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29–710 PDF 2006

MS–13, AND COUNTING: GANG ACTIVITY IN

NORTHERN VIRGINIA

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

JULY 14, 2006

Serial No. 109–174

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

DAN BURTON, Indiana

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

DARRELL E. ISSA, California

JON C. PORTER, Nevada

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania

VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio

——— ———

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

DAVID MARIN, Staff Director

LAWRENCE HALLORAN, Deputy Staff Director

TERESA AUSTIN, Chief Clerk

PHIL BARNETT, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on July 14, 2006 ............................................................................... 1

Statement of:

Connolly, Gerry, chairman, Fairfax County Board of Supervisors; David

Albo, delegate for the 42nd District, State legislature, Commonwealth

of Virginia; Robert A. Bermingham, Jr., coordinator, Fairfax County

Gang Prevention Program; Luis Cardona, youth violence prevention

coordinator, Department of Health and Human Services, Montgomery

County; Elizabeth Guzman, assistant area executive director, Boys &

Girls Clubs, Prince William Region; and Norma Juarbe Lopez, executive director, Hispanic Committee of Virginia ............................................ 13

Albo, David ................................................................................................ 24

Bermingham, Robert A., Jr. ..................................................................... 29

Cardona, Luis ............................................................................................ 51

Connolly, Gerry ......................................................................................... 13

Guzman, Elizabeth .................................................................................... 35

Lopez, Norma Juarbe ................................................................................ 34

Spero, James, Acting Assistant Special Agent in Charge, Special Agent

in Charge Office, Washington, DC, U.S. Immigrations and Customs

Enforcement; Diego G. Rodriguez, Assistant Special Agent in Charge,

Criminal Division, Washington Field Office, Federal Bureau of Investigations; Marla Decker, deputy attorney general for public safety, Virginia Office of the Attorney General; Chief Touissant Summers, Jr.,

Chair, Northern Virginia Regional Gang Task Force, city of Herndon

Police Department; and Captain Milburne (Bill) Lynn, commander, Violent Crimes Task Force/Gang Unit, Prince George’s County Police Department ........................................................................................................ 77

Decker, Marla ............................................................................................ 110

Lynn, Captain Milburne (Bill) .................................................................. 105

Rodriguez, Diego G. ................................................................................... 89

Spero, James .............................................................................................. 77

Summers, Chief Touissant, Jr. ........................................................................ 101

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Albo, David, delegate for the 42nd District, State legislature, Commonwealth of Virginia, prepared statement of .................................................. 26

Bermingham, Robert A., Jr., coordinator, Fairfax County Gang Prevention Program, prepared statement of .......................................................... 31

Cardona, Luis, youth violence prevention coordinator, Department of

Health and Human Services, Montgomery County, prepared statement

of ..................................................................................................................... 55

Connolly, Gerry, chairman, Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, prepared statement of ........................................................................................ 17

Davis, Chairman Tom, a Representative in Congress from the State of

Virginia, prepared statement of ................................................................... 4

Decker, Marla, deputy attorney general for public safety, Virginia Office

of the Attorney General, prepared statement of ........................................ 112

Guzman, Elizabeth, assistant area executive director, Boys & Girls Clubs,

Prince William Region, prepared statement of ........................................... 38

Lynn, Captain Milburne (Bill), commander, Violent Crimes Task Force/

Gang Unit, Prince George’s County Police Department, prepared statement of ........................................................................................................... 107

Rodriguez, Diego G., Assistant Special Agent in Charge, Criminal Division, Washington Field Office, Federal Bureau of Investigations, prepared statement of ........................................................................................ 92

Page

IV

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by—Continued

Ruppersberger, Hon. C.A. Dutch, a Representative in Congress from the

State of Maryland, prepared statement of .................................................. 126

Spero, James, Acting Assistant Special Agent in Charge, Special Agent

in Charge Office, Washington, DC, U.S. Immigrations and Customs

Enforcement, prepared statement of ........................................................... 80

Summers, Chief Touissant, Jr., Chair, Northern Virginia Regional Gang

Task Force, city of Herndon Police Department, prepared statement

of ..................................................................................................................... 103

(1)

MS–13, AND COUNTING: GANG ACTIVITY IN

NORTHERN VIRGINIA

FRIDAY, JULY 14, 2006

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Fairfax, VA.

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:07 a.m., in room

305, Fairfax City Hall, Fairfax, VA, Hon. Tom Davis (chairman of

the committee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Tom Davis, Van Hollen, Ruppersberger,

and Norton.

Also present: Representatives Wolf and Moran.

Staff present: David Marin, staff director; Jennifer Safavian,

chief counsel for oversight and investigations; Brooke Bennett,

counsel; Rob White, communications director; Andrea LeBlanc, deputy director of communications; Teresa Austin, chief clerk; Mindi

Walker, professional staff member; Bill Womack, legislative director; Darcie Brickner, legislative assistant; and Howie Denis, counsel.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. The hearing will come to order.

I would ask unanimous consent that the distinguished gentlemen

from Virginia, Mr. Wolf and Mr. Moran, be permitted to participate

in the hearing today. Without objection, so ordered.

I want to thank everybody for coming out to Fairfax City to today’s hearing. Mr. Van Hollen is in traffic, but he’s going to get

here—in traffic in the county, Jerry, but I’m not sure—we’re going

to be examining the activity of gangs in northern Virginia and the

D.C. Region, including the notorious MS–13. We’ll also be looking

at the State, local, and Federal responses to the problem.

It’s very easy for us to think of gangs as something affecting big

cities like Los Angeles or New York, but more and more gangs are

moving into smaller cities and suburban communities, terrorizing

residents and stretching enforcement and prevention resources to

their limits. For example, MS–13, one of the Nation’s most violent

and prevalent gangs, has a presence in 33 States, with membership

that could exceed 20,000 people in the United States. And as we’re

all well aware, MS–13 has an especially active presence here in

northern Virginia and suburban Maryland.

But it’s not just MS–13. In Fairfax County, one of the Nation’s

most prosperous and well-educated communities, law enforcement

officials say there is a gang presence in every high school. Gangs

continue to threaten our suburban communities in Dale City, Manassas, Herndon, and even in the bucolic Shenandoah Valley. If

2

there’s a strong presence of MS–13 in such a peaceful area, can we

say for sure where it is not?

We in northern Virginia have been fortunate in that leaders at

all levels are proactively addressing the gang problem. Foremost

among these is my colleague and good friend, Congressman Frank

Wolf. Representative Wolf has spearheaded the fight against gangs

in northern Virginia from a policy standpoint and, more importantly, from an appropriations standpoint, securing nearly $12 million in Federal funding. When his area came under attack by

gangs, Congressman Wolf recognized that a traditional law enforcement organization could not effectively address gang issues, rather,

coordination between myriad Federal, State and local agencies

would be vital. This was accomplished in the form of the Northern

Virginia Regional Gang Task Force.

We’ll hear today that the Task Force has been successful in fighting the gang problem in our neighborhoods. But let’s be clear, without Congressman Wolf, the Task Force would not exist. The Task

Force has made tremendous steps in gang suppression across

northern Virginia. Congressman Wolf is to be commended for his

dedication in fighting MS–13 and gangs in northern Virginia, and

I just appreciate his being here today to lend his dedication and

knowledge of this issue to this panel.

At the local level, Supervisor Sharon Bulova took the initiative

by conducting a community dialog on gang activity and revitalization needs. Throughout the spring of 2004, over 300 concerned citizens and activists took part in a series of meetings to examine

gang-related issues and come up with recommendations to stem the

problem. One such recommendation was to revitalize Ossian Park,

located adjacent to Annandale High School.

I am happy to announce that working with Supervisor Bulova,

I was able to obtain $250,000 in the fiscal year 2007 Treasury,

Transportation, Housing and Urban Development Appropriations

bill that recently passed the House; it still needs to move through

the Senate and conference. These funds will help reduce gang activity at the park and make it an anchor for community events.

We’re well served by individuals such as these, but the gang

issue is something that my colleagues and I, as Representatives

from northern Virginia, suburban Maryland and Washington, DC,

must all turn our attention to. Congressman Wolf and I last year

went to El Salvador. Refugees from that country’s civil war in the

1980’s founded MS–13 and, more recently, Salvadoran immigrants

continue to have a large presence in MS–13 and other gangs. In

order to understand the problem here in this region, we need to understand the challenge at its source.

The good news is that we are making progress in the fight

against gangs. The Task Force, with its unique multi-jurisdictional

and multi-disciplinary approach, is able to cross county lines and

fight gangs with efficiency and effectiveness.

The Task Force has also seen a reduction in gang violence in the

region. This system is working, and the partnership with Federal

agencies, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement,

the FBI, ATF, Customs and Border Patrol, U.S. Marshals Service,

Department of Justice, and the State Department, is working. ConVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:01 Sep 26, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00006 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\29710.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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gress’ faith in the system is evident in the continued moneys dedicated to fighting gangs on a local, national and international level.

I represent northern Virginia, but I’m also a resident, a father,

a neighbor and a community member. What happens in our local

parks, in our schools, and on our streets impacts my constituents

and me personally and my family.

The D.C. Region is a dynamic community, with people of all nationalities and ethnicities who are proud to call it their home.

That’s one of our great strengths, but it also presents many challenges, and the introduction of gang violence is one of those challenges we have to rise to meet. We cannot and will not surrender

our streets to violence of turf and retribution, a cycle of violence

that too often claims not only the lives of those engaged in this

warfare, but the lives of innocent victims as well.

Like all of us, I’m tired of seeing headlines about Fairfax youths

being attacked by machetes, or a 17-year-old Herndon youth being

shot to death by MS–13 gunmen on bicycles, or a 22-year-old Reston man being beaten to death in a park by MS–13 members, or,

as most recently, three Prince George’s County young men murdered. Each life wasted to gang activity is one too many.

We as Members of Congress should continue to work to find solutions to the growing gang crisis in not only our own districts, but

in districts across the Nation as well. And this is why we call important hearings like this one, to hear about the successes of our

law enforcement and prevention communities and how we can continue to assist them best.

The enforcement and prevention communities must work hand in

hand to successfully fight gangs, and today we’re fortunate to be

hearing from representatives from both not only northern Virginia,

but Maryland as well.

I’m also pleased we’ll be hearing from two local officials who

have worked on this issue at both the State and local areas. Gerry

Connolly, who is the chairman of Fairfax Board of Supervisors, will

inform us of Fairfax County’s efforts in combating this problem.

Delegate Dave Albo, who is chairman of the Courts of Justice Committee in the Virginia House of Delegates, will discuss innovative

tools that enable State prosecutors and law enforcement personnel

to protect our communities.

I want to thank all of our witnesses for being here today. And

finally, I want to thank the city of Fairfax for so generously making

this facility available to us.

[The prepared statement of Chairman Tom Davis follows:]

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5

6

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. Mr. Van Hollen.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me begin

by thanking Congressman Tom Davis for convening this hearing on

a very important issue, which obviously impacts the people of Fairfax County, northern Virginia, Washington, DC, and Montgomery

County, Prince George’s County and other parts of Maryland. It

really is a regional issue, a national issue, and when you’re talking

about gangs like MS–13 and some others, it’s gangs with international reach. And we need to approach these on a regional basis

and with our support from our national partners as well.

And I just want to thank our partners on the Virginia side of the

river for working in collaborative fashion with those of us in Maryland.

I’m here with my colleague, Mr. Ruppersberger, from the Baltimore area, and I think it’s been a successful model but we need to

keep at it. Mr. Davis just mentioned a number of the recent

killings in Adelphi, MD. It’s part of my congressional district. We

need to make sure that we work with dispatch, that we take nothing for granted. Some progress has been made, but we need to

work even harder.

And in that connection, I do want to thank Congressman Frank

Wolf for his leadership on this issue. He was the mover and shaker

in terms of the funds we were able to put together. Last year for

suburban Maryland, the portion of Maryland outside of Washington, DC, Prince George’s County, Montgomery County, we’ve put

together—and I’m pleased to have—I want to thank you, Mr.

Chairman, for inviting witnesses from Maryland, including Mr.

Cardona who is here and others. We have put together a joint

Montgomery County-Prince George’s County Anti-gang Task Force

that I think has been successful at trying to bring those two jurisdictions together to address this issue.

They have a three-part strategy, which is a strategy that I know

is also being worked on over here. Obviously a law enforcement

component, a strong law enforcement component, and suppression.

A second intervention, trying to make sure that people who join the

gang have an opportunity to get out of a gang. It’s a lot easier to

get in than to get out, and we want to make sure that we have the

support systems in place to help those who want to get out.

And finally, and maybe most importantly, is the prevention

piece, because every person we can prevent from joining a gang in

the first place is a person that we don’t have to address even larger

problems and needs later on.

So I look forward to this hearing and learning from one another

on both sides of the Potomac River, because I think, as I said earlier, there is obviously a common denominator running through the

gang issue, which makes it a regional problem.

I also want to thank you, we have Captain Lynn from the Prince

George’s County Police Department representing the Chief. He’s

here and I think will be saying a few words a little later on.

So let me again thank you for bringing us together, and I look

forward to continuing to do this on both sides of the river and monitoring this.

8

And again, I want to thank Congressman Moran as well. He

serves on the Appropriations Committee. Without his support we

wouldn’t be able to put this together.

So I thank our partners from Virginia, and I look forward to

working with you again this year so we can help provide the resources necessary to help our local law enforcement and our local

social service agencies address this very important issue.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Van Hollen.

Mr. Wolf, thank you for your leadership on this, and thanks for

being here today.

Mr. WOLF. Thank you very much, Tom.

I want to, at the outset, say that the effort from the Virginia side

has been a total cooperative effort between Tom Davis, Jim Moran

and myself. Everything that we have done on the funding and on

all the different programs we have done together. And then with

your colleagues, with Chris and Dutch it’s been the same way, approaching this as a regional problem, not just in Arlington or just

in the Shenandoah Valley. So I want to thank Tom and Jim for the

cooperation, I mean, the three of us working together, and also

across the river with our Maryland people.

I also want to thank the Federal, State and local people. This is

a model for the Nation, because what it has done is not just suppression, but it’s suppression, law enforcement, but also education.

You’re going to hear about the educational aspects and intervention

whereby we go in and begin to pull people out of the gangs, but

we also prevent people or do everything we can to keep people from

coming in.

Also last, I want to thank the law enforcement people. At the

Federal level, FBI, DEA, ATF, Marshals Service have done a tremendous job. The State police and the local police, our policemen

and women deserve a debt of gratitude from Arlington, Alexandria,

Fairfax, Loudoun, Prince William, city of Fairfax, Manassas, Manassas Park all the way out into the Shenandoah Valley. They

have been quiet in their efforts but very, very effective.

I also want to thank the GRIT teams and the educational parts.

We owe the law enforcement in this region a tremendous debt of

gratitude.

Last, Tom, I appreciate your leadership. And I think working together, Republicans and Democrats really coming together, and the

three in northern Virginia making a difference and also up in

Maryland can really make a difference. No one in this region

should live in fear from gangs. And we are committed to making

sure there is the Federal resources, the Federal dollars to deal with

this issue so everyone, whether you’ve been in this region for 50

years or 50 days or 50 minutes, no one should live in fear in this

region, and we are committed to making sure that we eradicate, we

eliminate, we eradicate not just get control, we eradicate the gang

violence in this region. So Tom, thanks for your leadership and

your effort.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Well, thank you, Frank.

Mr. Ruppersberger, you came the furthest this morning and were

the first to arrive, so traffic couldn’t have been that bad.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Thank you very much.

9

Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, you pulling us all together. This is a great team here. Frank Wolf, Congressman Wolf,

you’ve done a great job and I know your efforts have really made

a difference. And Jim Moran, you three working as a team, and

Chris Van Hollen, it’s good to be here as a region, Virginia, Washington and Baltimore.

The Baltimore-Washington regions have a lot of things in common, but one thing we do differ is that you all root for the Redskins

and the Nationals, we root for the Ravens and the Orioles. I just

want to make that clear.

Now, in my district and throughout the State we are experiencing some of the same problems you are in Virginia. MS–13 is a sophisticated crime network that is not contained by State or international borders. Right now, some attribute the rise in the gang activity in Maryland to the success of the Regional Gang Task Force

here in Virginia. And instead of reducing gang activity, we’re just

spreading it around. And if this is in fact the case, then we all need

to work together across State lines to combat this serious problem.

We can’t just brush it under the rug in another jurisdiction, we

need to work as a regional team across the lines to solve the problem.

Now the rise of MS–13 exposes several challenges we face as a

region and as a Nation. The fluidity of borders, insufficient immigration, enforcement tools, a lack of social programs that promote

youth development, the persistence of poverty and a limited regional approach to law enforcement create the perfect storm for

violent gangs to survive, and MS–13 is clearly an example. Now we

need to strengthen our regional approach to law enforcement by

building effective programs already underway and making sure we

give law enforcement the resources they need.

Now many years ago I was an investigative prosecutor in Baltimore County, MD and I dealt with some gang issues, but not what

it is here today. The gang problem is getting more serious and

deadly, and we must fight proliferation of gangs on a multiple of

fronts.

It is a fact that a lot of gang members have a poor home life,

and that these young people who are most susceptible to being recruited in the gangs are ones that do not have a strong family life.

The gang becomes their family and support.

Now we need reasonable enforcement efforts and we need effective prevention and intervention programs. To address this problem, we need to ensure that prevention and intervention programs

have the resources they need to reach the kids today, and I know

that our two members here on appropriations have done a lot in

that regard. After school programs, such as Police Athletic Leagues

and others, seek to involve parents, schools and local community

groups to get rid of in our neighborhoods of the underlying conditions where gang activity flourishes. By teaching youth to respect

themselves and their community through smart decisions and getting involved in a positive way, we can help put them on a path

to successful legal future.

Now we need to reach these young people starting in elementary

school and continuing through junior high. Recent trends in my

congressional district, in the Baltimore region, indicate that reVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:01 Sep 26, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00013 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\29710.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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cruitment is occurring in junior high and the high school level, and

if prevention is to work we need to get to these kids now.

My district is also diverse when it comes to gang membership.

I represent Baltimore City, Harford County, Baltimore County, and

Anne Arundel County. We not only have MS–13 growing, but we

also have ‘‘CRIPS’’ and ‘‘BLOODS,’’ so this is becoming a serious

issue.

We need to stay focused, and our jurisdictions across the Washington-Baltimore region must work together. Cooperation is key if

we’re going to save our young people, stop the violence and the

crime associated with gangs. And I want to thank you again, Mr.

Chairman, and I yield back.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much.

Mr. Moran.

Mr. MORAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you very

much for holding this hearing. And although it’s of a much lesser

importance, nice job with getting the FCC to advance our telecast

of Nationals’ games—good victory there yesterday. Since Dutch

brought it up, I thought I would——

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Well, we were working together on that

one, too.

