Well we should renew the renew the assault weapons ban because prosecuting criminals doesn't stop them from committing crimes before they commit them and Project Safe Neighborhoods is bad because it inappropriately targets blacks.....Note that gun control groups are gun safety groups. And once again we have to focus on inanimate objects to solve a problem.
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/ne...2BF6?OpenDocument&Headline=Stop+gun+violence?
Stop gun violence?
By Peter Shinkle
Of the Post-Dispatch
09/05/2004
With the help of inmates in St. Louis jails, the U.S. Department of Justice has crafted an ad campaign aimed at felons. Possess a gun illegally, it warns, and you will find yourself in a cold, desolate prison, far away from friends and family.
It may sound like a get-tough scare tactic, but this is not just an ad. President George W. Bush's administration is pouring more than $1 billion over four years into Project Safe Neighborhoods, an effort to halt violent crimes largely by focusing on the illegal possession of guns by felons.
Touted as Bush's top criminal justice initiative, it has added hundreds of federal prosecutors nationwide, enabling the Justice Department to charge thousands more defendants who otherwise may have faced little or no time in state prisons.
The U.S. attorney's office in St. Louis, for instance, has nearly tripled its gun prosecutions in the past three years. The vast majority were felon-in-possession cases, prosecutors say. In addition, defendants in these cases are getting longer sentences on average than they did in previous years, said U.S. Attorney Jim Martin.
"They're getting real time, what George B
ush calls hard time, in federal court," Martin said.
In Southern Illinois, the number of defendants charged in federal gun crimes almost doubled in 2003, the first year of the program, officials said.
Yet Project Safe Neighborhoods also has its critics. Democrats and gun safety groups contend that Bush's administration has failed to enforce other gun laws, and has failed to lead Republicans to renew the ban on assault weapons - set to expire Sept. 13.
Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, the leading Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said, "Over the past few months, four law enforcement officers have been killed in the line of duty - and an equal number wounded - by violent criminals toting dangerous assault rifles. While it is true that programs such as PSN may eventually prosecute those individuals, a truly successful program would prevent such tragedies from occurring."
The Justice Department's own inspector general reported last month that the agency has delays as long as one year in recovering guns from people who were allowed to purchase firearms before their background checks were complete, and who were later found unfit. Conyers said the report shows "substantial failures" by the administration.
Meanwhile, some criminal defense attorneys contend that Project Safe Neighborhoods' focus has driven up prosecution of laws that fall heaviest on young African-American men.
St. Louis defense attorney Scott Rosenblum said the administration is expanding federal prosecution of crimes that traditionally have been handled by state prosecutors, and the result is long sentences for defendants who very often are black.
"We don't need to federalize state crimes so we can prosecute young, predominantly African-American men for obscene periods of time," he said.
Martin retorted: "These statutes have been on the books a long time. We've been more aggressively prosecuting them." He added, "Our decisions whether to use these statutes are never based on the individual's race."
Federal gun laws differ from state gun laws in a way that has been particularly appealing to law enforcement officers in the St. Louis region.
Under Missouri law, a convicted felon is only barred from possessing a concealable gun if he was convicted or served time in prison in the past five years for a narrow list of violent crimes, including murder and rape.
So if someone was convicted of murder, but was paroled more than five years ago, Missouri law places no restriction on that person's gun ownership, said Jeanette Graviss, chief warrant officer of the St. Louis circuit attorney's office.
And even if a convicted murderer does get caught with a gun within the five-year limit, the crime seldom results in a lengthy prison term, she said. While it carries a maximum sentence of seven years, most defendants get probation, Graviss said.
The Missouri law is further limited by the fact that it applies only to guns that are concealable, or shorter than 16 inches. So it permits a convicted murderer to buy a rifle the day he leaves prison.
In contrast, federal law makes it a crime for a convicted felon - no matter what the felony or how long ago it was committed - to possess a pistol, rifle or other firearm. In most cases, the crime carries a maximum of 10 years, and a fine of up to $250,000. However, if the offender has three or more violent felonies, it provides a minimum of 15 years, assistant U.S. attorney Tom Mehan said.
Illinois law similarly prohibits felons from possessing firearms again, with a penalty for violators of two to 10 years in prison.
While the cases charged federally have increased, so have the sentences being handed out. The average sentence in eastern Missouri gun cases 2001 was 44 months. Last year, it was 69 months, the U.S. attorney's office said.
At the court based in East St. Louis, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kit Morrissey said that of the 57 defendants who received prison sentences for gun crimes in the federal fiscal year 2003, two-thirds were sentenced to more than five years.
"This is significant evidence that we are successfully prosecuting serious offenders who would otherwise be doing the greatest damage in our communities," Morrissey said.
