12:05 P.M. EST
MR. ROEHRKASSE: Thank you all for coming today. As I'm well aware, you all know violent crime and specifically gang violence has been getting attention from the Department of Justice recently, so we thought we'd take this opportunity to bring together all of the components in the Department of Justice that have a stake in this matter and have been working diligently to combat gang violence specifically over the past three years.
We have first off is going to speaking Associate Deputy Attorney General for the Department of Justice and also U.S. Attorney in Connecticut, who has recently come down from Connecticut, Kevin O'Connor.
He will be followed by Alice Fisher, the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division, who will be followed by the Assistant Director for the FBI, Chip Burrus, who will be followed by the Acting Director for the ATF, Mike Sullivan. And we also have Billy Sorukas, the Chief Task Force Operations for the Marshal Service who won't be making a proactive presentation but will be here to answer questions with regards to the Marshal Service working this effort.
So I would ask that we allow everybody to go through, talk about all of our missions to go through, talk about their work before we ask any questions. And when we do get to questions, if we could have you all identify yourselves as well as the news organization that -- where you're from. So with that, I'll turn it over to Kevin.
MR. O'CONNOR: Thanks, Brian. Good afternoon. Welcome. Pleased to be here today to update you on the Department's efforts to combat and prevent gang violence and gang activity in our communities. I'm pleased particularly to be joined by my colleagues, Ms. Fisher, Chip Burrus and Director Sullivan of the ATF, all of whom will probably provide you more specifics than I will.
But I think we can cast a good perspective, really a good perspective on the collaboration and the universe of anti-gang efforts that have been in place here at the Department and across the country since 2005 at least
Each of the components represented here today, ATF, Criminal Division, and FBI, as well as our colleagues here in the Department of Justice, Bureau of Prisons, U.S. Marshals Service, DEA, as well as our state and local counterparts across the country, all play a key role in combating gang violence and preventing people from joining or rejoining gangs. And while these components can speak about their efforts individually and collectively, it does bear noting that so many other people played a key role in the effort to combat gangs across the country.
As Attorney General Gonzales has said on many occasions, combating gang violence is a top priority in the Department of Justice. As many of you are aware, this is a priority shaped in large part by both anecdotal and statistical information that we have had an opportunity to review showing certain crime trends across the country and the Department's need to respond to those crime trends. Even though they can be put in perspective in some respect, this is also an effort to address what is perceived or in fact may be an up tick in violent crime, at least based on 2005 Uniform Crime Reports.
The strategy is a relatively straightforward, simple, two-prong approach. There is the prevention aspects, and the key there is to try to prevent people from joining gangs in the first place. The bottom line is, people do not join gangs to engage in philanthropic activities. They typically join gangs with an effort towards eventually committing all sorts of crimes, violent crimes, property crimes and the like.
And it is incumbent that we not simply focus on enforcement, but we also try to prevent and deter gang membership, whether it's kids being asked to join gangs for the first time or prisoners reentering their communities after serving their time and rejoining the gangs that probably caused them to commit the crimes that they served time for in the first place.
We also recognize here at the Department there is no one-size-fits-all approach to combating gang violence in our communities, and we defer to the strategies that have been developed all across the country to address those particular problems.
And we also recognize, as I said before, that effective enforcement does not just involve prosecutors and the agencies up here, but so many other people, including faith-based community representatives, community service organizations, educators and the like.
What I'd like to do before I turn it over to my colleagues is briefly update you on some of the things that have happened here in the Department of Justice in the last two years in terms of our efforts to get this gangs initiative up and running and in place across the country.
The Attorney General established an anti-gang coordinating committee in 2005 to organize the Department's efforts to combat gangs, which as I said before, doesn't just involve one component but involves many components, all of whom serve on this committee. The committee meets regularly, in this room most of the time, for the purposes of coordinating our efforts to make sure everybody is playing the role we need them to play, and that we aren't duplicating the efforts unnecessarily.
Likewise, the Attorney General also asked in 2005 each United States Attorney to appoint an anti-gang coordinator in their office, so 94 offices across the country have an individual in that office who serves as the Department's primary point of contact for nationwide anti-gang efforts.
Those coordinators have met in person at least on one occasion, and they speak regularly, share information and best practices regularly that can be modeled or duplicated in other parts of the country.
The Attorney General also directed these anti-gang coordinators, as I referred to before, to implement, in consultation with local and state agencies in their districts, a comprehensive anti-gang strategy focusing on prevention and enforcement.
All of the U.S. Attorneys across the country have done so. That information has been collected here in the Department and again is being made available to each of us to see if there are things that our colleagues are doing that may be of use to us in our districts.
Finally, the Attorney General expanded the successful project Safe Neighborhoods initiative that was launched in 2001, initially aimed at deterring gun violence, to include anti-gang efforts. The Department has provided approximately $30 million in state and local grants in the last year to support those efforts, and those funds are in addition to the $10 million in grant funds provided in FY 2006 to support our traditional PSN gun crime reduction programs.
You know, the PSN statistics are in your fact sheet. I won't go into great detail on them. But the bottom line is since 2000, the federal firearms prosecutions, the numbers of federal firearms prosecutions has increased just about 66 percent, and almost all of the defendants -- not all, but almost all of those defendants who are convicted actually served a period of incarceration, and in FY 2006, at least 50 percent of them received a term of more than five years, which shows you the benefits of federal prosecution when it comes to deterrence, specific deterrence and incarceration.
Under PSN, the strategy was simple. It was to develop partnerships with our state and local colleagues to aggressively attack gun crime in our districts. That model has been used to address gangs as well. The simple strategy of developing partnerships with our state and local counterparts, recognizing, as I said before, it's not a one-size-fits-all approach.
A particular district may want to focus on guns with the ATF. They may want to focus on drugs with the DEA. They may want to focus on fugitives with the U.S. Marshals. Every U.S. Attorney is given the leeway to adapt a strategy that best fits their particular district, and to use and partner up with the state, local and federal counterparts who can play the most effective role in doing that.