Mr. MORAN. Yes, we were. Tom took the lead.

And of course as all of my colleagues up here have said, Chris

and Dutch—and I know Eleanor will reiterate it—Frank Wolf has

been our leader on this issue. And you can tell from the passion

that he brings to the issue how much he cares about it, and rightfully so.

We have been devoting resources over the years, millions of dollars, virtually all of it targeted for regional efforts to reduce gang

violence, as well as deal with a lot of the drug activity in the region, which is integrally connected as well.

But those efforts, getting money and bringing the issue to the

public’s attention, is kind of a marginal role. And I know with all—

even with all the leadership that Frank has brought, the real efforts that count are down and at the neighborhood level, as Frank

says, with the police officers working within the community, the social workers, the people who work in our recreation centers, our

education personnel particularly. Their day in and day out efforts

are in fact making a real difference.

Now, I think our greatest impediment is the fact that too much

of our efforts have really been imbalanced. Too many folks, at least

at the legislative level, are the first ones that want to clamp down

tough on gang members after they’ve committed crimes, after there

have been victims, after there has been no alternative, really, but

to put gang members into situations where they’re going to become

even more hardened, whether it’s incarceration, deporting them

back to a Central American country or wherever.

Many of us may have seen that television show that was terrific

the other night on a gang and the violence that is integral to a

gang’s formation and membership. We’ve got to do much more in

a smarter way, and we’ve got, as many of my colleagues have said,

focus more on prevention so that those lives can be saved and we

can reduce the number of victims of gang violence.

11

You know, almost every wave of immigrants have seen their children engage in gangs. We’ve seen that movie, the Gangs of New

York, the Irish gangs, Italian gangs. West Side Story is one of the

most popular movies, but that was all about the fact that the gangs

were a dominant part of urban life, and that’s part of human nature. But while those—we had little that we could do about those

gangs a century ago, we have a lot we can do today. We know what

intervention strategies work. We know that putting money into day

care, into Head Start, into after school programs, into mentoring,

into a number of the other efforts that northern Virginia and the

Washington suburbs, Maryland and Montgomery County, Prince

George’s and Baltimore have engaged in. They’re taking the lead,

they’re showing tremendous results, but it does take resources. And

one of the—the only note of dissidence, if you will, on this issue

that troubles me is that some of the folks who are the first ones

who want to save money by cutting it out of day care and elementary education programs are the first ones who want to imprison

and get tough with gang members after people have been victimized. We need to do both. It needs to be balanced, and it really

needs to start in the early years. Every child is precious, every life

can be redeemed, and we need to go about using the experience

that we have to start saving some of these lives before it’s too late.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Mr. Moran, thank you.

And Ms. Norton, welcome to Fairfax, thanks for being here.

Ms. NORTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I need more

than a road map when it comes to coming to the suburbs. It all

seems like another country. But the fact is that this——

Mr. CONNOLLY. Welcome to our world, Mrs. Norton.

Ms. NORTON. I’m trying my best. But the fact is that if the emergence of MS–13 and gangs in large numbers bringing with them

crime to the suburbs doesn’t tell us that we are one region, I don’t

know what will. Therefore, Mr. Chairman, I am very pleased that

you had this hearing and invited those of us from other regions,

other jurisdictions, even though you call it a hearing on MS–13 and

gang activity in northern Virginia. But crime is contagious, respects no borders, and it goes from northern Virginia to wherever

it finds fertile ground. We have not had precisely the same problem

you have had here in northern Virginia, but we have had enough

so that we now have our own gang intervention partnership unit

working both to deal with the violence and to try to partner with

activities in the District that can deal with young people with these

gang members.

We estimate that in the District we have 500 to 600 gang members, mostly around the Adams Morgan area. We have identified

about 75 active MS–13 members. So we know already that they are

everywhere.

I’m sure that people in your communities who have been unused

to the kind of crime these MS–13 members commit have been

shocked by what the outbreak of these gangs means. In a real

sense, what I don’t understand is how these gangs regionalize

themselves, it’s almost like drugs regionalizing itself; you find meth

some places, crack and heroin other places, and all of it’s equally

harmful.

12

So I’ve come because I think that your experience in northern

Virginia has much to teach us in the District of Columbia. We

know about big time crime, street crime, but we have had less of

the gang violence that you now have in very substantial amounts.

Indeed, I see Luis Cardona here, and see that Luis—who used

to be on my staff, I mean, there is the word ‘‘Montgomery County’’

behind his name. Lord, Luis. This is a young man who was on my

staff when I first came here. I see he’s a Youth Violence Prevention

Coordinator. He is an extraordinary young man because while he

was on my staff doing all kinds of casework—he was out in the

community doing I’m sure what they pay him to do now. See, I was

paying him as a caseworker and to have contacts with my Hispanic

community. And all of his volunteer time, when he got out of work,

was spent doing exactly this kind of work.

So I’m pleased to see you, Luis, and we need you back in Washington. And I want to thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I want to

thank my good friend, Frank Wolf, who started the entire region

on the road to understanding this, put his money where his mouth

was and now has the attention of all of us in the Congress, not only

from this region. I also want to thank Frank because, as you may

have read, he’s working with me as well on the way in which there

have been crime spikes in the District of Columbia recently.

Thank you again, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. If I could just thank you, my colleague, Ms.

Norton, for doing such a good job with Mr. Cardona. And I just

have to say he is doing a terrific job in Montgomery County and

in cooperating with Prince George’s County on this issue. And we

hate to lose him again, he is doing just a terrific job, and I look

forward to hearing from him.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you.

Members will have 7 days to submit opening statements for the

record.

We’re going to recognize our first panel. We have the Honorable

Gerry Connolly, the chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors; then Davis Albo, the Delegate for the 42nd District in

the House of Delegates and chairman of the State Courts of Justice

Committee. Mr. Robert Bermingham, the coordinator of Fairfax

County Gang Prevention Program. Mr. Luis Cardona, youth violence prevention coordinator, Department of Health and Human

Services, Montgomery County. Mrs. Elizabeth Guzman, executive

director of the Boys and Girls Club for the Prince William Region,

and Mrs. Norma Juarbe Lopez, the executive director of the Hispanic Committee of Virginia.

It’s our policy we swear all witnesses in before you testify, so if

you would just rise, please, and raise your right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Chairman TOM DAVIS. We’re going to start with Chairman

Connolly, go to Mr. Albo, Mr. Bermingham, and then we’ll start,

Mrs. Lopez, with you and move straight down. Try to keep it to 5

minutes. You have a light in front of you; it will turn orange after

4, red after 5.

Gerry, let me just say welcome to the city of Fairfax, but thank

you, also. You head a task force, we had all these task forces, we

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grouped them all together. And we appreciate your leadership as

well and your taking the time to be with us today. Thank you.

STATEMENTS OF GERRY CONNOLLY, CHAIRMAN, FAIRFAX

COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS; DAVID ALBO, DELEGATE

FOR THE 42ND DISTRICT, STATE LEGISLATURE, COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA; ROBERT A. BERMINGHAM, JR., COORDINATOR, FAIRFAX COUNTY GANG PREVENTION PROGRAM;

LUIS CARDONA, YOUTH VIOLENCE PREVENTION COORDINATOR, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES,

MONTGOMERY COUNTY; ELIZABETH GUZMAN, ASSISTANT

AREA EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS, PRINCE

WILLIAM REGION; AND NORMA JUARBE LOPEZ, EXECUTIVE

DIRECTOR, HISPANIC COMMITTEE OF VIRGINIA

STATEMENT OF GERRY CONNOLLY

Mr. CONNOLLY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members of the

committee, Mr. Moran, Mr. Wolf. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for

your leadership in holding today’s important hearings.

I want to speak to you today about how Fairfax County is working to protect our most precious resource, our children, from the

threat of gangs.

Our commitment is that every kid is worth fighting for. Our approach, a true working partnership between the county government, the business community, the nonprofit faith and civic communities, is truly unique and is a testament to a simple idea that

all of us have a role in protecting our children’s future and the

safety of our citizens.

It was with that simple but powerful idea that the Board of Supervisors embarked on this project with the adoption of our Gang

Initiative in January 26, 2004.

In my inaugural speech in late 2003 I laid out six priorities for

our community that I thought were of particular importance, chief

among these was the need to tackle the growing threat of gangs.

Education and public safety are the two priorities of any local

government. Over the years, Fairfax County has made strategic investments in public safety, and I’m proud to be able to say that

with more than 1 million residents, Fairfax County is the safest jurisdiction of its size in the United States, and those investments

are paying off. Last year our crime rate declined by another 3.2

percent in Fairfax County, dropping to a 32-year low. One of the

few clouds on that otherwise bright horizon, however, is the rise in

gang activity. Gangs challenge the community’s fundamental mission to keep every neighborhood and community safe and to create

a quality of life that allows our children to thrive and reach their

full potential. The threat of gangs has to be combated in a coordinated way.

There are an estimated 1,500 gang members in Fairfax County.

During 2005, police statistics indicate that there were approximately 1,200 gang-related crimes within our county. Police estimate that over the last 5 years they’ve identified nearly 100 gangs

in Fairfax County, most of them, however, small and short-lived.

We estimate that the gang members in Fairfax County are responsible for less than 10 percent of violent crimes, such as homicide,

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rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny and motorcycle

theft, and virtually all of this violent gang activity is committed by

one gang member upon another. Approximately 40 percent of gangrelated crimes in the county were for the destruction of private

property, such as graffiti. The most active gangs in the county include Mara Salvatrucha, MS–13, the county’s largest group, ‘‘South

Side Locos,’’ ‘‘CRIPS,’’ ‘‘BLOODS,’’ ‘‘Folk Nation,’’ ‘‘People Nation,’’

and ‘‘18th Street.’’ The gang problem in our county is real, but as

a result of proactive actions taken by the Board, our police force

and our community partners, the problem of gangs is not at an epidemic level in our county as it is in some other comparable jurisdictions.

That being said, gangs pose a significant threat to public safety,

and we take the threat very seriously.

As I’ve said, the solution to the threat of gangs does not lie only

with law enforcement, as Mr. Moran indicated. The coordinated

prevention strategy we’ve undertaken in these last 2 years is a

cross-agency, communitywide initiative to strengthen and improve

collaboration between all county departments, the schools, the private sector, faith-based groups and the community at large. Together we’ve undertaken an anti-gang effort based on prevention,

intervention and suppression strategies.

As you are aware, Mr. Chairman, Fairfax County has long been

involved in gang prevention and related activities, including the establishment of a gang investigative unit of our police department

when in fact you were chairman, Mr. Davis, in 1994. It has a welldeserved reputation for providing numerous youth recreational and

educational opportunities that have deterred a vast majority of our

young people from ever joining gangs, an investment that will pay

dividends in public safety and quality of life into the future.

But there were missing elements in the county’s efforts when I

brought my gang initiative to the Board 2 years ago, including

identification and coordination of what we’re already doing. Some

of the things we put in place were recognizable as anti-gang programs, such as our police unit. Those heading other programs, such

as after school care and youth job training, librarians even and

park authority staff didn’t think of themselves as part of the antigang effort, but they are. In some places, critical services were falling short of the need, such as after school programs for middle

school students, our highest risk population, during the highest

risk hours of the day. Most notably, those in charge of these resources had no way of talking to each other or coordinating their

efforts of leveraging the time and money they already were investing.

It was with that in mind on July 12, 2004 that we brought before

the Board of Supervisors an Anti-Gang Initiative and asked that

we launch the effort with a gang summit. The summit brought together all the stakeholders in the community to formulate a coordinated plan to combat the influence of gangs on our children and

in our community. As a result, the Fairfax County Board directed

the county executive to develop and present a proposal for a crossagency effort to enhance the coordination of activities regarding

gangs and to involve the Fairfax County Public School system as

well as community-based organizations such as the Partnership for

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Youth. The Board also directed the inclusion of a community coalition connected to high schools and their feeder schools, as well as

representatives from regional shopping malls or centers.

We also established a Coordinating Council on Gang Prevention

chaired by the county executive and led by a steering committee.

And we hired our first gang prevention coordinator, Mr.

Bermingham, from whom you will hear later.

The membership of the Coordinating Council is based on the

premise that gang prevention, intervention and suppression must

be a public, private and community-based effort. The Council is responsible for coordinating the county’s preventative and community

education efforts and reports directly to the Board. It seeks to educate and engage members of the community, including parents and

other community leaders in the community. The Council is pursuing five strategies which are taken from the U.S. Department of

Justice of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Comprehensive Gang Model; community mobilization, opportunities

provision, social intervention, suppression, and organizational

change and development.

With respect to suppression, the police department in Fairfax

County continues to take a proactive approach to gang suppression

and prevention. The department has conducted seven coordinated

gang operations in the past year. These operations bring together

police resources from the involved district station, the Gang Investigative Unit, Operations Support Bureau, and outside agencies

such as Juvenile Adult Probation and Parole, and the public

schools and the Gang Prevention coordinator.

The police department’s Youth Services Division in the summer

of 2005 assisted in providing information to the Virginia State Legislature which made the brandishing of a machete a criminal offense. Over the past 4 years there’s been 100 percent success rate

in identifying the suspects in gang-related homicides in Fairfax

County. While highly publicized, they are, thank God, few in number. The homicide rate remains very low, and one of the two most

recent cases is being prosecuted utilizing Federal RICO statutes.

We have seen a reduction across the board in the reported violent

gang-related crime in the first quarter of 2006 compared with the

first quarter in 2005.

We’ve done a lot of things in prevention, Mr. Chairman, as well.

And the biggest single thing we did, when I became chairman, we

discovered that in our 26 middle schools—which is the age group

that is the most vulnerable—we had only three after school middle

school programs, and none of them were 5 days a week. I am

pleased to tell you that with the infusion of resources and with the

help of our Federal partners—you, Mr. Moran, Mr. Wolf in particular—we’re going to have after school programs 5 days a week in

every middle school in Fairfax County, all 26, targeted particularly

on gang prevention.

We’ve also partnered with Cox Communications in the $3 million

effort that they’re funding in collaboration with the county that will

lead to the creation of six new Boys and Girls Clubs specifically focused on targeted, at-risk youth for gang prevention strategically

located throughout the county.

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I’ll be glad to answer questions, but I just want to summarize,

Mr. Chairman, by saying I really believe and I know our county is

committed to the proposition that every kid is worth fighting for,

and we’re not going to rest until we achieve the goal Mr. Wolf has

set for everybody, the full eradication of gang violence in our community.

Thank you so much for having me.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Connolly follows:]

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much, and your entire

statement is in the record. We appreciate it.

Delegate Albo, thanks for being with us.

STATEMENT OF DAVID ALBO

Mr. ALBO. Thank you, Congressman.

For those of you who are not familiar with me, I’m chairman of

the Judiciary Committee, we call it Courts of Justice Committee in

Virginia.

I’ve practiced law for 18 years. I’ve done everything from serving

as a public defender to a district court prosecutor, and so—in fact,

I’ve been working a lot on the gang bills we passed in the Virginia

legislature over the years.

Let me tell you basically, you will hear from the Attorney General’s Office on what Virginia has done. We met for 2 years and

looked at every single State’s laws, called those States, asked them

which laws of theirs are working, which ones are not, and we basically took the greatest hits. So if you want to have a place to start,

later on our Attorney General’s Office will give you a list. You may

want to look at the Federal implementation of that legislation.

I want to talk a little bit about the nuts and bolts of prosecuting

these criminals because that’s really the hard part.

To convict a person of a criminal street gang offense you actually

have to prove that the group is a gang. And I know that sounds

like it might be easy because everybody knows MS–13 is a gang,

but it’s more difficult than you may think because you have to

prove beyond a reasonable doubt every element of the offense.

The CRIPS and the BLOODS have like 100 subgroups. So if a

person is in a gang, the prosecutor has to prove that they are actually in the same subgroup, and any changes in leadership, any

changes in clothing, any slight deviations from signs will all ruin

a prosecution.

So what we’ve done in Virginia is—I’m basically giving you an

idea of how our law works—it’s very difficult to even pass a law

that makes it illegal to be in a gang because the first amendment

says that everybody has a right to freedom of association. You can

hang out as an American with whomever you want to hang out

with under the U.S. Constitution. You can’t, however, hang out

with a group organized for a criminal enterprise, such as a terrorist

cell or the mob. So what we do is we define gangs as groups of

three or more people who are organized to accomplish certain

crimes. We call these certain crimes predicate criminal acts, and

then we make a list. Now of course we didn’t want to make it a

crime and thus have horrendous punishment for somebody who’s

hanging out with a bunch of people who are organized for the purposes of trespassing. So what we’ve done is we’ve taken those serious crimes and we list those. Then we go out to the street and talk

to prosecutors and police officers and say what’s missing? Have you

seen any gangs that are doing certain crimes that aren’t listed? For

example, this year we found out that a bunch of groups are organized for the purposes of engaging in prostitution, so this year we

added prostitution to our list.

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So now you know how we have our law structured. A gang is a

group of three or more people organized to commit a certain criminal act.

So now you’re in court and you’re a prosecutor. How are you

going to prove that the group that this guy is a member of is organized for committing these certain acts? Well, a law enforcement

unit like Fairfax—and I have to congratulate Gerry Connolly—and

I hope he will pass on this compliment to his police force because

they are second to none, they’re very advanced, they’ve been in the

business for a long time and they’re very, very brave. But if you

have a jurisdiction in Virginia that doesn’t have the kind of resources, it’s nearly impossible.

We started looking at ways for us to be able to prove that certain

organizations are engaging in these criminal acts, and then in the

Crime Commission someone had a great idea. You know, there actually is a list out there of people who admit they’re in gangs and

they tell you what crimes they commit. I couldn’t believe at first

when I first heard there is this list out there but there is. Do you

know what that is? That’s in the prisons, because when a guy gets

busted and he goes to prison, the first thing he tells the warden

is don’t put me in that cell block because I’m a CRIP and they’re

BLOODS.

So what we started this year to do is create a list, and that list

will be a list of self-admitted gang members who will tell, of course,

I’m a member of the CRIPS, and then we’re going to be able to see

what crimes he commits. We create that list, and then we’re going

to try to use that list in court under the exception to hearsay rules

such as business records exceptions or admissions against self-interest.

Now, what would be great, and another purpose of this is to kind

of coordinate our efforts in the Federal, State and local levels, we’ll

keep an eye on this. If this thing is working, we might want to try

doing it in the Federal level because we have a lot of gang members in prison in the Federal level. The bigger the list, the more

resources we have, the easier it is for our people to prosecute.

In closing, what I want to tell you is that I probably passed

about 10, 12 laws in Virginia already. The best ones come to us

from street police and prosecutors. The best place to go for information is to talk to the people on the street. That’s where you find

out that we’re having problems proving an organization is a crime.