What's more, taking a case to federal court can have a more immediate impact on getting an offender off the streets.
In the Missouri's state system, a person arrested with a firearm typically would not be held in jail until trial, but it is routine for federal prosecutors to win pretrial detention of gun crime defendants, Mehan said.
St. Louis Police Chief Joe Mokwa said he believes the increased federal prosecution of felon-in-possession cases has played a role in the city's declining murder rate. Last year was the first time in 40 years that fewer than 100 people were slain in the city, and that number may again be below 100 this year, he said.
The department is working closely with federal agencies to identify and arrest violent offenders, and St. Louis police officers now take immediate steps to get their gun cases into the federal system, he said.
"Every criminal wants you not to take him federal," Mokwa said. "In the federal system, even the pleas don't get you very good deals. That's why we go there."
Swifter justice
Project Safe Neighborhoods brings to bear the swiftness and efficiency of the federal justice system, which does not have the vast caseloads found in state courts. As a result, it is not uncommon for a defendant in a federal gun case to be sentenced to prison by the time a state case would have gone to trial, federal prosecutors said.
Consider the case of Trevlan Glass. In 2000, he was arrested and indicted for illegal possession of marijuana and a prescription drug, hydrocodone. His case stalled in St. Louis Circuit Court. In 2002, he was again indicted on a drug possession charge.
Then, on June 12, 2003, Glass was arrested again, and authorities found he had a pistol in his possession. This time, prosecutors took the case federal. A week later, Glass was indicted in U.S. District Court on a charge of possessing a firearm while under indictment. Glass pleaded guilty to the charge in September 2003, and he was sentenced to 21 months in prison.
His state drug possession case - from 2000 - has yet to go to trial. His attorney, public defender Michael Dwyer, refused to comment.
One reason such cases are moving so swiftly is a new climate of cooperation among state and federal prosecutors.
"Typically, across the country, there's not a good relationship between the U.S. attorney's office and local prosecutors," Graviss said. "I don't know why, but they just butt heads on who's going to take cases."
But that has changed here since Project Safe Neighborhoods began, she said. Federal prosecutors have begun attending regular weekly meetings in St. Louis Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce's office to determine which cases should go to federal court.
The weekly meetings include agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Joyce said.
It is an "unprecedented" degree of cooperation, Joyce said.
Her office has received more than $900,000 in federal grants from Project Safe Neighborhoods, money she has used in part to open two neighborhood offices. Those offices help prosecutors and investigators work with communities to identify the offenders who do the most harm, Joyce said.
Martin, the U.S. attorney, said the weekly meetings with multiple agencies have become a "total team effort." As a result, he said, "nothing is falling through the cracks."
Cold winters
Project Safe Neighborhoods' overall effort is to stop gun violence, not just obtain convictions, and it has launched an ad campaign to try to convince felons not to carry firearms in the first place.
Some of the ads, seen on Metro buses, show a wintry prairie landscape, with the words, "Drop the gun, or we'll drop you 600 miles from nowhere." It continues: "Commit a gun crime, and you're alone. In Yankton."
The project's trading cards, for authorities to distribute at community meetings, point out that Yankton, in South Dakota, has a population of 13,528 - with no airports or bus or train stations. "In summer, the mosquitoes are hungry because there aren't a whole lot of people around," it says.
"Average January temperature: 19," it concludes.
Some of the ads are posted on the backs of St. Louis police car headrests, as a reminder to suspects in the back seat as they're taken in.
The campaign was produced based on research by Scott Decker, a professor of criminology at the University of Missouri at St. Louis, who interviewed juvenile and adult inmates at jails in St. Louis. He was awarded almost $150,000 in Project Safe Neighborhoods grant funds last year for the work.
One project ad campaign stressed that getting sentenced for a gun crime would disappoint a defendant's mother. But Decker said his interviews uncovered another concern: Offenders are worried about being imprisoned far away from friends and family.
A survey of juvenile inmates last month found that 87 percent already know a convicted felon cannot legally carry a gun, said Decker.
Yet the survey also found that 59 percent believe the most important consideration in deciding whether to carry a gun is not the penalty for getting caught with one but the threat of getting caught without one in an encounter with an armed adversary on the street, Decker said.
Thus, he said, Project Safe Neighborhoods must strive for the objective of "making the guys more afraid of the system than of the street."
So the ads depict Yankton as a desolate, frigid place that is hard to reach.
Not everyone is pleased with the portrayal. Joyce Briggs, business manager for the Yankton Chamber of Commerce, noted the facility is actually a minimum-security prison camp built on a former college campus, and has no barbed wire. Inmates get to work in local nonprofit organizations, she said. "Most of them love it here."
