Retired Law Enforcement Officers Continuing Service Act

Departments often have more open cases than staff to work them. These grants would pay for extra hands on homicide, carjacking, and financial crime cases, plus footage review and lab work.

Grant money would let a department hire retired officers back for desk jobs. The work covers footage, crime scenes, lab tests, computer help, and training.

A department has to show that the retirees it hires still have current skills. If they do not, those hires must take classes to catch up.

The bill says the work paid for by these grants does not include making arrests or using force. Retired officers hired this way would do case support, not street policing.

Each year the Justice Department watchdog would check the books of grant winners for waste and fraud. Departments with clean books for three years would go to the front of the line.

If an audit finds a department spent grant money the wrong way, it gets a year to fix it. Miss that, and it loses these grants for two years.

Before hiring, a department must try to learn if the retiree was ever punished for misconduct, or is still under review. The chief must read what turns up first.

Before it hands out money, the Justice Department must check whether it already paid for the same work. If one agency gets two such grants, Congress gets the dollar totals and the reason why.