<DOC>
[110 Senate Hearings]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office via GPO Access]
[DOCID: f:43451.wais]
S. Hrg. 110-444
EXAMINING THE FEDERAL ROLE TO WORK WITH COMMUNITIES TO PREVENT AND
RESPOND TO GANG VIOLENCE: THE GANG ABATEMENT AND PREVENTION ACT OF 2007
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JUNE 5, 2007
__________
Serial No. J-110-40
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
43-451 PDF WASHINGTON DC: 2008
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COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont, Chairman
EDWARD M. KENNEDY, Massachusetts ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania
JOSEPH R. BIDEN, Jr., Delaware ORRIN G. HATCH, Utah
HERB KOHL, Wisconsin CHARLES E. GRASSLEY, Iowa
DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California JON KYL, Arizona
RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin JEFF SESSIONS, Alabama
CHARLES E. SCHUMER, New York LINDSEY O. GRAHAM, South Carolina
RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois JOHN CORNYN, Texas
BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas
SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, Rhode Island TOM COBURN, Oklahoma
Bruce A. Cohen, Chief Counsel and Staff Director
Michael O'Neill, Republican Chief Counsel and Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
----------
STATEMENTS OF COMMITTEE MEMBERS
Page
Feinstein, Hon. Dianne, a U.S. Senator from the State of
California..................................................... 1
Leahy, Hon. Patrick J., a U.S. Senator from the State of Vermont,
prepared statement............................................. 131
Specter, Hon. Arlen, a U.S. Senator from the State of
Pennsylvania................................................... 3
WITNESSES
Boxer, Hon. Barbara, a U.S. Senator from the State of California. 4
Bratton, William J., Chief of Police, Los Angeles Police
Department, Los Angeles, California............................ 8
Croteau, Gregg, Executive Director, United Teen Equality Center,
Lowell, Massachusetts.......................................... 23
Driskill, Boni Gayle, Wings of Protection, Modesto, California... 16
Fox, James P., District Attorney, San Mateo County, California,
and President-Elect, National District Attorneys Association,
Redwood City, California....................................... 18
Robinson, Claude A., Jr., Vice President of Youth Development
Programs, Uhlich Children's Advantage Network, Chicago,
Illinois....................................................... 20
Villaraigosa, Hon. Antonio R., Mayor, City of Los Angeles, Los
Angeles, California............................................ 6
Word, Patrick, Detective, Gaithersburg Police Department,
Gaithersburg, Maryland, and Chairman, Mid-Atlantic Regional
Gang Investigations Network, Gaithersburg, Maryland............ 25
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
Responses of Gregg Croteau to questions submitted by Senators
Durbin and Kennedy............................................. 34
Responses of James P. Fox to questions submitted by Senator
Kennedy........................................................ 41
Responses of Patrick Word to questions submitted by Senator
Kennedy........................................................ 43
Questions submitted by Senator Durbin to James P. Fox (Note:
Responses to the questions were not available at the time of
printing.)..................................................... 45
SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD
Action Network, Manolo Guillen, Founder & Chairman, San Diego,
California, letter............................................. 46
Advancement Project Inc., Constance L. Rice, Los Angeles,
California, letter............................................. 47
Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs, Inc., Steve Remige,
President, Monterey Park, California, letter................... 48
Bakersfield City Council, Safe Neighborhoods and Community
Relations Committee, Walter Williams, Stephanie Campbell, Steve
Perryman, DeVon Johnson, and Ann Batchelder for Bob Malouf,
Bakersfield, California, letter................................ 49
Biane, Paul, Chairman, Board of Supervisors, County of San
Bernardino, San Bernardino, California, letter................. 50
Big Brothers Big Sisters, Judy Vredenburgh, President & CEO,
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, letter............................. 51
Bond, Hon. James, Mayor, City of Encinitas, Encinitas,
California, letter............................................. 52
Boxer, Hon. Barbara, a U.S. Senator from the State of California,
prepared statement............................................. 53
Boys & Girls Clubs of America, Lorraine Howerton, Senior Vice
President, Office of Government Relations, Washington, D.C.,
letter......................................................... 56
Bradford, Hon. Steven C., Council Member, City of Gardena,
Gardena, California, letter.................................... 57
Bratton, William J., Chief of Police, Los Angeles Police
Department, Los Angeles, California, statement................. 58
Brown, Hon. Edmund G., Jr., Attorney General, Oakland,
California, letter............................................. 73
California District Attorneys Association, David LaBahn,
Executive Director, Sacramento, California, letter............. 75
California Gang Investigators Association, Wesley D. McBride,
Executive Director, Huntington Beach, California, letter....... 76
California Peace Officers' Association, Paul Cappitelli,
President, Sacramento, California, letter...................... 77
California State Sheriffs' Association, Laurie Smith, President,
Sheriff, Santa Clara County and Robert T. Doyle, Legislative
Committee Chair, Sheriff, Marin County, West Sacramento,
California, letter............................................. 78
Childhelp, John R. Reid, Executive Director, Scottsdale, Arizona,
letter......................................................... 79
Citizens Against Homicide, Jan Miller, Co-Founder, Jane
Alexander, Co-Founder, San Anselmo, California, letter......... 80
Couso-Vasquez, Garry, Chief of Police, Montebello, Califorina,
letter......................................................... 81
Croteau, Gregg, Executive Director, United Teen Equality Center,
Lowell, Massachusetts, statement............................... 82
Driskill, Boni Gayle, Wings of Protection, Modesto, California,
statement...................................................... 92
Delgadillo, Rockard J., City Attorney, Los Angeles, California,
letter......................................................... 100
Do It Now Foundation, James D. Parker, Executive Director, Tempe,
Arizona, letter................................................ 102
Dorn, Hon. Roosevelt F., Mayor, City of Inglewood, Inglewood,
California, letter............................................. 103
Doty, Wendy L., Superintendent, Downey Unified School District,
Downey, California, letter..................................... 104
Doyle, Bob, Sheriff-Coroner, Riverside County, Riverside,
California, letter............................................. 105
Dumanis, Bonnie M., District Attorney of San Diego County, San
Diego, California, letter...................................... 106
Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, Art Gordon,
National President, Lewisberry, Pennsylvania, letter........... 107
Foster, Hon. Bob, Mayor, City of Long Beach, Long Beach,
California, letter............................................. 108
Fox, James P., District Attorney, San Mateo County, California,
and President-Elect, National District Attorneys Association,
Redwood City, California, statement............................ 110
Grand Lodge, Fraternal Order of Police, Chuck Canterbury,
National President, Washington, D.C., letter................... 120
Grim, Arthur E., President Judge, Reading, Pennsylvania, letter.. 121
Hahn, Janice, Councilwoman, City of Los Angeles, California,
letter......................................................... 122
Hamai, Sachi, Executive Officer, County of Los Angeles, Board of
Supervisors, Los Angeles, California, letter and attachment.... 123
Hispanic American Police Command Officers Association, Ray Leyva,
National President, San Antonio, Texas, letter................. 125
International Association of Chiefs of Police, Joseph C. Carter,
President, Alexandria, Virginia, letter........................ 126
International Association of Women Police, Amy Ramav, President,
Ontario Provincial Police, Operational Policy & Strategic
Planning Bureau, Orillia, Ontario, Canada, letter.............. 127
International Union of Police Associations, AFL-CIO, Dennis
Slocumbe, International Vice President, Alexandria, Virginia,
letter......................................................... 128
Kolender, William B., Sheriff, San Diego County Sheriff's
Department, San Diego, California, letter...................... 129
League of California Cities, Maria Alegria, President, and
Christopher McKenzie, Executive Director, Sacramento,
California, letter............................................. 130
Local Initiatives Support Corporation, Benson F. Roberts, Senior
Vice President for Policy and Program Development, Washington,
D.C., letter................................................... 133
Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, Leroy D. Baca, Sheriff,
Monterey Park, California, letter.............................. 135
Loveridge, Hon. Ronald O., Mayor, Riverside, California, letter.. 137
Major Cities Chiefs Association, Darrel Stephens, President,
letter......................................................... 138
McKenna, Hon. Rob, Attorney General of Washington, Olympia,
Washington, letter............................................. 139
Mentor, Karen Nussle, Senior Vice President, Alexandria,
Virginia, letter............................................... 141
Mollner, Joe, Senior Director, Delinquency Prevention, Boys &
Girls Clubs of America, statement.............................. 142
National Association of Police Organizations, Inc., William J.
Johnson, Executive Director, Washington, D.C., letter.......... 148
National Association of Women Law Enforcement Executives, Laura
Forbes, President, Carver, Massachusetts, letter............... 149
National Black Police Association, Inc., Ronald E. Hampton,
Executive Director, Washington, D.C., letter................... 150
National Board of Concerns of Police Survivors, Suzie Sawyer,
Executive Director, Camdenton, Missouri........................ 151
National Crime Prevention Council, Alfonso E. Lenhardi, President
and CEO, Washington, D.C., letter.............................. 152
National Center for Victims of Crime, Mary Lou Leary, Executive
Director, Washington, D.C., letter............................. 153
National District Attorneys Association, Mathias H. Heck, Jr.,
President, Alexandria, Virginia, letter........................ 154
National Juvenile Justice & Delinquency Prevention Coalition,
joint letter................................................... 156
National Latino Peace Officers Association, Roy Garivey,
President, Las Vegas, Nevada, letter........................... 161
National League of Cities, Hon. Bart Peterson, President and
Mayor, Indianapolis, Indiana, letter........................... 162
National Major Gang Task Force, Edward L. Cohn, Executive
Director, Indianapolis, Indiana, letter........................ 163
National Narcotic Officers' Associations Coalition, Ronald E.
Brooks, President, West Covina, California, letter............. 164
National Organization for Victim Assistance, Joseph Myers,
President, Alexandria, Virginia, letter........................ 165
National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, Jimmie
Dotson, President, Alexandria, Virginia, letter................ 166
National Organization of Parents of Murdered Children, Inc., Dan
Levey, President, Cincinnati, Ohio, letter..................... 167
National Sheriffs' Association, Ted Kamatchus, President,
Alexandria, Virginia, letter................................... 168
National Troopers Coalition, Dennis Hallion, Chairman,
Washington, D.C., letter....................................... 169
Oklahoma Gang Investigators Association, Tim Hock, Vice
President, Lawton, Oklahoma, letter............................ 170
Parks, Hon. Bernard C., Councilmember, Los Angeles City Council,
Los Angeles, California, letter................................ 171
Passalacqua, Stephan R., Sonoma County District Attorney, Santa
Rosa, California, letter....................................... 173
Peace Officers Reserch Association of California, Ron Cottingham,
President, Sacramento, California, letter...................... 174
Penrod, Gary S., Sheriff, San Bernardino County, San Bernadino,
California, letter............................................. 175
Points of Light Foundation, Howard H. Williams, III, Interim CEO
and President, Washington, D.C., letter........................ 176
Pulido, Hon. Miguel A., Mayor, Santa Ana, California, letter..... 177
Rackauckas, Tony, Orange County District Attorney, Santa Ana,
California, letter............................................. 178
Ramos, Michael A., San Bernardino District Attorney, San
Bernardino, California, letter................................. 179
Reed, Hon. Chuck, Mayor, San Jose, California, letter............ 180
Robinson, Claude A. Jr., Vice President of Youth Development
Programs, Uhlich Children's Advantage Newtwork, Chicago,
Illinois....................................................... 181
Robles, Darline P., Superintendent, Los Angeles County Office of
Education, Downey, California, letter.......................... 184
Salinas City Council, Ann Camel, City Clerk, Salinas, California,
letter and resolution.......................................... 185
Sanders, Hon. Jerry, Mayor, San Diego, California, letter........ 187
Schwarzenegger, Hon. Arnold, Governor, Sacramento, California,
letter......................................................... 188
Sheedy, Hon. Sandy, Chair, Law and Legislation Committee,
Sacramento, California, letter and attachment.................. 189
Totten, Gregory D., County of Ventura District Attorney, Ventura,
California, letter............................................. 191
Tulare County Board of Supervisors, Allen Ishida, Chairman,
Visalia, California, letter.................................... 193
United States Conference of Mayors, Hon. Douglas Palmer, Mayor of
Trenton, President, Washington, D.C., letter................... 194
Villaraigosa, Hon. Antonio R., Mayor, City of Los Angeles, Los
Angeles, California............................................ 195
Walters, Paul M., Chief of Police, Santa Ana, California, letter. 205
Walters, Thomas P., Washington Representative, San Diego County
Board of Supervisors, Washington, D.C., letter................. 206
Williams, Hubert, Police Foundation, Washington, D.C., letter.... 207
Wood, Hon. Jim, Mayor, Oceanside, California, letter............. 208
Word, Patrick, Detective, Gaithersburg Police Department,
Gaithersburg, Maryland, and Chairman, Mid-Atlantic Regional
Gang Investigations Network, Gaithersburg, Maryland............ 209
EXAMINING THE FEDERAL ROLE TO WORK WITH COMMUNITIES TO PREVENT AND
RESPOND TO GANG VIOLENCE: THE GANG ABATEMENT AND PREVENTION ACT OF 2007
----------
TUESDAY, JUNE 5, 2007
U.S. Senate,
Committee on the Judiciary,
Washington, D.C.
