Citation URL: http://www.urban.org/ChristopherSKoper

This report contains a collection of readings that examine various staffing issues in policing. These readings address three broad issues: determinants of police staffing levels; the processes of hiring, training, and deploying officers; and retention patterns associated with individual officers and staff positions. The papers are the result of an Urban Institute research project funded by the National Institute of Justice to, in large part, answer questions of interest to policymakers in the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (i.e., the COPS Office), the agency that administers the federal Community Oriented Policing Services program. Passed by Congress as part of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, the COPS program is the federal government’s initiative to add 100,000 officers to the nation’s police agencies through grants for hiring new officers and other means.

This study examines the effects (especially on violent and drug-trafficking crimes) of the bans on the manufacture, transfer, and possession of designated semiautomatic assault weapons and large capacity ammunition magazines under the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. The analysis considers potential ban effects on primary and secondary gun markets, on assault weapons' uses in crime, and on the lethal consequences of assault weapons' use.

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