We find out what these organizations are doing. And that’s how I

think that Virginia’s laws have developed into some of the most

successful in the country.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Albo follows:]

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. Delegate Albo, thank you very much.

Mr. Bermingham, thank you for your work and thank you for

being here.

STATEMENT OF ROBERT A. BERMINGHAM, JR.

Mr. BERMINGHAM. Thank you, sir. And good morning to you and

the other committee members.

My name is Bob Bermingham and I’m the Gang Prevention Coordinator here in Fairfax County, and I want to thank you for giving

me this opportunity today to talk briefly about how Fairfax County

is responding to this issue; more specifically, what I’m doing a little

bit day-to-day, and how we’re working on a regional effort, given

Congressman Wolf’s direction, and how we are working in northern

Virginia together to deal with this issue.

I also want to thank you for bringing this and keeping this on

the public agenda table. It’s easy sometimes for these things to

slide away, and I’m glad to see that year in and year out that we’re

continuing to talk about this. Just this morning I was reading an

article that was passed on to me from our Chief of Police where the

Governor in Alaska is putting together a task force because of the

amount of gang activity they’re having in Anchorage. So it certainly is a national issue, not just a local issue.

Chairman Connolly has done an excellent job of outlining our response here in Fairfax County, so I’d like to take this opportunity

to tell you a little bit about what I’m doing individually and how

I’m working with the northern Virginia region on this issue.

Fairfax County Board of Supervisors established this position

over a year ago, and I think they had tremendous insight when

they placed this position in the County Executive’s Office. I report

directly to the county executive, which gives me a tremendous

amount of leverage when I’m trying to bring services within the

county level together. It also sends a very important message to

county staff and to the community as to how serious our Board of

Supervisors took this issue.

I truly believe if they had hot taken this step, if they had not

as a board and as leaders within government said this is an issue

for us, we would still be struggling to bring our services together

and work together collectively on this issue. And the more that

leadership such as is sitting in this room today talks about the

issue and allocates resources to it, the more successful we’re going

to be.

As a result of putting a spotlight on gangs, gang prevention in

Fairfax County, we are progressing in the coordination of our own

internal programs. Our first steps were to take a look at what we

are doing, the services we are providing and how we can bring

those together to work specifically with the gang issue in Fairfax

County. What we do is we have a lot of services. What we knew

is we were doing a lot of good things, but we wanted to make sure

that we’re doing them for everybody, and doing them collectively

and not individually.

In short, I am the point person in Fairfax County regarding

gangs. I’ve been asked to develop and implement the county’s strategic plan of how we’re going to address this issue, and I’m doing

that by working with our partners within local government and

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outside, with our nonprofit organizations, our faith-based organizations and our community members who bring this together. The

teams that we have set up in Fairfax County include all of those

individuals and help us develop those plans.

We are working together and collaborating together on a regional

basis as well. I hope that the day will come that we’re able to collaborate with our partners across the river and in Maryland, and

we’ll put away the Red Skin/Raven issue and be able to work a little closer together as we can share and exchange information. And

that’s what we’re able to do on a regional issue. We’ve taken an

issue and we’re working together to see what works in each one of

our situations.

I’ve been asked to deal with this from the suppression, intervention and prevention side. I am not a law enforcement officer. I

spent 18 years in the juvenile court, but I am not a police officer.

But I am fortunate, as Delegate Albo said, to be working with the

finest police department probably in the country, and one of the

most sophisticated gang prevention or gang units we’re working

with. I can tell you, if you’re a Fairfax County resident, you have

a great police department serving you, and that the criminals, as

we’ve heard from our partners in Maryland, may be leaving northern Virginia and going elsewhere. And that’s because the gangs,

and you hear it on the street, don’t do it in northern Virginia, don’t

do it in Fairfax. That’s the word on the street. I think that’s encouraging for us, but I also agree with Mr. Van Hollen, that we

need to work collaboratively on these issues as well.

My job day-to-day, I just want to give you a brief idea of what

that may be in a week. I could work on a special project from the

chairman’s office, collaborate with an organization like Boys and

Girls Club and the expansion of their programs, work with our own

community recreation centers and what they’re doing. Two days

ago I spent about 4 hours in one of our residential programs talking to a young man who’s getting ready to leave that residential

program and is afraid, because he’s afraid for his safety and he’s

afraid for his family and what he’s going to do when he gets out

and tries to stay away from these gangs.

This Sunday I’ll be spending some time at Good Shepherd

Church in Alexandria sharing and exchanging information with

community members about what they can do to help their children

and how they can be a part of this.

In closing, I want to thank you again for providing this opportunity for this very important discussion. Fairfax County is committed to gang prevention through a three-pronged approach we’ve

discussed.

We’re very fortunate to have leadership in Fairfax County that

take this seriously. Chairman Connolly frequently asserts ‘‘seize

the mission,’’ that’s something that he passes down through our

government. I can tell you that in Fairfax County, county government and the community has seized the mission in gang prevention.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Bermingham follows:]

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Ms. Lopez and Ms. Guzman and Mr Cardona, you’ll be our cleanup hitters.

STATEMENT OF NORMA JUARBE LOPEZ

Ms. LOPEZ. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, and other distinguished members. My name is Norma Lopez. I’m the executive director of the Hispanic Committee of Virginia. It’s an organization

that was established in 1967 to help Latino immigrants in northern Virginia integrate into the American society. We’ve been in existence since 1967.

I’m here to discuss a little bit about the work that we’re doing,

and what I think would be some ideas about what can work.

Thanks to two members of this committee, Representative Wolf

and Representative Moran, as well as Walter DeJalva from Arlington County, the Hispanic community of Virginia has been able to

receive funding in order to begin a collaborative with two other organizations on gang intervention and prevention. The two other organizations are Greenbrier Learning Center and Barrios Unidos.

We’re doing a few things as a collaborative. One of the things

that we do is an after school mentoring program at Greenbrier

Learning Center where we try to prevent kids from engaging in

gangs and having a place to go after school, especially Latino children who are having problems in school and also speak a second

language.

The other thing we do is through Barrios Unidos, we’re going to

have a peace summit at George Mason University this month, beginning on July 27th, and there we’re going to invite all sectors of

the community, including former gang members and law enforcement agency, government representatives to discuss what are the

issues in the community and northern Virginia regarding gang violence. Because we believe that in order to have a plan, you need

to assess what is the level of the problem in your community, and

this is one of the purposes of the summit.

The other thing we do is mentoring after school for middle school

children. And there we try to keep kids in a safe place until their

parents get out from work. Let’s face it, gang prevention really begins at home, and it begins with the parents, that is No. 1. And

many of our Latino parents work in low sector skilled jobs, and

they have erratic schedules, and their children need a place to go

before their parents get in from work.

The other thing that we’re doing is making presentations

throughout schools, high schools, middle schools, elementary

schools throughout northern Virginia in trying to get youth not to

engage in gangs.

What works? We know the research is being done by the Department of Justice. There is a lot of issues with what works or what

doesn’t work. Again, I’ll tell you one thing, compared to a city like

Los Angeles, we can say we don’t have a gang problem. But, you

know, we said that 20 years ago, and in 20 years things have

changed. The question is, what can we do to not let the city—this

area of the country become as problematic as, you know, Los Angeles.

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The other thing is, one of the other things that we’re working on

is we’re working with the Fairfax law enforcement agencies and

we’re working with an office called Barrios Marino, and one of the

things that we are discussing preliminarily is to try to change the

negative image of the law enforcement on the part of the Latino

community, especially the parents, so that there can be a change

in the attitude about what really—in order to seek assistance from

law enforcement agents.

There are many things that we hope to be working on in the future, especially with the law enforcement agencies and other government agencies. I think that having town meetings, and especially teaching parents parenting skills in the evenings, and as well

as English as a second language. For this community that’s very

important because as the kids become more acculturated and assimilated into the American culture, they become more alienated

from non-English speaking parents, and I think that is very important for our community.

Thank you.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much.

Ms. Guzman.

STATEMENT OF ELIZABETH GUZMAN

Ms. GUZMAN. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, and members of

the Committee on Government Reform. I’m pleased to be here

today, and I thank you for allowing me the opportunity to address

the issue of gang delinquency in our communities.

My name is Elizabeth Guzman, and I am the assistant area executive director of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Washington,

the Prince William County and Manassas region. In my position,

I oversee three Boys and Girls Club sites, one located in Dale City,

another in Dumfries and our newest clubhouse located in Manassas.

The mission of the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Washington

is to help boys and girls of all backgrounds with an emphasis on

at-risk youth to build confidence, develop character and acquire the

skills needed to become productive, civic minded and responsible

adults.

My organization embraces five core areas: Sports, arts, education, health and life skills, and character and leadership development.

Our clubs in the Prince William County and Manassas region

serve over 6,700 youth. Our demographics vary based on the communities where our clubs are located. Our clubs serve youth from

all walks of life, including high income two-parent families to lowincome single-parent families. Our members come from all over the

Prince William County and Manassas region to mutually participate in positive, structured and life-altering programs available at

all of our locations. Any child between the ages of 6 to 18 can attend our clubs and participate in any of our programs at a low rate

of $20 a year. No child is ever turned away who cannot afford the

annual dues. The Boys and Girls Club always find a way for any

child to be a member of our clubs.

While we offer many programs in each of our five core areas, we

will focus today on the programs that we currently offer to help

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deal with the issue of gang prevention, intervention and suppression. What makes the Boys and Girls Club so successful and the

No. 1 youth-serving agency in the world today is not just our low

fees and our reputable programs but, more importantly, our continued ability to offer services that combat the most serious, the most

alarming and the most destructive issues in the lives of our youth.

Most recently, unfortunately, that issue has been involvement in

delinquency.

We’ve always offered the following programs to help delay the

onset of gang behavior or other acts of delinquency; programs like

Goals for Graduation, Smart Moves, Job Ready, College 101, our

Keystone and Church Leadership Clubs, and GED programs. And

in that effort, we’ve also established the following partnerships.

Our newest local board member is a juvenile justice judge in Prince

William County and he has sponsored 100 club memberships to juveniles who appear in his courtroom. Twenty thousand free passes

to the Boys and Girls Club have been sponsored by Prince William

County Sheriff Glendell Hill and have been provided in each patrol

unit to be distributed by officers as necessary.

The city of Manassas will soon be sponsoring 7,700 club memberships for each child in the Manassas Public School system. And

most recently, Prince William County hired Richard Buckholtz, director of the GRIT program to work with agencies like the Boys

and Girls Clubs to continue the Gang Prevention Initiative.

The programs are successful and these partnerships are crucial,

but the issue of gang delinquency cannot be taken lightly. It is not

a problem that evolved overnight, and therefore should be combated with strategic, positive educational programs with proven

track records.

The Boys and Girls Clubs of America offers the groundwork for

a targeted outreach program that has proven successful in many

at-risk communities throughout the United States. Since 1990,

with the implementation of the targeted outreach program, the

Boys and Girls Club of America have steered close to 22,000 young

people away from the dangers of gang delinquency. In two simple

words, it works.

In my written statement of testimony I’ve outlined the program

in great detail, but I’ll give you some highlights of this program

now. It’s developed into four components. Component No. 1 is our

delinquency prevention component, and it pretty much prevents

youth ages 6 to 18 from engaging in risky behavior that can lead

to gang delinquency. This is done primarily by involving youth in

programs that are of interest to them and keeping them involved.

Component No. 2 is a gang prevention component, very similar

to our delinquency prevention component, except that new youth

are recruited to the club through referral services in the community that identify these youth as being at risk of gang membership.

Component No. 3, our gang intervention component that entails

working one on one with gang involved youth using Boys and Girls

Club programs to facilitate the change. This component focuses on

youth who are identified gang members.

And finally, our fourth component, the targeted re-entry component is a unique collaboration that allows the Boys and Girls Clubs

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to assist incarcerated youth in transitioning back to the community.

This is the targeted outreach program in a nutshell, and to simplify it further, in two simple words once again, it works. Some outcome measurements from the targeted outreach program include

that 55 percent of youth have shown a decrease in aggressive behavior, 70 percent of youth now attend the club at least twice a

week, and 38 percent of youth have improved their school performance by one or more letter grades.

I leave you with this final fact. The Virginia Department of Justice in 2005 released that to support one incarcerated youth the

cost is $88,000. Our annual cost to serve any child at the Boys and

Girls Club is $1,000. By keeping just 893 at-risk youth out of jail

in 2005 through our targeted outreach program, the Boys and Girls

Club helped save Virginia approximately $56.5 million. Imagine

how much we can save in Prince William County and Manassas

alone when this program is in full swing. It works.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Guzman follows:]

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Mr. Cardona. You are our clean-up speaker. Thank you for being

here.

STATEMENT OF LUIS CARDONA

Mr. CARDONA. Actually, I think I’m the reliever. Good morning,

Congressmen Tom Davis, Van Hollen, Ruppersberger, Wolf, Moran,

and my former employer, Congresswoman Norton, and to the rest

of the participants in this morning’s briefing. And thank you for

having me. It is an honor to serve my community as we seek to

strengthen our efforts to guide our youth and future generations to

make safer and healthier decisions in life.

As you may or may not know, I have been working with communities locally, nationally and internationally for the past 12 years,

attempting to help bring peace and an end to senseless violence

that tragically takes so many of our children and youth away from

their loved ones and community. I sit here before you as the youth

violence prevention coordinator in the Department of Health and

Human Services in Montgomery County, MD. Thanks to the leadership of the county executive, Doug Duncan, director of health and

human services, Carolyn Colvin, Police Chief Tom Manger and

most importantly because the residents and stakeholders of Montgomery County have seen a redeeming value in my ability to help

others leave gang life as well as help to end gang violence. For

more than 12 years of my life I made poor choices which led to several arrests, several assaults and a near death experience in which

I was shot five times; 22 of my friends and associates have been

murdered, and 30 of my friends have been sent to the criminal justice system. I’m the only member of my family to graduate from

high school, much less graduate from college, as well as the member of the neighborhood crew that I used to hang with. My very

presence here alone symbolizes the possibility of success and hope

for so many of our youth who are caught up in gang life.

Twelve years ago I met a wise and spiritual man who has been

the father I never had. His name is Nane Alejandrez from the national organization, called Barrios Unidos, that helped me make

the transition from gangster to peace warrior. This journey has

been one of redemption, spiritual healing and of many difficult

challenges in which my life was in danger from the same individuals that I hoped to help. Last month I took my mother to dinner,

and for the first time in my life, she told me how proud she was

of me, to the extent that I fought back the tears, because these

were never words that in 39 years I had heard at home or from

the same person that just said them. My crusade of nonviolence

has taken on a new role as I am doing my part to create for my

children what I never had as a child.

I want to take this opportunity to share Montgomery County’s

public health vision of helping to create a peaceful community

where youth do not have to see gangs as the only option and where

youth are valued to the extent that they will hopefully never consider joining gangs in order to feel valued. And I say public health

because after all, gang violence is a public health issue, not solely

public safety.

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Thanks to Congressman Frank Wolf, the Maryland delegation of

Senator Barbara Mikulski, Senator Paul Sarbanes, the entire committee sitting in front of us this morning, including Congressman

Al Wynn and the Montgomery County Council as well as the many

valuable members of the Montgomery County gang task force that

helped sponsor and put together a strategy where we would utilize

the three-prong approach of prevention, intervention and suppression to address the county’s gang issue. For example, through the

joint county efforts of Montgomery and Prince George’s Counties,

we just opened the Crossroads Youth Opportunity Center [CYOC],

in the Takoma Park/Langley Park area, a safe place for youth involved in gangs who seek to get out as well as for youth that are

at risk for joining gangs. Ironically, the term crossroads represents

the possibility of hope and inspiration for young people at a crossroad in their lives. In 2 months of operation, we have served 100

youth and families, predominantly Latino and African-American,

where we have provided mentoring, positive youth development,

behavioral health services and mental health services, case management, retreats, recreational opportunities, family building programs, job training and placement, group support for incarcerated

youth, re-entry case management, tattoo removal services, relocation and safety planning and legal support and representation. Two

African-American young men recently came into the CYOC and

told me that they came because a police officer referred them to the

center and that they themselves were sick and tired of being sick

and tired and no longer wished to gang bang.

We have had rival members of several different gangs come together under the banner not of their gangs but of the fruitful opportunities that the center offers because finally someone that

looks like them and has been there has reached out to them and

brought them to the table to help put an end to this madness. We

have a partnership with our county corrections through the leadership of Director Art Wallenstein where those inmates who are returning to the community are provided with case management before they are released that assesses their needs and ensures that

they are provided with preparation services that will enable them

to successfully transition back into the community, thereby reducing the possibility of getting involved in the criminal justice system

again.

Ladies and gentlemen, imagine a prison system that actually rehabilitates its inmates. We have a multidisciplinary team that

meets on a monthly basis that consists of police, schools, local management board and other stakeholders that work to provide prevention and early intervention to youth who have not been incarcerated or high-level gang members and provide them and their families with wraparound services to ensure they do not end up in the

criminal justice system. This was made possible because one of our

biggest assets in the gang unit reached out and said we have to get

to these kids before they are locked up. Through our recreation department, we have a sports academy, there are three different high

schools in Montgomery County that allow youth who do not achieve

the minimum 2.0 GPA but are at risk of gang involvement or members of gangs and provide them with the opportunity of positive

life-affirming recreational activity and academic reinforcement in

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order for them to achieve that 2.0 GPA and hopefully even higher.

Through our victim services partnership with the police department, we identify resources that are needed to sometimes relocate

youth or families that are in potential danger because that youth

has left gang life. It is essential for us to support youth and families who take this courageous step.

In addition, we have further strengthened our coordination efforts by establishing a youth provider council that consists of all

the youth service providers in Montgomery County, where we have

begun a process—excuse me—a process where all youth-serving organizations use a commonly shared philosophical approach to

working with gang-involved youth as well as those youth that are

at risk of joining gangs and their families. This was aided by our

sponsoring a joint county training in December in which 200 participants, where three gang coordinators from northern Virginia attended and were provided with the tools to effectively work with

gang-involved youth and helped them to make the transition out of

gang life. We have now begun to coordinate a solution-based community awareness and education effort where we provide the community with not just—these are the signs that your kids are in

gangs, but what do you do next—sound strategies for addressing

the gang issue. This effort has developed a strong cultural sensitivity that addresses the needs of our diverse community in Montgomery County. We have also established a youth leadership council

that consists of former gang members that meet on a monthly basis

to ensure that our efforts are headed in the right direction to better

serve our youth. Members of that youth leadership council have

gone to schools, community meetings and even met with our steering committee headed by our police chief and director of DHHS.

