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S. HRG. 108–429

COMBATING GANG VIOLENCE IN AMERICA:

EXAMINING EFFECTIVE FEDERAL, STATE AND

LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT STRATEGIES

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY 

UNITED STATES SENATE

ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

SEPTEMBER 17, 2003

Serial No. J–108–42

Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary

(

(II)

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY 

ORRIN G. HATCH, Utah, Chairman 

CHARLES E. GRASSLEY, Iowa 

ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania 

JON KYL, Arizona 

MIKE DEWINE, Ohio 

JEFF SESSIONS, Alabama 

LINDSEY O. GRAHAM, South Carolina 

LARRY E. CRAIG, Idaho 

SAXBY CHAMBLISS, Georgia 

JOHN CORNYN, Texas 

PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont 

EDWARD M. KENNEDY, Massachusetts 

JOSEPH R. BIDEN, JR., Delaware 

HERBERT KOHL, Wisconsin 

DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California 

RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin 

CHARLES E. SCHUMER, New York 

RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois 

JOHN EDWARDS, North Carolina 

BRUCE ARTIM, Chief Counsel and Staff Director 

BRUCE A. COHEN, Democratic Chief Counsel and Staff Director 

(III)

C O N T E N T S 

STATEMENTS OF COMMITTEE MEMBERS 

Page

Durbin, Hon. Richard J., a U.S. Senator from the State of Illinois .................... 4

Feinstein, Hon. Dianne, a U.S. Senator from the State of California ................. 3

Hatch, Orrin G., a U.S. Senator from the State of Utah, prepared statement .. 92

Leahy, Hon. Patrick J., a U.S. Senator from the State of Vermont, prepared 

statement .............................................................................................................. 103

Sessions, Hon. Jeff, a U.S. Senator from the State of Alabama .......................... 1

WITNESSES 

Ashley, Grant D., Special Agent, Assistant Director, FBI Criminal Investigative Division, Washington, D.C. .......................................................................... 11

Christie, Christopher J., U.S. Attorney, District of New Jersey, Newark, New 

Jersey .................................................................................................................... 9

Fitzgerald, Patrick, U.S. Attorney, Northern District of Illinois, Chicago, Illinois ........................................................................................................................ 5

Jordan, Eddie J., Jr., District Attorney, District of New Orleans, New Orleans, Louisiana ...................................................................................................... 21

McBride, Wesley D., President California Gang Investigators Association, 

Huntington, Beach, California ............................................................................ 25

McCulloch, Robert P., President, National District Attorneys Association, Alexandria, Virginia ................................................................................................ 23

Yang, Debra W., U.S. Attorney, Central District of California, Los Angeles, 

California .............................................................................................................. 7

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS 

Responses of Christopher J. Christie to questions submitted by Senators 

Chambliss and Leahy .......................................................................................... 36

Responses of Patrick Fitzgerald to questions submitted by Senators 

Chambliss and Leahy .......................................................................................... 43

Responses of Debra W. Yang to questions submitted by Senator Chambliss ..... 50

Responses of Robert P. McCulloch to a question submitted by Senator Leahy . 55

Responses of Eddie J. Jordan to questions submitted by Senator Leahy ........... 56

SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD 

Ashley, Grant D., Special Agent, Assistant Director, FBI Criminal Investigative Division, Washington, D.C., prepared statement ....................................... 58

Christie, Christopher J., U.S. Attorney, District of New Jersey, Newark, New 

Jersey, prepared statement ................................................................................. 72

Fitzgerald, Patrick, U.S. Attorney, Northern District of Illinois, Chicago, Illinois, prepared statement ..................................................................................... 82

Jordan, Eddie J., Jr., District Attorney, District of New Orleans, New Orleans, Louisiana, prepared statement ................................................................... 93

McBride, Wesley D., President California Gang Investigators Association, 

Huntington, Beach, California, prepared statement ......................................... 105

McCulloch, Robert P., President, National District Attorneys Association, Alexandria, Virginia, prepared statement ............................................................. 108

Yang, Debra W., U.S. Attorney, Central District of California, Los Angeles, 

California, prepared statement ........................................................................... 118

(1)

COMBATING GANG VIOLENCE IN AMERICA: 

EXAMINING EFFECTIVE FEDERAL, STATE 

AND LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT STRATEGIES 

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2003

UNITED STATES SENATE, 

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY, 

Washington, D.C. 

The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:00 p.m., in Room 

SD–226, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Jeff Sessions presiding. 

Present: Senators Sessions, Feinstein, and Durbin. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JEFF SESSIONS, A U.S. 

SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF TEXAS 

Senator SESSIONS. Good afternoon. We’re glad you are here. It is 

a good looking panel out there. As a former United States Attorney, 

it’s the best looking panel I think I have ever seen, three out of the 

four of you there. 

I would like to welcome everyone to this important hearing on 

the issue of the problem of gang violence in America. Chairman 

Hatch very much wanted to chair this hearing but was not able to 

do so today. It was just unavoidable and he asked me to do so. I 

look forward to that. 

The problem of gang violence is not a new one, nor is it a problem limited only to the urban areas. Once thought to be only a 

problem of our Nation’s largest cities, gangs have invaded smaller 

communities. I have seen that personally in Alabama. 

Gangs in America are no longer the romanticized, movie-like 

characters depicted in ‘‘West Side Story’’. In reality, gangs now resemble organized crime syndicates, who readily engage in gun violence, illegal gun trafficking, illegal drug trafficking, and other serious crimes. 

All too often we read in the headlines about gruesome and tragic 

stories of rival gang members gunned down, with innocent bystanders, adults and teenagers and children caught in the cross fire of 

gangland shootings, and family members crying out in grief as they 

lose loved ones to the gang wars plaguing our communities. 

Recent studies confirm that gang violence is an increasing problem in all of our communities. Based on the latest available national youth gang survey, it is now estimated that there are more 

than 25,000 gangs and over 750,000 gang members who are active 

in more than 3,000 jurisdictions throughout the United States. 

2

Current surveys now show that gang activity is once again on the 

rise. 

While we are all committed to fighting the global war on terrorism, we must redouble our efforts to ensure that we devote sufficient resources to combatting this important national problem. 

I have been and remain committed to supporting Federal, State 

and local task forces as a model for effective gang enforcement. 

Working together, these task forces have demonstrated they can 

make a difference in the communities. We must act in a bipartisan 

fashion to ensure that adequate resources are available to all of our 

communities to expand and fund these critical task force operations. 

I am also mindful of the fact that, to be successful in reducing 

gang violence, we must address not only effective law enforcement 

strategies, but we also must take steps to protect our youth so that 

the next generation does not fall into the abyss of gang life which 

so often includes gun violence, drug trafficking, and other serious 

crimes. 

The young people of our cities need to be steered away from gang 

involvement. We need to ensure that there are sufficient tools to 

intervene in the lives of these troubled youth. Federal involvement 

is crucial to the control of gang violence and to prevent new gang 

members from replacing old gang members. 

I would just add parenthetically that I had the honor to represent Senator Hatch this morning before the National Conference 

of the Boys and Girls Clubs of America, which I think is one of the 

most cost-effective methods that this country has, probably the 

most. The National Center for Philanthropy has rated the Boys and 

Girls Club number one for youth activities and in helping youth for 

the ninth consecutive year. But there are programs like that that 

are important, that are receiving both local support and are receiving support from the Federal Government. 

So we must take a proactive approach to solving this problem. 

We need to educate ourselves and redouble our efforts to fight gang 

violence. If we really want to reduce gang violence, we need to ensure that law enforcement has adequate resources and legal tools, 

and that our communities have the ability to implement proven 

intervention and prevention strategies so that gang members who 

are removed from the community are not simply replaced by the 

next generation of new gang members. 

So I want to take a few moments here to express my appreciation 

for Senator Feinstein. She has worked with Senator Hatch and I 

in the past on gang legislation, and I expect she will be able to join 

us later on today. 

So, without further ado, I would be delighted to hear from our 

panelists. I believe there is much that we can do to deal with this 

problem. I would like very much to hear from you, your ideas and 

suggestions on the current situation on the streets of America. 

Senator Feinstein, it’s good to see you. I just made reference to 

your interest in this issue for a number of years. I was just going 

to the panel, but now I would be delighted if you would like to 

make some comments before we do that. 

3

STATEMENT OF HON. DIANNE FEINSTEIN, A U.S. SENATOR 

FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA 

Senator FEINSTEIN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

I would really like to make some comments. I would like to 

thank Chairman Hatch for holding this hearing, and you for 

chairing it. I understand the Chairman had a small accident and 

hopefully he’s fine. 

In 1996, Chairman Hatch was good enough to join me in my efforts to address this problem through legislation. In that year we 

introduced our first bill, in April, and we have been trying to get 

at this ever since. We have introduced legislation in each of the 

last four Congresses—the 4th, the 5th, the 6th and the 7th. Our 

efforts have focused on targeting those who recruit and use minors 

in gang crimes, and those who travel in interstate commerce to further gang activity. 

We have also worked to provide for more cooperation between 

Federal and local officials, and to make it easier for prosecutors to 

go after gang members who commit serious or violent crimes on behalf of their gangs. 

Now, so far we have not succeeded. We did offer an anti gang 

amendment to the juvenile justice bill in the 106th Congress. That 

passed 96–3. The legislation never made it to the President’s desk 

for other reasons. So the problem has just gotten worse. 

For example, in 2002, there were over 650 homicides in Los Angeles in that year. Half of them were gang related. Homicides are 

up 11 percent over last year. And law enforcement believes that 

much of this increase is due to gang activity. There are more than 

100,000 gang members and associates in Los Angeles, and at least 

200 active gangs there. 

I am often struck by how vicious gang crimes can be and how 

damaging they are to their victims. I want to just give you a couple 

of examples. 

In 2000, gang members tried to rob a passerby with an assault 

weapon from their car. When the victim resisted, the gang shot the 

victim 17 times. Only two months before that, two rival gangs had 

a shootout in San Francisco’s Mission District and an innocent bystander was caught in the cross fire and shot through both legs. I 

mean, I have seen stories of weapons fired, bullets going through 

walls from gangs, killing children in their beds, killing a grandmother ironing at her ironing board. I walked around a block in 

Los Angeles where, in a two-week span, about seven people had 

been shot dead by gangs. 

The evolution of gangs is interesting. In 1980, there were gangs 

in 286 jurisdictions. Today, they’re in 1,500 jurisdictions throughout the United States. In 1980, there were about 2,000 gangs; 

today, there are 26,000 different gangs. In 1980, there were about 

100,000 gang members; today, there are more than 800,000 gang 

members in the United States. 

In addition, gangs have gone from relatively disorganized groups 

of street toughs to highly disciplined, hierarchical corporations, 

often encompassing numerous jurisdictions. That’s where we come 

in. 

For example, the Gangster Disciples has a chairman of the 

board, two boards of directors, one for prisons and one for streets, 

4

governors, regents, area coordinators, enforcers and ‘‘shorties’’, the 

youth who staff drug selling sites and help with drug dealers. 

For 1987 to 1994, this gang was responsible for killing more than 

200 people. One-half of their arrests were for drug offenses, and 

only one-third for nonlethal offenses. 

In 1996, the Gangster Disciples Nation and other Chicago based 

gangs were in 110 jurisdictions in 35 States. I am delighted the 

Senator from Illinois has just come in. Southern California based 

gangs are equally well dispersed. In 1994, gangs claiming affiliation with the Bloods or Crips, both of whom are based in southern 

California, were in 180 jurisdictions in 42 States. 

As a result of such dispersal, violent criminal gangs can be found 

today in rural areas. Washington State law enforcement has told 

us about one gang member they traced from Compton, CA to San 

Francisco, then to Portland, Seattle, Billings, and finally to Sioux 

Falls, SD. 

The Justice Department has found that from the seventies to the 

nineties, the number of small cities or towns—those with populations of less than 10,000—with gangs increased by 15 to 39 

times. This is a larger relative increase than for cities with populations larger than 10,000. 

