Well, surprise, surprise - lock up the criminals and crime goes down.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/article/0,2669,CTT-18543736,FF.html
Law leaves criminals gun-shy
By Bob Kemper
Tribune Staff Writer
March 25, 2000
RICHMOND, Va.--The fact that the drug dealer was packing a gun along with 10 1/2 ounces of crack cocaine on the night police stopped him on the streets of this historic city was no surprise to Lt. Michael J. Shamus. What struck him were the first words out of the dealer's mouth.
"He shouted, `Hey, all the dope is mine! The dope is mine!' " Shamus recalled with a laugh. "Then he said, `But that gun, that gun's not mine.' "
Richmond police have dozens of similar stories they tell of street toughs willing to say or do anything these days--even volunteering their guilt for drug dealing--to avoid being charged with carrying an illegal gun. Dope means doing time. A gun, they know, means Exile.
Project Exile, born here three years ago and now touted in Washington, D.C., as a means of curbing gun violence nationwide, is credited with helping to significantly reduce the number of guns on Richmond's streets and, as a result, the incidence of violent crime. Under the program, all local gun crimes are prosecuted in federal court, and those people who are convicted are sent--exiled--to federal prisons outside Virginia for a minimum sentence of at least
5 years.
Since the program started, 590 people have been exiled. All are still in prison.
While the gun-control debate rages, groups on both sides of the issue have embraced Exile. This month, when Colorado was kicking off its own version of the program, Jim Brady, one of America's most outspoken proponents of gun control, shared the stage with Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association.
"This sort of dramatic success hasn't been achieved through any other program that has come along," said NRA spokesman Bill Powers, whose organization has given $350,000 to the Richmond program. "It's a program--regardless of how you feel about the political issue of gun control--you ought to be supporting it."
In 1994, a record 160 people were killed in this capital city of 200,000, giving Richmond the dubious distinction of being dubbed one of America's Murder Capitals. Last year, the number was 74, the lowest figure in 15 years. So far this year, 10 people have been killed here, half the total of a year earlier.
With fewer guns on the street, the number of rapes, robberies and assaults in Richmond also has dropped.
Crime rates have been falling across the country in recent years, but Richmond officials note that their rates have dropped further and faster than almost anywhere else. And the biggest drops in homicides and assaults here have been among incidents involving guns, they said.
Of course, Project Exile didn't do it all. The City Council, reshaped in the 1994 elections at the height of public concern over crime, has made crime-fighting its top priority every year for five years and formulated a comprehensive plan to combat violence. And Police Chief Jerry Oliver, hired in 1995 to remake a demoralized police department, has done everything from putting computers in patrol cars to opening new precinct stations, which he calls "customer service zones."
"There have been a whole lot of things that have been combined together to give us the kind of reductions we've been seeing," said Richmond Mayor Timothy Kaine, who was one of five newcomers elected to the nine-member City Council in 1994. "But Exile is, I'm sure, a big part of it."
Since Project Exile's inception, local officials said, far fewer people are carrying guns on the street, and that alone has helped curb killings and other violence.
"It was almost as if the firearm to the criminal was an article of clothing," said James B. Comey, chief of the criminal division in the U.S. attorney's office in Richmond. "They would get dressed to go out and do whatever misdeed they were going to do, and they put on their socks and their pants and their shoes and their gun, all with equal parts of reflection. It was just a part of the uniform.
"Most violence in Richmond is what I call `happenstance homicides,' " the federal prosecutor continued. "It's what would have been a fistfight or a stabbing 15 or 20 years ago but like all altercations, it ratchets up to the most lethal available weapon. And because the gun is there, it's a shooting."
Project Exile was conceived during a round of meetings with federal and state prosecutors and city police, who in 1996 were puzzling over how to get at the core of Richmond's biggest problem: the sheer number of guns on the street.
There are several theories explaining the proliferation of firearms in Richmond. Guns have always been easy to buy in Virginia, and until just a few years ago, when handgun sales were limited to one a month, there was no limit to the amount of firepower one could purchase. At the same time, more people started carrying weapons simply to protect themselves from those who were already packing.
The possession of a gun in Virginia was usually a misdemeanor. And even if an overwhelmed police force did make gun-related arrests, the criminals were usually out of the state courts on bail in a short time.