The Committee met, Pursuant to notice, at 10:02 a.m., in
room SD-226, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Dianne
Feinstein, presiding.
Present: Senators Feinstein, Feingold, Durbin, Whitehouse,
and Specter.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. DIANNE FEINSTEIN, A U.S. SENATOR FROM
THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
Senator Feinstein. The meeting of the Judiciary Committee
will come to order, and I am delighted to have Senator Specter
here. And we have an all California panel, Senator: my
colleague Senator Boxer; the very distinguished mayor from Los
Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa; and, I happen to think, an
extraordinarily fine Chief of Police, Chief Bratton from L.A.
What I would like to do is begin with a brief statement, ask if
you would like to make one, then turn to Senator Boxer.
I want to begin by thanking Chairman Leahy for scheduling
this hearing on S. 456, the Gang Abatement and Prevention Act
of 2007. This problem--gang violence--is one that Senator Hatch
and I have been trying to address with Federal legislation for
over 10 years now. I did not realize it had been so long. We
first submitted legislation in the 104th Congress, the 105th,
the 106th, 107th, 108th, and 109th. So it looks like we are
finally going to be able to address this problem in this bill,
and I am very pleased.
Gang violence today is no longer just a big-city problem.
Like a cancer, criminal street gangs have now spread throughout
the United States, destroying neighborhoods, crippling
families, and killing innocent people as they expand. Before
1990, the number of cities and counties affected by gangs had
grown by less than 200 jurisdictions in both the 1970s and the
1980s. But gangs expanded by 675 cities and 458 counties from
1990 to 1995, just about when Senator Boxer and I came to the
Senate. And today the FBI says gangs affect 2,500 jurisdictions
in this country.
In 1991, the National Youth Information Center said there
were 4,881 gangs in America. Today there are at least 30,000
different street gangs. In 1991, the National Young Information
Center said there were 250,000 gang members nationally. Today
the FBI estimates there are at least 800,000 active gang
members.
Let me put this 800,000 number in its proper perspective.
Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo recently noted in
his letter endorsing our bill that, ``The Department of Justice
tells us there are only 708,000 State and local police
officers. We are outmanned, outgunned, and in the midst of a
national crisis.'' In short, cities and States need our help.
Our gang problem is large and growing--a national problem that
requires a national solution.
Gang members do not simply commit violent crimes, but they
also commit them more frequently. In two cities--Los Angeles
and Chicago, arguably the most gang-populated cities in the
United States--over half of the combined nearly 1,000 homicides
a year were attributed to gangs in 2004. Of the remaining 171
cities, approximately one-fourth of all homicides are
considered gang related. And across the United States, the
number of gang homicides reported by cities with populations of
100,000 or more increased 34 percent from 1999 to 2003. And
that was before the recent surge in violent crime that we have
seen nationwide in the past 2 years.
A few weeks ago, at a hearing on violent crime before
Chairman Biden's Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs, every witness
present talked about gangs as a contributing factor in this
violent crime upsurge. Several of the witnesses expressly
endorsed our bill, and today, as we hold a specific hearing on
the bill itself, I am pleased that several other witnesses will
also call for its passage.
S. 456, the Gang Abatement and Prevention Act, is tough on
violent gang crimes, but it is also tough on the root causes of
that gang crime. Through a comprehensive approach that will
combine suppression, prevention, and intervention efforts, the
bill would adopt new Federal criminal laws and tougher
penalties against those who commit gang-related and other
violent crimes. It would authorize hundreds of millions of
dollars for new gang-related prosecutions and to bolster
witness protection in cases involving violence. And it would
identify successful community programs and invest hundreds of
millions of dollars in schools and civic and religious
organizations to encourage young people to walk away from gangs
and to provide positive alternative so they never join.
I am very pleased to see that the bill has received support
from dozens of organizations: United States Conference of
Mayors, Fraternal Order of Police, International Association of
Chiefs of Police, National Sheriffs Association, and on and on.
I have pages listed here, which I will not go into, but over
the 10 years that we have been fighting for this bill, I think
it has become much better known, and we have also negotiated
with several members of this Committee and others. And so I
think today we have a much better bill, Senator Specter, before
the body of the Senate. So I look forward to rapid passage,
hopefully, by this Subcommittee and Committee and on the floor
of the Senate.
If I might turn it over to you, and thank you for your
interest in this very, very much.
STATEMENT OF HON. ARLEN SPECTER, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE
OF PENNSYLVANIA
Senator Specter. Well, thank you, Madam Chairman, for your
leadership on this important issue. I have seen the problem of
juvenile gangs since my days at district attorney of
Philadelphia many years ago, and the problem has increased in
intensity because there has been insufficient attention paid to
it. I thank you for coming to Philadelphia last year for the
hearing which we had there on the issue, and I sent for a copy
of the Philadelphia Inquirer to demonstrate the problem which
is in Pennsylvania's biggest city: ``Philadelphia leads big
cities in murder rate.'' I am sorry that we have that
distinction, but that is the brutal fact of life.
It is very appropriate for the Federal Government to play a
more active role in this issue, and the legislation which we
are discussing here today is a big step along the way. I note
that last week the Department of Justice initiated some action
in New Orleans, a special problem because of the impact of
Katrina. But it is an issue around the country. And what some
of us have been searching for on an immediate answer, we talk
about the underlying causes of crime; we talk about education
and housing and job training. And it is a seemingly intractable
problem, but we have to continue to battle it.
One thought is for a short-term answer would be to try to
recruit mentors. We find so many of these gang members and
other juvenile offenders come from broken homes--no father, a
working mother, no parental guidance, no role models. And the
thought has been that if we could identify the at-risk youth
and pair them with an adult mentor to provide some immediate
guidance, that might provide some answer.
And following the hearing with Senator Feinstein, Senator
Biden, and Governor Rendell and I attended in Philadelphia last
year, we have held similar hearings across the State, in
Pittsburgh and Allentown and Lancaster and Harrisburg, trying
to bring in the United States Attorneys, the Drug Enforcement
Agency, Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, FBI, in addition to the
State police. But the Federal Government needs to play a role
in this important subject, and I think that this legislation,
Senator Feinstein, is a big step forward. So I am pleased to
join you.
I am sorry to see that there are not more members of our
Committee here today, but that is not atypical because there is
so much activity in the Senate--really on any day, but today is
an especially tough day. Senator Feinstein and I just came from
a lengthy meeting on immigration, and we are trying to take
some important steps on that subject today. That bears on this
issue as well.
So I will stay as long as I can, Madam Chairwoman.
Senator Feinstein. Thank you very much, Senator. I
appreciate it and I appreciate your support and your concern.
And I remember well and very much enjoyed my time in
Philadelphia. It was a very good hearing.
Senator Specter. You will have to come back.
Senator Feinstein. I would like to. Thank you.
Senator Specter. I was in Los Angeles last week.
Senator Feinstein. Thank you very much. Reciprocity.
Now I would like to call on my friend and colleague and
welcome her here, Senator Barbara Boxer.
STATEMENT OF HON. BARBARA BOXER, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE
OF CALIFORNIA
Senator Boxer. Thank you, Madam Chair, for the privilege of
participating in this important hearing, and I commend you for
your hard work and leadership on this issue for so many years.
And I am proud to join you as a cosponsor of your bill, and I
am proud because I believe this bill is balanced. It combines
toughness, prevention, punishment, help to beleaguered
communities--all those elements that I think are so crucial.
And I also want to join you in welcoming my friend Mayor
Antonio Villaraigosa and my friend Chief William Bratton.
Both of these gentlemen, as you and I well know, worked
tirelessly on the issue before us today--gang violence. They
confront it every single day, and I want them to know how much
we appreciate their efforts and how much we hope to be able to
help you.
Those of us from California, Madam Chair, the mayor, the
chief, and I, know all too well, unfortunately, the damage that
gang violence has done to our communities and our families,
particularly our children. And while I will put the balance of
my statement into the record, I want to share with you a story
that really catapulted me into this issue after my friend
Senator Feinstein had shown such leadership, and this occurred
in 2005.
On November 13, 2005, 11-year-old Mynisha Crenshaw sat down
to have dinner with her 14-year-old sister and their family in
their San Bernardino, California, apartment building. And I
just want us to all think about that, sitting down with our
families to have dinner. That was very unremarkable. A gang-
related dispute broke out in the neighborhood, and gunfire
sprayed the apartment building, killing young Mynisha, 11-year-
old Mynisha, innocent, seriously wounding her 14-year-old
sister who, thank goodness, has recovered. But imagine the fear
and anguish the family and the community felt because of this
tragedy. A young girl full of hope and promise sitting down for
dinner as part of a family, dead because of this senseless
violence.
When I went into the community, San Bernardino, after that
fact, I saw something I had rarely seen before. The community
was just up in arms together and saying, ``This is it. This
cannot happen again.'' Well, 4 months later, it did happen
again. Two innocent men were killed in gang-related crossfire
in downtown San Bernardino.
Well, believe me, Senator Feinstein, you and I know exactly
what happened in San Bernardino. It is a very high-intensity
gang area right now, and I wrote a bill with you called
``Mynisha's Law.'' And it is a very simple concept, and I am so
happy it has been incorporated into your larger bill because I
think it does add something. It is complementary, and I am so
happy your staff worked so hard to get this done.
What we simply say is that there should be an interagency
task force from the various areas of Government that provide
help to these communities but do not ever talk to each other
about it--the Department of Justice, Education, Labor, HHS, and
HUD. And they will coordinate and work with your coordinating
committee that you have on the ground already in the bill to
make sure that what is delivered to these communities, you
know, is really the right medicine.
I will give you just one example, and then I will wind up.
For example, the Department of Education runs the 21st
Century Community Learning Centers, and Mayor Villaraigosa and
I and, I know, Senator Feinstein, you have been strong
supporters of after-school programs. They really do work. They
keep these kids out of trouble. These high-intensity gang areas
need more funds, so that would be part of the mix. Health and
Human Services, they have the Healthy Start program, which gets
in really early. These are just examples. Community development
block grants come out of HUD, and Job Corps comes out of Labor.
So what we are going to do is not reinvent the wheel but
have people who know what they are doing, and what I liked
about your staff's and your recommendation to us is--originally
we had the task force in Washington. You insisted, and I think
rightly so, that they ought to be people on the ground from the
community so we really have an onsite team working with the
rest of the bill, as you have set it up.