Now, as they have increased, so have all forms of violence. I don’t 

want to take any more time, but I can go on with that. 

What I want to do—and I think Chairman Hatch has agreed—

is make it a Federal crime to recruit as juvenile into a gang that 

crosses State lines, that commits certain crimes, and subject that 

to a minimum sentence of three years—the recruitment of as juvenile to a gang. We have to stop this. The killings just can’t go on. 

They are wanton, they are evil. 

The two Williams sisters, great tennis stars, just had their halfsister slain in what looks like it might have some relationship to 

gang activity. It goes on and on and on. So I am hopeful that the 

Chairman and I will finally be able to move this bill. Our original 

bill established some racketeering statute predicates for gang 

crimes. I know the Chairman wants to go in a slightly different 

way now, which is fine with me. But I think we really need to get 

this bill moving and out. 

I thank you very much for the opportunity. 

Senator SESSIONS. Thank you, Senator Feinstein. You are knowledgeable and have been committed to that. 

Senator Durbin, you have a U.S. Attorney here, and if you have 

any opening comments, we would be glad to hear those. 

STATEMENT OF HON. RICHARD J. DURBIN, A U.S. SENATOR 

FROM THE STATE OF ILLINOIS 

Senator DURBIN. Thank you, Senator Sessions, and thank you for 

presiding over this hearing, and I am particularly honored that 

U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald of the Northern District of Illinois 

is here. My colleague, Senator Peter Fitzgerald, as they often say 

in the newspaper, ‘‘no relation,’’ appointed him as U.S. Attorney. 

He has done a terrific job, and I was happy to support his nomination. 

I am glad that we are going to broach this topic. 25 percent of 

gang members nationwide are in Los Angeles, LA County and ChiVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:46 Apr 30, 2004 Jkt 093250 PO 00000 Frm 00008 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 S:\GPO\HEARINGS\93250.TXT SJUD4 PsN: CMORC
5

cago. I am pleased that the two U.S. Attorneys from these areas 

are going to tell us about their strategies to deal with gang crime. 

Chicago is a great city. I am honored to represent it and glad every 

moment I spend there. It is heartbreaking when you look at the 

murder rate in this city, and particularly when you see the victims, 

kids, innocent kids caught in gang cross-fire, some kids mistakenly 

or for whatever reason drawn in to these gang battles, and it just 

breaks your heart to see it. Mayor Daley has been very responsive 

to this as has State’s Attorney Dick Devine and U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald. But I think we need to do more. 

We lost 650 people last year as victims of homicide in Chicago, 

three times the number of New York. It breaks my heart to say 

that, but it is a fact, and we have to deal with it squarely. 

There is an issue here that is part of this conversation that I 

hope to raise that some members do not want to talk about and 

that is, where are they getting the firearms they are using to kill 

other people? I think that has to be part of this conversation, and 

if we do not have an honest discussion about that, we are addressing only part of the problem. Let us be honest enough to address 

it completely. 

Thank you. 

Senator SESSIONS. We are pleased to have a panel today who can 

answer some of the questions raised for sure. We have two panels. 

Our first panel will have three United States Attorneys and the Assistant Director of the FBI. Mr. Patrick Fitzgerald is a United 

States Attorney from the Northern District of Illinois; Ms. Debra 

Yang is the United States Attorney for the Central District of California; and Mr. Christopher Christie is United States Attorney for 

the District of New Jersey. Mr. Grant Ashley is an Assistant Director of the FBI for the Criminal Investigative Division. All of these 

witnesses have extensive experience combating gang violence and 

will bring unique perspective to the problems. So if there are no 

further comments—

Senator FEINSTEIN. Mr. Chairman, would you just allow me to 

welcome Ms. Yang? 

Senator SESSIONS. Yes, please. 

Senator FEINSTEIN. I came in here very fast and did not realize 

that you were here. As you know, she is U.S. Attorney over a huge 

Los Angeles office, and I just want her to know how welcome she 

is. Thank you. 

Senator SESSIONS. Mr. Fitzgerald? 

STATEMENT OF PATRICK FITZGERALD, UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 

Mr. FITZGERALD. Thank you, Senator. Good afternoon. My name 

is Pat Fitzgerald, and I am the United States Attorney for the 

Northern District of Illinois. It is truly an honor to appear before 

this Committee and I am very gratified that we are having this 

hearing on this particular problem. 

I think when you look at the problem that plagues America these 

days of violence, but particularly urban violence, both in cities as 

large as Chicago and in smaller urban areas, we have to recognize 

that the problem of violence has three different legs: gangs, drugs 

6

and guns, and often we do not pay enough attention to that leg of 

the problem that consists of gangs. 

I will briefly talk about some statistics. Senator Durbin already 

mentioned that we have a homicide rate in Chicago last year three 

times the per capita rate of New York, and of those homicides, so 

far this year it is estimated that 45 percent are gang related. Last 

year it was estimated that 60 percent were gang related. That is 

a serious problem. 

The chilling statistic made real is to learn that it has been estimated that every two weeks a Chicago Public School student loses 

his life or her life to gun violence, and since school opened several 

students have been shot. Yesterday a 15-year-old was killed in Chicago as a result of that violence. 

I think if we look at the statistics, Senator Feinstein mentioned 

the Gangster Disciples. One chilling fact is to look back that in 

1995 during a Federal search of the Gangster Disciples, a membership list was recovered of employees that listed 7,000 people working for the Gangster Disciples, selling drugs, almost half the size 

of the Chicago Police Department. That puts in perspective precisely what Senator Sessions said. This is not about West Side 

Story. This is an organized crime syndicate that is very well organized and very violent. 

The other chilling fact is to look at how gangs can corrupt. Just 

a few weeks ago we arrested several prison officers in an Illinois 

jail, one of whom was a gang member himself, who was bringing 

drugs in to 9 different gang members in jail, 6 of whom had been 

convicted of murder. We have prosecuted police officers who were 

working with other police officers to steal drugs from gangs and 

sell them. Gangs are extensive, they are violent and they corrupt. 

In looking at the problem of violence we recognize that every 

time we went after the problem of guns we ended up looking at 

gangs as well. We recognize that when we went after the problem 

of drugs, we looked at gangs as well. We recognize we also have 

to focus on gangs as gangs. 

In my own office we have restructured the Narcotics Section to 

become the Narcotics and Gangs Section. Half the attorneys work 

with agents and police to work on national and international cartels. The other half work on gang cases. But we recognize they run 

into each other all the time because the gangs are the source of 

supply for those cartels. 

One thing we have done is we have recognized that this has to 

be a bipartisan Federal, State and local joint effort. We are working extremely well with the State’s Attorney’s Offices in Illinois, 

particularly Dick Devine, the Cook County State’s Attorney. We are 

working well with the Federal agencies and the local agencies to 

partner together. We form gang strategy teams to make sure we 

share information that the FBI develops as part of its investigations, that DEA develops, that ATF develops and the local police, 

to make sure we are doing the best we can with our resources to 

focus on those gangs and the leadership of those gangs. 

We are taking advantage of the Project Safe Neighborhoods’ effort against guns to go after the worst offenders in particular districts, with special emphasis on four districts in Chicago that seem 

to be the most violent. We are sitting down jointly with State prosVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:46 Apr 30, 2004 Jkt 093250 PO 00000 Frm 00010 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 S:\GPO\HEARINGS\93250.TXT SJUD4 PsN: CMORC
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ecutors, the Chicago Police Department and ATF and saying, ‘‘Who 

are the worst offenders most likely to kill,’’ and selecting them for 

Federal prosecution as a joint decision in making sure that we send 

those people away for the harsher sentences. 

We also recognize that half the battle is to deter people from 

joining gangs and carrying guns. So we are having parolee forums, 

where we meet with parolees as they are released from prison, 30 

at a time, and present them with two stark images, what will happen to them if we catch them breaking the law and carrying a gun 

and what the alternatives are. 

We recognize that the effort has to be joint. We cannot do it 

alone and the State and local authorities cannot do it alone, and 

it is a true partnership. It is not about seeing who gets credit and 

what court the case is prosecuted in. The mandate is to get results. 

I think the most important thing we can do is to make sure we 

keep up that fight on a bipartisan, Federal, State and local effort 

as a joint effort, and recognize that gangs are at the core of the 

problem, and send the message out that if people participate in 

gangs they will get our attention and that we will bring prosecutive 

efforts. 

The message of hope that we can get from some examples besides the rate of violence in Chicago is what we saw in Joliet, another city in my district, where the FBI went after some gang 

members and went after particular offenders associated with gangs 

a couple of years ago. As a result of those prosecutions, we saw the 

rate of shootings drop 40 percent and murders drop 50 percent. We 

saw that in another city, another area in the district in Aurora. So 

we recognize that there is hope, that by being smart and by focusing our efforts correctly and working together, we can see results 

as to what is an extremely vexing problem that plagues my district 

but really the whole country. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Fitzgerald appears as a submission for the record.] 

Senator SESSIONS. Thank you, Mr. Fitzgerald. I would just add 

that I definitely agree that well-applied law enforcement can make 

communities safer. At one point we got to the view somehow that 

nothing we did made any difference, but it does made a difference. 

It is done in New York and Boston, and some Alabama areas I 

know about it made a difference, and I appreciate your leadership. 

U.S. Attorney Yang. 

STATEMENT OF DEBRA W. YANG, UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, 

CENTRAL DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 

Ms. YANG. Thank you, Chairman, and thank you for having us 

here today, and other members of the Subcommittee. 

I am Debra Yang, and I am the United States Attorney in Los 

Angeles. I cover the Central District of California which encompasses about 17 million people. 

I have to say that I am extremely gratified that we are discussing this subject today. On a personal note, as a young girl 

growing up in Chinatown I was surrounded by Asian gangs and always told to stay away from a particular group called the Hua 

8

Ch’iao, who are still currently in existence, if not even stronger 

now. And when I moved on to junior high school there were gangs 

there by the name of avenues, Frogtown, Tuners, that I also tried 

to stay away from, who are still in existence and part of the focus 

of what we do now in my office. So it is a longstanding problem 

that we definitely need to address. 

I will say that violent crime and narcotics distribution by street 

gangs has been a significant problem in the Central District. As 

Senator Feinstein alluded to earlier, the statistics are staggering. 

In Los Angeles County alone conservative estimates put street 

gangs at about 1,000. This is just in Los Angeles County. The number of individual gang members in those street gangs at 150,000. 

In addition, there is approximately another 20,000 gang members 

in Orange County, Ventura and San Bernardino Counties, which 

are in my district. I will say that gangs are the driving force behind the homicide rate in my district, and that fully half of all gang 

members in the District are believed to participate in violence connected to the distribution of narcotics. Indeed, the homicide rate in 

Los Angeles was probably one of the highest in the country last 

year. 

Los Angeles is known as what is called a source city. We export 

gang members, violent gang members, across the country, across 

State lines. Members and cliques of the Los Angeles-based 18th 

Street Gang have migrated outside of California into the southwest 

border up into the Pacific Northwest, out to New Jersey, Mexico, 

El Salvador. There is a current case pending right now in Tennessee. We have also tracked Los Angeles-based gang members to 

Indianapolis, Oklahoma, Omaha, Raleigh and St. Louis, and this 

only arises out of a few cases that are going on in the office right 

now. 

My district has focused on the investigation and prosecutions of 

gangs and gang members since 1992. It essentially arose out of the 

wake of the Los Angeles riots. The intense focus has continued 

unabated. What we have done is we have worked in a collaborative 

manner, because in order for us to respond to the problem on a 

Federal level, we have to have the intelligence that is gained on 

the street side through the local law enforcement officers. As a result I have sought to make our district a leader in targeting criminal street gangs as criminal enterprises, and focusing on the gang 

leaders where appropriate, while at the same time continuing to 

target gang individuals, the so-called soldiers for Federal crimes 

and criminal conspiracies where appropriate. 

