Fighting Crime

FIGHTING CRIME -- (House of Representatives - May 14, 2008)

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Dent) is recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. DENT. Madam Speaker, fighting crime is an issue that is important to most Americans. That is because it is an issue that has a tremendous impact on a community's quality of life.

I think most Members of Congress recognize this simple fact. However, this Congress needs to take action in order to address this problem. On our side of the aisle, we've tried to do our part. Republicans have offered some 100 bills to help fight crime, but so far, only three have been considered on this floor.

These legislative efforts should not be piecemeal, but should instead be part of a grand strategy, to wit: we need to aggressively target those individuals who are responsible for promoting criminal activity in our society.

Our focus should not be on promoting efforts to decriminalize certain drugs, but instead on targeting and jailing drug dealers.

Our focus should not be on protecting the rights of criminals, but instead on protecting the rights of their child victims. More needs to be done, for example, to combat the scourge of predators who stalk young people over the Internet.

Finally, our focus should not only be on adult offenders, but on youthful ones as well. Gang members, some of whom are as young as 12 and 13, and we see intergenerational gangs as well, are extorting money, dealing drugs, and committing acts of violence. They need to be stopped, and that is where my bill, H.R. 3157, the Anti-Gang Task Force Act of 2007, comes into play.

H.R. 3157 will help our local law enforcement communities combat the scourge of gang violence. It authorizes $20 million for each of fiscal years 2008 through 2011 to establish new multijurisdictional anti-gang task forces, bringing together State and local prosecutors with Federal officials from the FBI, DEA, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, DHS, and others.

Gangs are mobile, and they often cross jurisdictional lines in order to facilitate the dealing of drugs or to avoid detection by local law enforcement authorities. Thus, a multijurisdictional approach is clearly necessary in order to stop the proliferation of gang violence and gang activity.

My district encompasses a good portion of what is called the Route 222 corridor.

This corridor bisects five cites--Easton, Bethlehem, Allentown, Reading and Lancaster--located in four southeastern Pennsylvania counties. It is uniquely situated in that it is linked directly to New York City, approximately 80 miles away via Interstate 78 and through other easily accessible roads, including Route 222 to Philadelphia, which is 60 miles to the southeast.

So gang violence along the Route 222 corridor, primarily involving drug trafficking and armed robberies, dates back more than a decade and has been a chronic problem affecting each of the five cities within this corridor. The roadways that have allowed commerce to thrive in the region have also strongly benefited the gangs, who can move between the cities with relative ease, thereby making their operations much more difficult to detect and to track. As a result, the 222 corridor has been plagued by gang activity.

Fortunately, we're not standing idly by and letting the gangs take over. The Route 222 corridor is one of six sites around the country that has received funds under the Project Safe Neighborhoods program. This Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN) initiative involves a cooperative law enforcement effort between the counties and cities along the corridor, and there have been some notable successes.

First, there have been successful prosecutions of members of the Mafia El Don Gang, which has conspired to distribute more than 50 kilograms of cocaine in the Lehigh Valley. Meanwhile, two members of the 314 and a half Gang, allegedly responsible, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office, for approximately 15 to 20 bank robberies in the Valley, have been indicted. In addition, the initiative is committing extensive resources to outreach of both at-risk youth and their parents in order to discourage young people from joining such gangs. And we have seen intergenerational gang activity in my community.

The Congress would do well to emulate the efforts of the U.S. Attorney's Office and the local District Attorney's offices and law enforcement agencies that are working hard to fight the gang problem in my area. More than talk is required if we want to curb gang activity and end gang-related violence, we need action. That action should take the form of legislation, legislation that targets criminals, promotes Federal-State cooperation, and that comes from both sides of the aisle.

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