The solution the group arrived at was to prosecute every local gun-related crime in federal court. Under federal jurisdiction, bail was harder to get. Sentences at the time were stiffer than state penalties. And, in what surprised its creators as the greatest deterrent of all, those convicted in federal court would do their time in a federal prison hundreds of miles from home.
"It's just amazing how afraid these guys are of the federal system," Kaine said. "People who you think are tough and not afraid of anything, well they're afraid of federal prison. So it means they think twice about taking their gun out with them."
Local authorities found that because those arrested under Project Exile were not being released on bail, people in the community were far more willing to come forward and provide police with information about other crimes in which the suspects were involved.
Take the case of Bug.
Melvin Douglas "Bug" Smith had been charged over a decade with a wide variety of crimes, from resisting arrest to murder, but none of the charges stuck. After he was arrested in 1997 on gun charges and prosecuted under Project Exile, residents long terrorized by Bug but now confident he would not be able to come after them provided evidence that he had killed five people. As a result, Bug is serving a mandatory life sentence.
To help local police determine whether their case qualifies for federal prosecution, each officer was given a laminated card listing on one side 13 categories of people prohibited by federal law from carrying guns, from wife beaters to "mental defectives."
On the other side of the card is a hint for making a federal case. "Always ask if the suspect uses drugs, i.e., cocaine, heroin, marijuana," the card reads. "Most suspects will deny dealing but readily admit using and that's all we need to make a federal gun case."
A crucial component of Exile, however, has nothing to do with police and prosecutors. Using money raised mainly from local corporations, a private foundation affiliated with Project Exile has been heavily advertising a very blunt message written in white on a black background: "An illegal gun gets you 5 years in Federal Prison."
The slogan, with the police phone number, was plastered on a city bus and 15 billboards in some of Richmond's most troubled neighborhoods. Police officers have handed out thousands of small cards bearing the slogan to residents. And, with the help of local advertising experts, an innovative radio and television campaign was developed.
When the advertising executives heard that televisions inside crack houses are always turned up loud, they made a soundless TV spot in which only the slogan appears on the screen. So when the television's sound goes off, everyone in the crack house usually turns to find out what is wrong. Then they see the message.
"The idea is to sink into everybody's consciousness, `Don't use a gun,' " said Kaine. "We may not make you a good person, but if we can make you a bad person without a gun rather than a bad person with a gun, we'll consider our job to be somewhat successful."
Exile is not without its critics.
Defense attorneys charge the program is racist because more than 90 percent of those arrested are black. The program's sponsors note that most of the victims saved from these criminals also are black. Richmond's population is about 60 percent black.
"It isn't about profiling race. It's about profiling behavior," said Chief Oliver, who is black. "We're the police, we're the good guys. We've got to go after the bad guys, and many of the bad guys are black."
So far the program has passed constitutional muster. A federal three-judge appeals panel, deciding the first Project Exile case, ruled in January that the program does not violate constitutional restrictions on federal interference in state matters. The case will be appealed to the Supreme Court next month.
The national attention has thrilled local, state and federal officials in Richmond, but it gives them pause too.
Project Exile, for all its success in Richmond and a handful of other cities that have copied the program, will not solve America's gun problems. It won't work at all in many towns, officials said.
"I'd recommend it to any mayor to think about. Would I recommend it to be a national program? I don't know the answer to that," said Kaine. The budgetary concerns of shifting all local gun cases to the federal courts and then incarcerating people in federally financed prisons may prove too great, he said.
And a key to the Richmond program's success, authorities said, is cooperation among federal, state and local fficials. "Everyone came to the table and there was no concern with who got the credit," said Deputy Police Chief Frederick Russell, who was involved early on in the development of Exile.
In many cities, those relationships are not nearly as strong as they are in Richmond.
Because Project Exile has proven so effective, six states and a handful of cities, including Philadelphia, Rochester, N.Y., and New Orleans, have started similar programs.
Last year, Virginia Gov. James Gilmore started a statewide program that will mimic the Richmond project. And this month, Gilmore is expected to name a new leader of that state program: NRA President Charlton Heston.
Meanwhile, Richmond is moving ahead. The first exiles will be returning home in a little more than a year, and Oliver, the police chief, said the city has to be ready to help them. He is creating Project Embrace to help those who return find jobs and services they need.
"We should be aggressive in locking them up," Oliver said, "but we should be aggressive in lifting them up too."