Most importantly, those youth are now positive assets in our community, no longer bringing negativity to the community. Some of

them recently participated in a congressional briefing for this subcommittee a couple months ago. You may think I am making a big

deal of this, and I am. I say this because it is the responsibility of

the society to create a community that nurtures the power of what

youth can bring to our society in a positive manner, and it is only

when we fail to do that youth make bad choices. We must get away

from only acknowledging those things that are negative, but focus

more on the positive things that our youth do every day. However,

we must always, always keep educating our community, especially

youngsters and families of the consequences of gang life. And in

order to do that, we’re going to need to expand the initiatives like

the Crossroads Youth Opportunity Center throughout the county

and throughout the region. One member of our youth leadership

council is now working at an agency doing HIV outreach to the

same communities where he was once seen gang banging. Another

youth is working with a large construction company called Shapiro

and Duncan as the safety compliance officer where he is now recruiting other youth caught in the crazy life to get sound and

meaningful jobs where they can begin the process of healing. By

the way, both of these individuals are in our tattoo removal program. Two members of the youth council that were once sworn enemies are working along other members of our gang prevention

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task force where they decide on what programs should be funded

to address the gang issue in the county.

I will never forget that call 2 weeks ago when these young men

asked me why they had just received all these proposals and what

they were supposed to do with them. They could not believe that

the community valued their leadership so much that they wanted—

they wanted all the people to help—the community wanted them

to help choose what we fund for our summer and fall activities.

While we have been successful in Montgomery and Prince

George’s County in reducing MS-related gang crimes from 38 percent to 24 percent from 2005 to 2006, I want to caution policymakers to understand that gangs are not exclusive to only Latinos.

Our African-American community is also impacted by gangs and

gang violence. 2005 figures show that 8.5 percent of gang crime

was attributed to African-American gangs, whereas in 2006, in the

first quarter, 38 percent of it is attributed. We must ensure that

all our efforts address the needs of the full efforts of our communities. In addition, in order to effectively address the gang issue,

we should separate active criminal gang members from inactive

gang members who are no longer involved in criminal activity. For

the past couple of years, we have put a high profile to Latino gangs

because of several high-profile crimes. However, we cannot lose

sight of our other impacted communities.

I conclude by thanking all of you for your time and your attention to this very important matter and hope we can spread this effort out on a regional, national and international level because as

we all know, gangs do not operate within borders and migrate.

Hence, we have to provide our youth with what my mentor would

call, ‘‘a better deal,’’ where they will be loved, valued and recognized for doing the right things. After all, ladies and gentlemen,

most often, that is the reason you’ve turned to gangs as an option.

And I’d not realized this until this past year, but my mentor demonstrated how the values of a healthy family and of the gang are

so similar but so different in the long run. Youth will take advantage of a better deal. We just need to offer it to them in order to

do it successfully. It will require individuals that have been there

and done that to make that appealing to youth. Remember, when

gangs recruit children and youth, they are crafty, brainwashing.

They are using crafty brainwashing strategies to sell the idea of

gang membership like the next best thing to sliced bread. Ladies

and gentlemen, we have to do a better job of selling what we bring

to the table, which is what they really want. At the end, I have a

picture of what I would call the healing process, which are two

members of a rival gang who come together and acknowledge what

has been done by Congressman Van Hollen, and had it not been

for the Youth Opportunity Center, if they were out on the street,

they would be trying to kill one another. Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Cardona follows:]

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much.

And I want to thank everybody for some very, very informative

and moving testimony.

Mr. Moran.

Mr. MORAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I appreciate your indulgence. I’ve got to leave to pick up my kids. I am

all anxious to do that now after this testimony. But I just got two

questions, and perhaps the next panel might address it. There was

a show this week on gang violence on television, and it focused particularly on children, really teenagers, that have been deported

back to El Salvador. They had been deported without their parents,

individually, and in fact, there was one heartbreaking scene where

a young boy is on the telephone, begging his mother to bring him

back because he’s all by himself, and he wants to be with his mother. She refuses, and he goes into the hardened life of more gang

activity, but I understand that’s what we are doing to an increasing

degree, deporting gang members. Perhaps after they’ve been incarcerated for a while, we send them back to their country of origin

but without the family, and I’m not saying that’s not an appropriate thing to be doing, particularly if they’re here undocumented,

but I wonder if it really makes sense to be separating them from

their families, perhaps for good, and that’s just the first question.

The next panel might want to address that as well. Unless somebody has—do you want to say, very quickly, Mr. Cardona, because

I don’t want to take up the other panel’s time?

Mr. CARDONA. Well, the LA Times did a very interesting article

on how deportation policy was actually making this problem worse

in comparison, unfortunately. And one of my concerns would be,

what can we do except, respecting another country’s sovereignty, to

support them to develop the same type of social service infrastructure we have in this great Nation so that these young men don’t

just go to prison and become more and more hardened criminals or

they don’t become more violent.

Mr. MORAN. I understand that. The most important social service

structure is the family, them being with their parents. We have a

policy which deliberately takes them away sometimes forever from

their parents or at least through their most formative years. It’s

just something that needs to be considered. I don’t know what the

alternative is unless you deport the entire family, and that obviously would be an even more controversial policy. I want to ask

Chairman Connolly, and then I’ve got to leave, but, Gerry, has

Fairfax County done any kind of correlation—we now have 20, 25

years of experience. Do any of your agencies track back the lives

of these gang members? Once you incarcerate them, do you look

back and find common factors so that perhaps we can identify them

at an early age? I know all of you have read a number of articles

that say that, you know, the kids that come into kindergarten and

can’t read or that graduate from eighth grade without any reading

or have no supervisory day care in their first 5 years, whatever,

and come from certain backgrounds is a very, very high correlation

they are going to be gang members. And so if we have that knowledge, then that helps us target our intervention resources. Have

there been studies in northern Virginia perhaps?

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Mr. CONNOLLY. Mr. Moran, it’s a good question. And I think

there are some correlations. You know, a lot of the gang members

are relatively recent arrivals in the country and in the community.

As Luis said, you know, it isn’t just Hispanics. It’s also Asian

gangs; it’s other members of the community as well. Now, I think

the biggest common denominator is fractured family structure and

alienation, and, you know, peer pressure and peer acceptance are

two of the most powerful forces on the planet if you’re 15 or 16

years old. And to be able to join something where you’re accepted,

even if the price of admission is something that obviously is profoundly unacceptable by community standards, is a powerful force,

and so trying to break those patterns of peer influence, create new

ones, rival ones, create clubs like Boys and Girls Clubs, have opportunities for athletic involvement afterschool, have mentoring programs that can influence somebody like Luis’ mentor did and

change the course of a life. If you look at the gang problem on a

spectrum, at the far end of the spectrum is law enforcement and

suppression. We’re pretty good at doing that, even in deportation,

but we’ve failed by the time we’ve gotten to that end of the spectrum. The other end of the spectrum is prevention and intervention. If we can bump that up and be more successful at that, we

can avoid a lot of the cost at the other end of the spectrum.

Mr. MORAN. Thank you, Gerry.

Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. Thanks for having this

hearing, and thanks for your membership, Frank, and our colleagues from Maryland, and, Eleanor, they drove for a long time.

Probably all of them got lost at some point on the way. But they

got here. And Dutch came 3.5 hours. We’re not in session today.

There are a lot of things they could be doing, but it shows their

commitment to this issue, and I thank all of them.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you. Just one follow on, when Mr.

Wolf and I were down in El Salvador last year, we met with President Saca. We met with some former gang leaders. They have some

tattoo removal programs down there. You go down there with tattoos, you are a leper; you are unemployable. But one of the concepts he tossed out is, if the United States would build a prison,

they would be happy to manage it down there. One of the problems

we’ve had here I think is that they are using prisons as a recruiting tool. Does anybody have any thoughts on that? Mr. Cardona.

Mr. CARDONA. Well, it was interesting because this past year

they—international development, they did an assessment of gang

prevention, intervention, suppression strategies throughout Central

America and Mexico, and part of what they were saying was that

in corrections in the prison systems, the problem is getting worse.

However, of all places, the second poorest country in Latin America, Nicaragua, they didn’t have the same problems, and what they

discovered was that, in that institution or in that system, you actually had a process that rehabilitated its inmates. They use culturally sound programs, arts, music, things that install the same

type of values that often gang members seek so that they can feel

value. It’s the same thing that I have seen in Montgomery County

in terms of what Art Wallenstein is doing. And I encourage all of

you to come up there and see what they’re doing. It’s amazing. Because those individuals know when they leave, there’s something,

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there’s a community that’s going to nurture them but at the same

time hold them accountable if they step back in the same type of

behavior. So again, if we can focus in on that component, not just

solely building the prison, but ensuring that prison system has

some type of support system to make sure that those individuals

get the support they need because, if not, if you don’t have that in

place, it’s just going to be like a breeding ground to make it worse

and for the individuals to become more and more violent.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Yes, Mr. Connolly.

Mr. CONNOLLY. Mr. Davis, I’m local government, but I did spend

10 years, as you know, on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,

and my job was authorizing the Foreign Assistance Program, and

I want to echo something Luis just said. I think one of the unintended consequences of large deportations, trying to get the problem out of here and send them back home, is that we are unwittingly creating a very efficient and organized criminal class in

those societies, and we ought to be looking, it seems to me, at some

of our Foreign Assistance Programs to see if we can’t provide much

more assistance in trying to break those cycles and focus on that

in the home countries, whether it be prison or other kinds of programs, I think there’s a real opportunity for the Agency for International Development and other aid groups we fund as a government to help us there, and it would have a positive effect here. As

Jim knows, in the program he’s citing for example, they report

some of those individuals who have been deported four and five

times. So you know, just simply deportation alone isn’t going to

solve the problem.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you.

Mr. Wolf.

Mr. WOLF. Thank you, Tom. Just one two-part question, and it

can be very short to anybody that wants to answer it. Is there

enough coordination or cooperation in the region? I know, in northern Virginia, it’s very effective. Federal, State and local law enforcement, enforcement schools, but is there enough with regard to

the District of Columbia and Maryland? Is there enough coordination? Because I hear that sometimes you’ll find—somebody taking

place up in Maryland will have a Virginia license plate. Second, is

there enough involvement in this whole effort, particularly in the

rehabilitation education of the business community? Because the

areas that I’ve seen great successes, the buy-in, I know Gerry mentioned Cox—is there enough of the business community participating in this effort?

Mr. BERMINGHAM. I will take a shot at answering both sections

of those. I would say, on the law enforcement side, my understanding is that there is great communication and collaboration going on

regionally with Maryland and D.C. and northern Virginia and that

there are regular meetings and sharing and exchanging of information. I know that the FBI has met with our task force, and they

talked about how they could improve their communication at the

Federal level with data bases and names and those types of things.

So I know that’s underway. Could that be improved? I’m sure it

could. But I think, on the law enforcement side, what I’m hearing

from our task forces, there is a good communication. I think there

is more that could be done in the intervention and prevention side

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as far as collaboration. The coordinators—Congressman Wolf, it’s

your money that helped establish or just helped get up and running and getting their feet going and one of our next steps is to

start coordinating more with P.G., Montgomery and D.C.

Just sitting here listening to Mr. Cardona—and that’s why I love

these things—I have learned two more things that I hadn’t thought

about in what I am doing every day in Fairfax County. So that collaboration can be improved and will be improved as we continue

to mature as a group here in northern Virginia.

I think the business community is a tremendous asset to this

issue, not just financially but the opportunity to provide employment opportunities for kids. And really what we’re trying to do

here in Fairfax is work with our work force investment board and

establish essentially scholarships for kids to have summer jobs in

businesses in northern Virginia. An individual or an employer

could sponsor a child for a summer job, and what we’ll do for the

work force investment board and with the services in the country

is job coach that child before he gets to that job. Prepare them,

what you will wear, be on time, just the basic things, how you conduct yourself at work, and then followup with them afterwards to

debrief them and work with them to make that next step. That’s

just one small example of what the business community can do. We

were preparing and continue to work with your Hispanic Advisory

Committee to bring those businesses together. We really want to

make sure though that we can tell them what they can do. We

need mentors. We need money. We need jobs. Don’t want to bring

them together and just say, this is the problem, but give them

some tasks. I think mentoring, mentoring schools, tutoring, job opportunities, those types of things, and financial assistance to certain programs is something that the businesses could bring to the

table and should.

Mr. ALBO. Mr. Chairman, can I just add to that real quick? In

2004, we passed a law in Virginia to allow multijurisdictional

grand juries for gang crimes, and you can understand why a person, say, is caught for a gang crime in Winchester but say his actual gang crime is say in Fairfax. In order for that prosecution,

you’d have to have some type of evidence that organization in Fairfax is a gang. So the Federal Government probably is going to need

to step in to create some type of coordination for, if a gang member

is busted in Fairfax County, what if his actual gang is in Maryland? And how does the Fairfax County Prosecutor’s Office get information or investigational information in Maryland to be able to

prove the elements necessary to prove that this guy is in a gang.

Mr. CARDONA. Excuse me, Congressman Wolf. On the first question, I would have to tell you that it has been, indeed, a pleasure

to work with some of my counterparts in northern Virginia. As I

mentioned earlier, we held a training in which Richard—Bob Welch

in Arlington. And I’m trying to remember the brother’s name in Alexandria. We had several gang coordinators there participating. We

had begun preliminary conversations, and we always are bouncing

ideas back and forth off one another. What I would like to—and I

was hoping we could really work on, and I don’t know if maybe this

is maybe more Federal or more State-related stuff, is how can we

get COG, the Council of Governments to take leadership in terms

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of how we develop a regional philosophical approach to prevention

and intervention? As the gentleman had just mentioned, we did a

great job of information sharing and the work from the suppression. It’s time for us to move forward and see how we can strengthen that from the prevention and intervention perspective as well.

To answer your second question, I mentioned in my testimony

the construction company Shapiro and Duncan which has the philosophy of giving and providing individuals who made mistakes

with opportunities to work, but they work with them, and they

support them in that transition as well. And so it is going to be

essential for us to identify other partners like Shapiro and Duncan

who do that—who have that type of process and recognize the importance of being able to provide employment opportunities to this

population. Thank you.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much.

Mr. Van Hollen.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Let me thank all of you for your testimony, and thank my old

friend Gerry Connolly for his leadership here in Fairfax County.

We actually served together back in the day on the Senate Foreign

Relations Committee. It’s good to hear what you are doing here in

Fairfax County. I do think that we can increase the amount of cooperation, collaboration. I think we have a good baseline. We’re

very pleased to have gotten your police chief, Police Chief Tom

Manger and so he was familiar with some of what you’ve been

doing on the Fairfax County——

Mr. CONNOLLY. Not quite the cooperation.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Exactly. And so Tom Manger has been very involved in this, as has Chief High on the Prince George’s County

side, and I do think there is a good amount of collaboration between law enforcement. We can always build on that, but I also

think, as you said, Mr. Birmingham there are many things we can

learn, expand on the law enforcement coordination, but also learn

what we’re doing on other pieces, the intervention piece, the prevention piece, and just to generally improve collaboration, and as

you said, Mr. Albo, I think—we’re interested in some of the things

we can do at the Federal Government level to expand on the lessons that you’ve learned.

Just to my friend and colleague, Mr. Wolf, I just wonder, the

Youth Opportunity Center, the Crossroads Youth Opportunity Center that Mr. Cardona talked about in his testimony and the lives

it’s already changing is as a result of the—our use of the prevention dollars that we received through your efforts. As you know, we

had—just as you do, we have a three-part strategy, prevention,

intervention and suppression, and a key component of that, of

course, is prevention, and that Youth Opportunity Center would

not be there if it wasn’t for the funds, and you’re already hearing

the stories and the results, and we need to do more of that. And

the Boys and Girls Club is a terrific resource in that regard, and

I thank you for your work. We’d like to expand the number of Boys

and Girls Clubs—we have a number in Montgomery County. We

need more in Prince George’s County and elsewhere in the region.

We can work with you and other Members to do that.

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Let me ask you, these young people spend most of their day—

or a good part of their day in school. We heard about the middle

school problem in particular. Those are the, you know, the faculty,

the teachers, those are people who are with these youth all day

long. To what degree is there cooperation between the school system and all of you who are trying to, you know, fight gang violence.

There is sometimes a reluctance on the part of the school officials

to share information that they’ve learned about a young person in

school. On the other hand, they’re the ones that are there and, if

they are paying attention, can recognize the early warning signs.

And in my experience, while there’s sort of an ad hoc sharing of

information, we’ve never sort of done it in any coordinated way.

And I’m not talking about trying to get young people in trouble. I’m

trying to find a way to identify young people who need help because Mr. Cardona talked about people that two of the youth that

recently came to the Crossroads Opportunity Center were referred

to them by the police. It seems to me the school system can also

do a better job of helping refer young people that they recognize to

be at risk to the other after school resources that we’ve got. And

if you could just all comment to what extent you have a collaborative cooperative relationship with schools in a systematic way.

Mr. CONNOLLY. It’s a great question, Mr. Van Hollen. And it also

overlaps with Mr. Wolf’s question about coordination. The problem

with government at all levels is the stovepipe mentality. I’ve got

this mission, and that’s not my mission; that must be somebody

else’s. So to break down those stovepipes and to try to say actually

we’re looking at this in a holistic way, and we’re trying to save

kids’ lives and channel them in productive ways, everybody’s got a

piece of this action, and the schools have the biggest because that’s

where most of these kids are for most of the day. You know, Congressman Davis talked about the initiative Sharon Bulova had in

the Braddock district. We’ve now done that countywide, and I think

one of the things you have to do is bring all the stakeholders together and talk about this problem and to try to break down those

barriers. In Fairfax County, for example, we have a police officer

known as an SRO, special resource officer, in every high school and

in every middle school. And that isn’t just a crime prevention.

That’s as a referee. That’s as a mentor. That’s as a source of information and referral for the schools, and they now see that person

increasingly as integral to their mission in what they’re doing. In

the past, frankly, he or she was over there, and they did whatever

they did, but they weren’t integrated into the faculty and the discussions. So we’ve succeeded at that, and again, trying to have a

seamless day where we can have after school programs for kids is

also a critical part of the mission, and the schools have been very

cooperative in that. And I think a lot of scales have fallen from a

lot of eyes in terms of the roles of the schools in particular as a

key component in the gang prevention and intervention strategy.

So I think we’re making a lot of headway.

Mr. BERMINGHAM. Let me just followup on the Fairfax side of

that. And Chairman Connolly is correct. We’ve made great strides

with the school system in working together on this issue and our

SRO program’s one of them. The afterschool program and coordination of who’s going to run that and operate that. And you are lookVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:01 Sep 26, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00068 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\29710.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ing at issues of principals being in the building from 7 a.m., until

7 p.m., if they were going to have to run those programs. And what

we were able to do was bring the collaborative within the county

to bring other county organizations into those schools and to do

some of the afterschool program, and now we’re going to bring the

community into the schools to help with those.