So at the end of the day, I would ask unanimous consent to
put the rest of my statement into the record. I just want to
again say thank you. This is a good bill. I am going to work
with Senator Reid to get this bill to the floor. We need this
bill. It is a long time coming. It is going to make a
difference. And I am so happy that Senator Specter is here. I
know the numbers of things he has to do. I am so happy that
Senator Whitehouse is here and that Senator Hatch is so
supportive.
So, Madam Chair, you just call on me. Sometimes back home
we say Senator Feinstein and I make a good team. She talks to
the tall Senators, I talk to the short Senators. Whatever you
need from me, I will be there for you on this very important
legislation.
Thank you very much.
Senator Feinstein. Thank you very much. I appreciate your
comments. I appreciate your cosponsorship. I appreciate your
friendship. Thank you so much.
[The prepared statement of Senator Boxer appears as a
submission for the record.]
Senator Feinstein. We will now move on, if we might.
Senator Whitehouse has joined us, and I would like to introduce
now, I think, one of the finest mayors in America. He runs a
very big city--Los Angeles--Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. He is
the 41st mayor of the city. He was elected in 2005 after
serving 2 years on the Los Angeles City Council. Before that,
he served in the California State Assembly, where he was
elected by his colleagues as the first Assembly Speaker from
Los Angeles in 25 years. The reason is because, I think, San
Francisco had a bit of a monopoly on the speakership, but you
certainly--
Mr. Villaraigosa. A century.
Senator Feinstein. Yes, exactly.
He was raised in East Los Angeles, was the oldest of four
children, raised by a single mother. He is the first Latino
mayor of Los Angeles since 1872 and was named as one of
America's 25 Most Influential Latinos by Time Magazine. He also
has been named one of America's best leaders by United States
News & World Report.
Mr. Mayor, both Barbara and I know what it is like to go
back and forth, the time loss. We thank you and Chief Bratton
so much for coming back for this hearing. I know it is a bit of
a hassle, but just know your visit is very much appreciated.
Thank you for coming.
STATEMENT OF HON. ANTONIO R. VILLARAIGOSA, MAYOR, CITY OF LOS
ANGELES, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
Mayor Villaraigosa. Well, thank you, Senator Feinstein, for
your leadership on this issue over the last decade that you
have been working on this bill and for bringing this issue to
the forefront. And, Ranking Member Specter, it is good to see
you in good health and to see you again. We had an opportunity
to talk last year about this issue, and we had talked about the
idea of me coming to speak here, and I want to thank you for
being here. And, Senator Whitehouse, although we have not been
able to meet previously, it is good to have you here as well.
Thank you for holding this hearing on the issue of
preventing and confronting gang violence. I too, along with
Senator Boxer, who I was on the plane with last evening, have
some chilling stories to share with you. One of them was on
December 20th of last year. I received a call from my security
detail informing me that there had been a shooting in Central
Los Angeles. At about 8:30 that night, two gang members--one
barely 20 years old--were seen driving down a quiet residential
street, like many in the city of Los Angeles. Neighbors heard
the sound of gunfire. Shots rang from the car toward a nearby
house. The car sped off. But one stray bullet pierced the front
window of a neighboring apartment. That bullet crossed the
living room and penetrated a wall into the kitchen, where stood
a lovely 9-year-old girl. Her name was Charupha Wongwisetsiri.
The next day I met and grieved with Charupha's mother. She told
me she had brought her daughter to Los Angeles, to America from
Thailand, on the promise of a better education and a brighter
future. Little Charupha died a few days later in the hospital.
This was just a week after 14-year-old Cheryl Green, a
young girl with her whole future in front of her, was standing
on a corner in her own neighborhood in the middle of the day
with a group of youngsters around the same age, when gang
members walked up to her, shot her in cold blood, for the
simple fact that she was African American.
Honorable members, innocent people lose their lives to gang
violence every day in every corner of this country. Gang
violence affects neighborhoods from Phoenix to Boston, from
Milwaukee to New York, from Columbia to Chicago, from Houston
to San Diego and Philadelphia.
Since 2001, more than 4,000 people have lost their lives to
gang violence in California alone. More than 4,000 people. Hear
that for a moment. That is more American lives than we have
lost in the war in Iraq. That is more American lives than we
lost on September 11th. Gang violence is a problem of national
scope, and it must be confronted on a national scale.
You are all too aware that crime is on the rise across the
country. Homicides and robberies are up double digits since
2004. And street gangs are becoming increasingly responsible
for violent crime in our urban centers.
In Los Angeles, violent gangs were responsible for a
majority of the homicides, about 56 percent of all homicides;
70 percent of the gun violence in 2006 was perpetrated by
gangs. In order to reduce the crime in our urban centers, we
must confront this issue.
I am very fortunate, as both Senator Feinstein and Senator
Boxer have mentioned, to have Chief Bratton. I believe Chief
Bratton is one of the most experienced leaders on this issue of
gang and gun violence. He knows full well that cities like ours
have limited resources to achieve the maximum reduction in
crime. We need to collaborate and work with the Federal
Government to address this issue, and so your leadership on
this issue is very important.
The chief also knows and is the first to tell you that we
simply cannot arrest our way out of the problem of gang
violence. Ranking Member Specter spoke of the issue of mentors.
I can tell you, as a young boy growing up on the east side of
Los Angeles, the fact that I had a mentor--and I was an at-risk
individual. I grew up in a home with domestic violence and
alcoholism. Many of the kids who are involved in gangs and gun
violence come from broken homes, come from homes filled with
drugs, and oftentimes do not have the support that we need. And
so in order to reduce gang violence for the long term, we must,
as Senator Boxer said, address this issue in a comprehensive
way. That means a significant and sustained investment in
prevention, intervention, and re-entry, in addition to enhanced
suppression.
That is why I am here to voice my strong support for
Senator Feinstein's legislation. The Gang Abatement and
Prevention Act creates a collaborative and shared environment
for law enforcement to work together on gang crime. It
recognizes the wide consensus of gang experts and academics and
local officials that the only sustainable and effective anti-
gang strategy must include elements of gang prevention,
intervention, suppression, and community-based re-entry.
To implement this approach, we need the necessary resources
for a comprehensive strategy. I can tell you that we are
growing our police department. We are the most under-policed
big city in the United States of America, on a per capita basis
the safest big city in the United States. The numbers of
homicides are down in Los Angeles to levels that we have not
seen since I was a 3-year-old boy in 1956. And yet last year
gang crime was up, while in the last few months, because of a
strategy that the chief and I have implemented, it has gone
down. We still, in addition to police officers, need the
funding that I just mentioned.
I have submitted for the record our gang reduction
strategy. It is a strategy of working with the Federal
Government, with a Justice Department grant, that in an area of
the city where crime has gone up 30 percent, in this area, we
are focusing on suppression, prevention, intervention, re-
entry, family preservation, jobs, tattoo removal, a whole
amalgam of programs, gang crime is down 40 percent. So we think
this strategy works. We are here in support of this
legislation. We think it is important to be tough on crime, but
equally tough on the root causes of crime as well. We think
this legislation does that.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mayor Villaraigosa appears as a
submission for the record.]
Senator Feinstein. Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor, and I
want to thank you because you have taken a very active interest
in this area. I think you have put forward your own programs. I
know they are working, and I really think you are to be
commended. So thank you for being here.
Senator Boxer. Senator Feinstein, may I be excused? I have
another hearing.
Senator Feinstein. Yes. Thank you again very much. Thank
you, Barbara.
Since October 2002, William J. Bratton has served as the
54th Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department. That is the
third largest police department in the United States. He
manages 9,000 sworn officers. He is the only person ever to
serve as chief executive of both LAPD and the New York Police
Department. He has developed an international reputation for
re-engineering police departments and bringing down crime.
As chief of the New York City Transit Police, Boston Police
Commissioner, and then New York City Police Commissioner, he
cut crime in all three posts, including the largest crime
declines in New York City's history.
Chief, it is a great pleasure to welcome you here, and we
look forward to hearing from you.
STATEMENT OF WILLIAM J. BRATTON, CHIEF OF POLICE, LOS ANGELES
POLICE DEPARTMENT, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
Chief Bratton. Thank you, Senator. It is a pleasure to be
here with Mayor Villaraigosa to speak on this very important
issue. I have previously submitted written testimony, and I
will paraphrase some of that.
I am here in support of the Gang Abatement and Prevention
Act of 2007. I thank you and your colleagues, Senator
Whitehouse and Senator Specter, for the opportunity to appear
here this morning with my mayor.
In the 1990s, we got it right in this country. The Congress
of the United States supported the omnibus crime bill, and in
the 1990s, we began to reduce crime dramatically after the peak
year of 1990 when it reached its highest level ever. Overall,
crime in the United States in those years went down by between
30 and 40 percent, including homicides.
But after the events of 9/11, the Federal Government, like
a one-eyed Cyclops, basically focuses its attention now on
terrorism, and in many ways abandoned the partnership with
local communities and States in fighting local crime. Your
bill--and I would expand on Senator Boxer's comment. This is
not just a good bill. It is a great bill--a great bill not only
in its content and its focus on suppression, intervention, and
prevention--and you need all three, as Mayor Villaraigosa has
indicated, that American police chiefs and mayors have known
for a long time. You cannot arrest your way out of this
problem. Suppression is, in fact, the first and foremost
ingredient, but you need to add to the mix prevention and
intervention, and your bill certainly allocates resources to
begin that process.
But after the events of 9/11, the Federal partnership was
frayed. The additional officers that were hired in the 1990s by
and large went away. The 8- to 10-percent reduction in the size
of American police forces over the last 5 years has mirrored
closely the increase in the 1990s. We have seen also that the
new insidious element of crime that was evident in Los Angeles,
Chicago, and some other cities in the 1990s gang crime has now
spread throughout the United States and, in fact, Chicago and
L.A., we are the source of much of that spread of gang crime,
unfortunately, to the rest of the country.
But in our city, as the mayor has indicated, we believe
that we know what to do about it, and what it takes is
resources and it takes partnership--resources in terms of not
only additional police officers appropriately focused, but
partnership with our Federal agencies, and we believe the
partnerships we have in Los Angeles serve as a national model--
FBI, DEA, ATF, and that partnership has been expanded on to the
war on terrorism as well as trying to deal with the gang crime
problem in L.A.
As of this morning in Los Angeles, our overall homicides
are down by 50 versus the same period of time last year. That
is a 25-percent reduction. So we are having some success. But
where we are still need to do more is in the area of prevention
and intervention, because even as we make the city streets
safer, to keep them that way we have to find alternatives for
our young people. And the mayor's testimony, supported by mine,
speaks to a number of the initiatives that we have underway in
Los Angeles that are helping us out, and helping us out
significantly.
As the mayor indicated, you cannot arrest your way out of
this problem, but, in fact, that is where you need to begin in
the sense of the suppression. To that end, the organization
that I am proud to be President of, the Police Executive
Research Forum--and I am also a very active member in the Major
City Chiefs of Police--2 years ago we issued a report, ``The
Gathering Storm,'' that talked about our belief, based on what
we were dealing with, that crime was coming back to the United
States; the residual benefits of the investment in the 1990s
was, in fact, wearing off; the fact that agencies like the FBI,
which had focused most of their 13,000 agents on crime in the
United States, were now focusing the vast majority of the
resources on international terrorism; that that was going to
have some impact on our abilities to fight crime. And it has.
The FBI yesterday reported that for the second straight
year in a row crime is up in the United States. In eight of the
ten largest cities of the United States, homicides are up. As
indicated by Senator Specter, Philadelphia has the dubious
distinction of now having the highest murder rate in the
country.
We know what to do about this. We got it right in the
1990s. We can get it right again in the 21st century. But it is
essential that the Federal Government re-engage in the
partnership that brought about the successes in the 1990s. Your
bill begins that process. It is a necessary, essential, and
critical first step. I applaud you and your colleagues for
moving it forward, and I certainly wish you every success as
you bring it to the full Congress.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Chief Bratton appears as a
submission for the record.]