Finally, I would add that in February of 2006, the Attorney General announced an anti-gang initiative to be put in place in certain areas of the country, and this is in addition to the 30 million and the 10 million in funding, but what we refer to as the Six Sites Anti-Gang initiative, where six cities that were determined to have an acute gang problem were selected to receive an additional $2.5 million aimed at prevention, enforcement, and a reentry component to address the sizable prison population that was returning to their communities, and as I said before, a very at-risk population in terms of reentering gang life, and therefore, potentially increasing their likelihood to commit violent crimes.
As I said, each of these sites has received $2.5 million to address these issues. Those sites are Los Angeles, Tampa, Cleveland, Dallas-Fort Worth, Milwaukee, and what we refer to as the 222 corridor, which stretches from east into Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Finally, one other aspect of prevention, the Attorney General also directed each United States Attorney to convene a gang prevention summit in their district, and nearly -- to date, nearly all have done so. These summits have brought together a total of more than 10,000 law enforcement officers, prosecutors, social service providers, prevention practitioners and members of the faith-based community to discuss and share best practices on how to prevent folks from joining or rejoining gangs in their communities.
As you can see in this priority area, the Department has been very active in addressing and responding to gang violence. As I said, I did not detail any specific cases, and I will defer to my colleagues to do that. I think I can, however, speak for all of us in saying while we are proud of the work we have done and the efforts we have made, we also recognize that we cannot rest on our laurels, and we're going to continue to work as hard as ever, because much work remains to be done, and we have a team in place across the country and a structure in place we believe to do that, to continue to do that effectively.
I will leave it at that, and I will be turning it over now to my colleague, Alice Fisher, the head of the Criminal Division.
MS. FISHER: Thank you, and Happy New Year to all of you. Good afternoon. I'm going to use this, although I don't want to, just because they told me that they're taping it. I hope that it's not too loud. I know that my voice carries, but that's part of being the baby of six children.
So, I'm going to talk about the national strategy that we put in place to attack the regional, national and international gangs from kind of a headquarters level.
Kevin talked a little bit about what all the U.S. Attorneys are doing, and they're focusing on their districts, and their districts may have local gangs, they may have regional gangs, they may have national gangs. But it was important to the Attorney General that we step back and look at, from a national perspective, what we do to attack with maximum impact these national gangs and these international gangs that are crossing state lines and are crossing our borders. And so we've done a couple of things.
One is we set up a new national anti-gang task force that is aimed solely at dismantling and disrupting America's largest and most dangerous gangs that operate across state lines and across our borders.
It is called GangTECC, which stands for national Gang Targeting, Enforcement and Coordination Center, and it is up and running. And currently, we're at the FBI with lots of agents from different divisions, some of which are here, but it's a multi-agency initiative. It's DEA, FBI, ATF, BOP, Marshals, ICE. We work with state and locals. And we've also put prosecutors in to embed them with this national gang, GangTECC, the task force.
Now the purpose of this is that we are all centrally located, and we can share information about investigations. We can share information about tattoos that gangs, these national gangs are using, the drug trafficking routes that they're using. We can share cooperators, and we make sure that we're working together, side-by-side, so we can figure out what is the best strategy to hit hardest at these gangs.
So the targeting center, GangTECC, will be engaged in initiating new gang investigations, de-conflicting and coordinating ongoing investigations, make sure that they're effective and enhancing them, making sure that we get the intelligence that's coming into the National Gang Intelligence Center that is led by the FBI but is also multi-agency and really focused on intelligence gathering, and making sure that we're using that to support our investigation so we can put these people away.
GangTECC is very mission-focused. It is very clear. We are going to target the national and international gangs, and regional to some extent, to make sure that we achieve maximum impact against them. And each gang may have a different strategy to do that, and we're working very hard together with the intelligence analysts, the prosecutors and the operational assets.
Just a second on the prosecutor aspects. We have a new squad in the Criminal Division that is the Gang Squad, made up of seven brand new prosecutors, supplemented by five or six other prosecutors from within the Criminal Division solely focused on this mission.
So they are the prosecutorial arm of this effort. They are experienced gang prosecutors both from DA's offices across the country and from U.S. Attorneys offices. And their mission again is to just attack the most significant gang threats in the United States by aggressively using tools that we have at our disposal.
This means we are using the tools that we've used in organized crime cases in the past. We are using the racketeering statute. I'm going to talk a minute about an MS-13 indictment that was brought last week in Nashville where we used the RICO law. We are using wiretaps. We are going to use informants. We are going to protect our witnesses.
So a lot of those tools that we historically have used in organized crime cases, we are going to look to use in our effort to dismantle these national and international gangs.
These prosecutors are also obviously going to look at best practices and help formulate policy and work with the U.S. Attorneys offices on multi-district cases, so they won't only be strategizing and enhancing prosecution, but they will be in court as well on some of the bigger cases where we can adequately use our resources.
But it's all about our integrated approach to combating these gangs; the analysts, the prosecutors, and the operational assets to work side-by-side. This -- I don't know if any of you got these on the way in, but this talks a little bit about the differences between the team and what we're doing together, the GangTECC, the NGIC, and the gang squad prosecutors. It also on the back has some of the tattoos that are being used by some of the national gangs. You can see MS-13, Latin Kings, motorcycle gangs, et cetera.
And you can -- I brought them for you to take off, but, you know, this is the kind of thing that we're sending out to all the U.S. Attorneys districts, to state and local law enforcement, so they will look. And when they see MS-13 tattoos, new tattoos, they will send that information into the Gang Intelligence Center so we can share that information, and we can best effectively use our resources by connecting the dots, leveraging our information from the field.
Case examples. I mentioned, just to briefly give you one, an indictment that we've brought in Nashville against MS -- 13 members of MS-13 last week. I also brought copies of the indictment, and you can get them on the way out. But it's a very good example how we can use this approach to try to make an impact and dismantle gangs.
This was a particular group of people operating in Nashville. As alleged in the indictment, the purpose of the enterprise was to further their gang violence, intimidation, their turf, through violent assaults, murders and attempted murders. They, according to the indictment, are charged with attempting to murder seven people and murdering three, plotting to shoot and kill several more.
