Rethink spending on anti-terrorism, report says

By Mimi Hall

The government doles out too much anti-terrorism money to towns and cities for emergency equipment that rarely gets used while cash-strapped police struggle with crime, according to a growing number of mayors, police chiefs and security experts.

Seven years after 9/11, some are asking the government to re-examine spending hundreds of millions of dollars on bomb robots, chem-bio suits and equipment that often gathers dust in warehouses.

"The simple truth is that average Americans are much more likely to find themselves victims of crime than of terrorist attack," the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) says in a new report that calls on the next president to shift money back to crime fighting.

Since 2003, when the Homeland Security Department was created, the government has given states and cities $22.7 billion for emergency preparedness. How that money is doled out has been controversial from the start. Big cities complained that too much was sent to remote towns; police complained that they couldn't use it for overtime.

This is the first time officials have called for a complete re-evaluation of the grant system. ....