Senator Feinstein. Thank you very much.
Senator Specter. Madam Chair?
Senator Feinstein. Yes, Senator, would you--
Senator Specter. I would just like to submit a couple of
questions for the record. I am going to have to excuse myself
at this point. But I thank the witnesses who have come in, the
mayor and the chief and the witnesses from San Mateo.
Senator Feinstein. Thank you.
Senator Specter. Very important testimony, and we
congratulate you on your success, and Philadelphia is going to
follow you.
Thank you.
Senator Feinstein. Thank you, and thank you for your
cosponsorship. I appreciate it very much.
Senator Specter. Glad to do it.
Senator Feinstein. Just a quick question before we move on.
Most people do not know that the Federal Government does not
run prevention programs. We fund grants which go to communities
or organizations for these programs. In your view, since your
initiative, Mr. Mayor, and, Chief, during your tenure--you
heard Senator Specter speak about mentoring, which is, I think,
a great idea. It is very hard because if you have 700,000,
800,000 gang members, it is hard to find that number of
mentors. But which programs in Los Angeles have you found work
the best?
I went to Lennox School, and I watched a gang program in
that middle school. I was very impressed with it. And I thought
it might be interesting if you could go into what you believe
today in Los Angeles are the most successful models.
Mayor Villaraigosa. We are in the process currently of
reviewing our anti-gang programs. We hope to complete that
assessment of their performance sometime later in the year. I
can tell you that one program, a prevention program that you
have been very, very supportive of and sponsored budget
augmentations in support of this, is the L.A.'s Best after-
school program, a great prevention program, an after-school
enrichment program for kids that about 26,000 kids in Los
Angeles are benefiting from, in a school district, however,
with 780,000 kids. So a long way--
Senator Feinstein. Explain how it works.
Mayor Villaraigosa. It is essentially an after-school
program of enrichment. It has academics, music, dance, you
know, a cultural component as well as tutoring. Kids
participate--not all the kids in the school because the program
is not big enough, but a group of kids who qualify participate
in this program. It has been very, very successful. There has
actually been a longitudinal study by UCLA that has
demonstrated the positive impacts of this program for
graduation later on. And there are other programs, Homeboy
Industries, Father Boyle, who I think you know, has done
incredible work with kids. He says that nothing stops a bullet
like a job, working with kids on family preservation issues, on
counseling, providing skills for jobs.
We are in the process of increasing--when I was elected
mayor, we were doing only about 2,500 summer youth jobs. In my
first year, we had a goal of 5,000. We passed that, got 7,500.
This year the goal is 10,000 summer youth jobs. We are on our
way to 13,000, we hope, by the end of the summer. Very
important to keep kids off the streets. We have a program
called ``Learn and Earn'' that focuses on the dropout rate and
on the failure of young people to pass the high school exit
exam. We train them with the Princeton Review in the morning to
pass the exit exam, and in the afternoon we give them a job.
So those are some programs. There are others. Again, this
GRIP program--I think it is called Gang Reduction Improvement
Program--is a collaboration with the Justice Department, and
those are some of the elements.
Senator Feinstein. Thank you.
Chief, in your view, what community program works the best?
Chief Bratton. I am certainly very supportive of Homeboy
Industries, which is to my mind one of the most successful
intervention programs; taking active gang members and trying to
turn their lives around. Father Boyle has done a phenomenal
job. But there are three programs within the Los Angeles Police
Department that I would like to briefly reference.
First is our Jeopardy program, which is an intervention
effort to take kids who are beginning to get recruited into
gangs, and I applaud in your bill that there is a significant
component that basically makes it a crime to recruit young
people into gangs, because that is where we need to stop it as
they are going in. But Jeopardy tends to deal with those young
people who are into a gang but not so far in that we cannot
help to pull them out. It requires parental involvement. The
parents have to basically come to classes with their kids.
Something that is so often missing and allows for the
recruitment of young people into gangs is parental involvement.
The second program is the Explorer program. These are young
cadets. We have about 750 of them in this program. We are going
to double that, hopefully, over the next year. These are young
people who for 12 Saturdays in a row come in and they are
mentored and taught by our police officers. They wear uniforms.
After graduation they can stay with the program until they turn
20 years of age. They give over 100,000 hours of voluntary
service every year back to the community, and these are young
people who have found an alternative to the gangs.
The third program is our Magnet Schools, in partnership
with the Los Angeles Unified School District. We have five high
schools in which we have approximately 1,500 young people who
are in our program. The graduation rate of young people
entering our high schools is about 50 percent. But in our
Magnet School program, the graduation rate is 95 percent of
people who enter, and the vast majority of them go on to
college when they graduate. Last year, they received in excess
of a million dollars in scholarships. We have police officers
assigned to those schools full-time. They work with these kids
every day. One day a week they wear their uniforms to school
and mingle with their classmates. The bravery that takes in the
Los Angeles School System to wear a Magnet School police
uniform among their classmates is laudable.
Those are just three of the efforts that are underway
currently that would be expanded upon with the resources that
your bill would provide.
Senator Feinstein. Thank you very much.
Senator Whitehouse, any questions?
Senator Whitehouse. Thank you.
First of all, welcome to you both. It is wonderful to have
the mayor with us, and, Chief Bratton, in Providence, Rhode
Island, we have Dean Esserman as our police chief.
Chief Bratton. You have the best.
Senator Whitehouse. He was an acolyte of yours and has
brought a lot of the thinking that you brought to law
enforcement to the city of Providence with great effect. So I
will pass on your good regards to him. He is a close friend.
Like many other cities, we have a fair amount of gang
activity in Providence. We see it starting very early, and I
wanted to ask at what school level do you see the risk of gang
participation and influence really becoming very acute.
Chief Bratton. The mayor mentioned the L.A.'s Best program
that he is so intimately involved with. He and I have actually
had a fundraising event this past Sunday and raised almost $1
million for that program. It is all privately funded. Those are
elementary school kids.
We are finding, as we get more involved with this and the
evolution of the gangs over the last 15 years, is that it is
increasingly affecting younger people. You literally have to
start trying to get them at the elementary school age, keep
them engaged, off the streets, in an environment where there is
mentoring, and then move right up the cycle. In Los Angeles, we
have got truly a career ladder, if you will, for lack of a
better term. Get them into L.A.'s Best, see if you can then
move them into our Explorer programs, see if you can move them
into the Magnet School programs.
The mayor, in very tight budget years the 2 years he has
been mayor, has been very actively supportive of our student
worker program so that when the kids graduate high school,
these Magnet Schools, they can find employment in the police
department or they can be funded to go on to college and then
hopefully become police officers. Over 20 of our police
officers have gone through that series of steps, if you will,
where you provide a safe passage through those very troubling
years from elementary school on up.
So elementary school, it is like so many other things, you
cannot start early enough.
Senator Whitehouse. Mr. Mayor?
Mayor Villaraigosa. Let me just mention, Senator, that we
hear from teachers that as young as 8 years old they start
seeing some of the at-risk behavior in a lot of these kids. So
the chief is right that the elementary school level is where
you begin to see some of the manifestations of kids who are at
risk and maybe moving into gangs.
Just to set the record straight, I said ``GRIP.'' It is
``grip,'' but it is G-R-P, Gang Reduction Program.
Senator Whitehouse. Chief, the HIGAA program, High-
Intensity Gang Activity Areas, that Senator Feinstein has
proposed seemed to be modeled on the HIDTA, the High-Intensity
Drug Trafficking Area programs that I helped administer as U.S.
Attorney in Rhode Island. What was your experience from the
police side with the HIDTA programs?
Chief Bratton. HIDTA is a great initiative. It is a
regional initiative, something we are certainly very familiar
with, both from my experience in Boston, New York, and now in
Los Angeles. The recommendation that the mayor has included in
his testimony is that the new initiative that is proposed in
the Senator's gang bill should be focused more specifically.
HIDTA is a larger region. Our experience would be that you
would want to keep it concentrated within a geographic
jurisdiction, such as the city of Los Angeles.
So in the Mayor's testimony, written testimony, there is a
proposal to more specifically, while taking many elements of
HIDTA, the High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program that
has been so successful throughout the country, as we deal with
gangs you would want a more significant and focused
concentration of how you would apply those resources.
Senator Whitehouse. I cannot help but think about, if we
speak about safety in our communities, the decision of the Bush
administration to reduce funding for community policing and
taking police officers off the streets and to fight against
assault weapons restrictions and put more assault weapons on
the streets. Do you see fewer police officers and more assault
weapons as a sensible policy with respect to gang activity and
violence in our cities?
Chief Bratton. I was quite proud during my time as police
commissioner of New York City to actively work with the then-
President and the then-Congress to work on the omnibus crime
bill. I was pleased to be in the Rose Garden when President
Clinton announced the initiative and to also be there for its
signing, and we saw the benefits of that coalition--the omnibus
crime bill, some meaningful gun laws for the first time in the
history of the country, and it worked, including the close to
100,000 additional police that were hired.
All of the elements of that program have pretty much been
dissipated since the events of 9/11 other than the philosophy
of community policing, which we embrace--partnership, problem
solving, prevention. Unfortunately, the partnership with the
Federal Government, the Federal Government contribution to that
partnership has waned significantly. Director Mueller of the
FBI would love to have his agents once again back working in
close partnership with us on issues besides terrorism. What few
agents he does have he allocates to traditional crime reduction
efforts, and Los Angeles certainly gets its fair share of what
is left.
But the point you make that in the 1990s we got it right.
We must once again understand that we cannot just fight a war
on terrorism. We need also to fight a war that is closer to
home, that is taking 16,000 lives every year, and that death
toll is now growing once again. We have the capabilty to fight
both terrorism and traditional crime together.
Mayor Villaraigosa. And, Senator Whitehouse, I am glad that
you make the reference and the connection between gangs and gun
violence. I know that Senator Feinstein authored the assault
weapons ban, and as she knows, I was, along with Senator
Perata, the author of California's assault weapons ban when I
was Speaker of the California State Assembly, and also the
author of most of the most far-reaching, sensible gun
legislation in California.
These gang members are not using bats and brass knuckles.
They are using guns. They are using fire power that should be
restricted to the battlefield and not the streets and
neighborhoods and kitchens, as you heard from our testimony, of
neighborhoods in Los Angeles and in cities across the Nation.
We mayors--Mayor Bloomberg, myself, Mayor Daley--have led an
effort to address this issue of micro-stamping and having the
ability to trace weapons and ammunition so that we can get a
handle on this issue.
Whenever I refer to gang violence, I always say ``gang and
gun violence,'' because as I said, they are not using knives
and bats and, you know, brass knuckles. They are using fire
power that is very, very formidable.
Senator Whitehouse. Thank you.
Senator Feinstein. Thank you.
Let me just thank you for that effort because, having been
a former mayor myself and active in the Conference of Mayors, I
always thought that where the leadership would have to come
with respect to guns is either from the mayors or from the
women of America. There has to be an understanding of what the
laxity with respect to being able to buy a gun on a street
corner, from the back of a car, at a gun show, really does to
the safety of the cities of America. And that has always been a
very difficult point because the NRA comes right after you, and
I see where they are going after Mayor Bloomberg. But I just
want you to know I have the greatest respect. Thank you for
what you are doing. Stand up tall. I am ready to go with
legislation at any time. It is written. We have it. The problem
is we do not have the votes for it. I just want to, you know,
really say thank you.
I also want to make a point. A few years back, I went on a
visit to various schools in L.A. You were not mayor then. I was
speaking to a fourth-grade class, and I noticed a youngster
came up and stood next to me. I thought, ``This is strange.''
And afterwards, I asked somebody, I said, ``Who was that
youngster that came up?'' He was the gang leader. So he was
coming up to assert his territory in the classroom while I was
actually speaking to the class.