But let me just step back and tell you about MS-13 and why it's important, and there's experts here that can talk further about it, but it's just one example of how we're leveraging our information. It's a national and international organization, obviously. It has approximately, as alleged in the indictment, but according to the FBI, approximately 10,000 members across the United States. It is affecting our communities. It is recruiting juveniles in our communities. It is active, according to the FBI, in over 30 states in this country, including Honduras, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador. It is one of the largest gangs in the U.S. And we want to make sure that with our efforts here, we step back and look at the national picture and don't just go after them district by district.
As you'll see in the indictment in Nashville, they -- this group of people were not only operating in a bubble in Nashville, they were also attempting and plotting murders in other states. They have a motto that's put here: Mata Viola Controlla, which means Kill, Rape, Control. That's MS 1 of the MS-13 mottoes. They wear certain tattoos. They wear certain colors. They have gang names for each other. They pay dues. They have international wire transfers to promote their activities, and they function as an enterprise, and we need to use those enterprise strategies to go after them.
There's another case that you all might be familiar with growing up in Maryland where 20 MS-13 members were indicted. There was one jury trial already as part of that, that resulted in two convictions. A pattern of racketeering activity, six murders in Maryland, one in Virginia, deadly weapons, kidnapping, robbery, obstruction, et cetera.
There's another case in Chicago I just mentioned that Director Sullivan is going to talk about against the Latin Kings. The U.S. Attorney's office in Chicago has indicted I believe 38 members, and again, you can talk about the details of that, but high-ranking members of the Latin Kings, another very serious, violent, severe threat in the gang area.
One final thing I'm going to mention before I turn it over to Chip, and Chip can also talk a lot about this, as can Michael, we are looking internationally as well, which means that we're working on our international cooperation with countries like El Salvador and Mexico to make sure that we positions ourselves well to share information with them and to make sure that we're hitting this threat from every angle that we need to hit with. So we're working very closely with the Department of Homeland Security and ICE, who are members of both GangTECC and NGIC, to make sure that we're prosecuting and using all our leverage against these people.
So, Chip.
MR. BURRUS: Thank you, Alice. Before I start, I wanted to introduce two members of the staff that were here, Mike Brunton, Mike, would you stand up? And Brian Truchon. Brian is the director of the MS-13 National Gang Task Force, and Mike is the director of the National Gang Intelligence Center. Both are here and would be able to provide you with some additional information should you desire it on both of those entities.
A few days before Christmas in Eastern Tennessee in a town near Knoxville, a young man walked into a bank. He was a local gang member. He pulled out a gun and he robbed the bank. After robbing the bank, he shot and killed the teller. This is a few days before Christmas. Exiting the bank, he said "Merry Christmas." This is the type of violent gang behavior that we face here in the United States almost every day. I could tell you countless stories just like that.
Most of us in the room remember the type of gang violence that we had back in the nineties where you had a cocaine or a crack-fueled organizations that had, you know, identifiable heads. The Rafel Edmonds organization here in D.C., many of us remember that. It's not the type of threat we face today, though it is equally s violent. What we face today is a much more decentralized threat. There's much more neighborhood-based gangs. They're much more local. They're local, they're violent, and we've really got to do something about it.
They're in smaller communities, they're on Indian reservations, and they use technology very well. They are very adept and very knowledgeable with how to use technology, and we face some real challenges from the federal standpoint.
But let's make no mistake about it. We're up to the challenge, folks. We have got some great agents that are on the ground, both state and local officers, and we've got great ATF agents, DEA agents, U.S. Marshals, FBI agents all working on this problem, and I think you've got some great leadership sitting here at this table that is taking this seriously.
I want to talk just a minute about our Safe Streets task forces. This is going to sound like a broken record to many of you, but I think it's such a successful concept, because the FBI does I think very well in terms of leadership, in taking leadership in the law enforcement community in many of these areas. But we can't do it by ourselves. We need the state and local task force officers. We need our partners at ATF or DEA to tell us what is going on, what do they know. State and local officers clearly know their territory much better than we do, and bring extreme dynamics to the task force that sometimes we don't have.
Kevin mentioned it earlier about the type of things that a task force, especially a federal task force brings, and that's access to the federal system. That's extremely important, because many of the gang members that you see today will be very pleased to go to their local jails. They go into environments that they're very comfortable with.
When they go to a federal system, a federal prison, they don't go to the local area prison. They end up in a place like Sandstone, Minnesota or, you know, El Paso, Texas, very much out of their comfort zone. And I think that sends a real message that if you begin to engage in the type of violent behavior that we see many of these folks engaged in, you're not just facing the local time, you're facing some real hard federal time, and our prosecutors and agents are going to take that seriously.
There are 131 Safe Streets task forces around the country, 30 Violent Crime task forces, and 16 Safe Trails task forces in Indian country. Last year, or over the past ten years, we've indicated somewhere on the order of 24,800 indictments in Safe Streets task forces throughout the country, and an equal number of convictions. We've had 122 undercover operations and over 1,137 Title 3 tools used against gangs over the past ten years.
We're going to apply technology in areas where perhaps we don't have some of the resources. I think technology is one of the ways that all of us have been able to expand the use and application of our resources.
For example, many of the surveillance teams that we may have had pre-9/11 may not be available to us today because of the need to apply them to terrorism-type investigations. But that doesn't mean we do without that type of technology. There's certainly GPS locators, there's other ways that we can track movements without having to necessarily have a whole team on board.
So we're going to be able to apply technology in many of these cases where perhaps we haven't been able to do so in the past.
I also want to mention the National Gang Intelligence Center, which is really one of the lessons that we learned in the FBI after 9/11. Intelligence drives everything, and it should, especially in these gang investigations. You know, to get the intelligence together, to find out what all of these agencies have, state and locals have, and combine it into one product that we can then distribute it out, to work with our prosecutors, to be able to develop a good strategy, not to just do individual cases in individual cities, but to try to link that together.