We use such Federal legislation such as RICO, VICAR, money 

laundering statutes and the more traditional narcotics statutes and 

firearms statutes to aid us in that regard. In essence we try to 

focus on what I call the big Federal cases, where we can strike to 

the heart of a gang and try to take out the entire entity as opposed 

to just picking off individuals and not really getting to the root of 

the problem. 

A prime example of our long-term investigation and prosecution 

strategy for organized street crimes was recently in the case of the 

18th Street Gang and against the Mexican Mafia. This investigation spanned four years from beginning to end and led to the convictions of more than 75 Mexican Mafia members and 18th Street 

9

Gang leaders. The Mexican Mafia is a hispanic street gang which 

is believed to have upwards of 10,000 members in California as 

well as in Mexico and El Salvador. During that time it took an arsenal of resources, both Federal and local, to put that case together. A total of 19 search warrants were executed during that 

time, a total of 26 defendants were ultimately charged, and all 

were convicted. 

This case in particular marked the first time that my district 

used the RICO statute against a street gang, and a street gang is 

vastly different from a prison gang, much more loosely organized, 

not as hierarchical, much more fluid, because they pick up with 

other crews from other neighborhoods. This was something that 

took a tremendous amount of resources. We ultimately were able 

to get about $2 million in narcotics proceeds which were forfeited 

to the Government, and most importantly, the efforts had an extremely positive effect on the quality of life in the MacArthur Park 

District of California. For those of you who are not from California, 

it is right on the Wilshire Corridor. It is in the center of California, 

right next to the LA County Museum of Art, right next to the Otis 

School of Design, right in the heart of downtown. This two-mile radius has managed to sort of have a stronghold. It is also known as 

the Rampart area, and we were able to sort of clean that up and 

improve the quality of life there. 

I want to say that one of the other things that we have managed 

to do is sort of work hand-in-hand with the FBI, ATF. We currently 

have an ACES program going on where there are 60 agents who 

have been deployed to our jurisdiction for a period of 6 months. 

DEA’s Met team, where they go in and they focus on certain areas 

where the homicide rate has been extremely high and try to get to 

the root of the problem, and as we work in conjunction with them, 

that is how we essentially try to eradicate some of the problems 

that we see. 

Thank you, Senators. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Yang appears as a submission 

for the record.] 

Senator SESSIONS. Very well said, and that is impressive. I have 

no doubt that if you maintain that pressure in targeted areas, you 

will see a reduction in rime in those areas. 

Mr. Christie.

STATEMENT OF CHRISTOPHER J. CHRISTIE, UNITED STATES 

ATTORNEY, DISTRICT OF NEW JERSEY, NEWARK, NEW JERSEY 

Mr. CHRISTIE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee. It is an honor for me to appear today before the Committee 

along with my colleagues from Chicago and Los Angeles, and I 

think it shows what a national problem this is, that you have 

someone here from New Jersey, someone from the midwest in Chicago, and someone from the West Coast in Los Angeles. This problem is now a national problem and it is getting worse. 

In May of 2002, early in my term, in response to a steadily escalating gang problem in New Jersey, we created a violent crime unit 

within the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and they were to target street 

gangs, violent narcotic enterprises and firearms trafficking networks. We have 10 experienced Federal prosecutors in my office 

10

that are assigned to this unit and are working on fighting this new 

brand of organized crime. 

As Debra said very well, these gangs are structured. They are sophisticated criminal organizations. In New Jersey they have a clear 

hierarchy in their decision making and in distributing the criminal 

proceeds among the gang members. So this sophistication is now 

allowing them to have considerably longer life spans than gangs 

were maybe 20 years ago. These gangs operate like big businesses, 

and albeit they are businesses that are unrestricted by any sense 

of right and wrong, but they are operating like businesses. 

They typically work in the narcotic drug market and they work 

to build and expand that territory and to exploit it. We have one 

particular gang that I will talk about in a moment that was bringing in proceeds of nearly a million dollars a week in the northern 

part of New Jersey from heroin trafficking. We have to though, I 

think, work with our local and State partners, and one case that 

we worked on in particular was regarding the Latin Kings, which 

is a national gang. We were able to work with our partners in the 

State Police in New Jersey and the State Attorney General’s Office, 

to bring down 53 members of the leadership of the Latin Kings, 

from the person who was in charge of the Latin Kings in New Jersey, on down through the leadership. This leadership in the Latin 

Kings in particular is male and female, and these people were 

brought down and arrested. The charges were split up between 

some being prosecuted by my office, some by the State Attorney 

General and some by local county prosecutors. We have tried to use 

that as a model to be able to bring other large street gangs under 

control in our district. 

We have also used Project Safe Neighborhoods and its emphasis 

on trying to get guns off the streets of our cities, along with the 

FBI and the DEA and ATF and local authorities to try to work together to get the guns off the streets. It is, as Pat said I think, we 

have to talk about those issues. Those things coalesce, the guns, 

drugs and the gangs. That is their currency that they deal in. The 

other currency that they deal in is something that Senator Feinstein pointed out, which is the recruiting of juveniles. These juveniles are their currency. This is what they deal in. They are the 

most expendable to them. They are the ones most likely to be arrested by local law enforcement authorities because they are the 

soldiers on the street, and they do not include them in the hierarchy of the gang so that they cannot give any information to law 

enforcement that would harm the leaders of the gang and the leaders of the gang see them as expendable, both in terms of them 

being brought to jail or being killed on the streets. 

We have a set of the Bloods in New Jersey called the Double ‘‘ii’’ 

set that comes this way. The Bloods began in Inglewood, California. 

They take the ‘‘I’’ from Inglewood, California and since their home 

is in East Orange, New Jersey, which they refer to as Ill-Town, 

that is how they get the Double ‘‘ii’’ set of the Bloods. We have been 

working with our PSN research partner, which in New Jersey is 

Rutgers University, and identified the Double ‘‘ii’’ set of the Bloods 

as the most violent gang in the State of New Jersey, and so we 

have begun to focus our resources on them. We have charged now 

seven members and associates of this gang with drug conspiracy 

11

and using firearms in furtherance of drug trafficking. It is a very 

important case for us. 

One anecdote that you might find interesting. They have weekly 

gang meetings, and the gang members come to those meetings, and 

all of them are required to contribute $31 at every meeting. This 

goes into a fund for bail money and to buy firearms. When new 

members are initiated or ‘‘coming home,’’ as they call it, to the 

gang, you come to this meeting and you are beaten by gang members for 31 seconds, and sometimes for several 31-second rounds. 

So why the number 31? Because the Bloods’ code of conduct has 31 

rules and rule 31 is ‘‘I will have love for my Bloods.’’ The payment 

of the $31 is a token of the loyalty oath, and the 31-second beating 

reinforces the discipline of the code of conduct. That is the way 

they enforce their rules. 

These people also traffic in guns and briefly, I think it is important, and we have started to focus in New Jersey because we have 

particularly tough gun laws, State gun laws in New Jersey. The 

trafficking that is coming into New Jersey in guns is a particular 

problem, and we have begun to work with ATF to target out-ofstate gun dealers who enable a pipeline of weapons into New Jersey, to flow through gangs like the Bloods. We have recently had 

a case where Federal agents intervened and cut off the gun supply 

from another state and the gang had sought to begun to supply 

other neighborhood gangs, getting into that business to make 

money. 

They work in a very organized, hierarchical way and a very violent way. We are working in New Jersey to try to make sure that 

we focus on those bigger problems and work with local law enforcement. 

I thank you for the time. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Christie appears as a submission 

for the record.] 

Senator SESSIONS. Thank you. 

Mr. Grant Ashley, Assistant Director of the FBI, Criminal Investigative Division. 

STATEMENT OF GRANT D. ASHLEY, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, 

FBI, CRIMINAL INVESTIGATIVE DIVISION, WASHINGTON, D.C. 

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

Committee. I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you regarding 

this important problem, and I thank you for your support regarding 

gang investigations. I also want to thank the United States Attorneys who are partners in this very important effort, and without 

them, we would not be able to do the things that we do. 

I am going to speak from a national perspective from the investigative side, and I am currently responsible for the criminal investigations conducted by the FBI. As a native son of Los Angeles, I 

assisted in setting up the early gang investigations in the late 80’s 

there, and I supervised violent crimes in Chicago for almost 6 

years. I am very familiar with the problem both from a personal 

as well as a national perspective, as is my brother who is a lieutenant in the LAPD, and my sister, who is a judge in California. Okay, 

I am done with the family stuff. 

12

On January 9th of 1992, the FBI announced the Safe Streets Violent Crimes Initiative. This initiative was designed to allow our 

local Special Agents in Charge of each FBI office to develop longterm and proactive task forces with their partner police agencies 

and other Federal agencies. They focused on violent gangs, other 

crimes of violence, and the apprehension of violent fugitives. Since 

1992 these task forces have successfully aligned FBI agents with 

their local law enforcement counterparts, as well as the other Federal law enforcement, and our prosecutive partners to combat violent gangs. Task forces bring together all of these agencies in a 

force multiplier concept, and allows the unique expertise of each of 

the participating agencies to be deployed in a very efficient manner. 

This approach also yields information sharing among the agencies. The task forces are very effective. They are efficient, and they 

are economical. Where joint goals are met, they bring together the 

investigative as well as the patrol and other information, and, they 

leverage components of the participants. To focus the task force efforts, the FBI developed a national violent crime strategy. There is 

a national strategy for organized drug investigations, as well as a 

national gang strategy. These serve as the framework for combating violence in America, and each of these strategies uses a 

component of the Safe Streets Task Force with a comprehensive 

plan. 

The basic missions of the task forces, Safe Street Task Forces, 

are to focus primarily upon street gang and drug-related violence, 

address specific violent crime problems, and seek the most significant violent crime fugitives through teaming of Federal, State and 

local law enforcement officers with prosecutors, to conduct longterm proactive investigations, utilizing sophisticated techniques as 

necessary. 

The Violent Gang Task Forces target the violent gangs and their 

associates responsible for their criminal activity. Additionally, they 

place a specific emphasis on the identification of the major violent 

street gangs, and the enterprises, who pose significant threats to 

our society. 

The FBI is identifying and targeting these gangs as high priorities by utilizing our enterprise theory investigation. 

The Major Theft and Transportation Crimes Task Forces target 

violent, major theft groups that include armed hijackings, automobile hijackings, and major jewelry rings. 

The Violent Crime Task Forces address specific crime problems, 

including bank robbery, armed robbery, kidnapping, extortion, 

murder for hire, firearms violations, RICO, and other violent offenses that fall within the Interstate Transportation in Aid of 

Racketeering and the Hobbs Act statutes. 

The Fugitive Task Forces are responsible for locating and apprehending the most violent Federal and State fugitives. As part of 

the Safe Streets Violent Crime Initiative to reduce violent crime by 

arresting felons fleeing jurisdiction, these task forces were created 

to specifically apprehend these fugitives. They utilize the Federal 

Unlawful Flight to Avoid Prosecution statute. 

It should by noted that the task forces focused on gangs are applying investigative techniques and strategies which the FBI has 

13

successfully used to target traditional organized crime, including 

the development of an intelligence base, undercover operations, and 

the use of various electronic surveillance techniques. These task 

forces pursue the gangs through sustained, proactive, multi-divisional, coordinated investigations using RICO and Continuing 

Criminal Enterprise statutes. In many cities, task forces are targeting individuals or groups associated with the Bloods, Crips, 

Black Gangster Disciples Nation, the MS13, Almighty Latin Kings 

Nation, Jamaican Posses, and other violent gangs, along with outlaw motorcycle and prison gangs. By applying the same methods 

used in the successful war on traditional organized crime, the task 

forces are developing racketeering and continue enterprise cases to 

remove the leadership and hopefully the most dangerous members 

of our society. 

Along with gang investigations, the investigation of other violent 

crimes of kidnapping, bank robberies, and drug-related murders, as 

well as an intensified focus on the apprehension of dangerous fugitives, continues to be a primary purpose for safe streets task forces. 