It sort of concentrated my attention, and I began to watch
body language in other classes. And what I saw--and I do not
know whether this is valid or not, but I saw it--was the
difference between the third graders and the fourth, fifth, and
sixth graders in the dullness of the eye that appeared, the
apparent boredom, their body language in the chairs, and this
sort of bright, eager third grader. By the time that third
grader became a sixth grader, you saw the cynicism and the kind
of pulling back that took place.
So I have always drawn the conclusion that you really have
to be concerned from grades 4 on up. Do you think that is
wrong?
Mayor Villaraigosa. No, I do not. I think you are
absolutely right. You know, the murder of Cheryl Green that I
mentioned, the young boy or the young man who shot and killed
her in cold blood was--they did a story on him on the front
page of the L.A. Times, and, you know, as a young boy he was a
ball player, a church-going youngster, a good mom, a good
family. And around the fourth or fifth grade, he began to
exhibit, you know, aberrant behavior that then resulted in him
joining gangs in middle school grades and then finally a life
of destruction.
Senator Feinstein. You mentioned Father Boyle and his
programs, and the chief did as well, in terms of being able to
turn around these youngsters.
One of the things that I have thought about is having some
of these programs right in the school, almost part of the
curriculum, in places where you really have troubled schools--
and we know they do exist--and try to get at the heart of the
gang movement right inside the schools. Do you think that makes
any sense?
Mayor Villaraigosa. It makes a lot of sense, Senator. In
fact, as you know, I made a valiant effort--
Senator Feinstein. Yes, you did.
Mayor Villaraigosa.--to take over in a partnership L.A.
city schools. That effort notwithstanding was judged
unconstitutional, and then I supported a majority, helped to
elect a majority of reform members. I am hoping and expect that
I am going to get a cluster of schools, some 50,000 kids, and
one of the things we want to work on is on this issue of gangs
and at-risk kids and have a concentrated focus in the schools.
A woman who I supported for school board who is a
neighborhood prosecutor, who works in the city attorney's
office and works with gang members, says she has never met a
gang member who was not first a truant or a dropout.
Senator Feinstein. That is correct.
Mayor Villaraigosa. And so focusing on this issue in the
schools is one aspect of the partnership that I think cities
and schools need to have to address the violence in schools and
in neighborhoods.
Senator Feinstein. Well, thank you very much. I do not want
to take any more of your time. You might have to remind the
commission occasionally of your support of them during the
election. That is what I always found happened after a while.
But I wish you the best of luck, and thank you for your help
with this bill, and thank you both so much for being here. I
appreciate it very, very much.
Mayor Villaraigosa. Thank you, Senator Feinstein, Senator
Whitehouse, for having us here.
Senator Whitehouse. Good to be with you, Mayor, Chief.
Senator Feinstein. We will move on to the next panel. We
have a victim, Ms. Boni Gayle Driskill, from Modesto,
California. And Mr. James Fox, District Attorney of San Mateo
County. Mr. Fox is also the President-Elect of the National
District Attorneys Association. We have Mr. Claude Robinson,
Vice President of Youth Development Programs, Uhlich Children's
Advantage Network, Chicago; Mr. Gregg Croteau, Executive
Director, United Teen Equality Center; and Mr. Patrick Word, a
detective from the Gaithersburg Police Department of
Gaithersburg, Maryland, and he is also Chairman of the Mid-
Atlantic Regional Gang Investigators Network.
It is wonderful to have you here. Boni, I believe we will
begin with you. She is a resident of Modesto. She is the mother
of Lacy Marie Ferguson, who has been an innocent victim of gang
violence. Before Lacy was shot and killed at the age of 25, Ms.
Driskill had been a medical assistant. She then quit her job to
help raise her granddaughter, Haleigh, who is now 6 years old.
Ms. Driskill is a member of Wings of Protection, a group that
provides counseling to the family members of victims of
homicide and missing persons.
Welcome. We will ask you to confine your remarks to 5
minutes so we can hear from everybody. Thank you very much.
STATEMENT OF BONI GAYLE DRISKILL, WINGS OF PROTECTION, MODESTO,
CALIFORNIA
Ms. Driskill. Thank you. First of all, I want to introduce
you to my daughter and my granddaughter. I find it is much
easier if you can see who I am speaking about. This is my
daughter Lacy. She is 25. This is my granddaughter, Haleigh,
who is now 6. Her mother was killed on her third birthday.
First off, I know by looking at me you would not think that
I would be aware of what gang violence means or be an expert in
it. I do not--
Senator Feinstein. May I make a suggestion? Talk into the
microphone, please, because it is all recorded.
Ms. Driskill. OK. First off, I know you would not think
that I would be aware of what gangs are or anything else. I
mean, my kids grew up--I am a Mom. My kids grew up. Of course,
I saw gangs in our neighborhood, but I kept them away from
them. We had lived in Los Angeles, and in 1982 I decided to
move my small children to Modesto, California, which was a
small town at the time and did not have a gang problem like Los
Angeles. I thought that that would be the solution at the time.
Well, on August 24, 2003, my daughter, Lacy, who was not a
gang member, who was not wearing the wrong colors, who--the
closest thing to a gang was Girl Scouts and Sea Cadets--went to
a corner market with her boyfriend. She was on a date with him,
and she went in to get a pack of cigarettes, came out. One car
pulled in front of her. It had gang members in it. Another car
came in, looked at them, left, I guess to--I assume to load up
their weapons, came back and opened fire on the first car.
My daughter's boyfriend was shot in the arm. The intended
target, which was the other gang member from the other car, was
shot twice in the buttocks. My daughter, on the other hand, was
shot pointblank in the back of her head.
She was resuscitated at the scene. She was taken to the
trauma unit. She was resuscitated again. And the wound itself
was such that there was nothing they could do. It was a large-
caliber hollow point, which did complete damage. It entered the
back of her head, exited her forehead with part of her forehead
and most of her brains. She was put on machines to keep her
alive. We had to make the decision to let her go because there
was nothing that could be done. We let her go that next day.
We took Haleigh into the ICU unit. We covered Lacy up and
we took Haleigh in there. She was 3. She wanted her Mom to hold
her. She couldn't. She asked why Mama had a big boo-boo on her
head. We took her out of the room. That was her good-bye.
I want you to know now Haleigh gets as physically close to
her mother as when we visit that graveyard. We do this. I
personally go about four times a month. She gets to go probably
about once a month and on holidays. She hugs the stone. She
kisses the picture good-bye. She asks questions now. ``Why? Why
are these people free?'' Because it is unsolved still due to
the fear that people have of gangs. There were 20 to 30
witnesses to the shooting. Nobody has stepped forward, which is
hard for us. We have fought very hard for justice.
I appreciate and I thank you, Mrs. Feinstein, for this gang
abatement bill. It means a lot to me and to numerous families
that I deal with on an everyday basis who have the same sad
life that we do. Their story may be a little different, but
they do not have a loved one anymore. They visit graveyards.
They get to talk about their feelings, and the gangs still
exist. They are not only existing, but they are proliferating.
They are spreading.
Los Angeles, as you heard, has a drop in crime. A lot of
their gang members are moving to our area. The Central Valley
is known for gangs. You cannot go to a J.C. Penney's, you
cannot go to a diner, you cannot go to take your child to Chuck
E. Cheese without seeing these people. They used to stay
basically within their own realm. Now there are so many that
they are everywhere that you go.
I appreciate Washington, D.C. It is so clean here. I have
not seen anybody that even remotely looks like a gang member
here, and for that I applaud you guys. We would like to see the
same.
Senator Feinstein. Well, do not rush to judgment.
[Laughter.]
Ms. Driskill. Well, so far. But, I mean, compared to what
we are used to living with.
A couple days before Christmas Eve in 2005, I wrote a
letter to the editor. It was addressed to the killers. Not so
much what I wanted to see done with them. I am pro death
penalty. I will be honest with you. But not so much what I
wanted to see done with them, but for the fact that I wanted
them to know what we have to live like since they did what they
did. They did what they did and they scurried into the night.
That is it. Nobody is uncovering who they are. They have that
much intimidation.
When I wrote a letter to the killer and put it as a letter
to the editor, they made a feature story out of it. A couple
days later, I received my answer from the gangs. They found out
where we lived. They drove into my driveway and shot off seven
rounds with a 9-millimeter gun. This is at a house that
consists of me and my husband--grandparents--and a 6-year-old
child who no longer has her mother. We face the intimidation of
these people every single day where we live, and as for police
officers, there are not enough. The crime is just over-running
them.
As for the gang units and stuff or prevention, we do not
have it. We have a wake-up program that I came in contact with,
and we have the after-school program. That is it.
Senator Feinstein. Could you wrap up because of the time?
Ms. Driskill. OK. Thank you. Sorry. I tend to get on a roll
with this.
Senator Feinstein. Thank you very much. We appreciate it.
Ms. Driskill. But basically what I am asking you is two
things. We really like this bill. Please, speaking as a
victim's family--and I speak for many--do not water this down.
Pass this thing the way it is so people can live peacefully.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Driskill appears as a
submission for the record.]
Senator Feinstein. Thank you. One of the big problems is
witness protection and the intimidation that gangs practice,
andyou are obviously a victim of that, too, and I am so sorry.
We will do everything we can.
James Fox is the President-Elect of the National District
Attorneys Association, and he is a former President of the
California District Attorneys Association. He is a graduate of
the University of San Francisco, and he has served at the
elected D.A. of San Mateo County for the past 25 years, where
he has seen firsthand the rise of gang violence.
Welcome, Mr. Fox.
STATEMENT OF JAMES P. FOX, DISTRICT ATTORNEY, SAN MATEO COUNTY,
CALIFORNIA, AND PRESIDENT-ELECT, NATIONAL DISTRICT ATTORNEYS
ASSOCIATION, REDWOOD CITY, CALIFORNIA
Mr. Fox. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. It is a pleasure
to be here, and I would like to thank you for the leadership
role that you have taken in regard to this very important
issue.
I have been involved in the criminal justice system in one
role or another for the past 41 years. I started out with the
juvenile probation department. I served as a deputy district
attorney prosecuting crimes. I spent 9 years as a criminal
defense attorney. And as you said, I have been the elected
district attorney now for almost 25 years. So I do think I have
a rather broad perspective of the issue of crime, and in
particular gang violence.
Our county is somewhat unique, as you are certainly aware,
Madam Chair. Many people do not realize that they have been in
San Mateo County, but San Francisco International Airport is
located in San Mateo County. So if you have been to San
Francisco by flying, you have been in San Mateo County.
The views that I am expressing are the views of both the
National District Attorneys Association as well as the
California District Attorneys Association, which has endorsed
your legislation.
You are well aware of the nature of the national gang
problem. I will talk a little bit about the San Mateo County
gang problem. But I want to also touch upon why I believe that
it is important that there be Federal legislation to deal with
this issue.
Complexity characterizes the gang issue in all of our
communities, and the safety of our citizens is seriously
jeopardized as a result. But the fact of the matter is this is
not just a local community issue. It is a national epidemic
requiring Federal assistance. With the relative ease with which
gang members can today cross State lines and international
borders and utilize ever emerging technologies to communicate
and perpetrate their crimes, we believe that it is important
that there be a cooperation and a partnership formed by the
local prosecutors as well as the Federal authorities.
In 2005, the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors,
recognizing the proliferation of the gang problem in our
county, funded additional positions in the sheriff's office and
in the probation department. We created a Gang Task Force, as
well as a Gang Intelligence Unit, which is collaboratively
cooperating with the Federal Government. The FBI is actively
participating along with ATF. We believe that that could serve
as a model for the partnership between the Federal Government
and the local prosecutors.
San Mateo County's gang problem really does not reach the
level where there are gang enterprises, criminal gang
enterprises. The majority of our gangs, it is all about colors,
turf, and respect. They are not engaged in for-profit
operations, but they will engage in violent retaliation if
somebody wearing the wrong color goes into their turf. So the
current Federal laws are not capable of dealing with that on
the Federal level because it does not rise to the level of a
RICO. It is not an enterprise as such.