There’s two programs that I’d highlight that would give you a

good indication that the cooperation has improved. The board of supervisors just expanded the money for our student assistance program and our resiliency and leadership program. Which are programs right now just in some targeted schools where there are

community service boards or social-worker-type people, outreach

workers in schools identifying these kids; they’re at risk, not just

at risk for gangs, but at risk for substance abuse, other criminal

activity, other anti-social behavior, and working with them on developing their leadership skills, working with them in the school

setting and outside the school setting to bring them—bring them

around and give them other alternatives. Our assistance programs

are working with those same kids but also start working with them

on a multidisciplinary team approach, meaning bringing service

providers to the table, both county and in the private sector, sitting

down with the youth and the family and saying, here are the problems, how can we address some of these risk issues that are in

your life? Is it a family problem? Is it your lack of attachment to

your school? Lack of your attachment to your community? And

start trying to build some buffers around them to help them. So the

school system has, in Fairfax, come along with us on this issue as

well and is working pretty much hand in hand with us I’d say.

Mr. ALBO. Congressman, it’s not kind of getting—you’re at questions about cooperation for rehabilitation. We’ve done a bunch of

stuff in Virginia that doesn’t really have much to do with rehabilitation but keeping other kids safe in school. We now require that

when a juvenile is convicted of a gang-related crime, that the principal in his school is notified. We also give principals the ability to

kick kids out for wearing gang-related clothing. And then we also

have enhanced punishments for gang crimes in and around schools,

sort of like your drug-free school zone, only gang-free school zone.

So it’s not really rehabilitation oriented, but in order to make these

effective, the principals, the resource officers that Mr. Connolly has

put in every single school have to know who the gang guys are.

Mr. CARDONA. This is a reality when we’re talking about the

school system. I mean, after all, at the end of the day, you know,

how comfortable are parents going to feel if they’re made aware

that there are gangs at their school? It doesn’t mean we don’t do

anything about it. I would say, in the time that I’ve been in Montgomery County, I’ve been impressed in particular with the leadership of the superintendent and his deputy superintendent, Don

Kress, who’s on our steering committee, because he has definitely

reached out to myself, to the police department and to other county

stakeholders to look at ways of how we can address this issue in

the schools. One of the things—we’ve been fortunate through our

County Council to begin on a preliminary basis the establishment—and we can’t take the credit. We have to give the credit to

our neighbors in Prince George’s County because they had this—

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it’s called a high school wellness center, and we’re talking about

providing in that process; it’s not just primary health needs, but

also youth development, social work, the type of things that Bob

Bermingham was just talking about. And so right now, we’re looking at how we can focus on that school that’s most in need. Unfortunately, it’s only going to be one school in the county. We hope to

expand that in the future as resources become available, but you

know, things like that are necessary to be able to support the

young people in the schools because it doesn’t make any sense for

there to be conflicts at the start of the school and for the young

people not to feel that they can trust us as adults enough to come

to us and ask us the resources we have and then take things into

their own hands by either bringing a weapon to school or by killing

somebody or doing something else that makes things worse.

Mr. LOPEZ. From the prevention end, the Hispanic Committee of

Virginia, collaborative efforts with Barrios Unidos and Greenbriar

Training Center has been very successful and has a very good relationship with Arlington County, city of Fairfax and the city of Falls

Church Schools. Our program at the school mentoring program, tutoring programs are designed as part of a collaborative effort with

the teachers and so that we exchange information on the report

cards and the test scores of our students and meet with teachers

periodically to see how the progress has been changing of those students and their grades and in their behavior. So that’s part of the

evaluation efforts of the whole program, whether we really did

make a difference, and we have performance measures that we

have to sort of exchange with the teachers quarterly and at the end

of every year of the program, and it’s been working well.

Ms. GUZMAN. I just want to add something real quick. The Boys

and Girls Clubs, we pride ourselves with picking up where the

schools leave off. Studies show that the most critical hours in a

child’s day are the hours between 3 and 7 when most parents are

still commuting, and that’s where the Manassas public school system is looking to sponsor 7,700 club memberships for each child in

their public school system so that the kids have somewhere positive

to go after school, keeping them involved in positive programs offered at each of our facilities. We have an annual meeting every

year with principals of each school in our districts, and we provide

each principal with 100 club memberships for children that have

behavioral problems or children that really need the supervision

that’s provided at the Boys and Girls Clubs and structured programs as well.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much.

Dutch, I want to ask just a couple quick questions. Fairfax has

been one of those proactive communities, but in the summertime,

when school’s not open, at-risk kids, what’s happening in Fairfax

and in Prince William? And the Boys and Girls Clubs fill part of

that void. But if I’m a potentially at-risk youth in Prince William

or Fairfax in the middle of summer, where am I? What am I doing?

And how am I being diverted at this point? At least in terms of

what everybody’s working on.

Mr. CONNOLLY. Thank you, Congressman Davis. We are—we’re

doing a lot. We—our Park Foundation started a special program for

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kids, especially at-risk kids, and we’re trying to get—and we’re

working with the business community—we’re trying to get 1,000

kids into that summer program every year, especially at-risk youth.

We, of course, have—I think we have 11 community and rec centers throughout the county, each of which has a specialized summer program, again, especially targeted to at-risk youth. In fact,

we just opened a new community center in Reston, as you know,

Tom, and again, it’s targeted just the right population, and I think

it’s going to be a great asset in what we’re trying to do. The police

run a summer camp program, and I think they have 150 kids, atrisk kids that they’re specializing in, in particular. In addition, we

have actually hired at-risk kids who have been absolutely the subject of gang recruitment, shall we say, as consultants, and we hire

a bevy of them to help us evaluate our summer programs and community and rec centers and see how we might make it better, and

that’s proved a wildly successful initiative. We just started it last

year actually based on some testimony from Barrios Unidos. And

we work with Barrios Unidos and hired these kids, and it’s been

terrific. And those kids who started last year are still showing up

and stuff, helping us in programming and gang prevention and

intervention. You know, peer counseling helps a lot. There’s a lot

going on, but to the question of Mr. Wolf’s question about business

partnerships, I think we can do a better job of trying to get the

business community to provide some funding for some of these

scholarships so we can expand those opportunities.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Yes, Norma. If you want to say anything,

Ms. Lopez and Ms. Guzman.

Ms. LOPEZ. We have—obviously, schools break for the summer,

and so our afterschool program does not operate during the summer months. But we have a summer camp, Alianza Summer Camp,

where we first train volunteers to serve as counselors, and it takes

place throughout the entire month of July. And we invite kids not

only from—from Virginia, northern Virginia, but also from the D.C.

Metro area, and we do a variety of activities. We have been very

successful in managing to run a summer camp program, and they

don’t stay overnight. It’s a day program, 5 days out of the week,

where we have limited funding, but we’ve been able to get a lot of

things, in-kind assistance in order to operate a program. Right

now, we would like to have for 3 months rather than for just 1

month, and we’re working to do that. But it’s been very successful,

and the parents are very much involved, and right now, the kids

are in summer camp. They’re having a great time.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. OK. Ms. Guzman, I know Prince William

has been very proactive with the Boys and Girls Clubs. Fairfax getting into it. I know Mr. Wolf made money available for Boys and

Girls Clubs on a larger scale to try to address that problem in the

summers where schools aren’t operating and a lot of the other programs aren’t up and running.

Ms. GUZMAN. The Boys and Girls Clubs during the summer, at

least in my particular region, we stay open for 12 hours, from 6

a.m. to 6 p.m., so that we have a place that’s open for kids.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. How many people do you have participating at your different Boys and Girls Clubs, do you think, in Prince

William?

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Ms. GUZMAN. Combined at all three of our sites, we have approximately 575 to 600 kids involved in the summer program.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Most of them tend to be in the at-risk category?

Ms. GUZMAN. Yes. There’s a mixture. There’s at-risk youth that

are combined with kids who really just need a place to go during

the summer. So we do stay open during the summer for that and

the evening as well. We focus primarily on our sports program during the evening. So from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. is our summer program,

but then from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. is our sports programs so the kids

can stay active in sports and recreation. We also have our Job

Ready Program, which allows youth, primarily at-risk youth who

are interested in working to be what we call junior camp

councilors, and they work during the summer, and this is all done

through our Job Ready Program. In addition to that, it’s important

to note that a high number of Boys and Girls Club staff, part time

and full time, are club alumni. These are staff members who have

grown up through the club and have acknowledged what the club

has done for them and how the club has saved their lives in many

instances, and so these end up becoming the professionals at the

Boys and Girls Clubs.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you. Mr. Ruppersberger.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. I find this hearing very beneficial, and I

want to thank the chairman for having this. It’s important I think

to learn from a program that does well. And from what I see here

today, you are doing very well and the questions I’m going to ask

basically are questions to find out how you are doing to ensure that

our jurisdiction is doing the same thing, and hopefully, we come together as a team. The trend in our area, the Baltimore region, is

that we have—you are doing such a good job here, but some of

these gang members are moving around. Now, my first question to

Ms. Lopez or Guzman, I think to address, and the next panel’s

going to be more law enforcement, but I’m very pleased to see that

you’re just not going to solve this problem by arresting people.

You’ve got to get to the youth, and that’s extremely important. In

my former job, the same job that Chairman Davis had and that

Gerry Connolly have right now, we developed a plan, PAL centers

in every precinct in our area, which is Police Athletic League. Basically it’s police officers dealing with the youth in a

nonconfrontational way and recreation people and that type of

thing. The question I have, we were having an issue that we had

the people and the students and youth coming afterschool were the

ones that usually were doing pretty well anyhow in school anyhow.

The ones that we had a difficult time reaching were those youth,

the youth that were on the bubble, that could go either way, that

were in the street and tough. One of the programs that we use

which was extremely effective is that we started introducing karate, teaching karate, and we were able to get in some of that more

difficult youth. How are you recruiting your youths in your Boys

and Girls Clubs, and what are you doing to make sure we are getting to the ones we need? All youth have issues, but the ones who

are on the bubble and that could go either way——

Ms. GUZMAN. As I mentioned earlier, the Boys and Girls Clubs

focuses on five core areas, the arts, sports, education, health and

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life skills and character and leadership development. We do this

because not every child that comes to the Boys and Girls Club can

pick up a ball and make a basket, and not every child that comes

to the Boys and Girls Club can be involved in an arts class and

really be happy with what they draw. So we offer a variation of

programs at the Boys and Girls Clubs, and we open our gymnasiums, and we also offer open computer labs to some of the afterschool programs. On Friday nights, we stay open an extra 2 hours

strictly for teens. Through Boys and Girls Clubs’ studies, it shows

the teens want to be separate from the little boys and girls. So now

they have their own club, and we’re open an extra 2 hours just for

teens. And at each of our three sites, we have approximately anywhere between 100 to 120 teens that on Friday nights for 2 hours

have a club and a place that’s strictly for them. They have a game

room area. They have a theater lounge, and they have a teen center, and these teen centers are decorated specifically by them. So

it’s their portion of the club that belongs to them only. So these are

just some examples.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. You have to make it fun.

Ms. GUZMAN. Yes, exactly. We at the Boys and Girls Clubs, we—

I don’t want to sound egotistical, but we really don’t have a problem recruiting kids.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. The tough kids.

Ms. GUZMAN. The tough kids are the easy kids. We really don’t

have a problem.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. I think I would like to maybe get together

with you and put you together with some of the people running the

programs in our areas.

Another question I have—and my daughter lives in Harrisonburg. She and her husband live in Harrisonburg, and I’ve had conversations with Frank Wolf and other people and my daughter

about a lot of the MS–13 seem to be living in that area. Now we

have—in my jurisdiction, we have Baltimore City, but 20 miles out,

there’s a place called Harford County, Edgewood, which is near Aberdeen Army Base, is kind of the scenario—I mean, I know

Harrisonburg’s a lot further, but more of a rural area. Do you see

and maybe—or Gerry or David or whatever—do you see the trend

of the urban going to the rural? And do you see that a lot of them—

maybe the members might not even live here that are conducting

some activities, but they are living in more rural areas and coming

to the urban areas?

Mr. CARDONA. Definitely. Again, law enforcement knows this. A

lot of these individuals migrate. They are very nomadic. And I

don’t want to, you know, branch off into another topic, but we have

to recognize, too, that the lack of affordable housing in these communities where they traditionally live is having an impact, too, in

terms of how we displace these families. So now you have these individuals living in communities where the environment is much

different. You know, I’m familiar with your community, and I know

it’s much—the population living there now, 10 years ago, it wasn’t

there. So that’s—you know, that’s part of the reality. It is what it

is. You now are finding these families going to these communities

because it’s the only place where they can find affordable housing.

So, strategically, in terms of, from a policy perspective, we need to

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keep that in mind when we’re talking about affordable housing as

well. But one of the—the other things that I wanted to respond to

in terms of what you were talking about, I’ve been doing this work

for 12 years, and prior to this, 12 years before, I had been heavily

involved in gang activity. Through those experiences, I have developed key relationships and open communication with older active/

inactive gang members. They know who I am. I know who they are.

And so to some extent, there’s an understanding that they know

what I’ve been trying to work and accomplish, and they respect

that, you know, and one of the things that’s important is—and I

think what everyone’s saying here is, it’s important that you bring

those individuals to the table, and you have to create this process,

but it’s not easy. It’s not an easy process.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. In that regard, when Congressman Wolf

and Davis and I were in El Salvador, we went—we were in a program. It was a rehabilitation for gang members, very, very positive

program. And one of the things—a couple things that they had in

the program is No. 1, the head of that program had to go to the

actual leadership of the gang and ask for permission to get this

person off the gang or that person would probably be killed. There

was a situation where there was a mother with two young children

that was walking down the street, and she had a, I think, M–13

or MS–13 tattoo on her face, and when a member of another gang

saw her with her children, they shot her right there on the spot.

This person running the program was able to go to the father of

those two children who was the leader in the gang in jail, by the

way, and he was able to get permission. Why I raise that issue is

that we also need to talk about the need of gang members who

want to get out. And we haven’t discussed that here today, but

what kind of program, if any, and do the gang members in the

United States have the same problem that you have in El Salvador,

that if you don’t get permission to get out of the gang, they’re going

to go and try to kill you?

Mr. CARDONA. There’s always that hazard. There’s that risk, and

that’s why it’s real easy for us to tell kids, get out of gangs, but,

again, we have to be very strategic in how are we going to compliment that? How are we going to offer them that better deal?

What can we do to provide safety? That’s why I talked about earlier, our victims services programs with HHS and the police department. It’s essential to an extent because sometimes there are those

dynamics. We’ve been fortunate in the Crossroads Youth Opportunity Center because prior to me coming here, I had a connection

to an individual who was inactive but had over 20 years have been

involved in MS and still knew who some of these guys were, and

he said, look, I’ll help you get these guys out. You know, but he

said, go through me because if you go through them directly,

they’re not going to trust you. Even to my extent, even with my

background, still, I’m establishment; I’m in the system. So there’s

still some type of lack of trust for what I’m trying to bring, but they

understand that I’m trying to help them, but I make it real clear

that they’re going to be held accountable if they don’t do the right

thing, and they will be arrested and go to jail if they break the law.

That’s—I’m not——

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Mr. BERMINGHAM. Congressman, if I could just add to that, I

think the clear message that we’ve got to hammer home in Fairfax

County is that you can get out. It may be a long process. It may

be difficult. It may not be simple, but you can get out and you can

get out alive. We have two gentlemen in this room today, one, Mr.

Cardona who has done it and is alive and is now working as an

activist, and Juan Pacheco, who’s here, who’s also an activist, who

has done work in this area and has made it out. Law enforcement

would tell you if that edict is true, that once you’re in, you’re in

for life. And let me tell you, once you get in, that’s what these

young kids are pounded with: You’re here for life, above ground

and below ground. They believe that because they can see the violence the gangs bring to them and to the people that are in.

But we also want to let them know that they can get out. It may

not mean that we ever have a kid who can walk up and turn his

MS–13 card in to the leader. That’s not going to happen. It is going

to take time. He will have to distance himself from that gang, and

our responsibility is to build in as many safeguards as we can to

help him or her start backing out, be it employment, be it involvement in organizations like Boys and Girls Clubs, Barrios Unidos or

other organizations that are out to support this effort, but it is doable. It can happen. Or I would suggest we would have much more

violence in this region and would have many more statistics of

death if in fact that was the case.

Ms. LOPEZ. I just want to say—I want to answer an earlier question that you had. I think that—I’m a public health professional,

and many researchers, sociologists don’t respect grassroots approaches to gang violence. Many of the approaches that Mr.

Cardona has been talking to you about today, and I think that in—

since I’ve been in the field for a while, you know, maybe we should

change our evaluation instruments that could really evaluate such

that they can evaluate what these grassroots efforts are doing. For

example, we as a community are sometimes very informal, the

Latino community. So a lot of things that work in a structuralized,

institutionalized way does not work for our community. So, for example, we hold house meetings in the evenings with youth. And

where do they go? They go to respected leaders of the community

who were either former gang members or just respected leaders to

discuss their fear about being approached to be initiated in gangs

or wanting to get out of a gang. Now, there are no instruments

that are evaluating the effectiveness of those programs that Mr.

Cardona has been doing, and I think we need to do that because

one of the things is we need to know what works, what that activity is, and those are very informal methods. Where can—where can

a kid go at 10 p.m.? I mean, what door can they knock at? If it’s

not going to be a community leader like Mr. Cardona, where they

can drop in and say, I’m having this problem, and they could stay

there through midnight. I mean, do you see? And how do you

evaluate that, but that’s not within the 9 to 5 structure, and we

need to look into those programs, fund those programs and develop

evaluation instruments that determine whether they were effective

or not. We keep on saying, as researchers, as professionals who

went to grad school and studied all these methods, that it doesn’t

work. But nobody really knows.

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you.

Ms. Norton.

Ms. NORTON. I say, amen to that. And frankly, I just don’t believe government should fund things without studying whether it

works. It’s not so hard to do. I apologize that a number of things

took me out of the room because I was fascinated by what I in fact

have heard. So if this question has been answered, I will pass right

on. It really has to do with whether or not gang members outgrow

their gangs or graduate to adult criminal activity. This is—this is

my interest. If you look at the pictures that were passed around

with the markings and the fingers and all, you know, obviously,

you are dealing with the kinds of things that juveniles do. Moreover, if you study immigrant life in America, you won’t be very surprised about gangs. Even though, for example, Hispanic life has

been stronger than American life overall, you’ve got a parent who

clearly is not a part of the culture. You want to be a part of the

culture here, may not speak the language. If it is a child, the child

will learn the language. One of the things that gets some of us so

upset about the American insulated notion of, I want all of y’all to

learn English. I want everyone to go to El Salvador and start

speaking Spanish just like that, the reason, for example, that the

Voting Rights Act had passed has a bilingual ballot on it is that

Hispanics do an extraordinary job, I could never do what they do,

and this is adults that come here and they start speaking the language. Well, it’s harder to write the language. Well, you are dealing

with a parent who’s learning. The child has learned more quickly,

and you have a kind of updated version of what the Irish and the

Italians and the Poles went through. They were—go back and read

what life was like in the streets of New York and Chicago with

those, you know; they weren’t sitting home just studying. They

were running the streets and often engaged in criminal activity.