Reporter Peter Shinkle
E-mail: [email protected]
Phone: 314-621-5804
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/ne...2BF6?OpenDocument&Headline=Stop+gun+violence?
Stop gun violence?
By Peter Shinkle
Of the Post-Dispatch
09/05/2004
With the help of inmates in St. Louis jails, the U.S. Department of Justice has crafted an ad campaign aimed at felons. Possess a gun illegally, it warns, and you will find yourself in a cold, desolate prison, far away from friends and family.
It may sound like a get-tough scare tactic, but this is not just an ad. President George W. Bush's administration is pouring more than $1 billion over four years into Project Safe Neighborhoods, an effort to halt violent crimes largely by focusing on the illegal possession of guns by felons.
Touted as Bush's top criminal justice initiative, it has added hundreds of federal prosecutors nationwide, enabling the Justice Department to charge thousands more defendants who otherwise may have faced little or no time in state prisons.
The U.S. attorney's office in St. Louis, for instance, has nearly tripled its gun prosecutions in the past three years. The vast majority were felon-in-possession cases, prosecutors say. In addition, defendants in these cases are getting longer sentences on average than they did in previous years, said U.S. Attorney Jim Martin.
"They're getting real time, what George B
ush calls hard time, in federal court," Martin said.
In Southern Illinois, the number of defendants charged in federal gun crimes almost doubled in 2003, the first year of the program, officials said.
Yet Project Safe Neighborhoods also has its critics. Democrats and gun safety groups contend that Bush's administration has failed to enforce other gun laws, and has failed to lead Republicans to renew the ban on assault weapons - set to expire Sept. 13.
Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, the leading Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said, "Over the past few months, four law enforcement officers have been killed in the line of duty - and an equal number wounded - by violent criminals toting dangerous assault rifles. While it is true that programs such as PSN may eventually prosecute those individuals, a truly successful program would prevent such tragedies from occurring."
The Justice Department's own inspector general reported last month that the agency has delays as long as one year in recovering guns from people who were allowed to purchase firearms before their background checks were complete, and who were later found unfit. Conyers said the report shows "substantial failures" by the administration.
Meanwhile, some criminal defense attorneys contend that Project Safe Neighborhoods' focus has driven up prosecution of laws that fall heaviest on young African-American men.
St. Louis defense attorney Scott Rosenblum said the administration is expanding federal prosecution of crimes that traditionally have been handled by state prosecutors, and the result is long sentences for defendants who very often are black.
"We don't need to federalize state crimes so we can prosecute young, predominantly African-American men for obscene periods of time," he said.
Martin retorted: "These statutes have been on the books a long time. We've been more aggressively prosecuting them." He added, "Our decisions whether to use these statutes are never based on the individual's race."
Federal gun laws differ from state gun laws in a way that has been particularly appealing to law enforcement officers in the St. Louis region.
Under Missouri law, a convicted felon is only barred from possessing a concealable gun if he was convicted or served time in prison in the past five years for a narrow list of violent crimes, including murder and rape.
So if someone was convicted of murder, but was paroled more than five years ago, Missouri law places no restriction on that person's gun ownership, said Jeanette Graviss, chief warrant officer of the St. Louis circuit attorney's office.
And even if a convicted murderer does get caught with a gun within the five-year limit, the crime seldom results in a lengthy prison term, she said. While it carries a maximum sentence of seven years, most defendants get probation, Graviss said.
The Missouri law is further limited by the fact that it applies only to guns that are concealable, or shorter than 16 inches. So it permits a convicted murderer to buy a rifle the day he leaves prison.
In contrast, federal law makes it a crime for a convicted felon - no matter what the felony or how long ago it was committed - to possess a pistol, rifle or other firearm. In most cases, the crime carries a maximum of 10 years, and a fine of up to $250,000. However, if the offender has three or more violent felonies, it provides a minimum of 15 years, assistant U.S. attorney Tom Mehan said.
Illinois law similarly prohibits felons from possessing firearms again, with a penalty for violators of two to 10 years in prison.
While the cases charged federally have increased, so have the sentences being handed out. The average sentence in eastern Missouri gun cases 2001 was 44 months. Last year, it was 69 months, the U.S. attorney's office said.
At the court based in East St. Louis, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kit Morrissey said that of the 57 defendants who received prison sentences for gun crimes in the federal fiscal year 2003, two-thirds were sentenced to more than five years.
"This is significant evidence that we are successfully prosecuting serious offenders who would otherwise be doing the greatest damage in our communities," Morrissey said.
What's more, taking a case to federal court can have a more immediate impact on getting an offender off the streets.