We have somewhere on the order of 30 analysts. Mike, what's the number?
MR. SULLIVAN: Twenty-five.
MR. BURRUS: Twenty-five analysts in the National Gang Intelligence Center from the ATF, from DEA, from the Marshal Service, from the Bureau of Prisons, all contributing to these type of intelligence products day in and day out.
The last thing I want to mention from the FBI side is our MS-13 National Gang task force. Alice made some very good comments about how dangerous these people really are. We have to and will continue to work and coordinate with our partners overseas. I can't tell you how important that is. They come in and out of the country. They are involved in criminal activity not only here but in El Salvador, Guatemala, in Honduras, and we're going to continue to work internationally with our partners overseas to try to put a stop to this menace.
Thank you. Director Sullivan.
MR. SULLIVAN: Thanks, Chip. I'm going to actually start with a very short news clip and end with a news clip as well, and I think it really shows the challenges that we face in law enforcement at the federal, state and local level when you look at the faces of the new gangs. I mean, Chip talked about it being more local as opposed to national, international, and also how dangerous these organizations are.
So, if you can just show up our first news clip.
(Video shown.)
MR. SULLIVAN: ATF -- first off, I'm Mike Sullivan, the Acting Director of ATF. I've been on the job for a little bit over four months. But it's obvious to me that ATF's number one domestic priority is really going to address violent crime.
In many ways, because of the unique position we are in in terms of our regulation of firearms and the explosives industry, I think we're well positioned to partner with our federal, state and local law enforcement agencies to really try to address the tool of the trade of violent criminal organizations, large or small, that really pose the greatest threat to public safety at the neighborhood level, at the city level and at the national level as well.
These tools really are going after guns in the hands of felons and prohibited persons, and also weapons and explosives used to retaliate against rivals and witnesses to some of these gang investigations.
The fact is Congress has really given us some very powerful tools in terms of enforcement as relates to charging, prosecuting and sentencing violent offenders who use guns and explosives material as part of their tools of the trade. For example, when you have a firearm connected to another felony offense, it results in enhancements in minimum mandatory sentences, typically starting at the five-year level.
So if you get a drug dealer who essentially either has a gun or uses a gun to help protect his gun dealing trade, whatever the sentence is for the underlying conviction, typically the enhancement, at a minimum, will look at an additional mandatory five years.
Now if it happens to be a sawed off shot gun or a machine gun, the enhancement could be a minimum mandatory 25 years. So that's a powerful weapon to get dangerous felons off the street. So from my perspective, you know, as a prosecutor, as the director, as a citizen, the sentencing enhancements are critically important in terms of the tools that we have that Congress and the Sentencing Commission has given us.
ATF is a relatively lean federal law enforcement agency. We have approximately 2,000 special agents, but they're dedicated almost exclusively to investigating violent crime in gangs. As a United States attorney and former district attorney in Massachusetts, I've seen how important both the experience and expertise of ATF agents are in terms of addressing gang investigations and gang prosecutions.
Like everybody else has already talked about, partnerships is critically important in terms of our agency and fulfilling our agency's mission. We participate in more than 110 task forces across the country, and these task forces investigate gangs as a primary element of their enforcement missions. So they're really focused to gangs, in some instances small gangs, like depicted in the news article in terms of a Chicago neighborhood, and others, as we'll see at the end of it, much larger gangs tied into international organizations.
As a result of these partnerships with our federal, state, and local law-enforcement agencies working with prosecutors, officers, both at the local and the federal level, we've been able to perfect continuing criminal enterprise investigations against three gangs in their hierarchy. So we're not just looking at the individual; we're really looking at the organization because that really is critically important from an enforcement, crime reduction strategy.
Court jurisdiction at ATF enforcing the federal law is to prohibit violent criminal use of firearms, bombs and explosives, as well as fire and arson, place us at the center of gang investigations and allows us to focus on such groups as the Crips, the Bloods, the Latin Kings, the White Supremacists, the Asian gangs, and as I already mentioned, MS-13 and the threat that they pose.
Alice mentioned the recent takedown in Nashville. I'm not going to talk about that. But ATF has been doing this work for decades, taking down and addressing violent criminal organizations. Let me just give you a few examples.
Just last week, an individual named Charles Thornton, a career criminal and notorious gang leader from Chicago, was arrested and detained on federal firearms and conspiracy charges. This ATF investigation uncovered a firearms trafficking scheme where, at Thornton's direction, firearms were diverted from one jurisdiction in Louisville, Kentucky to gang members in Chicago. It's a common theme in terms of getting organizations.
In 2005 ATF, working together with the tireless efforts of the United States Securities Office, led the Rage Task Force in Hyattsville, Maryland. That task force arrested and obtained indictments against more than 20 members of MS-13 on firearms and RICO charges, including, as Alice pointed out, seven homicides, which served as the RICO predicates. One defender has already pled guilty and received an 87-month sentence, and nine others face the death penalty.
Earlier this year, following a three-year undercover investigation in Chicago, ATF purchased and seized more than 80 firearms used in crimes for members and associates of the Latin Kings, the firearms used to protect, direct and facilitate the city's second largest street gang.
Undercover ATF special agents have infiltrated violent street gangs such as the El Rokins, MS-13, Latin Kings and the Vice Lords, exposing a culture of violence and criminal activity that has supported other federal prosecutions in jurisdictions nationwide. And when I close, I'll actually show you one piece of an undercover -- or the thoughts from an undercover agent's perspective in terms of MS-13.
In fiscal year 2006, ATF implemented the Southwest Border Initiative, which is focusing ATF resources on firearms violence, violent offenders in firearm trafficking along the U.S.-Mexico border, which obviously is turning out to be a significant challenge for both countries. And I know it's a priority for both attorney generals to address the firearms trafficking along the Southwest border.
This initiative has led to the identification of violent criminal groups in Laredo, Texas, including the Mexican Mafia, the Pistolaros and the Texas Syndicate, which are responsible for murders, drive-by shootings, aggravated robberies, and other violent criminal activity.
