Justice Department Crime-Fighting Grants Probed for Favoritism
A House committee is investigating whether grant-making units in the Justice Department ignored independent reviews and gave money to favored groups.
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has interviewed former and current Justice Department employees about grants made under a 2007 law giving the DOJ $150 million to distribute to crime-fighting groups, the Washington Post reports. J. Robert Flores, chief of the department’s office of juvenile justice and delinquency prevention, will appear before the committee today to discuss grants made by his unit.
The trade publication Youth Today had reported Flores gave a $500,000 grant to a program that promotes golf for inner-city teens. The program received a lower ranking through a peer-review process than other applicants that didn’t get grants, the Post story says. Flores has said the peer-review process was advisory only, and he and his staffers had authority to make the decisions.
Unnamed sources also told the Post that the Justice Department’s inspector general is investigating the amount of work done by a contract employee hired by Flores.
Questions are also being raised about grants distributed by the department’s Bureau of Justice Assistance, which is headed by Domingo Herraiz. A memo from Herraiz indicates that 106 of 128 grant applications were peer reviewed. One grant went to a group that wasn’t reviewed, the Ohio Office of Criminal Justice Services, the story says. It received nearly $300,000 for an anti-gang initiative.
Herraiz had served as director of the Ohio agency before joining the Justice Department. Justice spokesman Peter Carr said Herraiz recused himself from the final decision, and his career staffers had recommended the grant.
Another grant gave more than $600,000 to the Fraternal Order of Police of Ohio for a school alert system. Sources told the Post the group had supported Herraiz for the Justice Department post. Carr said the project received the normal review.