We believe that there are inadequate resources that have
been devoted certainly to prevention--as I said, I have spent
41 years in the criminal justice system. We do not nor have we
ever spent enough money at the front end to try to change
people, modify their behavior. We certainly do not spend enough
money in trying to educate and do the intervention for at-risk
behavior. You know, I am familiar with Father Boyle. I think he
has got a fabulous program. But the high school level is too
late. The intervention has got to start at the elementary
school--they cannot even start in the middle school--because
that is where it is getting started, as you commented yourself
Senator, having been in a fourth grade class and firsthand
witnessing the behavior of people who are at risk.
We believe that the additional funding that might be
available through this would authorize training. Training is
absolutely critical for prosecutors to succeed in a courtroom.
It is also critical for providing safety for our witnesses and
our victims, and the National District Attorneys Association
has a National Advocacy Center in Columbia, South Carolina,
which we believe is a model of training for prosecutors and
should be utilized in providing additional training to address
the gang problem.
In closing, I appreciate your efforts, Senator, and the
Committee's interest in this. I appreciate Chairman Leahy
scheduling this hearing on a very, very important issue, and I
believe that it is imperative that we finally be able to take
action that you have been advocating now for the past 10 years.
Thank you very much for your efforts.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Fox appears as a submission
for the record.]
Senator Feinstein. Thank you, Mr. Fox.
We are now joined by Senator Durbin, and since the next
witness is a distinguished Chicagoan, I believe that Senator
Durbin should introduce him.
Senator Durbin. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for
your leadership on this issue.
This hearing is the culmination of many years of effort by
Senator Feinstein on this issue. I know of her determination
and hard work to bring us to this point, and I thank her. We
have worked to resolve some differences that we had, and I
believe that we now are very close to having a good piece of
legislation to bring through the Committee and to the floor to
deal with this national problem.
Madam Chair, my guest today is Claude Robinson. Claude is
with an organization known as the Uhlich Children's Advantage
Network. Uhlich goes back to the Civil War. It was started at a
time when orphans of Civil War soldiers needed a place to go
and be safe. It has survived all these years because it has
been dedicated to young people and to the real problems that
they face on a regular basis.
Madam Chair, there is a lot of criticism of Members of
Congress for earmarks. I want to put it on the record that I am
proud of the earmark that I put in legislation to help fund
this program at Uhlich Children's Advantage Network because
they have taken this money and reached out, just as Mr. Fox has
noted, to children in the lower grades for gang prevention. If
we are going to avoid the terribly tragedies that Ms. Driskill
spoke of earlier, many of these children need to be reached at
an early age. UCAN, Uhlich Children's Advantage Network, has
done that.
And a word about Claude Robinson. Over 20 years of
dedication to this effort, he was truly deserving when WGN-TV
recently called him one of Chicago's ``unsung heroes,'' so I am
happy to welcome him to this Committee.
Mr. Robinson. Thanks. Thanks for having me, Senator.
Senator Feinstein. Welcome, Mr. Robinson.
STATEMENT OF CLAUDE A. ROBINSON, JR., VICE PRESIDENT OF YOUTH
DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS, UHLICH CHILDREN'S ADVANTAGE NETWORK,
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
Mr. Robinson. Thank you, Senator Feinstein. I wanted to
tell you that we really do appreciate the opportunity to speak
with the Committee today and to provide what we hope are some
viable solutions to the problems that young people experience
and that we experience then as adults in this country.
Perhaps Chicago's most indelible mark currently for the
2006-2007 school year are the 28 young people who have lost
their lives to guns and violence, in a timeframe spanning from
September of 2006 through March 31, 2007. In my estimation, one
life is too many, but 28 is unconscionable--28 young lives
where their futures are unfulfilled, where their families are
impacted, our communities are impacted, and then our Nation is
impacted.
I had the opportunity to watch--and hopefully some of you
did also--Anderson Cooper come to Chicago last week, and he
spoke to the superintendent of the Chicago public schools, Mr.
Arne Duncan, and asked him, ``Why is this happening in Chicago?
Is this specific to Chicago?'' And what Arne said, which
resonates with young people as they try and speak out to adults
in this country, Arne said that young people have not enough
love, their lives are not filled with enough meaning, and their
lives are not filled with enough hope. And he said, ``When you
have hopelessness, lovelessness, and meaninglessness, what
value can you have of yourself? How can you value your life?
And then if you do not value your life, you will not value the
lives of other people.''
So I wanted to present to you over the past 3 years what we
have done in Chicago to try and eradicate some of the violence,
Chicago being one of the most highly gang-infested and gun-
infested cities in this country.
We have been able to go into the Chicago Public Schools
through a partnership with Project Safe Neighborhoods, a
public-private venture where law enforcement partners and
partner providers were able to go into some of the toughest
neighborhoods in the city of Chicago--Chicago Police Districts
7th, 9th, 10th, 11th, and 15th. And we were able to provide 720
hours of classroom-based violence interruption workshops to
sixth through eighth graders at 40 different Chicago public
schools. We were also able to train about 25 young--40 young
people, actually, through our Young Leaders Development
Institute. These are young people who we get involved in actual
leadership activities, being involved working with our
legislators, being involved working with our local, State, and
national policymakers, being involved in their communities to
challenge their peers to look at the behavior, look at the
destructiveness that is going on, and then to actually try and
affect policy and effect change.
During the past 5 years, we have noticed that young people
have spoken about violence prevention programming and then,
like a lot of the colleagues that came up before me, they
recognized that not enough financial resources in prevention
programs are going, to help them to lead more productive and
less destructive lifestyles. So they see the hypocrisy that
adults are saying that you are supposed to lead a certain
lifestyle; however, you are not giving them the resources or
helping them to build the capacity to deal with the issues they
deal with on a daily basis in their neighborhoods.
UCAN's violence prevention programming has been able to
steer 2,000 young people away from gangs, away from guns, and
away from crime. These are not young people who romanticize
violence. They are dedicated to learning how to reduce the
violence and how to engage with policymakers to make sure that
things are moving in a direction that would benefit them.
We have a national poll that we do each year where we have
1,000 young people from around the country give their ideas on
what they think about guns and what they think about violence.
Every year we learn pretty much the same thing. I was
privileged to stand with Senator Durbin at the Cook County
Medical Examiner's Office as we launched 1 year the Teen Gun
Survey, and 84 percent of the young people that were surveyed
said that we should have a Federal assault weapons ban, that we
should renew it. And somehow the sunrise set on it. Young
people are active and young people are seeing that they can
make a difference, and they are looking for adults at all
levels who are concerned and who are committed to trying to
make their lives better.
UCAN firmly believes in the need for more resources, more
diversion programs, and more opportunities like the youth-led
programs that Senator Durbin has endorsed in Chicago.
There is a tremendous value in having all of the parties
work together. As a member of Project Safe Neighborhoods, I
have been able to sit in rooms with the U.S. Attorney's Office,
ATF agents, DEA agents, the Cook County State's Attorney, and
the Chicago Police Department to share information that will
help to get young people educated so that then they can make
more informed choices in their lives.
These partnerships made it possible for students who were
struggling through war zones to make better decisions for their
lives. UCAN's model is based on the Boston model that started
in 1993 that was recognized by OJJDP as a promising model. We
continually try and work with national organizations and
foundations to try and create partnerships that will keep
funding going so we can keep doing the programs that we do.
We are excited about the $125 million that would be made
available under S. 456 for prevention and intervention
services. This level of funding underscores the importance of
prevention services and the commitment of our elected leaders
to support proven, successful programs.
Additional funding will allow us to reach another 800
students in Chicago in only 2 years, and it will allow us to
train 50 more young leaders under our Young Leadership
Development Institute.
In closing, I want to just share what one of our young
people who is a freshman in college right now said. We launch
the results of our national poll each year in August or
September before school is about to start, and we let it go
until October 1 year. And he said, you know, ``Adults think
that Halloween is scary. And Halloween is not scary.'' He said,
``What is scary is that 49 percent of my peers around the
country want more violence prevention programs, but people keep
cutting them.'' And he said, ``It is also funny that they will
not listen. Violence prevention should be part of the defense
budget. Homeland security begins at home.''
Ladies and gentlemen, in my 20 years of working with and
learning from young people, I know it is essential to have a
youth-adult partnership where people are committed to a common
cause, and this cause would be gang prevention, gang
intervention, and then at the highest level where there are
young people who just do not care, then prosecution would fit
the bill.
I thank you for the time to speak, and I look forward to
many great things.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Robinson appears as a
submission for the record.]
Senator Feinstein. Thank you very much, Mr. Robinson.
Our next witness is Gregg Croteau. I hope I am saying that
reasonably well.
Mr. Croteau. Yes.
Senator Feinstein. Mr. Croteau is the Executive Director of
United Teen Equality Center in Lowell, Massachusetts. That is a
youth-led agency that focuses on gang intervention and
peacemaking. In June of 2006, he received the prestigious
Robert Wood Johnson Community Health Leader Award for his
leadership in gang peacemaking work. He has more than 13 years
of youth work experience, and he has brought with him in our
audience today Ricky Le, one of the youth members working with
his organization. We welcome you as well.
Please go ahead.
STATEMENT OF GREGG CROTEAU, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, UNITED TEEN
EQUALITY CENTER, LOWELL, MASSACHUSETTS
Mr. Croteau. Thank you, Senator Feinstein. It is great to
be here, great to be here with the panel. I would like to thank
all of the distinguished members of the panel for allowing me
the opportunity to share some of our thoughts on this
critically important issue. And I say ``our'' because, as you
mentioned, I am here actually with three of our colleagues:
Ricky Le, who is one of our team members; Sako Long, who is our
streetworker supervisor; and Juan Carlos Rivera, who has been
with UTEC from the very beginning as our streetworker director.
And I want to thank them because they are out there every day
making the difference on the streets of Lowell as well. So it
is great to be with them.
I would like to begin by acknowledging that the Federal
Government is absolutely on point in recognizing youth violence
as a critical issue in our communities. We have had to attend
far too many funerals in our days as youth workers. Funerals
have become far too much like regular events in the lives of
young people. In fact, when we were at one of our last
funerals, walking toward the gravesite of this 19-year-old man
who was shot, I accidentally stepped on another gravestone. And
as I looked down, the gravestone was actually that of another
young man who was shot only weeks before that we know. And
looking up, I thought, ``This is absolutely absurd. This is not
normal, and we cannot continue to keep walking past these
gravesites.''
So, yes, we truly appreciate the Committee's initiative in
prioritizing this critical issue in our communities and agree
that a major statement--a major statement--must be made to best
address the violence too often found in our streets.
For the past 7 years, I have had the honor of working as
the first Executive Director for the United Teen Equality
Center, better known as UTEC, which is a youth organization
located in Lowell, Massachusetts. As a youth-led agency, we
offer a range of services for young people ages 13 to 23, and
our core values focus on peace, positivity, and empowerment.
Soon after our establishment, we created the Streetworker
Program, and in short, basically the streetworkers are out
there mediating disputes, mediating conflicts with young people
on the streets. In particular, our staff implement a
peacemaking process with rival youth gang leaders that
ultimately leads to the facilitation of various peace summits
between opposing gang sets. We have had success stories over
the past years. One in particular was a summit where we were
able to build relationships up with young people from different
rival gang sets. The leaders of these gang sets, being to get a
commitment from them to get in the same van together and then
be able to go in the middle of an island in Maine, actually
kayak out together to the island in the same kayaks, and by the
fire that night they--not us or the staff--they were able to
bridge a peace summit between these two groups that were
previously shooting and stabbing each other.