Working in partnership, ATF and U.S. attorneys have used the firearm statutes, mandatory minimum and sentencing enhancement provided in the federal courts to obtain the longest possible criminal sentences, keeping these dangerous predators off the street. But we also understand, and I think we all collectively understand that we, as an agency, ATF, or as a department can't do this alone. That's why we look at opportunities to collaborate and cooperate amongst the federal law enforcement agencies, which is critically important in terms of accomplishing our mission, but also in many instances even more important, the partnerships with local and state law enforcement agencies.
But we also understand that training is a key element in terms of building those relationships and partnerships. With that in mind, ATF has trained more than 13,000 local police officers, federal agents, and local prosecutors for Project Safe Neighborhoods, has supported gang conferences nationwide, including last year's National Gang Violence Conference in Los Angeles, which was attended by more than 1,200 participants.
Since our creation as a bureau in 1972, ATF has established itself as the lead federal agency in the investigations of nationally recognized street gangs operating in several jurisdictions. We're obviously very much committed to supporting the Department of Justice Anti-Gang Initiatives. ATF's Anti-Gang Initiatives under Project Safe Neighborhood already include prevention, enforcement, and reentry initiatives, and I know Kevin O'Connor had already touched upon that.
We also have unique enforcement initiatives like the Violent Crime Impact Teams, the VCITs, in 25 cities. And that places an emphasis on any gang violence that erodes the quality of life in the neighborhoods. And this has been very much supported by Congress as well, including additional enhancements in the '07 budget proposal.
ATF is a full participant, as Alice mentioned, in GangTECC, which is a multi-agency task force that targets national and regional gangs. I am confident through the Department's focus and leadership ATF will continue to play a critical role and make a difference in the quality of life with regard to the people that we serve.
So let me just close with the clip that really talks about an undercover investigation of MS-13, I think it was referred to as Northwest MS-13, come out Northwest Virginia. And at that time, I'll turn it over to Kevin O'Connor.
(Video clip plays.)
MR. SULLIVAN: He looks like my 13-year-old son. At the beginning of that clip, the older -- it looks like he's the older because he's the taller of the three essentially talks about his gang. They were identified as a gang with the news reporter.
(Video clip plays.)
MS. ROEHRKASSE: Okay. Well, thank you. I think we have about 15 or 20 minutes left to take questions. And I should have clarified at the beginning that this entire session was on the record. And for those of you in broadcast, if you are interested in sitting with any of these individuals, we can certainly arrange that. So I'll turn it over to question and answer.
QUESTION: You all mentioned at the beginning that one of your goals is to try to prevent young people from joining gangs in the first place. What sort of things are you doing and how successful are they?
MR. O'CONNOR: Well, I mean I think nationally people are doing different things and it's really a locally driven initiative in the sense that the Department funds it. And I think in the fact sheet you'll see the various funding mechanisms. But generally speaking, it's the communities who know who their at-risk population are, so we defer to them.
I can tell you from wearing my U.S. Attorney hat in Connecticut, what we've done there is based on Project Safe Neighborhoods, where we target primarily offenders under the felony possession statute, that felons cannot carry guns in the community. We target that community that every month they have to report as a group to probation. We send in a team of prosecutors and agents to give them the kind of carrot-and-stick talk about, "Look, here are the federal gun crimes. You see these five folks? They were here last week. They didn't listen. They're doing 10, 15, 20 years."
That's been a very successful model when we look at our recidivism rates in Connecticut of offenders. The message has gone out, "Don't carry a gun because it's just not worth it."
What we have done in Connecticut is taken that model and gone to juvenile facilities and had the same conversations. I mean the reality is, when juveniles are joining gangs, it's a much different problem for us, particular on the federal level, because a lot of these folks are beyond our reach in terms of prosecution. So it's even more imperative that we focus on prevention. And we now send prosecutors to visit with these 14-year-old kids either in the juvenile system or we'll call a police chief and say, "Do you have a particular community group that knows who the at-risk population is? Let's get them together and we'll send in an agent, we'll send in a prosecutor, we'll send in Social Services."
Again, it's the carrot-stick. We'll talk to them about the enforcement side, but at the same time, let's give them information on job training, let's give them information on GEDs if they've dropped out of school. Let's do what we can to give them positive alternatives.
But the reality is we're not with these kids 24 hours a day, so we have to rely on the communities. And we in law enforcement aren't social workers, so we really partner up with our local social service faith-based communities and we try to support them by sending folks to talk, funding various programs, whether it's police athletic leagues and the like.
QUESTION: Well, you mentioned police athletic leagues. There was a time when midnight basketball was considered a dirty word around this building. Has that attitude changed?
MR. O'CONNOR: You know, I don't know about midnight basketball and whether that's been an issue addressed at the Department. I can't answer that question. I can tell you in districts across the country people are doing different things, which may or may not include after school basketball, baseball. I don't think we really care what the sport is. We just want to see these kids occupied on things other than gang activity.
MR. SULLIVAN: You know, I think the point is that we'll learn that one size won't necessarily fit all in terms of jurisdictions and that the Department has made it clear to U.S. Attorneys and ATF offices and I'm sure the other federal components as well, "Work with your local contacts, whether that's the faith-based community, social service providers, law enforcement, and other leadership to determine exactly what the unique challenge is.
I know in Boston here recently, the faith-based community played a significant role in negotiating a truce between two of the most violent gang organizations in the city of Boston. So I think we're receptive to looking at what is working in a particular community and looking at that potentially as a best practice to be shared with other communities across the country. And there might be something that somebody can talk about in terms of the initiative with regards to the nationwide tour looking into where are the challenges and what are some of the solutions.
QUESTION: Director Sullivan, you had mentioned earlier that you thought that violent gangs were the single biggest threat to local public safety in the country, I guess in localities. How long has that been the case, and can you elaborate on how that has changed over time?
MR. SULLIVAN: well, I think it's been a case for as long as I've been involved in law enforcement or as a prosecutor. Back in my early days as a district attorney, when I'd speak to people in the neighborhoods I was serving, their biggest fear was whether or not it was safe in their neighborhood to allow their child to go down and get the local school bus because of the gang activity on the street corners.