This seems to be some kind of updated version of this. And the

strong family life that may be right there can’t compete with the

need to become a part of your society in the new country. So, all

right, so that’s what you did. And you didn’t graduate maybe from

high school or whatever, but now you are, I don’t know, 24 years

old. Are these gang members destined to become—you said it was

one-on-one; they went at each other. Are these gang members destined to become criminals, or do they outgrow their gang phase and

become adults of one kind or the other? And talk about something

that needs to be studied, that ain’t so hard to study, by the way.

Mr. CARDONA. In 12 years, ago, doing this work, they can outgrow it.

Ms. NORTON. Did you say they can outgrow it?

Mr. CARDONA. They can make that transition.

Part of our responsibility—and I think Bob touched upon this—

is once we bring them into that process where they’re making that

transition, how we build their capacity and their skills to be able

to navigate the system, reintegration into school, get a job——

Ms. NORTON. But, Luis, I’m really asking another question. Although I was interested in the testimony that you attract tough

kids, I really wonder if you’re attracting tough kids to get out of

gangs. You know, tough kids may go and play basketball.

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My question is really very pointed to whether or not we have any

information or whether even anecdotally a kid—I’m assuming that

a—first of all, we know that the rate of high school graduation is

very low. We know that, with all of your extraordinary efforts, that

there are going to be many who don’t graduate from high school.

They’re just out there. They’re going to become men.

I want to know what happens to them. I want to know if they

then go off into drug activity, into mugging people on the Mall or

whether there is a kind of maturation process so that they go off

and work on something, doing whatever they can do. I do not know

the link between this rather juvenile activity—although it’s become

in it’s updated version very violent—and the crime that we experience in the ordinary course in society.

Mr. CARDONA. Again, Ms. Norton, the reality is if we don’t engage them in something and don’t help them make that transition,

they’re going to end up being that other number that contributes

to the issue of DMC, that contributes to the issue of increased

crime in your communities. We have to figure out ways of being

able to ensure that the options are there.

Now, what I’ve seen happen—in particular, we look at what’s

been happening in Central America. These individuals have been

warehoused just on the premise that they’re identified as gang

members, OK, just on that premise alone. So you combine that

with individuals who are hardened criminals, and there is no separation, then we’re going to have a serious problem, which is what

we’re seeing. And to the extent we’re starting to see increased levels of violence or criminal behavior because we are getting those individuals in the PBS, they’re coming back here more hardened

than when they left here.

Mr. BERMINGHAM. Ma’am, I would like the correlation between

this and typical work that’s done in the criminal justice system, because while we tend to, in discussions, separate the two, really

they’re one in the same. I mean, we’re looking at the gangs because

of the criminal acts that they’re doing.

I spent 18 years working in the juvenile justice; and we worked

very, very hard with every child we got to try to get them to stop

the behaviors they were doing, particularly before they got to

adulthood. And some of those we were very successful, and some

of those we had to work during their entire juvenile years to keep

them alive until they got to 18, 19 years old and got tired of the

behavior, got tired of being held accountable and moved on. And

frankly, some of them we didn’t save, despite our efforts.

Ms. NORTON. I’m trying to find out, this one-on-one stuff that’s

going on, they’re going at each other, are they out in Fairfax and

wherever going after the community as well? Are they plundering

in the community as well?

Mr. BERMINGHAM. We have not seen that.

Ms. NORTON. It’s very important, very important. Because if, in

fact, what you’ve got is an insolent phenomenon where they’re

going at one another, these youngsters may outgrow that if they

are not in fact using the skills—that’s what they are—to plunder

the community. But I understand your concern. You want to make

sure that this graduation effect does not occur.

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I have one more question, Mr. Chairman. Was I in the room

when girls were discussed? Because I saw some pictures that we

passed around of girls. And I, of course, have read about girls in

gangs, these counterparts; and I don’t understand the girls. So I

want to know whether the girls also are violent, whether they’re

in the same gangs with boys and whether the treatment of girls is

similar. I would appreciate more information on the girls. Do they

become pregnant? I mean, do they graduate into what? I just don’t

know.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Who wants to take it?

Mr. BERMINGHAM. I’ll be happy to take a shot at it, and I’ll look

at it from a national perspective.

Girls make up less than about 8 percent of the total gang population known nationally. That being said, those numbers are growing and they are in an area of concern.

I was recently meeting with some——

Ms. NORTON. Are they violent as well?

Mr. BERMINGHAM. They’re becoming more violent, yes, ma’am.

Ms. NORTON. What do they do in gangs?

Mr. BERMINGHAM. They can do anything else that a man can do.

It’s an equal opportunity association. You know, a weapon makes

as you a tough as anybody next to you, and we’re seeing——

Ms. NORTON. Are they auxiliaries to the male gangs or are they

engaged——

Mr. BERMINGHAM. Initially, they were auxiliaries to the gangs,

but now you’re starting to see a formation of their own. And while

we do not have an organized female gang that we know of in the

county, we know of one that tried to start in the middle school, and

fortunately they were smart or not smart enough to videotape it on

their phone, the initiation process, which was physical, maybe not

maybe as physical as you see in the male arena, but it was physical, and it was real. Now school officials were able to sweep in, get

the phone, and address all 12 of those young ladies that were involved, and we haven’t seen anything from it since.

The scary thing is determining whether girls are involved or not.

I was talking with an investigator from New York, and they had

a videotape of a young lady, and they were asking her whether she

was a gang member, and she said, no, but my boyfriend is. Oh,

well, do you hang out with him? Yes, all the time. Do you hang out

with other people? No, just the people he hangs out with. Can you

break up with him and date someone else from the other side of

town? No, I can’t. Have you ever carried drugs or guns or weapons

for him? Yes, I have. And the investigator turned off the tape and

looked at everybody and said, is she a gang member or not? She

wasn’t saying she was, but she was acting as she was, and that

was a very important thing.

Treatment for female offenders has to be different than male offenders. Historically, we have not made a difference in the way we

treat people in the justice system between male and female. Many

of our female offenders, gang members or not, as you all probably

know, have been victims of long-term violence, both physical and

sexual, and have a lot of different needs than men do when they

come into the justice system. So, yes, we need to be able to have

pointed services just to deal with the female issues.

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Mr. CONNOLLY. Mrs. Norton, we have a program—and our gang

coordinator in the school system, who is a former police officer,

does a great job; and he has a video of an initiation of female members in a gang—I don’t remember the particular gang. It may have

been MS–13. It was one of the most shocking and degrading things

you can possibly imagine. It involves sexual degradation, it involves physical abuse, it involves buying into something that is

very hard to imagine, and it just underscores how powerful—now,

they may not be the initiation for every gang, they may all have

different initiations, as Bob says, that quality may be coming to

gangs. But especially in some of the immigrant gangs, the sexual

hierarchy is there, and women are at the lower end of the ladder,

not the higher end. And the fact that somebody would subject herself to that says a lot about the need for social approval, even in

that context.

Mr. CARDONA. I can’t speak on behalf of northern Virginia, but

at least having worked in the District as a street outreach worker

in the past and working in Montgomery County, it’s been really

amazing to discover that when you look at a lot of the conflicts that

end up occurring between gangs and crews, 95 percent of the time

it has to do with a young lady.

One of the interesting things——

Ms. NORTON. Fighting over a girl?

Mr. CARDONA. Over a young lady, yes. And part of what we’ve

been doing through our Youth Provider Council, which again is the

directive of all of our youth services organizations, is kind of challenge them to really look at how we can develop and work on having programs to target young women so they can understand that

they don’t need to be objectified in this manner.

The thing is, it’s really interesting because, when you have the

opportunity to talk to the young ladies that are involved in this

conflict, to an extent they sort of thrive off the attention, you know,

unfortunately. And again, it speaks to the fact that, unfortunately,

maybe they’re not getting a lot of attention at home or maybe—

they’re not really getting the type of images of the positive images

of what it means to be a young Latina or just a young woman in

general.

And it’s amazing—I’ll never forget this. About 10 years ago—I

think I told you this story before—one of the young ladies that was

involved in my work chastised me and told me, you’re not doing

anything for young women; you need to do something for young

women. I said, fine. I said, you set it up. We’ll have dinner with

them. At the time, it was called Planet Hollywood. It’s closed down

now. It’s in downtown. So we had a dinner, and there was like 12

girls from a gang in a neighborhood in Columbia Heights.

Before the meeting went any further, even before we got to introductions, the leader of the gang said to me, which one of us do you

want to sleep with? So their whole premise was like, you know, our

only role can be objectified in this manner; and I was coming in

trying to say, hey, what can I do to be of help.

So, again, it really identifies a gap and a need in the region in

terms of what we’re going to do to work with these young women

for them to understand that you don’t need to be objectified. And

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ther. Because it goes both ways. You can’t just blame definitely the

young women.

On a national level, I’ve worked with individuals that have done

that type of work. There’s a young lady named Susan Cruz out in

Los Angeles who works with the juvenile justice system out there.

She has a program called Girls and Gangs. That’s the population

she works with, and it’s been really effective working with young

women in the situation.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you.

OK, Ms. Lopez, we’re ready to move to the next panel, I think,

but go ahead.

Ms. LOPEZ. I just want to emphasize a point that was made. This

is why mentoring programs are so important, particularly in the

Latino community. I mentor a number of young ladies who really

don’t need mentoring. They graduated from graduate school in

John Hopkins, and they’re traveling all over the world. But the

reason why they came to me is that there were no Latino role models, so they needed someone they can relate to.

I find in our volunteer program mentoring programs you have a

lot of non-Latinos who are volunteering, but you see a lot less

Latinos and Latinas volunteering for our programs, and that’s part

of educating our community. Because the Latino professionals are

out there. The question is, can we bring them into these programs?

It’s just critical to have someone that you can relate to both in

terms of gender, in terms of culture, in terms of everything.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much.

Let me just—the last question. We’ve spent a lot on prevention.

Mr. Albo, you’ve been on the other side. You’ve been a prosecutor.

What differentiates Virginia’s law? And is there any suggestion you

can give to other States in terms of penalty phase that makes us

different?

Mr. ALBO. The Attorney General’s Office will be here later, and

they’ll outline everything we’ve done.

Like I said before, when we created our Task Force, we looked

at all the laws in all the States and especially in California. We

looked at every law that California did, and we asked which ones

work and which ones don’t, and we took the ones that worked. And

the AG’s office on the next panel can really give you really good

insight on which ones.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Let me thank this panel. We’ll take a 5-

minute recess as we prepare for the next panel.

[Recess.]

Chairman TOM DAVIS. We’re ready for our second panel, which

I’m sure will be every bit as informative as our first panel.

We have Mr. James Spero, the Acting Assistant Special Agent in

charge of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement [ICE]; Mr.

Diego Rodriguez, Assistant Special Agent in Charge, Criminal Division, Washington Field Office of the FBI; Marla Decker—she is accompanied by Mr. James Towey, who is the assistant attorney general and director of the Organized Crime Unit for the Commonwealth of Virginia. Marla Decker is the deputy attorney general for

public safety in the Office of the Attorney General in Virginia;

Chief Touissant Summers, the Chair of the Northern Virginia Regional Gang Task Force in the city of Herndon, who has been very

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active on this issue; and Captain Milburne, Bill, Lynn, the Commander of the Violent Crimes Task Force Unit in the Prince

George’s County Police Force. I want to thank you all for coming.

It is our policy we swear witnesses in, so if you will just rise with

me and raise your right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Chairman TOM DAVIS. We will start—Mr. Spero, we’ll start with

you; and we’ll move right on down the list. We have a light here.

Your entire testimony is in the record, so if we can try to stay to

5 minutes. We’ve got our questions that we’ve gone over from your

written testimony, and we can move right along. Thank you very

much.

STATEMENTS OF JAMES SPERO, ACTING ASSISTANT SPECIAL

AGENT IN CHARGE, SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE OFFICE,

WASHINGTON, DC, U.S. IMMIGRATIONS AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT; DIEGO G. RODRIGUEZ, ASSISTANT SPECIAL

AGENT IN CHARGE, CRIMINAL DIVISION, WASHINGTON

FIELD OFFICE, FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATIONS;

MARLA DECKER, DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR PUBLIC

SAFETY, VIRGINIA OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL;

CHIEF TOUISSANT SUMMERS, JR., CHAIR, NORTHERN VIRGINIA REGIONAL GANG TASK FORCE, CITY OF HERNDON POLICE DEPARTMENT; AND CAPTAIN MILBURNE (BILL) LYNN,

COMMANDER, VIOLENT CRIMES TASK FORCE/GANG UNIT,

PRINCE GEORGE’S COUNTY POLICE DEPARTMENT

STATEMENT OF JAMES SPERO

Mr. SPERO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, thank you for providing me with the opportunity to speak with you today about U.S.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s [ICE], efforts to combat

violent street gangs in the Washington, DC, metropolitan area and

throughout the United States.

ICE is the largest investigative agency within the Department of

Homeland Security. Using our vast enforcement authorities, ICE

has built a robust enforcement program along the borders and

within the Interior of the United States. Gang members and other

criminals should understand that ICE stands ready to protect our

Nation and its borders. Our presence extends throughout the interior of the United States and deters illegal immigration by making

it clear to those willing to violate our borders and immigration laws

that such disregard for our laws is not acceptable. These efforts underscore ICE’s homeland security priorities and strengthen respect

for our laws.

ICE continues to initiate enforcement programs to identify and

arrest those who pose a threat to our communities. ICE’s gang initiative, Operation Community Shield, is one such program.

Through Operation Community Shield, ICE identifies violent

transnational gang members that are subject to arrest, criminal

prosecution and removal from the United States. Foreign-born gang

members frequently ignore our immigration laws and travel to our

Nation’s interior with the intent of joining other gang members to

participate in criminal activity.

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In the last decade, the United States has experienced a dramatic

increase in the number and size of transnational street gangs such

as Mara Salvatrucha, commonly known as MS–13, one of the most

violent gangs of its kind. These gangs have significant foreign-born

membership and are frequently involved in human and contraband

smuggling, immigration violations and other crimes with a nexus

to the border. Like many street gangs, they also have a propensity

toward violence. Their members commit such crimes as robbery, extortion, assault, rape and murder.

In 2003, ICE conducted a comprehensive threat assessment on

street gang activity in the United States. The threat assessment

identified MS–13 as a gang with a presence across the Nation, a

significant foreign-born membership and a history of violence.

Based on this threat assessment, ICE initiated Operation Community Shield on February 23, 2005, with the priority of targeting

MS–13.

In May 2005, ICE expanded the program to include the investigation of all transnational street and prison gangs. ICE has

partnered with State and local law enforcement and works closely

with other Federal agencies in support of this operation.

Operation Community Shield has resulted in the arrest of over

3,200 gang members. Of those arrested, 70 have been identified as

leaders of gangs. More than half of those arrested have violent

criminal histories with arrests and convictions for crimes such as

robbery, assault, rape and murder. Of the 3,200 gang members arrested 1,096 have been numbers of members of MS–13. In the Special Agent in Charge, Washington, DC, area of responsibility, which

includes northern Virginia, ICE agents have arrested 233 violent

street gang members, of which 190 have been identified as MS–13.

Even before the initiation of Operation Community Shield, ICE’s

Washington, DC, office was actively pursuing transnational street

gangs, particularly MS–13. An ICE Special Agent has been working full time on the Northern Virginia Regional Gang Task Force

since its formation in June 2003 and has contributed significantly

to the Task Force’s success. Of the 1,524 gang members arrested

by the Task Force to date, more than 20 percent, or 303, have been

arrested for criminal and administrative immigration violations.

Allow me to tell you about several significant arrests of gang

members that were made by the Special Agents from our Washington, DC, office.

In February 2006, ICE Special Agents arrested Edwin Fuentes

Alvirez, a native and citizen of El Salvador and a high ranking

member of Mara-R in the District of Columbia for removal proceedings. Alvirez has a criminal history that includes conviction for second-degree child sexual abuse and arrests for assault with a deadly

weapon, possession of narcotics with intent to distribute, and destruction of property. Based on his criminal history, if Alvirez returns to the United States illegally, he could be prosecuted for illegal entry after deportation and face up to 20 years in prison.

As this next example illustrates, gang members often get significant prison sentences for illegally returning to the United States

after being deported. In February 2004, ICE Special Agents arrested Edwin Armando Ramirez, a native and citizen of El Salvador and MS–13 leader in northern Virginia. Ramirez was preVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:01 Sep 26, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00082 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\29710.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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viously deported from the United States after being convicted of

purchasing/possession for sale of a controlled substance and possession of a dangerous weapon. Ramirez subsequently returned to the

United States and was arrested by ICE and was criminally prosecuted for illegal re-entry after deportation. On September 9, 2004,

Ramirez was sentenced to 6 years and 5 months incarceration.

By using ICE’s immigration authorities in fighting against violent gangs, we can take hundreds of gang members like these off

the streets and significantly improve community safety.

With ICE’s investigative efforts under Operation Community

Shield, we are not limited to immigration violations. We have combined authorities for enforcing both customs and immigration laws,

which makes our approach to fighting transnational gangs unique

and more effective. By combining our immigration enforcement authorities with our expertise in financial, contraband smuggling and

illegal export investigations, we have additional tools to hit these

criminal gangs where it hurts by targeting their organized criminal

activity and going after their money.

Also, ICE uses its Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities to investigate and charge members with violations of

Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations [RICO], and Violent Crime in Aid of Racketeering [VICAR], and similar statutes.

ICE’s ability to arrest virtually every member of a transnational

gang for some violation of law, even if it is for administrative removal proceedings, is a powerful tool that immediately disrupts a

gang and provides ICE the opportunity to gather intelligence and

develop sources of information for further advanced investigation.

At ICE, we believe that sharing with other law enforcement the

intelligence we gather on gang members is one of the most important ways to combat transnational gangs like MS–13. We create

lookouts in the Treasury Enforcement Communication System

[TECS], on every gang member we identify, encounter or arrest. To

date, we have created approximately 6,000 of these lookouts on

suspected or confirmed MS–13 gang members. These records are

available to all Federal, State and local law enforcement agencies,

including first responders, when they query subjects with the ICE

Law Enforcement Support Center [LESC], through the National

Law Enforcement Telecommunications System [NLETS].

The men and women of ICE, especially those with whom I work

at Washington, DC, office, are grateful for the chance to serve the

American people. On their behalf, I thank you and your colleagues

for your continued support of our on-going operations.

I also want to thank the distinguished members of the committee

for the opportunity to speak before you today. I look forward to answering any questions you may have.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Well, thank you, and thank you for the job

you are doing.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Spero follows:]

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. Mr. Rodriguez.