There are approximately 75 FBI-led Safe Street Task Forces focused primarily upon gangs, another 50 Safe Street Task Forces focused specifically on violent crimes and fugitives, that I mentioned, 

and another 15 task forces directed at major theft and transportation crime matters. We have these in most of the States. The 

Safe Streets Task Forces employed 566 agents, 63 other Federal 

agents, and 899 local and State law enforcement officies in fiscal 

year 2003. 

The task forces will significantly support the FBI’s current Violent Cities Initiative that is intended to reduce gang-related crimes 

of homicide, robbery, and aggravated assault in targeted cities of 

St. Louis, Atlanta, Detroit, Baltimore, Washington, Newark, Memphis, New Orleans, Chicago, Kansas City, Los Angeles, and New 

York. Additionally, the task forces will support the other FBI initiatives of bank robbery, child prostitution, and violent fugitives, in 

other cities. 

The task force concept increases the effectiveness and productivity of limited personnel and logistical resources; it avoids duplication of investigations and the consequent wasteful expenditure of 

resources in matters of concurrent jurisdiction, while expanding the 

cooperation and communication among the Federal, State, and 

local law enforcement agencies. 

The task forces allow the application of sophisticated investigative techniques normally associated with the complex organized 

crime and racketeering investigations. These techniques are frequently not available to local police agencies. 

Community outreach is another portion of the—

Senator SESSIONS. Mr. Ashley, if you could wrap up, if you can. 

Mr. ASHLEY. Can I hit funding? 

Senator SESSIONS. Please, go ahead. It is just we are going to be 

interrupted by a series of votes, and it is just going to be difficult. 

Mr. ASHLEY. I am sorry. All right. Beginning in 1996, Congress provided a recurring $5 million to 

the FBI. This money was under the Violent Crimes Reduction Program. It has been sunsetted. Essentially our costs run over $10 

million a year, and with the $5 million that has been employed to 

14

our base, we are going to run approximately $5 million shortages 

for the overtime that covers the police officers that are participants 

on these task forces. 

Thank you for your time. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Ashley appears as a submission 

for the record.] 

Senator SESSIONS. Very good. Well, that was a good series of 

statements, and I would just like to ask a couple of quick questions. If all of you would share in this answer, I would appreciate 

it. 

What are the ages of the gang members you are seeing? How 

young are they and how old are they running nowadays? And has 

that been a change in the last 15 or 20 years? Mr. Fitzgerald, do 

you want to guess on that? 

Mr. FITZGERALD. Senator, the gang members are very young. 

When you say the ones we see, the ones we prosecute are the 

adults because it is very difficult in the Federal system to prosecute juveniles, which feeds into what Senator Feinstein said about 

making sure we send a message to the leadership that they should 

understand that there is a penalty for employing juveniles. Right 

now juveniles are an asset that they figure they can use, they are 

expendable, and they won’t be prosecuted. 

If the leadership understands that juveniles are a liability and 

that the leadership of the gang, which is extremely rational, will 

pay a price for that, it would make a difference. But we see lots 

of young gang members, but we prosecute the adults. 

Senator SESSIONS. Ms. Yang? 

Ms. YANG. I was just going to add, Senator, that you will see that 

same thing with respect to using juveniles for some of the more 

heinous crimes in actually all of the different racial groups of 

gangs. You see it in the Asian gangs, the Hispanics, blacks, and 

also in some of the Aryan Brotherhood cases. 

Senator SESSIONS. So the leaders in the gangs, are they sometimes 25 or 30? Or are they 19 or 20? How does it shake out, in 

your best judgment? Or is it different per gang? 

Ms. YANG. Generally for us, with, I guess, the core gangs that 

I am talking about in Los Angeles City itself, if you are upwards 

of 25, around there, between 20 and 25, you are kind of an old guy. 

You are an OG, an old gangster. They are much younger than that, 

probably—you know, for what we do, as Mr. Fitzgerald said, everyone we see is 18 or older, essentially, but they are all hovering in 

that younger—older teen, young 20s age. But there are many others that are part of the gangs that we may not prosecute that we 

see as part of our investigation. Gang membership sometimes begins at birth. You are born into a gang. Many of the gangs are on 

their fourth or fifth generation of family members. The entity that 

I mentioned to you earlier, Frogtown, is now on their fifth generation of gang membership. 

So it starts very early. It starts in many different ways. The 

young teens are asked to sort of do younger types of crimes, running around, picking things up, and then as you get a little into 

the mid-teens is when it starts to step up and get a little bit more 

serious. And, of course, I am speaking in a generalized manner, but 

that is essentially what we have seen. 

15

Senator SESSIONS. Mr. Christie, will you comment on that? 

Mr. CHRISTIE. Yes, we will see in New Jersey, we have seen children as young as 7 and 8 years old doing tasks for gangs, whether 

that is running drugs, being couriers on the streets for some of 

these violent street gangs. And I think Debra is correct that if you 

get to be into your 20s, you are a very old gang member in New 

Jersey. Most of the time you will see gang members who are dying 

in their teens and engaged in violent acts well before they are the 

age of majority, and turning those violent acts against both younger and older people in the community. So the ages can range as low 

as 7 or 8 years old that we have seen, and as Debra said, if you 

get to be in your 20s, you are both fortunate that you have not 

been a victim of violence, and you are a gray hair, so to speak, in 

the gang world. It is a problem of—as Pat said, that is the currency. These young people are the currency. 

Senator SESSIONS. Mr. Ashley, have you got any thoughts to add? 

Mr. ASHLEY. That is exactly what we are seeing. 

Senator SESSIONS. To what extent do people in their 20s lead—

I guess you have answered that question. There are people in their 

20s that are leaders, but by the mid-20s, they are almost always 

gone and very few gang leaders would reach 30 years of age, for 

example. Any comment on that? I am just curious about how it 

looks out there. 

Mr. FITZGERALD. Senator, I took a peek at a list of birth dates 

for a number of gang dealers we have charged in the last couple 

years, and if there was a bell curve, they were all born in the 

1970s, and outliers are in the 1980s and some were born in the 

1960s and one fellow from 1959 creeped in there somehow. But I 

think they are mostly in their 20s, but they are still out there. 

There are some that still make it into their 30s, and they are likely 

to be more sophisticated and more savvy and more insulated. 

Ms. YANG. I was just going to add that aside from opting out because you are no longer a part of this earth, they still participate 

in the gangs. It may be a more sort of emeritus type of role. I hate 

to use that term in this context, but in that capacity, they still participate. There is a situation in Los Angeles right now where there 

is a 42-year-old gang member. He participates by essentially victimizing 7- and 8-year-olds, sodomizing them, photographing that, 

and then using that as blackmail, threatening to show their mothers the pictures, and then getting them to run crimes on behalf of 

the gang. 

Senator SESSIONS. All right. We are going to have a difficult 

time. I am just very distressed that the votes are the way they are. 

I understand that there are going to be six votes back to back in 

a minute. I will talk with Senator Feinstein and Senator Durbin, 

but I am not sure with that many votes it is feasible to try to come 

back and forth. But I would suggest we go as long as we can, and 

then we may have to recess until we can finish. 

Senator Feinstein? 

Senator FEINSTEIN. Thank you very much. 

I thought the testimony was very interesting, but one of the 

things that cropped up—and I think only Ms. Yang mentioned the 

use of RICO statutes. And if you think about it, the gang movement today is growing robustly. It is a bigger criminal enterprise 

16

than Mafia-type crime ever really was in the United States, and it 

is growing. 

Would it be helpful if there were a new gang statute with specific 

gang crimes as predicates along the line of RICO but a different 

statute? And the crimes would be murder, kidnapping, sexual assault, maiming, assault with a deadly weapon, firearms offenses, 

gambling, obstruction of justice, tampering with a witness, burglary, distribution of controlled substances, use and distribution of 

explosive materials, and money laundering. Do you need a new 

gang statute along those lines? Or is it possible to use RICO effectively in this area? 

Ms. YANG. Senator, I am not sure that I can answer that sort of 

without giving it a little bit more thought and taking a look at that 

as compared to RICO and the VICAR statute. VICAR we use a lot 

because we get a significant penalty when we can’t prove up the 

RICO case because it is a little more difficult. But there is one 

thing here that follows through that has always been problematic 

for us, and that is for us to prove the interstate nexus, the interstate commerce aspect, because it is very difficult in court for us 

to have to prove up how this gang crime is related to some sort of 

interstate nexus. And part of that is in the drafting of the way that 

some of the statutes have done. Part of that is in the court’s interpretation of what that language means. But that has always been 

very difficult for us, so in any RICO case, we end up having to litigate the whole interstate commerce aspect, and whether or not, you 

know, this gang is doing something that is affecting interstate commerce or whether or not the particular predicate crime really affects interstate commerce. And as you know, under RICO we have 

to prove multiple-predicate crimes. 

That has been the thing that has actually been the most difficult 

for us in Los Angeles. So without answering your question directly, 

that is something—

Senator FEINSTEIN. So what would be your suggestion? I mean, 

one of the things we know is that these gangs are interstate, that 

they travel interstate, that they move firearms interstate, they 

move narcotics interstate. So the question is, I guess, how you draft 

a statute that deals with that. Their spread is interstate. 

Ms. YANG. Right. Perhaps using language that is a little more 

open and broad so that—and I do not have any of the language 

particularly before me, but oftentimes, you know, there is particular language that says, you know, a facility of interstate commerce, or something like that. 

Senator FEINSTEIN. Would you be willing to take a look at our 

statute and see if you can make any recommendations? 

Ms. YANG. Absolutely, Senator. Actually, I think—is it Guillermo 

Gonzalez from your office? 

Senator FEINSTEIN. Yes. 

Ms. YANG. I met him recently, and he asked me to take a look 

at it. I did not have time because of some other things, but I am 

more than happy to do that. 

Senator FEINSTEIN. Thank you. 

Anybody else have comments on this subject of what we could do 

to give you the tool that you need to prove the interstate connections to apply the Federal law? 

17

Mr. CHRISTIE. Senator, I think Debra summarized it really well. 

Whether you are using RICO or whether a new statute was developed along the lines that you are discussing, that is always the biggest challenge for us as Federal prosecutors in these gang cases, 

because while you are correct that there are many different interstate aspects to what they are doing, frequently, like within the II 

Set of the Bloods that I was discussing in my testimony, they also 

are very local. And so, you know, you have to be—in New Jersey, 

it is sometimes a bit easier because we have a lot of travel between 

northern New Jersey and New York and southern New Jersey and 

Philadelphia, and so a lot of that, we have maybe a bit of an easier 

time. But I think what Debra suggested in terms of the language 

in any statute that tries to get at this problem, being a little more 

open, a little broader for us to give us an opportunity to get into 

it, whether it is RICO or whether it is a new statute as you describe, I think that is really the key for us as Federal prosecutors. 

Senator FEINSTEIN. Mr. Fitzgerald? 

Mr. FITZGERALD. And I would add one other thought. Currently 

we use RICO a lot to go after gangs. We also use the drug statutes 

often because most gangs are dealing drugs. When we catch them 

doing drugs, we are going to charge them under the drug laws, 

which are much simpler and have heavy penalties. 

I think if we would look into making a statute or amend 521 to 

make it more useful, because prosecutors look at what do I get and 

what do I have to prove out of all this, and RICO wins or the drug 

laws win, we should focus on two things: one would be to focus on 

those gang members who we cannot tie directly to drug trafficking, 

even though we know the gangs themselves are trafficking drugs, 

but tie to violence, because often the penalties for violence are less 

than drugs, so focusing on that. And, secondly, focusing on the 

gang leadership, because often you cannot tie the gang leaders directly into drug trafficking. 

Those are the things we would look at because, otherwise, where 

we do find drugs, we use the drug laws. And when it gets more 

complicated, we use RICO. 

Senator FEINSTEIN. Would you all support the part of the statute 

which I think is really new and rather consequential, and that is, 

a mandatory minimum of at least 3 years to anyone that recruits 

a youngster to go into one of these gangs? 

