Kennedy died before a real proposal could be made. Walinsky tried to sell it on his own in 1970, but couldn’t find a sponsor. A decade passed. Crime surged. The number and quality of city police officers diminished. In 1982 Walinsky decided to try again. Over the next decade he honed the idea, consulting chiefs and police unions. “I am 50 years old,” says Reuben Greenberg, chief of police in Charleston, S.C. “Do you know what happens if I pursue a fleeing felon? The distance between us increases. You need young blood. It’s when cops get old and can’t keep up physically that the shootings and brutality increase. You also want better-educated police officers – people with other options in life, people who understand other cultures . . . We have to change the fundamental nature of the criminal-justice system: spending time as a police officer should be the first step toward becoming a criminal lawyer, or a judge. It should be something you do for four or five years and then move on before you get old, burned out – just like the military.”
And as with military service, Walinsky hoped a tour in the police might one day become a valued credential for those seeking elective office. His Police Corps would be elite, rigorous. The scholarships would be substantial: $10,000 per year. There would be two summers of military-style basic training. There would be subsidies – another $10,000 per recruit per year – to the cities that participated (and another incentive: no need to put aside money for pensions). The whole business would cost about $300 million for a new class of 20,000 cops each year. There was opposition, of course. The notion that “kids” could do police work was derided (kids, of course, took Omaha Beach). The police unions were skeptical at first – although the Fraternal Order of Police has been a strong backer in recent years. “They want higher standards too,” Walinsky says.
Walinsky was relentless, obsessive; getting the Police Corps through the Congress became his last mission for Robert Kennedy. He made some powerful enemies – Jack Brooks, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has been implacable. But there also was a surprisingly ecumenical array of allies, from Ted Kennedy to Bob Dole in the Senate; from Barney Frank to Bob Dornan in the House. It almost passed in 1992; but that year’s crime bill evaporated in a fit of partisan silliness. It seemed ready to pass again in the initial votes this year, but was nearly starved to death last week.
Which brings us to the curious role of the president. Bill Clinton will tell you he loves the Police Corps. He was a charter member of Walinsky’s national committee. Indeed, he took the idea and expanded it to include teachers and social workers. It became the Clinton National Service plan. Audiences loved it; “scholarships for service” was Clinton’s best applause line in 1992. He promised a more engaged and energetic governance: the altruism of youth would be leveraged, sclerotic bureaucracies challenged.
Hah. After the election, the idea was diluted into a benign mush. There would be scholarships for service – but the service could not impinge on the work of existing public employees. Walinsky, appalled, slogged on. It was Bob Dole and Senate Republicans who pushed a fully funded Police Corps into the crime bill last year. The Clinton administration’s support was tepid, at best. The president’s own involvement was nil. And then, this summer, it appeared the White House would allow the funding to be squeezed drastically – to $25 million per year. “Well, it’s still in there,” a Clinton aide shrugged. This, as the White House paid an incredible bribe – $2 billion, no strings attached, for “urban partnerships” – to the Black Caucus in an (apparently futile) effort to win its support for the bill. All manner of crime pork and trendy trivia was tossed into the pot.
Bill Clinton ran for president promising to transcend the “brain-dead politics of left and right.” The Omnibus Crime Bill is a compendium of the brain-dead politics of left and right. Conservatives won all sorts of witless, showboat “tough” sentencing provisions. Liberals got $9 billion worth of “prevention” programs; some worthy, more wasteful. There is money for 100,000 new police officers – but it’s a safe bet you won’t see that many. Some of the older, larger cities won’t be able to use all the money (the federal government pays only a share; the cost per cop to the locality is significantly higher than Police Corps recruits would be). And none of it will challenge business as usual. Indeed, it will only nourish the existing brutal, brainless and inept law-enforcement bureaucracies.
And the Police Corps? A victory, of sorts (no thanks to the White House). Senate Judiciary chair Joe Biden cut a deal: the Corps would be authorized, but – unlike the rest of the crime bill – the money isn’t guaranteed. And Walinsky will have to trudge up Capitol Hill, again, and fight for an appropriation.
