House Passes Weiner Amendment to Restore Funding To Keep Police Officers on the Streets

Bipartisan Rebuke of GOP Budget Plan

Today, with 70 Republicans joining 158 Democrats in a bipartisan rebuke of the GOP budget plan, the House passed an amendment by Rep. Anthony Weiner (D – Queens and Brooklyn) that restores $298 million in funding to the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) hiring program, allowing over 1,300 officers to remain on the street.

“We all agree that we need to reduce the deficit, but we need to get our priorities straight. Unfortunately, the Republicans still don’t get it – we can’t play games with our safety,” Rep. Weiner said. “This was a bipartisan rebuke of the GOP budget plan.”

Weiner is a long-time champion of the COPS program, which was created in 1994 to put more police officers on the streets, sponsoring its reauthorization in Congress for the last the four years. In 2009, the House passed Weiner's COPS bill, which would add 50,000 new beat cops to streets over 5 years.