Mr. FITZGERALD. Without addressing a particular penalty, not 

having seen the provision, what I would suggest is if we are going 

to focus on recruitment, that we not limit it to the person who recruits someone into a gang, because a person could be the recruiter 

and someone else can employ that juvenile, someone else can manage and supervise. So whether it is changing that statute or whether making a Sentencing Guideline provision or an enhancement 

penalty, the way 924(c) is for guns, making anyone who recruits, 

hires, employs, or supervises a juvenile pay some price I think 

would be important. 

Senator FEINSTEIN. Thank you. 

Mr. CHRISTIE. Senator, I would really agree with Pat, because 

what we want to try to do is get up into the leadership of these 

gangs, and oftentimes it is very difficult for us to get our way in 

and up to the top. But if that type of recruitment statute that you 

18

were discussing was broadened to cover the areas that Pat just 

enumerated, that would be an extraordinary tool for us to be able 

to get at the leadership. Let the locals handle some of the street 

area stuff that they can handle. We can then use the Federal resources along with them to get up into the leadership. That would 

be very helpful. 

Senator FEINSTEIN. Will you all work with us on the drafting of 

that part of it so we are sure we have it right? 

Mr. FITZGERALD. We would be delighted to participate. 

Senator FEINSTEIN. Okay. 

Mr. CHRISTIE. Absolutely. 

Senator FEINSTEIN. Thank you. Those are my questions. Thank 

you. 

Senator SESSIONS. Thank you. Very thoughtful. 

Senator Durbin, I think we will let you finish up, and then we 

have probably got to get to our vote. 

Senator DURBIN. I will try to take less than the 5 minutes, and 

I just want to ask one question. Pat Fitzgerald talked about gangs, 

drugs, guns. I want to focus on guns for just a minute. 

I took a look at some of the statistics on prosecutions for gun 

trafficking, which I think has to be an important part of this conversation, and I was concerned with what I learned. The period 

from October 1, 1999, to September 30, 2002, a 3-year period of 

time, in New York State, 105 prosecutions for gun trafficking; in 

Illinois, 16; in the States of Indiana and Mississippi, 5 and 3. And 

the reason I raise those States is that Indiana and Mississippi are 

the source States for more crime guns in Illinois than any other 

States because of their lax gun laws and because of the proximity 

of Indiana. 

Can you explain to me why as the murder rate goes up and the 

gang activity goes up, the prosecutions for gun trafficking are so 

low? 

Mr. FITZGERALD. I cannot explain the statistical numbers. I can 

tell you we are focused on the gun trafficking. I was acutely aware 

and surprised to learn that Mississippi was the third largest source 

of supply State for illegal guns in Chicago. I can tell you we found 

that in Mississippi there is an area called Little Chicago where 

they have gangs that mirror the Chicago gangs that were the 

source of supply. 

I can tell you we prosecuted the gun shop in Mississippi that was 

illegally supplying guns to the gangs last year in Chicago and took 

the owner of the gun shop before a Chicago jury, convicted him, 

and had him sentenced. 

I can also tell you that we sat down with our researcher, with 

ATF, with the Chicago Police Department, and we are focused specifically on where the guns are coming from, making sure they are 

traced, and seeing where they came from. And as a result, an ATF 

agent and one or two detectives from the Chicago Police Department were detailed to Mississippi. So the Chicago Police Department was actually recognizing the problem and sent manpower 

down there to figure out what we can do. 

So we are alert to the issue. We do recognize that we have got 

to go after sources of supply gun trafficking, and when we can find 

19

it and we look for it, we do prosecute, as we did with that gun shop 

owner from Mississippi convicted in Chicago last year. 

Senator DURBIN. I would like to follow through, because we are 

out of time, with written questions and I will get into the proposal 

by the administration for the destruction of NCIC’s records of firearm purchases. And I have a GAO report that suggests that that 

is going to make it more difficult for you to do your job, if you do 

not have the time to check the backgrounds of these guns, to run 

them and to see if there has been any violation. And I would like 

to figure out how that plays into all of our conversation about ending gang violence, too. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator SESSIONS. Thank you. 

The gun matters are important. I challenged the Attorney General and the FBI Director to prosecute guns, I believe, more aggressively than they have in the past when they were confirmed, and 

I recall that Attorney General Ashcroft said that there was, I believe, a 35-percent increase in guns prosecutions. 

Give me a quick yes or no on this. Are you receiving support for 

increased gun prosecutions in your office? And are you providing 

the leadership to increase gun prosecutions in your district? Do you 

have a thoughtful plan to do that? I will ask each of you three 

United States Attorneys that. 

Mr. FITZGERALD. Yes to both questions, and I can tell you I sit 

down once a month with a researcher at ATF, DEA, Chicago Police 

Department, and detectives and focus precisely on the issue of guns 

and people who possess them, and also send the message that we 

want to go after traffickers, for example, in that case in which we 

prosecuted the Mississippi gun owner in Chicago. It is clear to me 

that we have to choke off the source of supply of illegal guns. 

Senator SESSIONS. Great prosecution, that is exactly what needs 

to be done, in my view. 

Ms. Yang? 

Ms. YANG. Yes, sir. The answer is yes and yes again. One of the 

things that we are doing through the Project Safe Neighborhoods 

Program is that we sit down with LAPD Chief Bratton, we sit 

down with the sheriffs, all the locals, ATF, DEA, the FBI, and we 

sort of figure out what we can do with the gang cases. 

In our particular district, we have a brand-new Ballistics Tracing 

Center that ATF has put up where essentially each bullet that is 

shot, we can determine which gun it is traced to, and that allows 

us to sort of get some history on the gun and how it is moving from 

one individual to another or one gang or where it is going to try 

to get to that. 

Senator SESSIONS. Good. 

Mr. CHRISTIE. Senator, yes to both questions. In New Jersey, 

what I decided to do in our district was to set up the separate violent crime unit to focus just on guns and gangs. We have ten experienced Assistant U.S. Attorneys who are providing the leadership 

in the district through Project Safe Neighborhoods to coordinate 

the State and local efforts. When I got there, I think the efforts 

were kind of diffuse and not very coordinated. 

Senator SESSIONS. Have the numbers gone up since the time you 

have been there? Do you know? 

20

Mr. CHRISTIE. The numbers have gone up, and just as importantly, a State like New Jersey where there are very, very tough 

gun laws in the State, on the State level, we are really trying to 

focus now on gun trafficking because we are receiver State. And so 

our new focus has been in that area more on trafficking than it has 

been on anything else because of the fact that our State gun laws 

are so tough, we are receiver State. 

Senator SESSIONS. I believe that is wise to trace each gun, if you 

see a common source, and I think it is worth the highest effort, and 

I think ATF and FBI and anyone else should be willing to follow 

those cases to whatever State they lead to and carry on those investigations. That is the advantage of Federal law enforcement. 

And I am telling you, I have been frustrated that people want to 

pass new laws burdening law-abiding people, but we have not been 

enforcing aggressively enough the existing laws, which have got 

some real teeth to them, actually. I heard an ad that is absolutely 

true. Five years without parole if you use a gun in a crime in 

America today, and I hope that message gets out. I think it is. 

This is the deal. We have got to go vote. If any of you on this 

panel cannot come back or you have flights and you have a hurricane that is worrying you, go ahead and take your flight. Senator 

Feinstein and others may want to ask you some further questions. 

Otherwise, we will go to the second panel when we get back. Please 

do not disrupt your schedule to stay until after this vote. It may 

be 30 minutes or more—it probably will be—before we get back. 

[Recess 3:00 p.m. to 3:55 p.m.] 

Senator SESSIONS. All right. Good to be back. I stayed up so late, 

I got down to the subway, and the subway would not work, and I 

was the last vote to be cast. I almost missed that vote. But we apparently are not having as many as we expected, and I do not 

think we will have another vote now, although that was not absolutely clear when I left. So I think we will have time to go forward 

and have a good discussion. 

Senator Feinstein needs to get back to California, and she needed to get out tonight before the storm, so I do not expect her to be 

able to be back with us this afternoon. 

I thought the first panel was good. We had a panel of experts 

who do the work that is important to us in making the kinds of 

decisions we need to make to improve law enforcement, particularly with regard to gangs. This second panel is also very extraordinary and valuable to us. 

Eddie Jordan is the elected district attorney in New Orleans, 

Louisiana. He brings a unique perspective to this hearing, having 

served as United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana and prior to his election as district attorney. So we have another U.S. Attorney in the bunch. 

Robert McCulloch is the elected district attorney for St. Louis 

County, Missouri. He is also the president of the National District 

Attorneys Association. He has a long and distinguished career. I 

look forward to hearing his testimony. It is good to see you. 

Wes McBride is the president of the California Gang Investigators Association and the former president of the National Gang Investigators Association. He brings 35 years of law enforcement experience to this problem. 

21

We have got a time limit, but we may, because of matters that 

are ongoing, not have other Senators that come here. What you say 

will be recorded and it will be part of the record, and it will be a 

factor as we evaluate what to do about improving our effectiveness 

against gangs. 

So if you would each share with us your comments on this subject, I guess in the order I introduced you, and I will have some 

questions after that. If we can stay within our time limit, then we 

might have a little time for some exchange. 

Mr. Jordan? 

STATEMENTS OF EDDIE J. JORDAN, JR., DISTRICT ATTORNEY, 

DISTRICT OF NEW ORLEANS, NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA 

Mr. JORDAN. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman. My name is Eddie 

Jordan, and I would like to thank the Senate Judiciary Committee 

for providing me with an opportunity to address you on the issue 

of ‘‘Combating Gang Violence in America: Examining Effective Federal, State, and Local Law Enforcement Strategies.’’

In 1994, then-President Bill Clinton named me the U.S. Attorney 

for the Eastern District of Louisiana. Under my leadership, the office successfully prosecuted hundreds of violent offenders, corrupt 

police officer, and most notably, powerful Louisiana political and 

business figures, including former Governor Edwin Edwards. Subsequently, I retired from my position as U.S. Attorney in 2001 and 

returned to private practice. On November 5th, I was elected District Attorney of New Orleans. 

Unfortunately, gang violence is increasing and it is evidenced in 

the number of homicides in New Orleans. Law enforcement officials 

routinely encounter problems whereby witnesses are being intimidated or killed because they come forward to testify in certain violent crime cases. In 2001, there were 212 homicides in New Orleans, and in 2002, that number increased to 257. If current trends 

continue, the projected number of homicides for this year will exceed last year’s number. So far this year, we have had 204 murders. 

According to Tara C. Kowalski, witness intimidation has increased dramatically in recent years. In fact, the first half of 2001 

saw a 50-percent increase in witness intimidation. Witness intimidation occurs when defendants or others acting on defendants’ behalf make threats or otherwise act to dissuade victims or eyewitnesses from testifying. Witness intimidation directly harms the 

witnesses involved; moreover, it adversely affects society as a whole 

because, without witnesses’ testimony, prosecutors are powerless in 

prosecuting criminal offenses. 

In New Orleans, two witnesses who turned down offers by my office for assistance and relocation were murdered. In March 2003, 

a potential witness was killed near the eve of trial after refusing 

relocation on two occasions. While there was insufficient evidence 

to prove the death was a retaliatory killing, the timing of the killing raised suspicion of a possible link. Also, in May 2003, another 

potential witness who rejected assistance was killed, along with her 

companion, shortly after testifies before a State grand jury. Many 

victims and witnesses are reluctant to relocate because my office is 

not adequately funded. My office is doing all it can with limited reVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:46 Apr 30, 2004 Jkt 093250 PO 00000 Frm 00025 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 S:\GPO\HEARINGS\93250.TXT SJUD4 PsN: CMORC
22

sources. Adequate Government financing would allow us to better 

assist victims and witnesses and make the alternative of relocation 

more appealing. 

