Committee, Rep. Sandy Levin, D-Mich., also paired the phrase "fully fund" with "$1 billion." Levin described the program's history, how it used to receive more than $1 billion per year under Clinton, but experienced cuts under Bush.

If we accept that Obama was using the same definition, then he kept the promise in 2009, but not in the following years. The bar chart we created below compares his budget requests with appropriations enacted by Congress, based on figures supplied by the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services.


Keep in mind that 2009 got a one-time boost of $1 billion from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, better known as the economic stimulus. In this way, Obama met his goal by adding stimulus money to dollars already set aside in Bush's final budget. The stimulus helped city police departments, local sheriffs' offices and tribal law enforcement offices retain officers or hire new recruits.

In each of Obama's proposed budgets for 2010-13, he requested below $1 billion. So far Congress enacted less than his request each time.

Finally, we should note that Obama made this promise before the severity of the Great Recession was widely recognized. It's reasonable to think he reduced his budget requests in light of that. Still, we're rating Obama's promise here on its ultimate outcome.

Obama said he would fully fund the federal community policing program, using an implied definition of $1 billion per year. Since the program received well below $1 billion for each of the last three years, we rate this a Promise Broken.