------------------
The New World Order has a Third Reich odor.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/article/0,2669,CTT-18543736,FF.html
Law leaves criminals gun-shy
By Bob Kemper
Tribune Staff Writer
March 25, 2000
RICHMOND, Va.--The fact that the drug dealer was packing a gun along with 10 1/2 ounces of crack cocaine on the night police stopped him on the streets of this historic city was no surprise to Lt. Michael J. Shamus. What struck him were the first words out of the dealer's mouth.
"He shouted, `Hey, all the dope is mine! The dope is mine!' " Shamus recalled with a laugh. "Then he said, `But that gun, that gun's not mine.' "
Richmond police have dozens of similar stories they tell of street toughs willing to say or do anything these days--even volunteering their guilt for drug dealing--to avoid being charged with carrying an illegal gun. Dope means doing time. A gun, they know, means Exile.
Project Exile, born here three years ago and now touted in Washington, D.C., as a means of curbing gun violence nationwide, is credited with helping to significantly reduce the number of guns on Richmond's streets and, as a result, the incidence of violent crime. Under the program, all local gun crimes are prosecuted in federal court, and those people who are convicted are sent--exiled--to federal prisons outside Virginia for a minimum sentence of at least
5 years.
Since the program started, 590 people have been exiled. All are still in prison.
While the gun-control debate rages, groups on both sides of the issue have embraced Exile. This month, when Colorado was kicking off its own version of the program, Jim Brady, one of America's most outspoken proponents of gun control, shared the stage with Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association.
"This sort of dramatic success hasn't been achieved through any other program that has come along," said NRA spokesman Bill Powers, whose organization has given $350,000 to the Richmond program. "It's a program--regardless of how you feel about the political issue of gun control--you ought to be supporting it."
In 1994, a record 160 people were killed in this capital city of 200,000, giving Richmond the dubious distinction of being dubbed one of America's Murder Capitals. Last year, the number was 74, the lowest figure in 15 years. So far this year, 10 people have been killed here, half the total of a year earlier.
With fewer guns on the street, the number of rapes, robberies and assaults in Richmond also has dropped.
Crime rates have been falling across the country in recent years, but Richmond officials note that their rates have dropped further and faster than almost anywhere else. And the biggest drops in homicides and assaults here have been among incidents involving guns, they said.
Of course, Project Exile didn't do it all. The City Council, reshaped in the 1994 elections at the height of public concern over crime, has made crime-fighting its top priority every year for five years and formulated a comprehensive plan to combat violence. And Police Chief Jerry Oliver, hired in 1995 to remake a demoralized police department, has done everything from putting computers in patrol cars to opening new precinct stations, which he calls "customer service zones."
"There have been a whole lot of things that have been combined together to give us the kind of reductions we've been seeing," said Richmond Mayor Timothy Kaine, who was one of five newcomers elected to the nine-member City Council in 1994. "But Exile is, I'm sure, a big part of it."
Since Project Exile's inception, local officials said, far fewer people are carrying guns on the street, and that alone has helped curb killings and other violence.
"It was almost as if the firearm to the criminal was an article of clothing," said James B. Comey, chief of the criminal division in the U.S. attorney's office in Richmond. "They would get dressed to go out and do whatever misdeed they were going to do, and they put on their socks and their pants and their shoes and their gun, all with equal parts of reflection. It was just a part of the uniform.
"Most violence in Richmond is what I call `happenstance homicides,' " the federal prosecutor continued. "It's what would have been a fistfight or a stabbing 15 or 20 years ago but like all altercations, it ratchets up to the most lethal available weapon. And because the gun is there, it's a shooting."
Project Exile was conceived during a round of meetings with federal and state prosecutors and city police, who in 1996 were puzzling over how to get at the core of Richmond's biggest problem: the sheer number of guns on the street.
There are several theories explaining the proliferation of firearms in Richmond. Guns have always been easy to buy in Virginia, and until just a few years ago, when handgun sales were limited to one a month, there was no limit to the amount of firepower one could purchase. At the same time, more people started carrying weapons simply to protect themselves from those who were already packing.
The possession of a gun in Virginia was usually a misdemeanor. And even if an overwhelmed police force did make gun-related arrests, the criminals were usually out of the state courts on bail in a short time.