The following are some of the more notable gang trends identified by the National Alliance of Gang investigators in their assessment: 

Gangs are migrating from larger cities to smaller communities, 

a move fueled in large part by an increase in gang involvement in 

drug trafficking; 

Most gangs have members who are involved in drug trafficking 

to some extent, ranging from street-level sales to wholesale distribution. However, the level of drug trafficking by gang members 

varies regionally; 

Numerous law enforcement agencies report that some gangs involved in wholesale drug distribution have connections to major 

international drug-trafficking organizations; 

While the overall violent crime rate has dropped nationwide, 

many smaller communities have experienced increases, sometimes 

double-digit increases, due to gang violence; 

Gangs, for the most part, are unsophisticated with little or no 

hierarchical organizational structures; however, some are becoming 

much more organized and sophisticated. 

Before I end, I just wanted to indicate that my office has no 

funds budgeted or allocated for victim and witness assistance. Our 

Victim/Witness Services Division was created in 1998. The Victim/

Witness Services staff provides full services to adult victims of certain State crimes, including, but not limited to, domestic violence, 

sexual assault, and stalking. But despite inadequate funding, the 

Victim/Witness Services staff provides assistance to witnesses of 

violent crimes who are in danger as a result of their willingness to 

testify in court. 

I would also indicate that in the year 2002, the entire division 

serviced approximately 600 clients. From January 2003 to July 

2003, the seven-person staff made a total of 1,498 advocacy contacts on behalf of victims of domestic violence and permanently relocated a total of 53 witnesses. 

But the costs involved here are substantial. The average cost to 

temporarily house a family of four in New Orleans is $365 per 

week, $100 per week for food, and $50 per week for personal items. 

The costs are substantially more for permanent relocation of witnesses. 

So I believe a coordinated approach is necessary to combat the 

gang violence and witness intimidation problems that we are facing. Perhaps the creation of a multi-jurisdictional task force should 

be utilized to address gang violence and witness assistance issues. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Jordan appears as a submission 

for the record.] 

Senator SESSIONS. Thank you, Mr. Jordan. You make some very 

valuable points. 

Mr. McCulloch? 

23

STATEMENT OF ROBERT P. MCCULLOCH, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL DISTRICT ATTORNEYS ASSOCIATION, ALEXANDRIA, 

VIRGINIA 

Mr. MCCULLOCH. Senator, my name is Bob McCulloch. I am the 

elected prosecutor in St. Louis County in Missouri and the president of the National District Attorneys Association. Of course, both 

of those entities would like to thank you and this Committee for 

taking the time and giving us the opportunity to present our views 

on the issue that is before us, not just gang violence but, as Mr. 

Jordan eloquently pointed out, the problem that is very much associated with that, and that in the area of witness intimidation. I 

have provided earlier some written remarks that I would like to 

ask be made part of the permanent record. 

Senator SESSIONS. They will be made a part of the record. 

Mr. MCCULLOCH. Thank you. 

In order to place a lot of this in context, let me talk about St. 

Louis County. St. Louis County surrounds but does not include the 

city of St. Louis. It is a county of about a million people. We have 

about 91 or 92 municipalities within that and about 65 police departments. In my office—

Senator SESSIONS. Sixty-five police departments? 

Mr. MCCULLOCH. Yes. I have to repeat that several times myself. 

Senator SESSIONS. We have a lot around Birmingham, but not 

65. 

Mr. MCCULLOCH. Sixty-five, and some are in municipalities 

about the size of this room, which is part of the problem, and I will 

address that a little bit. 

In my office, I supervise about 100 people, about half of whom—

53 total are prosecutors. We handle and prosecute to completion 

6,000, to 6,500 felony cases a year. Now, not all those are gang related, but just to give you a perspective of the amount of work that 

we do, much of it is related. The City of St. Louis has a similar 

size office. It is a smaller jurisdiction in terms of population, but 

a similar size office with a similar size staff and a similar caseload. 

My family—I have a very long and, I think, terrific law enforcement background. I have been a prosecutor for about 20 years. 

Many other members of my family have been in law enforcement—

my father, uncle, cousins, brothers, both as police officers and prosecutors, for well over a hundred years if you add all those up. And 

I say that only partially to brag about my family but, more importantly, to point out that even with that background, we were part 

of the massive middle America that thought gangs are a problem 

on the East Coast and on the West Coast, particularly in Southern 

California. If they did make their way to our neighborhood. They 

might make it to Chicago, and we have heard about how they have 

made it to Chicago. And I heard my city mentioned in there several 

times, my area mentioned in there. But to point out that this is a 

problem that is pervasive in America. 

In checking with prosecutors across the country, we find that 

gangs have emigrated across the country. Primarily from Southern 

California, and through the Chicago area to everywhere. Our gangs 

have even migrated from our area to some of the smaller communities, and that brings me back a little bit to the police departments. These gangs are like water. They will follow the path of 

24

least resistance, and that leads them to many of these smaller communities. 

In my neighborhood, especially, where some of these communities once were very cozy bedroom communities, they are now infested because they do not have the ability, they do not have the 

resources to staff and adequately train and develop a police department. And following that path of least resistance, we have a number of these municipalities where the gang problem is a remarkably 

serious situation. 

In one small area, we had five murders in a period of about 14 

months. Everyone who was killed and everyone who did the killing 

was between the ages of 17 and 22. And it literally involved in 

some cases walking across the street to sell some drugs because 

you were on the other guy’s turf at that point. That was the first 

murder. The second one, of course, would be in retaliation for that. 

The third one we may not know or they may not remember what 

it was about, but it all related and stemmed from that. 

While drug trafficking is still the primary function of the gangs 

in our neighborhood, they have expanded out somewhat. And along 

with their expansion comes the violence, and that is where the witness intimidation problems come into our office. 

We have a case pending now to illustrate that, and it is typical. 

I will try and get through this quickly before my time runs out, but 

to show that it is unfortunately typical of the problem we see in 

many, many other communities. 

We found a body of a young man who had been shot to death, 

found him on the side of the road. Running his background check, 

we found that he was involved peripherally in the drug trade. At 

least we had some indications of that. Three years went by and 

then we developed information through a snitch that this one particular individual was the one who killed him. Following up on 

that, we were able to develop a good, solid case on that guy. We 

now have him in custody on the murder of that particular case. 

What happened was the snitch came forward because the guy 

who did the killing had been released from jail. He had been released from jail because we already had him in jail on a different 

murder. And when he made bail in that case, our witness, our star 

witness, our only witness, eyewitness to that murder, was murdered himself. And that forced the other person to come forward 

and give us some information. 

We now have a similar situation. Although he is in jail, his cohorts are not all in jail, and that intimidation goes across the 

board. Similar to across the country, our problem is in the funding. 

We are able to put our witness in this case up for a couple days 

in a motel, a week maybe, maybe send her on a bus ride to a distant relative’s house. But eventually that runs out, and they are 

going to come back in. And there is just no mechanism or funding 

for a permanent solution to that situation, and that has been the 

biggest difficulty that we have. 

I apologize for taking up more time. We do appreciate the efforts 

of this Committee and the Congress and the Senate in going into 

that, and not only applaud and support both as a prosecutor in St. 

Louis and the National District Attorneys Association, the funding, 

the adequate funding to provide for the protection for these people 

25

who are brave enough or for whatever reason come forward in 

these cases. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. McCulloch appears as a submission for the record.] 

Senator SESSIONS. Thank you. Well said. 

Our investigator, Mr. McBride. 

STATEMENT OF WESLEY D. MCBRIDE, PRESIDENT, CALIFORNIA GANG INVESTIGATORS ASSOCIATION, HUNTINGTON 

BEACH, CALIFORNIA 

Mr. MCBRIDE. Thank you, Senator. I would like to thank the 

Committee for inviting my testimony. My name is Wes McBride. I 

served 35 years with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department 

obtaining the rank of sergeant when I retired in 2002. I retired as 

the intelligence sergeant for the Sheriff’s Department’s gang unit. 

Twenty-eight years of that time I spent in the gang unit. 

I am currently the president of the California Gang Investigators 

Association which puts on the largest law enforcement gang training in the Nation in partnership with the ATF. I am also the past 

president of the National Alliance of Gang Investigators. 

In the nearly three decades that I served in the gang unit, I 

made an extensive study of gangs, and I must tell you that I have 

watched gangs grow in number and sophistication over these years. 

In Los Angeles County, we have hundreds of persons slain every 

year by gang members. I have watched this number grow from less 

than 200 a year to over 807 in our record year of 1995. Now, that 

is just gang-related homicides. A phenomenon that I have observed 

over this period is that while there have been occasional declines 

in statistics over the years, these respites are only temporary and 

slowly climb again. The declines never seem to set or establish a 

new record low; however, the climb almost always sets a new 

record for a high. 

We already had some testimony earlier that there are 20,000 

gangs in the Nation, but we have 1,100 of those in Los Angeles. 

Of the 700,000 gang members nationally, we have 100,000 in Los 

Angeles. These gangs started migrating across the country in the 

1980s and established their presence in nearly every State in the 

Union. They freely cross State lines—

Senator SESSIONS. Including Alabama. 

Mr. MCBRIDE. Including Alabama, particularly Alabama, in the 

Deep South. They go there a lot. In fact, I interviewed a gang member once, and he talked about traveling the triangle. The triangle 

to him was L.A. to St. Louis to Houston and all points in between. 

Senator SESSIONS. And as I recall, we had some connections in 

St. Louis of gang members. 

Mr. MCBRIDE. Yes, sir. 

Senator SESSIONS. And Chicago. 

Mr. MCBRIDE. Yes, sir, and particularly the airport in St. Louis. 

And they travel nationally. They bring their inane gang violence 

with them. The L.A. gangs solve their problems with violence. You 

kill the problem, then it is not a problem anymore. They have no 

other problem-solving technique, and they bring that technique 

with them as they travel around the Nation. 

26

They will infect a community when they come into it with the 

disease of gangs, and it is a disease. It is always fatal. People die 

when the gangs arrive. This malignancy of gang presence kills a 

community just as surely as their bullets kill people. Gangs so intimidate the citizens of communities that they are afraid to testify, 

which goes to the point that was just brought up. They intimidate 

witnesses as a matter of course. It is not uncommon for them to 

injure or kill prospective witnesses. It is not uncommon for gangs 

to attack police officers who come into conflict with them. Many officers have lost their lives in the gang wars. However, gangs have 

been known to kill police officer solely because they were witnesses 

against them also, beyond the fact that they are interfering with 

their commerce. 

The most important weapon in the arsenal of gangs is fear. 

Gangs are the master predators of the urban landscape. Their ability to instill fear into the community knows no bounds. They will 

kill indiscriminately to make their point, and this fear percolates 

through the community and so underlies all aspects of the gang’s 

activity that it becomes part of the atmosphere. After a time, physical threats are not needed. The threats are unspoken but part of 

the community culture. 

To counter these threats, strong witness protection programs 

must be put into place. 

Law enforcement responses to gangs have been effective to a degree in various cities around the country. The underlying problem 

with current law enforcement approaches is that they tend to be 

crisis driven, short-lived in too many cases. There has never been 

a national coordinated effort to attack gangs. There have been effective and deserving programs, but they seem isolated to particular locales with little communication outside the affected areas. 

I will tell you that the threat of gangs is more realistic to the 

people of this country than any threat of external terrorism can 

possibly make. While many may argue the term ‘‘urban terrorism’’ 

when speaking of street gangs, gangs generate community fear and 

disillusionment within the communities of local government due to 

the perceived power of the gangs. When I encounter people in my 

travels and lectures, they express their fear of gangs. 

Since the tragic events of 9/11, many gang units have been reassigned to investigate external terrorism threats active within our 

borders. These investigations are vital; however, they should be 

done in addition to, not instead of. 

One of the disturbing issues that regularly comes to our association is the dismemberment of gang units across the Nation and the 

reclassification of what gangs are and gang members are in an effort to defuse the gang problem. Ignoring gangs is like ignoring 

cancer. You ignore it, it will come back, and it will kill you. Denial 

is the greatest ally that the gangs have, and it gives them room 

to formulate and take over their communities. 