In the Missouri's state system, a person arrested with a firearm typically would not be held in jail until trial, but it is routine for federal prosecutors to win pretrial detention of gun crime defendants, Mehan said.
St. Louis Police Chief Joe Mokwa said he believes the increased federal prosecution of felon-in-possession cases has played a role in the city's declining murder rate. Last year was the first time in 40 years that fewer than 100 people were slain in the city, and that number may again be below 100 this year, he said.
The department is working closely with federal agencies to identify and arrest violent offenders, and St. Louis police officers now take immediate steps to get their gun cases into the federal system, he said.
"Every criminal wants you not to take him federal," Mokwa said. "In the federal system, even the pleas don't get you very good deals. That's why we go there."
Swifter justice
Project Safe Neighborhoods brings to bear the swiftness and efficiency of the federal justice system, which does not have the vast caseloads found in state courts. As a result, it is not uncommon for a defendant in a federal gun case to be sentenced to prison by the time a state case would have gone to trial, federal prosecutors said.
Consider the case of Trevlan Glass. In 2000, he was arrested and indicted for illegal possession of marijuana and a prescription drug, hydrocodone. His case stalled in St. Louis Circuit Court. In 2002, he was again indicted on a drug possession charge.
Then, on June 12, 2003, Glass was arrested again, and authorities found he had a pistol in his possession. This time, prosecutors took the case federal. A week later, Glass was indicted in U.S. District Court on a charge of possessing a firearm while under indictment. Glass pleaded guilty to the charge in September 2003, and he was sentenced to 21 months in prison.
His state drug possession case - from 2000 - has yet to go to trial. His attorney, public defender Michael Dwyer, refused to comment.
One reason such cases are moving so swiftly is a new climate of cooperation among state and federal prosecutors.
"Typically, across the country, there's not a good relationship between the U.S. attorney's office and local prosecutors," Graviss said. "I don't know why, but they just butt heads on who's going to take cases."
But that has changed here since Project Safe Neighborhoods began, she said. Federal prosecutors have begun attending regular weekly meetings in St. Louis Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce's office to determine which cases should go to federal court.
The weekly meetings include agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Joyce said.
It is an "unprecedented" degree of cooperation, Joyce said.
Her office has received more than $900,000 in federal grants from Project Safe Neighborhoods, money she has used in part to open two neighborhood offices. Those offices help prosecutors and investigators work with communities to identify the offenders who do the most harm, Joyce said.
Martin, the U.S. attorney, said the weekly meetings with multiple agencies have become a "total team effort." As a result, he said, "nothing is falling through the cracks."
Cold winters
Project Safe Neighborhoods' overall effort is to stop gun violence, not just obtain convictions, and it has launched an ad campaign to try to convince felons not to carry firearms in the first place.
Some of the ads, seen on Metro buses, show a wintry prairie landscape, with the words, "Drop the gun, or we'll drop you 600 miles from nowhere." It continues: "Commit a gun crime, and you're alone. In Yankton."
The project's trading cards, for authorities to distribute at community meetings, point out that Yankton, in South Dakota, has a population of 13,528 - with no airports or bus or train stations. "In summer, the mosquitoes are hungry because there aren't a whole lot of people around," it says.
"Average January temperature: 19," it concludes.
Some of the ads are posted on the backs of St. Louis police car headrests, as a reminder to suspects in the back seat as they're taken in.
The campaign was produced based on research by Scott Decker, a professor of criminology at the University of Missouri at St. Louis, who interviewed juvenile and adult inmates at jails in St. Louis. He was awarded almost $150,000 in Project Safe Neighborhoods grant funds last year for the work.
One project ad campaign stressed that getting sentenced for a gun crime would disappoint a defendant's mother. But Decker said his interviews uncovered another concern: Offenders are worried about being imprisoned far away from friends and family.
A survey of juvenile inmates last month found that 87 percent already know a convicted felon cannot legally carry a gun, said Decker.
Yet the survey also found that 59 percent believe the most important consideration in deciding whether to carry a gun is not the penalty for getting caught with one but the threat of getting caught without one in an encounter with an armed adversary on the street, Decker said.
Thus, he said, Project Safe Neighborhoods must strive for the objective of "making the guys more afraid of the system than of the street."
So the ads depict Yankton as a desolate, frigid place that is hard to reach.
Not everyone is pleased with the portrayal. Joyce Briggs, business manager for the Yankton Chamber of Commerce, noted the facility is actually a minimum-security prison camp built on a former college campus, and has no barbed wire. Inmates get to work in local nonprofit organizations, she said. "Most of them love it here."
Reporter Peter Shinkle
E-mail: [email protected]
Phone: 314-621-5804