Patricia Schroeder: “I think this should go fairly simply. This is about the National Institute of Justice, which many of us feel with this…”

“I think this should go fairly simply. This is about the National Institute of Justice, which many of us feel with this amendment we are going to be able to avoid many of the pitfalls that we saw with LEAA. This is basically a new group that has really started that is kind of like what the firemen have had all along. It is a group that tests the different equipment, that can tell you what works and what does not work. When you have got over 17,000 police entities and their average number of cops per police entity is like 12, you know they do not have their own R&D department. When they go to purchase stuff, the only people they are getting objective information from is the vendor, and we all know that might be a little slanted. Caveat emptor rings loudly. So this is a group that has really gotten a terrific track record in doing R&D and transferring military technology to law enforcement and trying to get a much better deal for the taxpayer every way around. What they have done with bulletproof vests, with fingerprinting, with all sorts of standards, I think is long overdue. The firemen had this ages ago.”