STATEMENT OF DIEGO G. RODRIGUEZ

Mr. RODRIGUEZ. Good afternoon, Chairman Davis, Chairman

Wolf, Representatives Ruppersberger and Van Hollen and members

of the committee.

I appreciate the opportunity to testify before you today about the

FBI’s efforts to combat gangs in the Washington, DC, metropolitan

area, specifically the Latin America or Hispanic gangs such as MS–

13.

Today, gangs are more violent, more organized and more widespread than ever before. They pose one of the greatest threats to

the safety and security of all Americans. The Department of Justice

estimates there are approximately 30,000 gangs with 800,000

members impacting 2,500 communities across the United States.

The innocent people in these communities face daily exposure to violence from criminal gangs trafficking in drugs and weapons and

gangs fighting amongst themselves to control or extend their turf

and their various criminal enterprises.

MS–13 in particular has gained notoriety for its flexibility and

willingness to participate in any type of criminal activity at any

time. Although the level of sophistication in criminal activity varies, MS–13 factions in every location are traditionally violent.

Based upon available intelligence obtained through our law enforcement partners, it appears that MS–13 in the United States is

still a loosely structured street gang. However, its threat is based

on its violence and its potential to grow not only geographically but

in the organization and sophistication.

Law enforcement throughout the United States has reported

MS–13 members are engaged in drug trafficking. MS–13 members

are also involved in a variety of other types of criminal activity, including rape, murder, extortion, auto theft, alien smuggling, and

robbery.

In recent years, MS–13 has not only grown in membership and

presence in our region but also attracts great media attention by

committing random and, many times, violent acts. Analysis of law

enforcement and intelligence information has led to the following

observations of MS–13 activity in our area: To date, MS–13 in our

region has not developed a level of sophisticated criminal activity

and organization equal to that in Los Angeles, CA and in Central

America. Nevertheless, since 2000, a pattern of brutal attacks, including the killing of a suspected rival gang member by MS–13

members in northern Virginia, indicates that MS–13 has become

our region’s most violent gang.

Leadership from Los Angeles and El Salvador are believed to

visit our area to organize cliques. It is currently unclear, however,

whether their presence is to coordinate criminal activity or simply

to associate with other MS–13 members in this area.

To date, law enforcement data indicates varying levels of organization among cliques in D.C. and northern Virginia. An exact number of MS–13 members and cliques for the region is difficult to determine, given the mobility of the members, the addition of new

cliques, deportation and frequent re-entry of members and the

merger of cliques.

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Although members are aligned with individual cliques, like most

other gangs, MS–13 members regularly interact, socialize and engage in criminal acts with members outside their clique. Therefore,

law enforcement must continually assess whether the dismantlement of a particular clique in fact disrupts its members’ ability to

engage in criminal activity.

Local neighborhoods, prisons, the Internet and various schools

have been targeted as recruitment hot spots for MS–13. The increasing use of local schools to recruit new members is of special

concern and could increase violence in schools. Cooperation among

law enforcement at all levels is the best weapon against this

threat.

Since 2004, the FBI Washington Field Office has been a participating member of the Northern Virginia Regional Gang Task

Force. The Regional Task Force is engaged in tactical operations

and the use of State gang participation statutes in an effort to suppress criminal activities associated with gangs. The enterprise theory of investigation is also being used to identify criminal offenses

that may serve as predicate acts to support Federal racketeering

prosecutions.

For example, joint investigations with participating agencies

have resulted in successful Federal prosecutions and life sentences

of MS–13 gang members for the murder of a Federal witness and

the murder of a rival gang member.

We are also working to address this problem at the national

level. Given the extreme violence exhibited by MS–13 and its potential threat, the FBI established the MS–13 National Gang Task

Force to disrupt and dismantle this gang now, before it has the opportunity to become more organized and sophisticated.

The goals of the MS–13 National Gang Task Force will include

enabling local, State and Federal as well as international law enforcement agencies to easily exchange information on MS–13. Recent initiatives include the cooperative effort among the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, the Commonwealth

Attorney for the State of Virginia, local law enforcement agencies

and the FBI to coordinate a single data base platform to maintain

and disseminate data regarding MS–13 members and their criminal activity.

Also, a northern Virginia HIDTA Gang Task Force is being proposed to coordinate regional and nationwide multijurisdictional law

enforcement actions, including Federal prosecutions. The HIDTA

Task Force is proposed to include the FBI, ATF, DEA, ICE, and the

Arlington County, Fairfax County, Prince William County and city

of Falls Church Police Departments.

Once again, I appreciate the opportunity to come before you

today and share the work that the FBI is doing to address the

problem posed by MS–13 and similar gangs.

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, thank you for

your time and for your continued support of the FBI’s efforts to

combat gangs.

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Chairman Wolf, we are also thankful for the significant contributions the House Appropriations Committee has made to the efforts

of State and Federal agencies to address the gang problem in our

local communities.

I am happy to answer any of your questions.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Rodriguez follows:]

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. Chief Summers, thanks for being with us.

STATEMENT OF CHIEF TOUISSANT SUMMERS, JR.

Chief SUMMERS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It certainly is a great

opportunity for me to be here today.

I believe many of the speakers prior to me have basically laid out

what the issues and the problem is in terms of gangs in northern

Virginia. What I hope to share with you this afternoon is what I

feel is a very successful union of services and providers that have

addressed this issue, and that is the Northern Virginia Regional

Gang Task Force.

In the year of 2002, Congressman Wolf convened area law enforcement officials and government officials to take a look at the

gang problem, and from that meeting came the formation of the

Northern Virginia Regional Gang Task Force. It was established in

July 2003. Again, we could not have established this without the

support of Congressman Wolf, who was able to obtain some funding

to allow us to start this program.

The Gang Task Force was established as a multijurisdictional

partnership comprised of local, State, and Federal law enforcement

agencies to address gang activity in northern Virginia through

dedicated officers and resources, thereby making the region inhospitable to gang activity. Our goal was disruption of gang activity,

with the idea that gangs are not just a law enforcement problem,

but gangs needs to be solved as a community effort.

The goals of the Gang Task Force were built upon three component strategies: enforcement, prevention and intervention. The

component strategies to address gang activities necessitated a

phased-in approach. In other words, we didn’t try to deal with all

this at once, but we phased it in.

The first year, we dealt with suppression or enforcement, and

that developed and shared intelligence while using a coordinated

approach in conducting a tactical response to gang activity. The

multijurisdictional approach no longer restricts police response by

boundaries, and involvement of multiple agencies provides a common level of law enforcement across the region.

The coordination of our activities included working with our Federal partners, FBI, ATF, ICE, U.S. Marshals, our Federal, State

and local prosecutors, which I think is very important, and obviously our local police.

The Northern Virginia Gang Task Force is directed by 14 member chiefs, which in itself I think is an achievement, where we can

get together in a room and decide on what are the major issues and

how we should attack it. When you add to it our Federal law enforcement partners, our State police and our prosecutors, from time

to time we get together and decide what is the best approach for

the region. I think there is no secret as to—there is no wonder as

to why you see now the gangs moving from our region and going

to regions around us.

Our second area was prevention, and prevention involved education, not only educating our community but educating law enforcement, educating prosecutors, educating all the stakeholders to

exactly what the gang activity is, what the gang problem is, what

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grams as grade programs, after school programs, Boys and Girls

Club, getting the schools and getting private organizations, nonprofits, involved with the police in our efforts.

And our third and final program that we implemented last year,

June of last year, is intervention. There is some overlapping with

intervention and prevention, but intervention basically deals with

getting—what has been said numerous times today—getting the

young man or woman out of the gangs and providing them some

alternatives. And to do that, we have established a Board of Court

Services Directors who basically spearheads that. Under the Court

Service Directors are what we call GRIT teams—of which Mr. Bob

Bermingham is one, and he spoke to you earlier—to recognize or

to identify all the resources in the community and hopefully, instead of working against each other but working together, to try to

solve this problem.

I think the major achievement of the Northern Virginia Gang

Task Force is just that, the fact that we can get all the participants, all the stakeholders together in one room and decide on the

best course of action, not that we’re running the gang problem from

Fairfax to Alexandria or Arlington, but as a region we’re addressing the problem to let the gangs know that you’re not welcome here

in northern Virginia.

I want to thank you for this opportunity, and I want to thank

you because I firmly believe that hearings like this keep this problem before the public. It reminds everyone that this problem is a

community problem, that we all need to work on it together. Thank

you.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Well, thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Chief Summers follows:]

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. Captain Lynn, thanks for being with us.

STATEMENT OF CAPTAIN MILBURNE (BILL) LYNN

Mr. LYNN. Good afternoon, sir.

I want to thank you for the opportunity to be here. I also want

to apologize for my probably fading voice at times, I’ve been working on a week of trying to lose it.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Make sure we have the mic as close as we

can.

Mr. LYNN. In respect of time and in reference to your suggestion,

I know that my testimony is on record here. I’m going to jump a

little bit.

The things that the panel prior to us brought forth are extremely

important. Being a law enforcement officer for 25 years, I’m certainly about enforcing the law, putting people in jail when they

need to be. But after doing this for 3 years now, I also understand

that we’re not going to put handcuffs on this problem and make it

go away.

One of the things that we have to do, and the importance of this

committee and everybody getting together in this room, is that we

have to keep it in the forefront, as Chief Summers just said. We

have to keep it out there. We need to have the prevention, intervention, education programs out there.

Certainly the funding and things that have been available—

made available by the committee are certainly needed. The group

that we have put together in Prince George’s County, we took a

look in 2003 at some problems that we saw coming up, got together, had some meetings. We convened a large group of individuals from highlighted law enforcement agencies in the area, and we

asked the question in our conference room 1 day, who wants to get

together and make it a concerted effort to take care of this problem

that we’re seeing in our region in Maryland?

We were very lucky. We had some people jump on board right

away. ATF was one of the forerunners with us, are still in the program. Since then, we’ve had the Maryland State Police, we have

ICE, Maryland Park Police, Howard County, Montgomery County.

Everybody is joining forces.

We’ve been fortunate enough to secure some office space. Everybody reports to work at the same spot, which is important because

we’re able to share information on a daily basis. We see the same

faces. We know what the problems are. We know where to direct

our efforts.

The other thing that’s very important is that we, as a region,

whether it’s on the Maryland side of the Potomac River or Washington, DC, or the Virginia side, is that we work at this as a group.

Because what’s going to happen is, as their efforts scale up in Fairfax or in northern Virginia, the potential problems or the problems

are going to come into Washington, DC, or they’re going to come

into Maryland. So that information sharing effort has to be there.

We have to know what is going to move around. Because these

groups of individuals are very transient. They do move around.

One thing that we have to be careful of—I’ve been to a lot of

seminars and meetings in committees in this region and on the

west coast, and I’ve had the same thing said to me on both sides

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of the country—is that the public comes to a lot of meetings, and

they’re very interested. They know what the problem is in their

communities. They hear a lot of things, but then they step back to

see what the product is going to be and when it is going to be delivered, and a lot of times they don’t see it or it’s very delayed, and

they get very disheartened by that.

So I think we need to be careful of inaction or slow action. If we

invite the public to our forums and we listen to their concerns and

their problems and we take them to heart and put our programs

together, we need to make sure that we deliver on the cuff. Again,

I’ve had that same concern brought to my attention from both sides

of this country.

Something—and it’s a little off this topic, but it’s still a gang

topic—is we need to be careful with the fact of—certainly we’re

here for MS–13 today, Hispanic gangs, but we do see and we see

in Prince George’s County an influx of Bloods and Crips. It’s becoming more popular among middle schoolers and junior high, high

school, whether you want to call them wannabes, but they’re getting into that lifestyle, they’re starting to wear the colors. And a

lot of people use the cliche that wannabes are gonnabes, and we

need to be careful with that. Another thing that we can’t—as the

Task Forces progress, we can’t ignore that other aspect of gang activity.

Again, if I can just stress, it’s something that we do in Prince

George’s County. We have our Prince George’s County Gang Unit,

and we have the Regional Area Gang Enforcement group [RAGE].

We’re all about doing the prosecution. We have a current RICO

case going that’s probably going to come to court in September of

this year.

But one of the things that everybody who participates in this

group does is they get into the households of these people that we

begin to recognize as gang members. They get to know the families.

They get to know the fathers, the mothers.

I’m really impressed about the officers that are involved in this

and their dedication to this. They will give these people their private cell phone numbers to call them if there’s dilemmas going on

in their households. Because one of the places that we’re going to

attack gang activity in MS–13 is inside of the home. We can put

programs out there and we can make them available, but parenting

and what parents recognize is what’s going to be I think our first

step at getting a hold on this problem.

With that and, again, with respect of time—and I see I’m at the

red light here—I want to thank everybody for the opportunity.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Captain Lynn, thank you, and thank you

for your efforts.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Lynn follows:]

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. Ms. Decker, thank you for being here; and

we appreciate the Attorney General sending a couple of members

up to answer questions and share testimony.

STATEMENT OF MARLA DECKER

Ms. DECKER. Thank you, Chairman Davis and members of the

committee. It’s my pleasure to be here today.

I’m Marla Decker, Deputy Attorney General for the Public Safety

and Enforcement Division of the Office of Attorney General Bob

McDonnell. He sends his greetings today and his encouragement

for you to continue the efforts, your fine efforts.

Before I actually begin my testimony, I want to point out you’ve

seen a common theme throughout the morning and now into the

afternoon—and I’m the clean-up speaker, so I’m the last one saying

it—but I think it must be said, because there is no finer Ambassador on the gang issue than Congressman Wolf. And you hear it

anywhere you go in Virginia. Northern Virginia, of course, is very

lucky, but he has helped with the Statewide initiatives, he’s helped

with the Federal initiatives and, just as Chairman Davis recognized earlier, without the assistance of the funding, a lot of these

initiatives would be either non-existent or would be much more difficult to succeed.

I must say, Virginia has come a long way in over about 3 years

time, certainly with the efforts of all of the public officials, but we

can’t blink, we cannot blink. This is one of those things that it’s

not going to go away in a short time. It’s going to take a long time.

As Chief Summers mentioned, you know, suppression is one

piece, and we have to remain vigilant on the suppression side. But

as many things have taught us, the drug problem and other public

safety problems, we have to look at a soup-to-nuts approach, a full

approach which begins with prevention, intervention, suppression

and re-entry back into the community.

In a lot of ways from a State perspective that re-entry back in

to the community is one of the tougher pieces. Because once you

put these gang members away in jails or prisons, if nothing happens while they’re there to change what brought them there,

they’re going to go right back into the community. And if we don’t

work heavily on the prevention end, they’re going to go right back

to the same behavior. And it’s going to be worse.

So from the State perspective, while the suppression aspect is

very, very important, we also look at the OJJBP model, which tells

you to look at all of those other features, all of those other components, and we’re doing that. And my entire written testimony is a

part of the record, so I’m not going to go through that piece by

piece in the interest, again, of time and hitting some of what appears to be this committee’s concern.

I want to mention a couple of suppression things, but I also want

to mention one of the things the Attorney General’s Office has been

very active in is what we call community awareness. Northern Virginia in a lot of respects, in addition to being a leader on the gang

issue, was also very atypical in that the public officials did not engage in denial. We can’t have denial. Denial and apathy is a breeding ground for gang activity. The public officials must recognize

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that there is a gang presence or problem, and the community as

a whole must embrace that and deal with it.

So one of the things we’re doing across the Commonwealth is

we’re telling communities this is not a one-size-fits-all issue, it’s not

a one-size-fits-all solution. Look at what you’ve got, stop, take a

breath, analyze the situation, look at the situation, decide what

needs to happen. It’s not just a law enforcement problem. It’s

everybody’s problem. Get the group around the table, come up with

a plan and then execute the plan.

And that plan should look at resources, it should look at the

needs, and the needs assessment should be done. There should obviously be an important emphasis on the schools and after school

programs. We need to catch these children before the gangs do, because the gangs will. They recruit in schools. They recruit after

schools when adult supervision is not around.

So you’ve got to look at—you’ve got to take a holistic approach,

and you’ve got to look at what is going on in your community, in

your jurisdiction, and then take it from there and develop your

plan. That is one of the things that we’re going across the State

and we are attempting to achieve is to get localities—whether it’s

the locality or the region or—to look at what they’ve got. Our State

laws are now the toughest in the Nation, we think, among the

toughest in the Nation, and they compliment the Federal law as

well, and we are aggressively proceeding forward to take the worst

of the worst off the streets and to use our State laws and our Federal laws efficiently.

But the laws—now that Virginia has laws and we have model

State laws that we think can be mirrored nationally by other

States, and we would certainly encourage other States to look at

what we’ve done, but laws are not the full answer. Laws are a

major piece, suppression is a major piece, but, as has been mimicked throughout the day, we’ve got to look at the whole picture.

On that, I would thank the committee for your time. I’ve enjoyed

being here today, and I’m happy to answer questions.

And, with the chairman’s permission, Mr. James Towey is here

from our Organized Crime Unit to answer some of the more technical questions you might have.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Decker follows:]

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. Mr. Towey, thank you for being with us.

I’m going to start the questioning off with Mr. Wolf. And I would

just once again add that, before anybody knew there was a gang

problem in northern Virginia, Frank Wolf was up there with his

charts and getting the investigations; and he has used his chairmanship of the committee, who funds this, to help northern Virginia but even nationally, identifying in advance some of the tools

that were needed, knowing that we needed to change paradigm.

Mr. WOLF. Thanks, Tom. I thank all of you for your service. I appreciate it very much.

I have two questions. One, how often do the different jurisdictions—I know in Virginia it’s very good, and I’m sure in Maryland,

but how often does Maryland and Virginia and the District of Columbia, the police chiefs and the different anti-gang efforts actually

meet together?

Chief SUMMERS. I would venture to say that the police chiefs

probably meet less often than the line officers meet; and I have

Lieutenant Haugsdahl, who could probably shed some information

on that, with the permission of the Chair.

Mr. HAUGSDAHL. Officially monthly, sir; and pretty much weekly

on the telephone.

Mr. WOLF. So there’s pretty good cooperation, coordination in

Maryland, Virginia and the District?

Mr. HAUGSDAHL. Yes, sir.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. How about the FBI and the Federal agencies, are they coordinating as well?

Mr. RODRIGUEZ. Yes. From a Federal perspective, we are coordinating with our counterparts in Maryland and in D.C. with the FBI

office and as well as through the other task forces, especially at

agent level.

Mr. WOLF. So several times a week do you talk to the different

jurisdictions, FBI, ATF——

Mr. RODRIGUEZ. Yes.

Mr. WOLF. The other question is, how bad of a problem is this

in the prisons and the jails? I keep hearing stories of recruitment

problems in State prisons and in the county jails.

Mr. TOWEY. Mr. Congressman, I think I might be able to answer

that.

One of the best resources that the Commonwealth of Virginia has

for gang intelligence is the Department of Corrections; and the reason for that, of course, is because the Department of Corrections

does have a very large problem.