And we've seen some successes, and we've seen some trends that would suggest that crime rates or strategy along with a lot of other things that have been implemented over the last dozen or so years have had a positive impact with -- from our perspective the most important thing -- dangerous offenders for as long as you possibly can has a positive impact with regards to crime rate.
I know there are others who will debate that issue, so I think that's a matter of concern on the minds of people in the neighborhoods for a long period of time. Some neighborhoods, it may not be as much of a concern today as it was several years ago, other neighborhoods more of a concern.
QUESTION: Yet, in some cities around the country, violent crime is increasing and demands for greater federal resources to be devoted to violent crime and anti-gang activities are increasing. The Chiefs are going to be here in a couple of weeks, and they're going to be asking for more resources. Are we going to see more? Are we at a point where you might start drawing away from counter-terrorism to devote more resources to anti-gang or violent crime?
MR. O'CONNOR: Well, I think from the resource perspective we have directed $30 million in FY 06 directly towards gangs. And I think from the perspective of -- and Chip can shed light on this -- obviously, violent crime is the bread and butter of what we do in our communities. That's what people care about. And we obviously since 9/11 and before that have to focus on terrorism. I think you'll find that the visions are compatible, at least at the local level, that you can do both.
I think the locals are always looking for more money, and if I were in their shoes, I would too. But they also, I think, appreciate the fact that you take a city like Hartford or New Haven or Bridgeport in Connecticut, and they are receiving Weed and Seed funding, Project Safe Neighborhoods funding, Anti-Gang funding. They're receiving HIDTA funding. They're receiving a vast array of different federal funding that's come in, some through the Department of Justice, some through Homeland Security. And we still have those resources.
And on any given day, resources may shift, but if you have the basic programs in place, be it Weed and Seed or Project Safe Neighborhoods, you can adapt those programs to address -- and to pick up on your question, in fact, as I thought about it, we did sponsor basketball in Connecticut. I don't know -- nobody certainly in the Department of Justice told me we couldn't do that, so I don't know about that.
But the point is it may not be what Mike needs to do, but we in fact put together programs like that, and we did it through Weed and Seed and Project Safe Neighborhoods. So there still is federal resources coming into our districts, and we're using them to tackle gangs. And as I said, it's not a one-size fits all approach. Certain areas you may find they're using it to focus on drugs; that might be the biggest problem. You might have MS-13 where you can build a racketeering case. You may have a gun-trafficking gang.
And I think, from our perspective, we're going to approach this in a way that's best for our communities, and if we have to do a gun case, a drug case, an immigration case or a racketeering case, we'll do that.
MR. BURRUS: David, I think from your question about backing off of terrorism, the answer is no. But I think, on the criminal side of the FBI, what we try to do is to balance. We do some things. For example, we don't do as many drug-trafficking organizations as we used to primarily because we've shifted those resources over to try to address gangs. So it's a matter of balance there much more.
But we chase every threat in the counter-terrorism area. We obviously address -- there's no backing off in that area. But I think what we're able to do is to balance that and to say, okay, we have some additional resources that we're not going to use towards drug-trafficking organizations. The marshals do a very good job with fugitives. We're not totally out of the game, but certainly they do a very good job; we can do less of that. And so we've been able to staff both needs.
MR. SULLIVAN: And I think we're getting more creative in terms of sharing information even amongst ourselves as we're sharing it with local law enforcement agencies. We're getting more creative with regard to the task force models that federal agencies are typically -- when joint task forces with one another. We're now joining task forces with one another. We're now less concerned about turf issues as maybe historically has been the case, so I think we're trying to be extremely creative recognizing that there are some significant pockets of needs throughout the country.
QUESTION: What is this Department review on -- have you been able to draw any link between gang activity and the crime spike? And what conclusions have you already drawn about kind of the uptake -- is it localized as the attorney general has said in the past or is it a national problem that we're starting to try to grapple with?
MS. FISHER: Well, I am part of the team that went to certain cities to get down in with local law enforcement to discuss what they were seeing on a local level with regard to up ticks and some cities that had an up tick, but I only went to a couple. And there were other AGs that went to others. And I think that we're right now in the process of kind of looking that and pulling that information out and kind of seeing are there any trends, are there lessons that we should learn, are there things that we should be hearing from that. And so there hasn't been actually any conclusions drawn yet from everything that we saw. We're trying to -- gathering that information at this point.
QUESTION: Can you describe any of that to gangs, especially as applied to -- cities?
MS. FISHER: Well, Kevin, you might be able to comment on it. I only went to two, so I know that in the two cities that I went to, I heard a lot about gangs, and I heard a lot about reentry programs. I heard a lot about different prevention programs that were being done at the local level. I certainly think that the communities are facing a gang threat. That's clear.
MR. O'CONNOR: Just to clarify, the six cities are not the eighteen cities visited by Alice and OLP. The six cities is -- admittedly there's a gang problem, an acute one at that, which is why they applied for this funding. And there were certainly more than six cities that applied, and they were selected based explicitly on the nature of their gang problem.
The 18 cities that Alice and our colleagues at OLP are going out and visiting were not selected because of gang activity. They were selected for various statistical indicators, some good. Hartford for example, I was concerned when Hartford was selected, and the reason was because they actually had a decline in robberies over a period of time. And so part of this review -- Alice was exactly right, no conclusions have been reach yet, so it would be premature to sort of predict what it's going to say.
It was based on statistical review of certain cities and trends that they noticed, either up ticks in violent crime, downticks in violent crime to sort of get a full picture of what's working and what isn't. But it shouldn't be confused with the six cities that were selected for Anti-Gang Initiative.
QUESTION: Wondering if this review, especially in light of the chief saying it's a very dark situation, what is your feeling now about what you've seen going out across the country?
MR. O'CONNOR: Well, I think if you ask the police chiefs in certain communities, they will certainly attribute spike in violent crime to gang activity. I can only speak for Hartford. I sat in on that meeting. And Hartford is driven primarily by juvenile, and not really gang, it's sort of neighborhood cliques. I wouldn't compare it to an MS-13. The Hartford problem is much different than the El Paso problem, I'm sure.