The solution the group arrived at was to prosecute every local gun-related crime in federal court. Under federal jurisdiction, bail was harder to get. Sentences at the time were stiffer than state penalties. And, in what surprised its creators as the greatest deterrent of all, those convicted in federal court would do their time in a federal prison hundreds of miles from home.
"It's just amazing how afraid these guys are of the federal system," Kaine said. "People who you think are tough and not afraid of anything, well they're afraid of federal prison. So it means they think twice about taking their gun out with them."
Local authorities found that because those arrested under Project Exile were not being released on bail, people in the community were far more willing to come forward and provide police with information about other crimes in which the suspects were involved.
Take the case of Bug.
Melvin Douglas "Bug" Smith had been charged over a decade with a wide variety of crimes, from resisting arrest to murder, but none of the charges stuck. After he was arrested in 1997 on gun charges and prosecuted under Project Exile, residents long terrorized by Bug but now confident he would not be able to come after them provided evidence that he had killed five people. As a result, Bug is serving a mandatory life sentence.
To help local police determine whether their case qualifies for federal prosecution, each officer was given a laminated card listing on one side 13 categories of people prohibited by federal law from carrying guns, from wife beaters to "mental defectives."
On the other side of the card is a hint for making a federal case. "Always ask if the suspect uses drugs, i.e., cocaine, heroin, marijuana," the card reads. "Most suspects will deny dealing but readily admit using and that's all we need to make a federal gun case."
A crucial component of Exile, however, has nothing to do with police and prosecutors. Using money raised mainly from local corporations, a private foundation affiliated with Project Exile has been heavily advertising a very blunt message written in white on a black background: "An illegal gun gets you 5 years in Federal Prison."
The slogan, with the police phone number, was plastered on a city bus and 15 billboards in some of Richmond's most troubled neighborhoods. Police officers have handed out thousands of small cards bearing the slogan to residents. And, with the help of local advertising experts, an innovative radio and television campaign was developed.
When the advertising executives heard that televisions inside crack houses are always turned up loud, they made a soundless TV spot in which only the slogan appears on the screen. So when the television's sound goes off, everyone in the crack house usually turns to find out what is wrong. Then they see the message.
"The idea is to sink into everybody's consciousness, `Don't use a gun,' " said Kaine. "We may not make you a good person, but if we can make you a bad person without a gun rather than a bad person with a gun, we'll consider our job to be somewhat successful."
Exile is not without its critics.
Defense attorneys charge the program is racist because more than 90 percent of those arrested are black. The program's sponsors note that most of the victims saved from these criminals also are black. Richmond's population is about 60 percent black.
"It isn't about profiling race. It's about profiling behavior," said Chief Oliver, who is black. "We're the police, we're the good guys. We've got to go after the bad guys, and many of the bad guys are black."
So far the program has passed constitutional muster. A federal three-judge appeals panel, deciding the first Project Exile case, ruled in January that the program does not violate constitutional restrictions on federal interference in state matters. The case will be appealed to the Supreme Court next month.
The national attention has thrilled local, state and federal officials in Richmond, but it gives them pause too.
Project Exile, for all its success in Richmond and a handful of other cities that have copied the program, will not solve America's gun problems. It won't work at all in many towns, officials said.
"I'd recommend it to any mayor to think about. Would I recommend it to be a national program? I don't know the answer to that," said Kaine. The budgetary concerns of shifting all local gun cases to the federal courts and then incarcerating people in federally financed prisons may prove too great, he said.
And a key to the Richmond program's success, authorities said, is cooperation among federal, state and local fficials. "Everyone came to the table and there was no concern with who got the credit," said Deputy Police Chief Frederick Russell, who was involved early on in the development of Exile.
In many cities, those relationships are not nearly as strong as they are in Richmond.
Because Project Exile has proven so effective, six states and a handful of cities, including Philadelphia, Rochester, N.Y., and New Orleans, have started similar programs.
Last year, Virginia Gov. James Gilmore started a statewide program that will mimic the Richmond project. And this month, Gilmore is expected to name a new leader of that state program: NRA President Charlton Heston.
Meanwhile, Richmond is moving ahead. The first exiles will be returning home in a little more than a year, and Oliver, the police chief, said the city has to be ready to help them. He is creating Project Embrace to help those who return find jobs and services they need.
"We should be aggressive in locking them up," Oliver said, "but we should be aggressive in lifting them up too."
------------------
The New World Order has a Third Reich odor.