There has been no Federal leadership in the world of gang enforcement. Gang enforcement still tends to be done by pockets of 

investigators with little or no communication between these isolated pockets. 

Prosecution of street gang members based on current RICO statutes are too time-consuming and labor-intensive for local gang 

27

prosecution. Establishment of RICO requirements can take months 

to years. As an example, in L.A., I mentioned over 100,000 gang 

members, thousands and thousands of criminal cases. One study 

out of USC states that 10 to 15 people are shot for every one that 

dies. That is a lot of cases. It would overwhelm Federal prosecution. There is an undeterminable amount of narcotic and gang-related crime. A few years ago, one of the RICO prosecutions that we 

did took 4 years from beginning to end, took 39 people to jail. Of 

course, they were gone forever once they were convicted of a Federal crime. But it was out of a gang of 1,000 people. There wasn’t 

a ripple. There wasn’t a ripple within the gang. It did nothing to 

lower gang violence. 

In concluding, I would like to just say that to effectively combat 

the rising gangs, there must be a multifaceted approach to prosecutions, and I will just list four: effective witness protection; establishment of a National Gang intelligence Center, similar to the National Drug Intelligence Center; funding of law enforcement training on street gangs; and legislation that eases and streamlines the 

burden of proving RICO cases. 

Thank you, sir. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. McBride appears as a submission 

for the record.] 

Senator SESSIONS. Very good. Important comments each of you 

have made. I hardly know where to begin. 

I think first I would like to ask you about the status of the gang 

situation in your areas, at the least the two of you, and then, Mr. 

McBride, if you have any comments. 

I have been convinced today and for some time that we have a 

major national gang problem in America. It seems to me, however, 

that in certain communities, gangs go up and then they go down. 

At least in some of our communities in Alabama, I do not think the 

problem is as bad as it was in the 1980s. 

What is your opinion of the overall status in your communities? 

Is it worse today than it was 10, 15 years ago? And what do we—

let me just ask that first. How do you rate the circumstances 

today? I guess we will start with Mr. Jordan. 

Mr. JORDAN. Senator, during my tenure as U.S. Attorney, my office prosecuted at least two very high-profile drug gangs, the Seventh Ward Soldiers and the Richard Pena Organization. These violent drug organizations were responsible for multiple murders in 

the city of New Orleans. 

During my brief tenure so far as district attorney, I have not 

seen any dramatic change in the kinds of gangs that we have in 

the city. I believe that they are still neighborhood-based organizations, individuals who are loosely associated with each other, and 

they engage in crimes of convenience, often focused around drug activity. 

Senator SESSIONS. How about you, Mr. McCulloch? 

Mr. MCCULLOCH. Senator, we have a very similar situation. We 

have identified about 4,000 gang members in our county. Our county has a million people. Most of them are concentrated in a relatively small geographic area. They affiliate themselves with a 

total of about 180, 182 separately identifiable gangs. Most of them 

28

have some sort of loose affiliation with many of the gangs that you 

have heard about before from Los Angeles, from Chicago. 

While the number of crimes generally across the country, and 

certainly in our community, violent crime has decreased, the number of crimes that we can absolutely attribute to gang activity have 

also decreased. What we tend to see is that the violent crimes and 

the violent criminals we deal with tend to be much more violent 

than they ever were in the past. 

A very good point made by Mr. McBride is that we focus, we tend 

to focus on the number of people killed. There are many, many, 

many more people who are maimed by these people than are actually killed by them. And in the old days, you know, if you ganked 

a drug dealer, they would beat you senseless. But now they are 

going to come back and shoot you and everybody around you, and 

that is the difference that we see. While there may be fewer crimes, 

they are much more violent, much more dangerous. 

Senator SESSIONS. So you have a more dangerous group of gang 

members. You would not say they are larger today than 10 or 15 

years ago in number. 

Mr. MCCULLOCH. I would say the number has not changed drastically. 

Senator SESSIONS. Mr. McBride, you are the president of the 

California Association of Gang Investigators. How would you describe that? 

Mr. MCBRIDE. I would say that our gang population is static. It 

is at saturation points now. There was talk earlier about the age 

range of gang members. Our gang members range from 9 years old 

to in their 50s. The median age of an active gang member is the 

late teens, early 20s. And as we apply pressure and the gang problem grows and we put more pressure to it, it goes down for a while, 

as I said, and then it comes back up. We are on an upswing now. 

Our gang murders had dropped in to the 300s. Last year, there 

were 650. They are starting to climb again. 

I checked just before I came to testify. The Sheriff’s Department’s 

records indicate we are up 34 percent over last year on just gang 

homicides. So the rise is starting again, and as I check with my 

counterparts across the Nation, that is what they are telling me. 

It is starting to rise once again. 

Senator SESSIONS. Mr. Jordan, all of you mentioned witness intimidation. 

Mr. JORDAN. Yes. 

Senator SESSIONS. That is a very real problem. I found as a Federal prosecutor that we could put people in the witness protection 

program if you needed it, and you could arrest people and deny 

them bail, give them a prompt trial under the Speedy Trial Act, 

and they could be gone from the community, and you could get witnesses to testify against them. But if the courts are crowded, you 

have to wait a year to get a trial, and people have to be released 

on bail, and they are back in the community. I know that makes 

it more difficult. 

How would you characterize the circumstances that make it difficult for your witnesses, increases fear on them? And are you suggesting that targeted Federal resources that would help you protect 

29

key witnesses in very important prosecutions would be a good way 

for the Federal Government to assist in gang prosecutions? 

Mr. JORDAN. Certainly, Senator, I think that you have certainly 

hit the nail on the head when you say that a coordinated effort 

with Federal law enforcement authorities would go a long way toward helping us address the problem of witness intimidation at the 

local level. We have had severe problems with getting witnesses to 

come forward when our resources are as limited as they are, and, 

of course, it makes it difficult for us to make a relocation offer appealing to a citizen. And that is what we need. We need those 

kinds of resources, but we need to be able to sit down with Federal 

law enforcement authorities and strategize about what can be done 

to protect this family that is facing danger with the prospect of one 

of the members coming forward to testify in a court hearing or a 

trial. 

Senator SESSIONS. Well, the classic witness protection is very, 

very expensive. 

Mr. McCulloch, in the joint Federal-State task forces, I know you 

participated in that. 

Mr. MCCULLOCH. Yes, sir. 

Senator SESSIONS. Is there some midway? And I know the Federal Government will pay for overtime for local police officers and 

some things of that nature on the part of a task force. Could you 

have some money set aside for witness protection, maybe less than 

the Cadillac Mafia deal, but is there something we could do? 

Mr. MCCULLOCH. I think your statement there, I do not think 

anybody could have put it any better than that, some strategically 

placed Federal funding for that very purpose put in the hands of 

the local prosecutors, the local authorities for that specific purpose. 

The situation that we have—the two most dangerous times we 

have found across the board on these cases are immediately after 

the crime is committed—during that investigation, when the witnesses are most vulnerable, the emotions are running so high—and 

then just before the trial when the witness himself is at the greatest risk. And if there is adequate funding to perhaps—you know, 

just those. We can generally, in very rare circumstances, I should 

say, in very extreme circumstances, get our witnesses out for those 

two time periods. But we have found now that the intimidation 

takes various forms. There is the classic intimidation of killing the 

witness, but there are other times when it is as subtle as driving 

by the house. We had an arson case. A guy drove by the house of 

our star witness on the arson case, stood outside the house, and 

just struck matches while our witness sat on her porch, blew the 

match out, threw it down, strike another one. It is that sort of intimidation, and, frankly, it did scare her, should have scared her. 

We had to get her out. But I think that strategic placement of local 

funds. 

Better than 98, I want to say, percent of the criminal, the violent 

criminal cases in this country are prosecuted at my level and Mr. 

Jordan’s level. And that is where that funding, I think, needs to be. 

It has to be there in order to enable us to protect those witnesses. 

Senator SESSIONS. Just a yes or no, if you know. The task force 

monies, when one is set up, Federal and State, and Federal will 

30

bring in some monies to support that task force, are there monies 

available for witness protection, or do you know? 

Mr. MCCULLOCH. I am not 100 percent positive on that. 

Senator SESSIONS. But it could use up all the money pretty quick 

because it can be expensive. 

Mr. MCCULLOCH. It can go very fast, particularly if it is paying 

overtime to the officers to protect them, yes. And that may be a 

limited amount available for that, but I think most of the overtime 

money goes into the investigation itself as opposed to into the protection. 

Senator SESSIONS. Mr. McBride, I know we talked about in California Asian gangs and all. What connection, if any, or what factor, 

if any, is it that the gang members may be illegal aliens or citizens? Is that a factor at all? 

Mr. MCBRIDE. It is a minor factor. There is a very large immigrant gang, the Mara Salvatrucha, the El Salvadoreans that have 

traveled across this country. They were a problem that started in 

the Rampart area of Los Angeles City, spread through Central 

America, back up the eastern coast of the United States, almost all 

illegal aliens there. 

But I would say that no more than 20 percent of our gang members in Los Angeles are illegal aliens. Our problem is Americans 

killing Americans. 

Senator SESSIONS. What about the circumstance with known violent juveniles? A small number of juveniles in my experience can 

be very dangerous, and officers have told me they will kill you 

quicker than an older criminal will kill you, with less remorse. But 

I remember the story in New York, when we worked on the juvenile crime bill, of a teenager convicted—or charged, and convicted, 

I believe, in juvenile court of a very serious crime. It was unknown 

that that person had also been charged and convicted in New Jersey for a similar crime. They were let out on bail and they killed 

somebody the next day. 

The point is that under the juvenile laws, juvenile violent criminal records do not go into NCIC and maybe even the probation officer and the judge do not know that this gang person arrested in 

Alabama may have had a serious crime of violence in Los Angeles 

or St. Louis. 

Don’t you think that with regard to juvenile cases, at least cases 

involving serious violence, should be available in the NCIC or 

crime history so that police officers and probation officers and 

judges would know that? Is that a weakness in our system? 

Mr. MCCULLOCH. It is a weakness in our system, absolutely, and 

it falls right in with the fact that juveniles are defined differently 

across the country. At the Federal level, you heard that if you 

are—I believe it is 18. In Missouri, if you are 17, you are an adult, 

and there really is no age limit at which you can be treated as an 

adult, depending upon the type of crime. 

I think most States have now recognized that those records are 

very important and they have loosened up some, but not enough 

to do a whole lot of good. I still have difficulty getting juvenile 

records in my own jurisdiction. 

Senator SESSIONS. In your own jurisdiction. 

Mr. McBride? 

31

Mr. MCBRIDE. Yes, sir, that is a real problem. One State I saw, 

they could not even keep juvenile records in the same file cabinet 

as adult records. 

Senator SESSIONS. I think that is basically the law. 

Mr. MCBRIDE. But the problem is there is no national gang database either. If there were a database of gang members nationally, 

prosecutors could look up the gang member, maybe not his criminal 

record, if it was still protected by law, being a juvenile, but the fact 

that he is a gang member would come to his attention and he could 

call the investigators in these other States and locales. But that 

does not exist. A truly working system does not exist. 

Senator SESSIONS. Mr. Jordan, do you think that we could do better in that? 

Mr. JORDAN. Yes, Senator. I think that local prosecutors throughout the country could benefit from additional information, particularly background information about violent individuals. Having 

that kind of criminal history would put us in a much better position to make wiser decisions about charging decisions and what 

kinds of charges—

Senator SESSIONS. Whether to charge as an adult or a juvenile, 

for example. 

Mr. JORDAN. That is right. That is exactly right. 

Senator SESSIONS. So the weird situation is if you are 17 in a lot 

of States and you commit assault with intent to murder and are 

charged as a juvenile, it is a secret proceeding. It is not put in 

NCIC. They could move to the next State and commit another 

crime, and the judge could release them on bail. They could be 

tried as a juvenile again because nobody knew they had this history of violence. 