But I think what Rachel Brand and her folks and Alice are going to have to do is sort of develop a national strategy based on anecdotal information. And, as I said, the problem differs all over the country.
QUESTION: Mr. Burrus, what drives these gangs? Are they just in it for the money? Is it turf? Do they just like to get together and shoot people? What makes them come together?
MR. BURRUS: That's a really good question. There's a lot of factors, and it depends on the gangs. Many of the well developed gangs that we all know from -- that have been around for a long time have profit as a motive. I mean you have almost different branches: that one is good at laundering money, one is good at buying guns, one is good at getting drugs, and so they have almost specializations within the gangs.
And so it depends on the gang. It depends on the motivation.
QUESTION: Well, MS-13 for example.
MR. BURRUS: Well, MS-13, it's a good example of one of the decentralized factors that we talked about earlier. We've worked very hard through our National Gang Task Force to identify national leadership, and to date that hasn't really come about. But what we do see is very much of a regionalized aspect with MS-13. Profit drives them. Compatibility drives them.
QUESTION: What is compatibility?
MR. BURRUS: Fellowship, get-together. It was originally formed, as you're well aware, in Los Angeles, as sort of a protection mechanism for El Salvador refugees where coming into the country. It was sort of one of the starts to the MS-13 gang. So it's certainly a fellowship type of arrangement, but unfortunately it's a deal with the devil. They're engaged in all type of horrendous activities.
QUESTION: Is this just a reflection of -- you focus primarily on Latin gangs, MS-13, Latin Kings, is this just a reflection of the immigration situation in this country?
MR. BURRUS: You know, I don't know that it is a reflection of that because we're seeing it in a lot of the different demographic areas. We just did a survey of all 130 of our Safe Streets task forces, and one of the things that we found when we asked them to rate the gangs based on high threat, medium, low threat, the highest threat that we came up with were the neighborhood-based gangs. And that's not necessarily having affiliation with anyone else, the Chip Burrus Boys or the Alice Fisher Gang or something, that it's a localized, regionalized type effect.
So I wouldn't attribute it to that. I think we have a problem basically in many of the cities with the regional gangs.
QUESTION: You really focused on Latin gangs here today.
MR. BURRUS: I don't know that we did.
MS. FISHER: I just used an example.
MR. O'CONNOR: I think I can give you an example in Connecticut where we've done non-MS-13. We don't have a large MS-13 presence in Connecticut, not to say they're not there, but they're not committing the violent acts. We have a lot of the neighborhood gangs. And the challenge is you can't racketeer these people. You know, we have wiretaps where -- and made it public, so I'm not giving you anything public, where we've heard people refer to each other as El Commandant or the CEO, and you can hear the other guy say, "don't call me that, we'll get RICO'd."
You know, gangs are pretty savvy. They recognize that we've got these racketeering statutes. That being said, it doesn't mean we fold up our tent and go home. We've got OCIDF, we've got Safe Streets. We've got guns, we've got drugs. I mean they're going to be committing crimes, federal and state. Some are going to be federal and we'll take them federal. Some are state colleagues and our partnerships will do.
But we really at the end of the day don't focus so much on the sort of composition of the gang as we do the activities of the gang and what types of crimes are they committing. And frankly, the police chiefs, that's what they care about. They don't want to hear, "Mr. O'Connor, here is the origin of MS-13 and why they're upset about injustices in El Salvador." They want to know how we're going to get them off the corner of Vine and Elm Street because they're terrorizing that neighborhood.
And so we use NGIC, we use GangTECC to get that kind of international perspective and to share information. If Mike Sullivan has got a problem in Boston, chances are I'm feeling some of it in Hartford. So those things are very valuable, but when it gets down to the local police chief, he just wants to know that there's a commitment to prosecute on the state and federal level. And we will do that by any means necessary. In Connecticut, you won't do a lot of immigration cases, but you do a lot of drug and gun cases.
MR. BURRUS: If I could add to that, Kevin, just real quick. You know, there's a lot of tools in our toolbox in the federal system that we can apply, the development of sources and the use of that federal system scares these gang folks to death, and the fact that they're going to go to Sandstone, Minnesota from Hartford, Connecticut is a scary thing. And so we do get some cooperation as a result.
The other thing is that we have the ability to run the Title Threes, and while that doesn't necessarily result in a RICO every time, it certainly results in a lot of conspiracy charges, and so we can apply that in the federal system very effectively. And that's one of the things the FBI brings to the table is that type of leadership with state and locals.
MS. FISHER: Can I just go back -- can I add something to your question about why are they doing it? I think that power and territory continues to be a reason why they do it as well as the violence and the profit. And I think we see that in the gang cases that we bring across the country, but what brought it home to me the most is last year when I was in El Salvador, and I was out traveling with the director of police down there, and he took me through a particular area of San Salvador and it literally was a divide in these just slums where it stopped being MS 13 and started being MS-18.
And everybody that was on this side was MS-13 and everybody that was on that side was MS-18. The graffiti was different. People didn't cross the lines, and it was in-bred from these kids when they were ten years old all the way up to when they were sixty-five. So it just, I think, territory also for whatever reason continues to be a part of the problem.
QUESTION: I wanted to bring up another aspect of prosecuting violent crimes, which is that it's particularly dangerous for law enforcement, for undercover agents, for prosecutors, and I'd like to know if the federal agencies here feel like they have the resources to protect their agents, to go after threats against their agents and aggressively prosecute those as well so that when agents go out in the field, they feel like they have the backing of their departments.
MR. BURRUS: Yes, yes and yes. I mean I'd never send an agent out in the field that didn't have that kind of backup.
QUESTION: And I bring this up, not to put you on the spot Mr. Sullivan, but the Arizona Republic had a very good story over the weekend about an ATF agent who feels like there were some missed opportunities in his case, threats against him that were not followed up, that he wasn't notified from ATF about -- and I wonder if, in this new age, if the internet, if gangs are on the internet and able to find out more information than they could, say, 10 years ago about agents, if some of the federal agencies are keeping up fast enough in ways to protect their agents against gang threats.