Mr. WOLF. It does have a gang problem?

Mr. TOWEY. Absolutely. The Department of Corrections is used

by gang members not only to continue their gang participation activities but also as a recruitment tool. Prisons are sometimes referred to as ‘‘gang college.’’ That’s where people that are gang members or people that aren’t yet gang members go and they learn additional tools to help them survive in a criminal way back on the

street. And in many occasions a certain prison gang, such as La

Eme, the Mexican Mafia and Nuestra Familia, which are more

prevalent on the West Coast but are starting to show themselves

in the Virginia Department of Corrections, those gangs will recruit

new members and give them what they refer to as marching orVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:01 Sep 26, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00121 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\29710.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ders. They will instruct the new members when they leave to go

out and maybe do a hit on the street or do some other criminal activity on the street.

So new members are actually created as a result of the Department of Corrections. And they try to minimize that to a degree by

finding out what inmates are members of what gangs when they

come in. They have a screening process to try to separate them.

However, on the flip side of it, the fact that the Department of

Corrections does have a gang problem—and it certainly, I guess in

theory, should have at least as much of a gang problem as exists

on the streets because that’s where the gang members are ending

up—the flip side of it is that it’s actually a great resource for intelligence. There are certain investigators with the Department of

Corrections that are members of the Virginia Gang Investigators

Association and that are working daily with gang investigators on

the street to help them solve crimes and even in some cases working with prosecutors to give them the evidence that they need to

prosecute gang members under our gang participation and gang recruitment statutes.

Mr. WOLF. What about county jails?

Mr. TOWEY. I don’t know hard statistics on county jails, but I can

only imagine that whatever exists on the street is going to exist in

the jails, in the regional jails and in the prisons. Someone else

might be——

Mr. WOLF. Is there a Maryland——

Mr. LYNN. Congressman, yes. Much like he says that, when we

take them off the street, they’re going into the jails. And they are

not curtailing their activities in the jails. We have a good working

relationship with our county jail, and that’s when we provide them

an inmate that we know has gang connections, we give them that

information so they have the heads up when that person hits their

doorstep. We most recently had a stabbing that occurred in the jail,

and it was clearly gang related. It was one member on another

member. Even with the efforts that the jail takes to control those

gang members in there, and sometimes keep some of them separated, we also find, much like he just said, that information emanates from the jail. They continue to put their orders back out to

the street. They have people come visit them in the jail. We’re able

to see those records of who comes and sees them daily at the jail.

Their mail is inspected. So it is a good intelligence source, but the

gang activity continues even after they’re put on the——

Mr. WOLF. Is there any effort of rehabilitation with regard to the

gang activity in prisons?

Mr. LYNN. Yes, there is. And it’s a difficult thing because, you

have to have somebody to want to take the bite of the pie. You can

put it in front of them, but if they’re not interested in that, then

even though the efforts are there, and I don’t want to say futile,

but you get the point that I’m making. The efforts are there upon—

or from the people that administrate the jails and the workers that

are there, but if the participants that are there, the inmates don’t

want to take a bite of that pie, then it is futile at times. And a lot

of times, these guys that are in those jails are hardened gang members.

Mr. WOLF. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much. Mr. Van Hollen.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank all of you

for your testimony here this afternoon. I am just trying to get an

idea of the extent of cooperation among different members of say

MS–13 or another international-type gang among different regions

because we hear a lot about how, for example, there’s a network

of MS–13 members all the way from El Salvador on the West Coast

and here within this region. And my question is, to what extent is

that gang structure centralized in any way nationally or internationally? Or is it much more I guess like independent regional

franchises? And because it goes to some question about to what extent the intelligence gathering system works, in other words if you

have sort of an international network then, you know, finding out

what’s going on in El Salvador on the West Coast may have a direct bearing on what’s going on in the Washington region. If it’s

more sort of local efforts with very loose affiliations, something different. So do we have more of a sort of international network, central network or is this much more of a local franchise type operation?

Mr. LYNN. If I could comment very briefly on that, and I think

the international aspect of it, Federal partners here are going to

comment more appropriate than me. I can give you some examples

we’ve run into in Prince George’s County in Maryland. We see influences coming from the West Coast. One of the things that our

guys on the task force have been very good at doing is recruiting

informants. So we get that firsthand information right from guys

that are attending their meetings, and they do have routine meetings that you are required to be at. If you’re not there, then they

deal out punishment that you are not there. They probably attend

their meetings more regularly than some of us attend some of the

meetings that we’re supposed to be at.

Mr. WOLF. Caucus.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. We have penalties too now.

Mr. LYNN. Out of the information coming back from the informants we find information is shipped here from the West Coast. We

find people come here from the West Coast to come here to either

set up cliques or to direct cliques that are here for lack of a better

term, are not being successful. We’ve gotten information from informants that have been at meetings that people have come here

from out of the country. Have come here from El Salvador and

have come here to direct cliques of MS–13 that they are not being

violent enough.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. All right.

Mr. LYNN. So they get advisors that are sent here. That direction

that transient movement of people. In Prince George’s County, we

get people sent here from across the country, from the West Coast

from New York from New Jersey from down south, so with those

few examples in there, I think it is quite prevalent, and as far as

the international connection goes and that information’s swapping

back and forth, I think they can handle that.

Chief SUMMERS. In northern Virginia, we see about the same

thing. Where I don’t know that there’s a central command, there

certainly is an identity there, where if I come from California MS–

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13, certain cliques in northern Virginia I can identify with. Same

with folks coming from El Salvador.

Mr. RODRIGUEZ. I agree with Mr. Lynn on what he was just saying regarding how we have a lot of gang members, specifically from

California, come over to northern Virginia, looking to try to structure this gang a little bit more the way it is in California, because

they feel that it’s not structured here. I think a lot of that is due

to a lot of the members of MS do work during the day in some type

of legit job and get together in the evenings to do the illegal-type

stuff. Internationally, the FBI is working closely with El Salvador

and also we try to exploit as much of the information that we gather when we work closely with the task forces and conduct search

warrants and arrest warrants, pocket litter leads to a lot of intelligence for us. We try to exploit that as much as we can and I think

have been pretty successful coordinating cases across the country.

Mr. SPERO. Congressman Van Hollen, I’d like to also reiterate

what Captain Summers and Agent Rodriguez was saying. When

we’re out there on a day-to-day basis with the northern Virginia

task force and the other gang task forces in the region, specifically

the Fairfax County Gang Unit, we’re interviewing these gang members on a daily basis as we take them into custody. And during our

interviews, that’s exactly what we’re finding here in the northern

Virginia area, is that they—maybe they’re under a little bit of pressure because they are loosely affiliated under regionalized groups,

and not necessarily so successful at doing some of the stuff that

their counterparts on the West Coast have done. And we’ve heard

from gang members here in northern Virginia that members from

the California side or West Coast versions of the MS–13 factions

would come over here to try to whip them into shape, try to get

them to be more prosperous successful gangs.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Dutch.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Again, thank you all for being here. I think

this hearing has done a lot, but what we always—we talk about

issues at hearings, but hopefully, we can get to the next stage of

implementation. When we talk about Maryland, I think it’s important to know that you have the Washington suburbs and then you

have the Baltimore suburbs and you know, I think—what I am

going to ask you a question about is the area I represent the Baltimore suburbs. Maybe starting with you, Captain Lynn, or anyone.

Do you have relationships or meetings with the people in the

Baltimore area, Baltimore City, Baltimore County, Anne Arundel,

Harford, I would say that the area north, which is part of the district I represent called Edgewood, which is near Aberdeen, is north

of Baltimore City maybe 15 or 20 miles and there’s a lot of high—

there’s a lot of level right now of MS–13 involvement.

And in fact, the gentleman from Montgomery County just told

me that the individual he talked about here today, it was a source

for him, actually really lived and worked in that area, and one of

the reasons he said that you have movement—not only because of

what’s happening here, but there’s a lot of affordable housing. So

my question, are you working with that region, are you sharing information, do we need to do it better?

Mr. LYNN. I would say that we can always do what we’re doing

probably a little bit better. Do we share information with that reVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:01 Sep 26, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00124 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\29710.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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gion? Yes. Do we work with them? Have we worked with them?

Yes. Officers from Anne Arundel County, Baltimore County have

been in my station. We’ve assisted them with some search warrants and some arrest warrants. We’ve had some of our individuals

go up into that region and commit some crimes, a very serious assault probably about a month and a half ago, that information exchanges and we do work with that region, yes.

Chief SUMMERS. The Northern Virginia Gang Task Force has

been to Baltimore City and the surrounding areas and provided

training, and we are in contact with them pretty much weekly,

daily on certain gang-related issues, yes.

Mr. RODRIGUEZ. At the Federal level, our FBI Baltimore office,

we meet regularly with them, and next month, we’re going to start

to try to have a border-type meeting to include our State and local

partners and discuss the border issues as far as going over and

back to Virginia.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Let me ask you this, I’m on the Intelligence

Committee and I work very closely with the Joint Terrorism Task

Force, and I think it’s probably one of the best weapons that we

have against terrorism right now in our homeland in the United

States, Joint Terrorism Task Force is really coordinated by the

FBI, but you have NSA, CIA, State and local and not only do you

have the men and women in law enforcement on the street, you

also have analysts and you have the technology to make sure that

we have a data base of where terrorists are coming from, if there

are cells that are here. My question—and I think—and really the

jurisdiction of Congressman Wolf, I mean, if the terrorism task

force are doing well and we need to go beyond our own jurisdictions, if we’re really going to deal with this situation because one

thing I think I’ve learned here today and information that I have

before is if you do a good job in Fairfax, they’re going to move

someplace else. Not only because the heat’s up, affordable housing

issues like that. Do you think it would be wise to look at the program and the format of the Joint Terrorism Task Force and maybe

start focussing on that as it relates to—and it’s got to be done on

the Federal level—as it relates to gang activity? And there’s one

component that’s very important in any type of law enforcement

where we’re dealing with an issue like this, and that’s intelligence.

We can have a lot of aggressive people out in the street, but if we

don’t get intelligence from an international point of view because

you have a lot coming from El Salvador, and if you don’t have that

intelligence analyzed, and then if you don’t have the collectors or

the police or whatever out in the street getting the information, developing informants, you’re not going to be as effective because

really, what happens here might solve or help a problem someplace

else. Do you have an opinion on the Joint Terrorism Task Force

program? And would that be a model we could use here?

Mr. RODRIGUEZ. Yes, sir. I do. In fact, prior to coming to the

Washington field office, I worked in the director of intelligence, and

understanding intelligence and believe that truly is the way to

drive a lot of the investigations, especially in the terrorist area. We

can apply that same process to criminal matters. Again, it’s—a lot

of it is knowing your domain, understanding where the crime problem is, doing strategic analysis.

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Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. I see my light’s going on. I just want to say

this, I really would like to take this a little further maybe about

the possibility I’m going to talk with Congressman Wolf about it,

about that Joint Terrorism Task Force component, which would

mean new resources as it relates to gang activity. It’s kind of the

same thing that happened in New York when the Mafia was really

big, taken down.

Mr. RODRIGUEZ. Absolutely. We need to apply all the analytical

resources. Again, through strategic assessments, we’ll be able to

connect the dots instead of reacting to them, I think, a lot better

which is, I think, what the JTTFs are doing now in preventing and

deterring the terrorist acts, State and national intelligence, and letting that drive the investigation.

Mr. WOLF. If the gentleman would yield, how broad are they?

What is the broadest jurisdiction of the Joint Terrorism Task

Force?

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. It’s really coordinated by the FBI.

Mr. WOLF. How far did they go? What’s the broadest? Is it just

the region, like Baltimore?

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. You usually have one in every urban area,

but it expands throughout. So even though you have one in Maryland, it focuses on both Baltimore and D.C., but what’s unique

about it, you also have a tie-in, you have someone from the CIA,

NSA, they’re actually in that task force that are getting international information that needs to be analyzed.

Mr. WOLF. So you are talking about a separate one that would

just deal with the issue of all gangs.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. I would say—yeah, on the priority of gang

activity because——

Mr. WOLF. Right. But are you including bringing it into the existing ones that we have? Or having a separate one dealing just with

the gang issue?

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Well, it depends. You have a role model

with the Joint Terrorism Task Force—that is a good example, the

FBI. The Joint Terrorism Task Force is that combination of Federal, State and local. And as a former prosecutor, you get, as you

know, you get a lot from the street. You give me a street cop or

somebody who’s out there all the time, you get information. OK,

this is like a strike force situation, but with analysts and information, but you also have the FBI that’s starting a new program

that’s dealing in intelligence, which is different from the profile.

And they’re kind of another group.

What I’m saying is that we have these joint terrorism task

forces, in my opinion, and in the opinion of some other people that

do a lot of work in this area, are probably the most effective tool

in fighting terrorism in our area, cells and whatever. And why reinvent the wheel when we can probably do the same thing that

they’re doing since the FBI coordinates it. State and local, you can

pull people from different areas, and you have this task force and

it also gets you information from El Salvador, from there. You have

CIA components maybe in El Salvador that will feed information.

You just get a data base and then you react to it as it comes to

your area. As the street people are focussing in getting informants

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and people that can help in that regard. I think we need to talk

about it.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Maybe we can use the Washington/Baltimore area based on this hearing today as a pilot program.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you again. Mr. Rodriguez.

Mr. RODRIGUEZ. Currently right now, the National Gang Task

Force and National Gang Intelligence Center is doing similar

things to what you were saying, sir, and trying to take that intelligence, incorporating it into one data base that can be shared

across the country as well as with State and locals.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you. I have a couple quick questions. Mr. Spero, first of all, is there any al Qaeda connection here?

Is al Qaeda or any of these groups working with any gangs or trying to infiltrate them?

Mr. SPERO. We have heard anecdotal evidence that al Qaeda

could or MS–13 could be a potential link or have potential links to

al Qaeda or be a potential weakness, certainly in the northern Virginia area, we have not had any information to prove that there’s

been any——

Chairman TOM DAVIS. But nationally it’s a concern?

Mr. SPERO. Nationally, it is a concern, sir.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. You mentioned the 200—you mentioned

the 233 violent street gang members who were arrested in the D.C.

area, of which 19 were MS–13?

Mr. SPERO. Yes.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. What happened with these gang members? And did you work with the Northern Virginia Regional Task

Force and other local law enforcements to make those arrests?

Mr. SPERO. Absolutely we did. Some of those arrests were made

with this particular—the Northern Virginia Gang Task Force, in

which we have a full-time member who is essentially—he works on

a daily basis with them, goes out, he identifies targets, the highest

priority is the violent members of the gangs with criminal histories

and gang leadership. We also have an agent assigned to the northern Virginia gang unit. He is doing the same thing with that unit

as well.

We have an agent assigned to the District of Columbia to work

with the Washington, DC, Metropolitan P.D.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. If they got arrested, what happened to

them? Did they all get convicted or is it still in the process or——

Mr. SPERO. When we encounter these—these gang members,

what—we look at all different tools that are available to us from

ICE’s standpoint, whether it be a criminal arrest, and we get tremendous participation and support and cooperation from the U.S.

Attorney’s office and the District of Columbia as well as the eastern

district of Virginia, in prosecuting these gang members. And we

also take them into custody——

Chairman TOM DAVIS. So a lot of these you are—basically you

are still prosecuting?

Mr. SPERO. Yes. Some prosecutions are ongoing. Some have

been—if we don’t have the ability to charge them criminally with

a criminal prosecution, they would be taken into administrative

custody, and in that case, they would be served with a notice of——

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. I gather you have an ICE issue with some

of the many anyway regardless of crime. Is that correct?

Mr. SPERO. Yes.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Not with all. Some of them are citizens.

Mr. SPERO. Many of the foreign-born gangs, especially MS–13 in

this area are in the United States illegally. They are subject to removal proceedings. They also may be subject to——

Chairman TOM DAVIS. If you can get an identified gang member,

you will—at that point thoroughly enforce immigration laws. Is

that correct?

Mr. SPERO. Yes, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. OK. What percent were repeat offenders

of this? Any idea of the 233?

Mr. SPERO. I don’t have an exact percentage. We do see some repeat offenders when we are talking about re-entry after deportation

and when we do locate those. The Northern Virginia Gang Task

Force has a good gang data base, as does the northern Virginia—

the Fairfax County Gang Task Force. And we update that data

base as we take these people—the MS–13 gang members into custody, and when they—if they do come back, they’re already in our

gang data base, and we do arrest them and prosecute them for reentry after deportation.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Let me just ask a minute about GangNet

at this point. How utilized is that or are we looking for a way to

streamline so you have a national reference? Can you describe how

effective that—I don’t know, Captain or Chief, if we’ve used that,

if we’ve used that and coordinated with that, but that’s kind of a

nationwide Yellow Pages, isn’t it, for people who are suspected?

Mr. SPERO. Yes. We’re also looking at other gang data bases, including GangNet. We are—we share information. We share information with the State and locals and our other Federal partners.

And what we—from ICE’s perspective, have to add to that in addition to our intelligence on the gang members themselves is that

their immigration status and the biometrical data.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Go ahead.

Chief SUMMERS. Mr. Chairman, I still believe the information

across the country is pretty much fragmented, where northern Virginia has their data base, and maybe Richmond has theirs, California has theirs.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. But there’s not a lot of sharing back and

forth. So gang members can move across jurisdictions, come in and

set up shop, and it may take a while to know who they are and

what they are doing.

Mr. RODRIGUEZ. We are looking at GangNet across the country

through the FBI. We are also exploring other avenues with data

base sharing currently.

Mr. SPERO. Mr. Chairman, I would just like to clarify that we’re

in the process of coming out with ICE gangs. And in this ICE gang

system, when we do throw this out, it will be a situation where we

will be able to more effectively share the information back and

forth with the Federal partners, State and local law enforcement

agencies.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. OK. Finally, let me just ask Chief Summers. If this program in northern Virginia could be replicated,

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what would be the two or three things you would say to other jurisdictions across the country that’s made this so successful?

Chief SUMMERS. I would say first and foremost to get your local

law enforcement community together and get the buy-in from all

of the chief executives as well as the Federal and State partners.

And then I would say to do it as a phase-in approach and not a

shotgun approach to try to put in all of the phases, the intervention

and the prevention. You can’t do it all at once but you need to

phase it in. Kind of like a weed and seize, get the baddest off the

streets first and let the gangs know you mean business and then

you can proceed to educate and prevent and intervene.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Well, thank you. I think we’re happy to

see the strong partnership with the Federal, State and local enforcement. We know territories can exist, and it’s heartening to see

such a strong partnership. Anyone else? Frank, any more questions? Let me just thank this panel. It’s been a successful hearing.

We appreciate it. Keep up the good work. Hearing’s adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 1:35 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]

[The prepared statement of Hon. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger follows:]

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