We tried to fix that, and there were a lot of objections which I 

could not fathom why. The juvenile records are extraordinarily protected, but when there is violence involved in it, I think we have 

got to protect the public over the—and they should count themselves lucky they were not tried as an adult. 

Now, I was thoroughly impressed with and supported Alabama 

departments, both in Birmingham and Mobile, who modeled programs on the Boston initiative in which—if you are familiar with 

that, they had a dramatic reduction in murders by teenagers in 

Boston with very intensive supervision, very serious law enforcement, and counseling and a lot of other things. But I think the key 

to it was probation officers went out at night to their homes on a 

regular basis to see if Billy was at home and in bed like he was 

supposed to be. And if he wasn’t, they did something. And so there 

was credibility in the system. It took some money, but then the 

crime rate just began to plummet. 

Do you think our system is so overwhelmed—if you would give 

me just briefly your thoughts on it. Are we so overwhelmed we cannot reach that? Or do you think that would work if we had the resources to do it throughout America? 

Mr. JORDAN. I know, Senator, in Louisiana we have had a problem with supervised probation of young people, of adults, for that 

matter, and there are far too few resources put in that area. And 

if we could actually have individuals who are monitored very closeVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:46 Apr 30, 2004 Jkt 093250 PO 00000 Frm 00035 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 S:\GPO\HEARINGS\93250.TXT SJUD4 PsN: CMORC
32

ly by the system during the time before trial and certainly after 

they have been sentenced, that would help a lot. 

I think that it could even take the form of electronic monitoring 

as well, and I know there have been a number of proposals to that 

effect. But our State is very poor, and we are having a hard time 

dealing with that particular challenge. But I think that, again, this 

is an area where the Federal Government could play a very important role in helping us to solve this problem. 

Senator SESSIONS. The way they did it in Boston is probation officers were understandably uneasy going out at 9 and 10 o’clock at 

night, so they reached an accord with the police department that 

a police officer would go with the probation officer and they would 

actually go out to homes, which requires a commitment from the 

department and some resources. 

I believe in Alabama they changed some people’s hours of work, 

from 3 o’clock in the afternoon to 10 o’clock at night, probation officers, so they could do that. 

Would either one of you like to comment on that? 

Mr. MCBRIDE. I would comment on that we did that in 1979, my 

own unit, the Operation Safe Street on a grant with probation officers, and they rode with us. We did the exact same thing in 1979 

and early 1980, and it absolutely works. Absolutely works. We decreased gang crime. We had to give them numbers, and we told 

them we would do it by 15 percent, would be our goal. Well, we 

reduced gang crime in every case 50 percent in the areas we did 

that at. It was labor-intensive, but it worked like a champ. 

Probation officers rode with our deputy sheriffs, and we did home 

checks. We did everything. We would see them in violation as we 

drove down the street, had a probation officer with us, and we took 

the kid in custody. And it absolutely worked. The problem was 

funding ran out, probation did not have any money, and it stopped. 

Senator SESSIONS. And you have to have a place to put them, a 

judge and a DA that understands the program, and everybody has 

got to be on the same sheet of paper. But it reduced murders dramatically where that has occurred. 

Do you have any thoughts about that? 

Mr. MCCULLOCH. Senator, I think it works in all areas. We have 

seen in the use of drug courts, effective use of drug courts with the 

intense supervision that is placed upon them with reporting every 

week. Once a week they are in front of a judge, and if there is a 

slight violation, there is an immediate consequence for it. And that 

really drops our recidivism rate for the people that have gone 

through that court down to next to nothing. At least in the short 

term it has. We need to obviously study it over a lengthy period 

of time, but that has worked across the country in other areas. 

One of our problems is, again, back with the juveniles in that so 

many of them are juveniles. We do not have enough juvenile officers to supervise anybody right now, much less this intense supervision. And it all comes down to funding for it. 

Senator SESSIONS. I am very dubious about a lot of these ideas 

that say pay me now, pay me later. Sometimes they just—you 

know, this, that, and the other. But this deal is important, and I 

believe the numbers and the experience shows that if you carefully 

33

monitor through drug courts, which I think are excellent programs 

for the very reasons you mentioned, it makes a difference. 

A New York Times reporter, Fox Butterfield, said that in Chicago 

they spent 3 minutes a case on a juvenile case. It is just a revolving door. No attention is paid. No supervision is paid. Unless they 

go to jail, they are out essentially unsupervised. A judge has a bad 

choice then. 

In our juvenile crime bill that we passed in the Senate and ended 

up in a conglomeration over gun issues, it failed over that issue 

alone, and it was terrible, in my view. We tried to emphasize that 

if you have a judge and a court system that has got some jail capacity and sufficient probation officers to monitor the kids—because they get arrested early. By the time they commit a murder, 

they have been arrested two or three times, normally. And then 

you would see a drop-off in crime, and it ends up saving money, 

I think. It also saves some young people’s futures. 

Do you have any thoughts about that? 

Mr. JORDAN. In Louisiana, Senator, the options with respect to 

juveniles, the options are largely unsupervised probation and detention, and those are unacceptable options. I think you have to 

have a number of other alternatives there, particularly supervised, 

some kind of supervised monitoring of young people who have run 

afoul of the law. And until there are more alternatives, I think that 

we are going to continue to see a high recidivist rate. And I know 

that the State is now in the process of considering a change to the 

juvenile code or the juvenile regime in such a way that there will 

be more alternatives to the current options that we have today. 

Senator SESSIONS. There is a limit to what the Federal Government should do, in my view. I was a United States Attorney for 12 

years, and I know it is virtually impossible to prosecute a juvenile 

in Federal court. Maybe that is what people wanted. I would, 

frankly, say that I thought it was—and we had it in the legislation 

to give the U.S. Attorneys a little more discretion, Mr. Jordan, as 

to whether you are indicting a group of gang members, and maybe 

you want to charge some juveniles in that group, too. But we failed 

in getting that passed. 

You are experienced prosecutors and investigators. What can the 

Federal Government do overall that would help the most? 

Mr. MCCULLOCH. I hate to sound like a broken record, but as you 

said, the bulk of the cases, whether they are juvenile, adult—

Senator SESSIONS. Well, 99.999 percent of juvenile cases are tried 

in State courts. 

Mr. MCCULLOCH. Absolutely. 

Senator SESSIONS. There will not be one of 5,000 tried in Federal 

courts, juvenile cases. 

Mr. MCCULLOCH. Absolutely. And without those resources to be 

there, you know, that is what we are stuck with. We can prosecute. 

We can bring all the juveniles, we can bring all the adults we want 

into a courtroom, and if we want to keep them on probation, we 

have got to have the ability to monitor them. We have to have the 

ability to keep tabs on them, to keep track of them so that we are 

not prosecuting them down the line for some more serious crime. 

I will make a blanket statement, and I usually do not do that, 

but I will guarantee nobody, no 18-year-old starts off walking down 

34

the street and shooting somebody dead. That is not the first crime 

committed by that person. 

Senator SESSIONS. You are exactly right. 

Mr. MCCULLOCH. And if we can intervene at a much earlier time 

at a point in that, and the problem is there is just no funding 

there. In all honesty, by the time the funding does make its way 

to us, it has been siphoned off into other many worthwhile programs, but some that it could be much better spent in this regard. 

As a prosecutor, my goal and the goal of most prosecutors, all prosecutors, is to prevent those crimes. I would much rather prevent 

it than prosecute it later, and we have to get in at a much, much 

earlier age and in a much earlier stage in the proceedings in order 

to have any chance of doing that. 

Senator SESSIONS. Well, it is clear to me that you should intervene early in the kids who are most at risk. If you had to develop 

a cohort of kids most at risk, it clearly would be kids who have already been arrested, who are being arrested at 14, 15. You can be 

sure they are heading for big trouble if something does not happen. 

And the judge has control over those kids. The court system has 

them. If a child is misbehaving a little in school, who has got the 

power to do anything there? But if they have committed a crime 

and they are before that judge, he can order the family to be involved in counseling. 

In my home town of Mobile, Judge Butler, my law school classmate, ran that program for many years. They have broken the back 

of juvenile crime. He expanded the supervision. He expanded jail 

capacity. He said, ‘‘I couldn’t lock kids up for violation of court orders and probation because they had no place to put them. They 

gave us some additional space,’’ and he said, ‘‘The amazing thing 

was we don’t need it now.’’ He said, ‘‘Crime has dropped 40 percent 

among juveniles.’’ He is shocked at the dramatic decrease. But 

every youngster that gets involved with the court system is given 

attention. Now they have enough time to give them attention. 

It is not just sweetness and light. They are told things they have 

to do, and if they do not do them, the system falls through. 

Well, we could talk about this forever, but I know one thing. 

With regard to juvenile crime, it is State and local. That is where 

the rubber meets the road. If we are going to fight juvenile crime, 

we need to strengthen the local systems. It would be stupid, poor 

management, and very bad philosophy for the United States Federal Government to try to take over the prosecution of juvenile 

crime. We do not have juvenile centers. We do not have juvenile 

probation officers. We do not have juvenile prosecutors. You have 

all of those things. We do not have juvenile judges. And if we can 

figure out a way to assist the States and encourage them to follow 

intensive supervision, lock people up who are violent and dangerous, those who you take a chance on, monitor them closely, I 

think that would be helpful. We need to look at this witness intimidation, and we will be looking to see and make sure that the monies can be available to be used maybe in these joint operations, at 

least, to protect witnesses. 

Do any of you have anything else to share before we adjourn? 

Mr. JORDAN. Senator, I would just say that I do not think Louisiana is unique in the sense that we have a problem with proVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:46 Apr 30, 2004 Jkt 093250 PO 00000 Frm 00038 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 S:\GPO\HEARINGS\93250.TXT SJUD4 PsN: CMORC
35

viding the kind of supervision that is required in order to make 

certain that people do not become recidivist. I think this is a national problem, and that is the way, I think, to ensure that you 

have people who are held accountable, because everyone cannot be 

locked up. But there are a number of people who should be very 

carefully supervised during the time that they are out on the 

streets so that we can make sure that they are not getting into 

trouble again and not getting other people into trouble as well. 

So I think that the Federal Government really has an interest 

in helping local law enforcement authorities to deal with this problem. The U.S. Attorney should not be prosecuting juveniles, but 

certainly local prosecutors and local law enforcement authorities 

need a lot more resources if they are to effectively address this 

problem. 

Senator SESSIONS. Well said. I think there is a principle that the 

Federal Government does not need to become an essential funder 

of State criminal justice systems. But our national centers should 

be the center for research and assistance to local people. We can 

set up some grant programs to help energize new systems for 

States and help them make decisions, to leap forward and change 

the way they do business. And I certainly support that. 

I also was impressed, Mr. Jordan, with Mr. Connick’s ideas about 

drug testing in schools. I do not know how far he got there in Louisiana with that for school kids. But this country eliminated drugs 

in the military through drug testing, and I believe we could make 

dramatic progress in that, and we would identify early kids that 

are heading for trouble. Mom and Daddy would know that maybe 

some of their misbehavior was tied to drug use. 

Mr. JORDAN. I think that drug testing has to be part of a comprehensive program. Testing alone would not be sufficient to deter 

young people from getting involved with drugs. 

Senator SESSIONS. Well, I have a little different view of it. I do 

not think you need to arrest them, charge them, or even necessarily kick them out of school. But I think if a school says no 

drugs in our school and a child tests positive for drugs and Mother 

and Daddy are called and there is a little conference here, and if 

they need to go to counseling and be put on even more strict testing, I think the drug courts have shown that kind of monitoring 

does—can change behavior. 

But, anyway, we could talk about that one forever. It is just one 

of my insights that I have had, and Mr. Connick came and saw me 

one time, and he was a big promoter of it. 

Thank you so much for your excellent testimony. I value it greatly. It will be a part of the record. And I know that this Committee 

will move forward to try to do what we can to deal with the problem of gangs shortly. 

Thank you. We are adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 4:50 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.] 

[Other related material being retained in Committee files.] 

[Questions and answers and submissions for the record follow.]

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