MR. SULLIVAN: Well, obviously I can't talk about anything that's pending in terms of internal matters dealing with personnel issues. But my response is the same as Chip's, absolutely in terms of protecting the safety and security of the folks in the field that are doing the most dangerous work -- is a highest priority certainly. Even in challenging times, I would make sure that they have all the tools and all the protection that they needed.
And I don't want to promote any websites, but there are websites out there, obviously, that try to out those folks that are assisting law enforcement, whether they happen to be informants or undercover agents. And I think it puts law enforcement folks and cooperatives at great peril. And I know the Department is trying to take steps to reduce access to some of that information. Obviously it conflicts in some instances with First Amendment rights.
I just want to get back very quickly because, you know, I think when we think about gangs sometimes we think about only the sophisticated organizations. We brought up the Latin Kings and MS-13. In some instances, and we're talking about gangs being like that small collection of what appears to be either young men or in some cases children to kind of control a particular neighborhood -- it might simply be a street corner in some instances, not extremely sophisticated, but potentially very dangerous.
Professor David Kennedy talks about the issue of respect and how respect really plays into some of the violence and unintended victims in the neighborhood. If I'm living in a neighborhood, it doesn't make much difference to me whether it's an organized criminal enterprise or a local crew that's making me feel unsafe, I want law enforcement to do something about it. And I think we're trying to address clearly all of it, you know, from those sophisticated organizations to one that is just loosely held together because they all happen to live maybe in the same apartment complex, the same street on the same street corners.
QUESTION: Nor would it make any difference whether that person on the street corner was 19 or 16 years old, but under the law it makes a heck of a lot of difference, does it not? And in fact, Mr. O'Connor, didn't you indicate that you are much more limited in what you can do with juveniles when in fact juveniles make up a very substantial part of the problem that we're dealing with here?
So I guess I have two questions: one, is there anything that the federal government, the Justice Department is doing to try to either get Congress to change the laws or for the administration to somehow change regulations or something so you could be more aggressive at going after juveniles, and secondly, what are the states doing on that front to help get tough against underage offenders?
MR. O'CONNOR: I think that the question -- I don't know whether there's legislation pending on the federal level sponsored by the Department or otherwise with respect to juveniles. We can prosecute juveniles in the federal system, but it's very, very unique and very different. It's not certainly as easy as you can somebody over the age of 18. The state level varies. In Connecticut it's 16, so that's a nice little cushion for us, but my understanding is there's actually legislation in Connecticut going the opposite way where they're trying to increase it to 18, which obviously is each state's call.
But when it comes to juvenile crime, you're not going to prosecute your way out of it. I think we all recognize that that's where prevention is so key. We can't control the laws that Congress makes in terms of who we can treat from an enforcement perspective in the criminal justice system and who goes the juvenile way, but we certainly can do everything we can to get these kids to not pick up guns, to not sell drugs. And that's where I think the prevention component places an even greater role than it does perhaps on reentry.
But I think with respect to the issue of the juveniles you saw in that video, it's a real problem when you have kids picking up guns. But it's not the only problem.
MR. SULLIVAN: Yes, but most of the investigations, the joint investigations, we have our state and local partners, both law enforcement and prosecutors as well. Not everybody can and not everybody should be prosecuted federally and there are many states around the country that have very powerful tools to address violent juvenile offenders. I know in the district of Massachusetts, you can indict a juvenile offender as young as age 13 or 14 years old and prosecute that person as an adult. So we're not walking away from the opportunity to essentially use law enforcement sentencing tools to address violent offenders at a young age.
MR. ROEHRKASSE: I think we could do one, if you have one, and then Greg, and then that's it.
QUESTION: I just really wondered if you could elaborate a little bit on the use of technology to investigate these things, and what you're using and --
MR. BURRUS: In other words, where are our troops, and can I count them? No, no, no, no. We do have -- I'll just sort of preface that generally by saying we have wonderful science and technology division that is always using and trying to develop additional tools that we can apply pursuant to lawful warrants, pursuant to whatever the laws that we're allowed to use. I cited the GPS technology because it can -- it is widespread, it is easy to use, getting cheaper every day. The mapping programs are tremendously helpful for us to aggregate what we already know. We can use data from state and local law enforcement, put it into a mapping program, and give us a really good idea of say, informant coverage, or where is a predominant number of murders taking place, or what does our intelligence tell us about the location of gangs.
There's some other very unique technology applications that we're attempting to purchase that I would like to see nationwide that I think are just wonderful tools, but I don't think we're ready to roll those out yet.
MR. ROEHRKASSE: Last question.
QUESTION: Police chiefs who are facing surges in violent crime rate particularly have talked about and complained about federal cuts to the COPS program -- are you revisiting any of those decisions going into the next budget? Is the administration thinking about pushing for more money?
MR. O'CONNOR: I don't know the answer in the sense that I'm privy to the question of whether that's being pushed. I think certainly COPS grant has been raised by many police chiefs including those in Connecticut, and I think, to put it in perspective, it's certainly a valid issue from their perspective, but it's also not the complete picture in terms of federal funding as we talked about. When you put it in perspective, we're sending in a lot of federal resources, most of which, by the way, is used for police overtime, local police overtime, whether it's Weed and Seed or PSN or gang task forces.
But also you have to recognize that COPS was a hiring program not a sustaining program, and I think sometimes people have viewed it -- the 100,000 new cops were in fact hired, the money was allocated to do that. Now the question is whose going to continue to pay the salaries. And I think you can look at the original intention of COPS. It was not to perpetuate these positions indefinitely. It was to get these positions on board, get them up and running, and the assumption that the state and locals would, as they typically do with their police forces, assume the burden of paying their salaries although the federal government, as I said, continues to kick in millions of dollars to overtime, and that's key when you're using undercovers who have to work unconventional hours.
MR. ROEHRKASSE: All right. Thank you very much for coming today.
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