These stories are not unique for us. A major statement must
be made to truly reduce the violence in our streets. However,
we respectfully express our concern that this major statement,
this unique opportunity to significantly effect change--change
that lasts beyond the current moment--must include a balanced
approach of enforcement along with intervention and prevention.
As many researchers have commented, we cannot just lock
away the problem. At the recent House hearing for H.R. 1582,
the Chief of Police from Kansas City echoed this in his
testimony, saying that, ``We cannot arrest and imprison our way
out of this problem.''
As indicated in a letter from the National Juvenile Justice
and Delinquency Prevention Coalition, this bill ``contains 23
substantive sections; of those, 21 focus solely on creating new
crimes, expanding culpability for the accused, and enhancing
penalties for the convicted. Similarly, of the $240.5 million
in appropriations the bill requests, less than 20 percent is
allowed for prevention and intervention.'' Moreover, the
proposed legislation actually only authorizes approximately $25
million a year for gang violence prevention services for
communities across the country such as Lowell that will
probably not be designated as a High-intensity Interstate Gang
Activity Area. I sometimes think that the term ``gang problem''
is too easily thrown around. Perhaps it is subconscious, but I
think it becomes more palatable and easier to pinpoint the
problem by doing so. No community simply has a gang problem.
This is not some type of medical model where we can identify
the specific disease--i.e., the gang--that is eating the life
out of our communities.
All of the complex forces and rooted causes of gang-related
violence will never be adequately portrayed when defining it
with a singular name. The issues of poverty, racism, education,
and other complex forces all impact the violence in our
streets. There is no one fix, there is no one face, and there
can be no one name that encompasses all of our concerns.
That being said, we do have concerns that this new
legislation takes a very broad approach to solving problems
that are often locally distinct and community centered. As
Senator Kennedy mentioned in his statement on June 22, 2006,
there is a ``one-size-fits-all approach'' to this legislation
that is of considerable concern. From our experiences, it is
incredibly clear that the gangs in Los Angeles are very
different from the gangs in Lowell.
In Lowell, we have Bloods and Crips living right next door
to each other, and teens are not fighting over drug trade and
territory, but more often fighting over a perceived disrespect
or differing colors. As such the approach to best address this
problem must also allow for the opportunity to be radically
different.
We know that intervention and prevention strategies can
provide the hope that some young people have lost sight of.
Without a balanced effort in these areas, the hopelessness that
already surrounds too many young people will continue to grow
that much stronger. There is no greater foe, no greater
frustration, than the sense of young person who feels like
nothing can change, who feels like their life is cornered into
hopelessness.
There is a critical problem in our communities, and, yes,
we need to make a major statement in our policies to best
address it. However, we need to be very careful about getting
too drawn into the sensationalism that too often surrounds
gangs and believing that change is not possible by young
people.
Senator Feinstein. Could you summarize please?
Mr. Croteau. Yes, ma'am. We know too many young peacemakers
that have successfully brokered peace between their rivals. Two
of them are here today in Sako and Ricky. And if I could be
very brief, Sako, who spent some years in prison, came out of
prison and made a pact with his mother because he did not want
to see his mother cry anymore, and now he talks with other
young peace people with the theme of, ``How would it feel to
have one less enemy on the street?'' And he does amazing work.
And Ricky, who was moving in and out of foster care for years,
found our center belonging in a gang. After years of finding
now instant enemies, he made a decision--a decision that almost
cost him his life--to leave a gang. He decided to get jumped
out of the gang. And 3 years ago, in the process of being
jumped out, he was beaten into a coma for 10 days. He has
traumatic brain injury, but in his recovery, which has been
beautiful over the past 3 years, he is now using his story, his
opportunity to create change and send a message of peace to
other young people.
Senator Feinstein. If you could conclude, please. You are 2
minutes over.
Mr. Croteau. So we seriously caution against any new
policies that inadvertently risk deleting the success stories
of Ricky and Sako. We need more policies to help us strengthen
hope.
We thank you for considering our testimony. We thank you
for considering the concerns around the one-size-fits-all, our
concerns around increasing more funding for prevention and
intervention, and we truly look forward to working with you.
Thank you again.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Croteau appears as a
submission for the record.]
Senator Feinstein. Well, we do as well.
I want to correct one figure. You said $25 million for
prevention and intervention. It is $250 million for prevention
and intervention in this bill.
I will move right along now to Patrick Word, a 17-year
police veteran and a detective in the Gaithersburg City Police
Department. He currently serves as National Secretary and
Executive Board member of the National Alliance of Gang
Investigators and is President of the Mid-Atlantic Regional
Gang Investigators Network. Since 1994, Detective Word has been
assigned as Gaithersburg Police Department's Gang Investigator,
working with other State and Federal agencies on investigation
and intelligence gathering on criminal street gangs.
Welcome, Detective.
STATEMENT OF PATRICK WORD, DETECTIVE, GAITHERSBURG POLICE
DEPARTMENT, GAITHERSBURG, MARYLAND, AND CHAIRMAN, MID-ATLANTIC
REGIONAL GANG INVESTIGATIONS NETWORK, GAITHERSBURG, MARYLAND
Mr. Word. Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the
Committee. The pervasiveness of gangs throughout society is
undeniable. They incite fear and violence within our
communities. Gangs threaten our schools, our children, and our
homes. Gangs today are more sophisticated and flagrant in their
use of violence and intimidation tactics. As they migrate
across the country, they bring with them drugs, weapons,
violence, and other criminal activity. The acknowledgment of
the issue and joint community and law enforcement response is
our best defense.
The National Alliance of Gang Investigators Associations is
an alliance of 18 gang investigator associations across the
United States and Canada. The combined alliance represents over
20,000 gang investigators, intelligence officers, gang
prosecutors, corrections officers, and parole and probation
agents at the Federal, State, local, and tribal levels.
The NAGIA is a unique alliance of criminal justice
professionals dedicated to the promotion and coordination of
national anti-gang strategies. The NAGIA also advocates the
standardization of anti-gang training, the establishment of
uniform gang definitions, the assistance for communities with
emerging gang problems, and input to policymakers and program
administrators. We are not meant to replace or duplicate
services provided by any other entity. Rather, we facilitate
and support regional gang investigators associations, the RISS
projects, as well as Federal, State, and local anti-gang
initiatives.
Since 1994, I have been a police detective working gangs in
the suburban Washington, D.C., area. In that time, in my
membership with the Mid-Atlantic Regional Gang Investigators
Network and the NAGIA, we have partnered with the National Gang
Intelligence Center in the FBI; we have partnered with the
Global Intelligence Working Group and the National Youth Gang
Center to coordinate the sharing of gang intelligence in order
to foster information sharing among law enforcement
investigators across the country.
To date, in 2002 and in 2005, the NAGIA and the Bureau of
Justice Assistance conducted the most comprehensive and
scientific study to date of gangs across the country. That
threat assessment is available online and will be submitted as
part of the testimony.
Senator Feinstein. Thank you.
Mr. Word. Local law enforcement is the front line in the
war on gangs and gang violence. Eighty percent of all gangs,
according to our association members, are local and homegrown
groups engaged in daily criminal activity in large and small
communities, urban and rural, and every type of neighborhood in
between. These gangs range in size from the minimum accepted
definitions of three subjects to as large as several hundred.
They cross all cultural boundaries in the make-up of their
membership, and the age ranges anywhere from age 9 to age 40
here in the Washington, D.C., area. Too often, the public has
been confused linking the immigration issue as the major cause
of the gang issue in this country. It is simply a cause, but
not the cause of a gang problem.
Intelligence gaps still exist between law enforcement
agencies, and this hampers our ability to investigate and
apprehend violators as well as present cases for prosecution,
both locally and in the Federal system. These gaps can be
closed with the implementation of the national reporting and
the national gang data base which this bill calls for, which
already exists in the Violent Gang and Terrorist Organization
File, VGTOF, there the NCIC.
Criminal gangs have stepped up their recruiting efforts
over the years, and few States have addressed the issue through
legislative means. The NAGIA endorses those sections of the
bill that allow for the prosecution of gang recruitment.
Earlier Chief Bratton mentioned that we have currently 700,000
police officers and 800,000 gang members. Those numbers are
increasing every day.
Here in the Washington, D.C., area, U.S. Attorney Rod
Rosenstein for the District of Maryland is currently
prosecuting a large RICO case involving the MS13 gang, the
violent Salvadoran gang found here in the United States, and
also we are currently investigating a large Crip set in
Maryland--53 members arrested at the State level and Federal
prosecution is coming. And there is a press conference today, I
believe, on further indictments on the MS13 case.
Witness intimidation is a major problem in that case.
Witness intimidation is a problem for local law enforcement.
Many violent gang cases are dropped or lost in local courts
because witnesses do not or cannot come forward. Most local
jurisdictions do not have the resources necessary to fund
witness protection programs. The NAGIA supports and endorses
the portions of the bill which assist law enforcement in this
capacity.
Obviously prevention alone does not solve the gang problem,
inventory alone. We have heard that from other members of the
panels. But this is a remarkably progressive bill. It is a
crime bill, but it funds prevention and intervention and other
social type programs, which is unprecedented, at least in
recent memory, in law enforcement where a crime bill or a large
portion of this crime bill funds intervention programs. So we
support and endorse the funding of those programs as well.
Law enforcement plays only one of three roles needed for
communities to deal with the issue of gang violence. We are the
suppression arm of the comprehensive approach, and the NAGIA
has partnered with the National Youth Gang Center and their
support with Federal funding of the GREAT program and endorses
those prevention and intervention efforts across the country.
We support and endorse local nonprofits and faith-based groups
and other police departments who have worked with these groups.
This bill is part of the suppression arm, and we welcome
and endorse its passage. My thanks to the Committee and its
members for inviting me to speak on this very important matter,
and I am available to answer any questions that you may have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Word appears as a submission
for the record.]
Senator Feinstein. Thank you very much, and let me thank
all of the witnesses. I really appreciate your being here and
appreciate your testimony.
What we have tried to do is put together a bill that is
bipartisan in nature, and that has not been always very easy.
If you have Republican support, you sometimes do not get
Democratic support, and vice versa.
I think we have achieved it. The bill has been last session
pre-conferenced with the House. My staff has been wonderful
about working with any member that has a concern or an
amendment or something they want in a bill to try to see if we
can keep our bipartisan group together, but at the same time
where there are good ideas add them to the bill.
Detective, I am very pleased by what you said. We have over
the 10 years greatly increased the prevention and intervention
part from where it started, to be very candid with you. One of
my concerns is to try as we move along to really be able to get
a more adequate compendium on intervention and prevention
programs that exist in the United States and that are working
so that the money that is in this bill is not wasted but it
goes to the groups and organizations and cities and counties
that can produce a change in young people.
As I mentioned to Mayor Villaraigosa, I am particularly
interested in seeing if we cannot do more actually in schools
and maybe, like with L.A. Best, bridge that gap between the
school time and the after-school time to really begin to get at
the heart of it.
I must tell you, I am very concerned with the brutality of
these gangs, and we have a living witness here as to what
happened. Not only was her daughter shot and killed, but when
she went out and asked for additional police help, her house
got seven bullets. And that is the kind of thing that has to be
stopped and for which there should be no sympathy whatsoever.
The use of hollow-point bullets, again, is another
indication of just you do not have a chance, and I think and
hope we have struck a balance in this bill because that is what
we have tried to do.
I really have no additional questions. If anyone would like
to make a closing comment or two, the floor is yours.
[No response.]
Senator Feinstein. No? OK, then. Well, thank you all very
much for being here. This bill is on the calendar for
Thursday's markup. We anticipate that it will be held over a
week.
[Pause.]
Senator Feinstein. My understanding is that Senator
Feingold is on his way. He should be here in 2 minutes. So in
the meantime, I have a statement by Senator Kennedy to add to
the record and one by Senator Leahy to add to the record, and I
will do that.
