Rethink Spending on Anti-Terrorism, Report Says

Is the government spending too much money to fight terrorism and not enough to fight crime in the country? A new report by the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) seems to think so.

In an article on the USA TODAY website, Mimi Hall says the report is asking the government to re-examine spending hundreds of millions of dollars on anti-terror equipment while cash-strapped police departments are still struggling with crime.

“The simple truth is that average Americans are much more likely to find themselves victims of crime than of terrorist attack,” the IACP report says. Since 2003, the government has given states and cities $22.7 billion for emergency preparedness.

Since 9/11, the IACP says, 99,000 people have been murdered in the US and 1.4 million are the victims of violent crime each year. “In terms of day-to-day crime fighting, we’re far worse off than we were before 9/11,” IACP’s Ronald Ruecker told Hall.

The IACP isn’t the only organization fighting the anti-terror dollars. Hall says the U.S. Conference of Mayors also is challenging Washington’s priorities, saying that since 2001, spending on local policing has been cut 81 per cent while an average of 34 people are gunned down every day.

“If al-Qaeda were responsible for 34 deaths a day in the United States, the nation would do whatever was necessary to stop the deaths,” the mayors said in an open letter to the next president.