I would like to ask the two law enforcement people here a
question. The High-Intensity Gang Areas, which are really
modeled after the HIDTA areas, are trying to put together these
task forces that extend out, where necessary, into a region to
bring together people in law enforcement to really go after
some of these gangs, those that kill, those that practice
witness intimidation, those that kill witnesses. I mean, that
is--do you see that working well? We will start with the DA, if
I might.
Mr. Fox. Madam Chair, I know that in the San Francisco Bay
Area, at least, the HIDTA has been incredibly successful, and
Captain Brooks, whom I know you are familiar with, has been
very, very effective.
One potential concern is the potential of overlapping
because there may be some gangs that are engaged in drug
activities. And so I would hope there would not be a
duplication of effort or creation of a new bureaucracy if, in
fact, there exists a current structure which could address the
problem.
The HIDTA has been effective and can focus in on a
particular area. It is not just a broad--
Senator Feinstein. Well, let me ask you, do you think what
we should do is merge the two?
Mr. Fox. I think that that is something that should
certainly be given consideration, because my concern is if you
are going to create a new bureaucracy with the High-Intensity
Gang Area and you already have an existing structure, which
basically has the capability of providing the same coordination
and resource distribution, I would think that that is something
that should be considered, yes, Madam Chair.
Senator Feinstein. Thank you, Mr. Fox.
Detective, would you like to comment?
Mr. Word. Senator, I think that it has to be looked at on a
case-by-case basis. I think HIDTAs in certain areas of the
country are more effective than they are in other parts of the
country. I think the HIDTA concept is extremely effective.
Senator Feinstein. Do you have one back here?
Mr. Word. We do have one. The Baltimore-Washington HIDTA
extends from Northern Virginia up through the Baltimore-
Washington corridor, up the 95 corridor. Tom Carr is the
director of the HIDTA in this area, and they have been very
effective in their drug work. They have actually gotten
involved in some of the computer work involving gang data bases
here, at least in the State of Maryland, and that is a data
base that will be extended to the HIDTA.
But a case in point would be the small town in rural North
Carolina, in Fayetteville, North Carolina, just outside of
Fayetteville. A town of 900 had a gang infiltrate the town in
recent months where they have 25 gang members in a town of 900.
There are four police officers in that town. If that does not
tax resources, if that is not an area in need of a HIGAA or a
HIDTA extension and a role for a task force, I do not know
where there would be one.
Certainly we want to concentrate those in the larger areas
where we have more gang problems, but the gangs have moved out
into the rural and the suburban communities. Western Maryland,
West Virginia--these areas would be more attuned to having task
force concepts as opposed to the larger agencies and the
municipalities in the metropolitan areas. They already work in
a number of task force areas in the Project Safe Neighborhoods,
through each of the U.S. Attorney's districts. If we could
concentrate on working the HIDTAs or the HIGAAs in cooperation
with the Project Safe Neighborhoods program and the Operation
Safe Streets, I think that these would be a more effective use
of both manpower and of the funding.
Senator Feinstein. We will look into that. Thank you very
much.
I notice we are joined by Senator Feingold. Welcome,
Senator. You are the closing hitter, so please go ahead.
Senator Feingold. All right. I thank the Chair for keeping
the hearing going, and I thank you, Senator Feinstein, for
chairing this important hearing.
I would like to also thank all the witnesses for attending
today and extend my sincere condolences to Ms. Driskill. It is
always heartbreaking to lose a loved one, but particularly when
that loss is so violent and senseless.
Wisconsin has had to suffer its share of heartbreaking
losses as well. While we all hear about the rising crime rates
in cities across America, one of those cities hardest hit has
been Milwaukee. In a case that is far too similar to that of
Ms. Driskill's, on Monday, May 14th, 4-year-old Jasmine Owens
was shot and killed by a driveby shooter. She had been skipping
rope in her front yard. We simply must find a way to curb the
violence that is wreaking such havoc on our communities.
When I talk to law enforcement officials in Wisconsin about
combating gangs, they tell me something very interesting. They
tell me that the problem in California is extraordinarily
serious. They also say that the scope of the problem varies
across the Nation and that a solution tailored to California's
experience may not be the best way to deal with the problem in
other areas of the country.
Accordingly, they suggest that what is needed is a targeted
and substantial influx of funds from the Federal Government to
areas with serious gang problems to ensure sufficient numbers
of officers to patrol neighborhoods and to ensure sufficient
resources in the penal system to incarcerate gang offenders
once they are sentenced.
Basically, they are telling me that this is a problem of
resources more than a problem of law. And they are also very
insistent that prevention and intervention must play a very
significant role in strategies to combat gang crimes.
I want to be certain that we respond to the growing gang
problem in the smartest and most responsible way possible, and
I look forward to working with Senator Feinstein and others to
ensure that any legislation we consider to address the rising
gang problem is as effective as possible for both her State and
mine, and the other States as well.
Mr. Fox, do you think it would be a good practice for
Federal prosecutors who are considering a Federal gang
prosecution to consult with their local counterparts before
making a final decision?
Mr. Fox. Absolutely, Senator, and I think that one of the
models that could be used is the current Safe Streets Task
Force concept where there is a collaboration, and, frankly, the
local prosecutor, in conjunction with the U.S. Attorney, should
determine where that case could best be handled. There are
certainly some areas where the Federal laws may be far more
effective in providing public safety than the local laws, in
which event those should be handled by the U.S. Attorney.
So I strongly encourage collaboration and coming to an
agreement as to where the matter could best be handled.
Senator Feingold. Thank you, Mr. Fox.
Mr. Croteau, do you have any concerns about Federal
prosecutors deciding to bring gang charges without consulting
with local officials?
Mr. Croteau. I think from my experience I would say we come
from the intervention and prevention side, so we are not
enforcement experts. But we have a really good partnership with
our Middlesex District Authority's office, and we actually meet
monthly with them and with the chief of police. We have now a
whole advisory task force. And I think that having that local
connection there, which really has a feel for what is going on
on the ground, really makes the most sense for us. So I think
having the Federal prosecution come in that would have
concerns, again, we do not know that much about it yet. But I
know what works right now is working with local enforcement and
the district attorney.
Senator Feingold. Then do either of you think that
requiring Federal prosecutors to consult with local prosecutors
before bringing Federal charges would be a good addition to the
gang bill that the Committee will be considering in the coming
weeks?
Mr. Fox. I certainly feel that it would be appropriate to
require at least to consult. It is not necessarily limiting or
inhibiting the ability of the U.S. Attorney to move forward in
appropriate cases. But there certainly should be a level of
openness and communication.
Senator Feingold. Mr. Croteau?
Mr. Croteau. And I would say maybe the one thing that I--
and I just have been doing some research. It seems clear that
at least in--I think it was D.A. Paul Logli's testimony before
the House, he indeed said that, you know, it is not that they
need more laws. They do not need more sanctions. They need more
programs. And I think his testimony kind of echoed some things,
and that there necessarily -maybe there is not necessarily a
need to have additional Federal prosecutors. But as you said,
it is not necessarily an issue of laws but maybe an issue of
resources.
Senator Feingold. You do not think it would be a negative
thing to have this requirement of consultation?
Mr. Croteau. To have a consultation? I do not--
Senator Feingold. A requirement that they have the
consultation.
Mr. Croteau. To have the Federal prosecutors required--if
the Federal prosecutor will be involved, then, yes, I would
definitely think they should be required at the local.
Senator Feingold. What about you, Detective Word? Would you
have a problem with this kind of requirement?
Mr. Word. Senator, I do not. I have a U.S. Attorney in
Maryland who is very engaging and works closely with each of
the 24--at least in the State of Maryland, each of the 24
Maryland State's attorneys. I do not have a problem with a
requirement. I do think that recommendations should be made
through the bill that this--that it be strongly worded that it
be highly recommended that the U.S. Attorneys do, if not
required. I do not have a problem. We do have, like I said, a
very engaging U.S. Attorney in Mr. Rosenstein, and we have not
had those problems nor seen those problems. A very close
working relationship with our U.S. Attorney's Office.
Senator Feingold. Very good. Thanks.
Mr. Robinson and Mr. Croteau, your organizations both work
directly with young people, so you may be able to provide the
best perspective on this question. I would like to talk to you
about the implications of sentencing a minor to life in prison
in the Federal system where there is no opportunity for parole.
The Supreme Court has acknowledged that an adolescent's
culpability or blameworthiness may be ``diminished to a
substantial degree by reason of youth or immaturity.'' That
statement was made in the context of whether it was cruel and
unusual punishment to execute individuals who have committed a
capital crime while adolescents, but it seems to me that the
same principle could apply more broadly.
Do you think it is advisable to sentence individuals under
the age of 18 to life without the possibility of parole? Mr.
Robinson.
Mr. Robinson. Senator Feingold, with my expertise in
working with young people, the age of 18 would be too high to
sentence somebody for life. I would have it go a lot lower. If
we are going to--18 and over, maybe 20, because I think that
certain young people who have committed certain crimes
potentially should go, but then there is also, I think, a case-
by-case piece that we should go by around that. And if I am
considered an expert in youth development, my primary expertise
is in prevention and having young people not get anywhere near
that type of situation that you brought to my attention. So I
would probably not be the--I am not a prosecutor, so I would
not be the best person to ask that question.
Senator Feingold. Mr. Croteau?
Mr. Croteau. In my experiences working with young people,
absolutely I would be opposed to it. I think there is too much
potential in young people. Obviously, there is an absolute role
for enforcement and prosecution to the fullest. But I think
when that happens blanketly, if it is a blanket, across-the-
board prosecution, then we lose the possibility of having young
people who have had experiences, whether it be gang
involvement--and, again, it depends on the crime because I
think my concerns were also around the broad array of crimes
that now fell into this new crime bill. And potentially you can
go away for certain crimes that you would go away for life that
you would not have thought of before. And if that is the case,
you risk losing people, whether it be, like--people that we
know on the street that are doing amazing work now, having come
out of prison after being there for 7 years and who can now be
really the ones who are relating to young people on the
streets, and they are brokering peace and they are creating
change. And you lose that no matter what. Blanketly, you lose
that opportunity.
Senator Feingold. Thank you. Thank you all for your
answers.
I thank the Chairwoman.
Senator Feinstein. Thank you very much.
I just wanted to address one question as Senator Feingold
is leaving. The problem with consultation is the Department of
Justice, who has never agreed to a statutory consultation
amendment. I have no problem with it. I think there should be.
Whether we lose some of our Republican colleagues, I mean, we
have worked so hard and so long to get a bill that can cross
the aisle on both sides that it is difficult. But this, I
understand, is the problem with a statutory requirement for
consultation, that it is precedent setting.
Senator Feingold. Well, I understand the desire, obviously,
Madam Chair, to pass a bill, but it strikes me as odd that that
would be a concern of the other party to not have consultation
with local officials about something like this. You know, those
are strong answers from these folks. You obviously recognize--
Senator Feinstein. Well, they are the locals, and the Feds
like to keep their biceps flexed. But I am happy to look
further into it.
I wanted to just suggest one thing by way of ending this.
On page 27 of the bill begins the High-Intensity Gang Areas,
and it goes on for about 10 pages. It is a relatively easy
read. By that I mean it does not refer to other statutes. What
I would like to ask everybody to do, if you would, is take a
look at it and see how the two might be better integrated. I
agree with you, Detective, we do not want to reinvent the
wheel. Let us use the wheel that is there as effectively as we
possibly can. So I would be interested from you, from Mr. Fox,
from anybody, in some additional suggestions.
With that, let me thank you all, particularly those of you
who have come from a distance. It is really appreciated. And to
our victim, let me just once again extend our heartfelt
sympathy, and I hope you will get some satisfaction when we can
pass this bill. So thank you very much.
We will keep the hearing record open for the purpose of
written questions for 1 week.
The hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:50 a.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
[Questions and answers and submissions for the record
follow.]
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