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75–310 PDF 2012

BEYOND THE STREETS: 

AMERICA’S EVOLVING GANG THREAT 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIME, TERRORISM, 

AND HOMELAND SECURITY 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

JULY 25, 2012 

Serial No. 112–140 

Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary 

( 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://judiciary.house.gov 

(II) 

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY 

LAMAR SMITH, Texas, Chairman 

F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., 

Wisconsin 

HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina 

ELTON GALLEGLY, California 

BOB GOODLATTE, Virginia 

DANIEL E. LUNGREN, California 

STEVE CHABOT, Ohio 

DARRELL E. ISSA, California 

MIKE PENCE, Indiana 

J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia 

STEVE KING, Iowa 

TRENT FRANKS, Arizona 

LOUIE GOHMERT, Texas 

JIM JORDAN, Ohio 

TED POE, Texas 

JASON CHAFFETZ, Utah 

TIM GRIFFIN, Arkansas 

TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania 

TREY GOWDY, South Carolina 

DENNIS ROSS, Florida 

SANDY ADAMS, Florida 

BEN QUAYLE, Arizona 

MARK AMODEI, Nevada 

JOHN CONYERS, JR., Michigan 

HOWARD L. BERMAN, California 

JERROLD NADLER, New York 

ROBERT C. ‘‘BOBBY’’ SCOTT, Virginia 

MELVIN L. WATT, North Carolina 

ZOE LOFGREN, California 

SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas 

MAXINE WATERS, California 

STEVE COHEN, Tennessee 

HENRY C. ‘‘HANK’’ JOHNSON, JR., 

Georgia 

PEDRO R. PIERLUISI, Puerto Rico 

MIKE QUIGLEY, Illinois 

JUDY CHU, California 

TED DEUTCH, Florida 

LINDA T. SA ́ NCHEZ, California 

JARED POLIS, Colorado 

RICHARD HERTLING, Staff Director and Chief Counsel 

PERRY APELBAUM, Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIME, TERRORISM, AND HOMELAND SECURITY

F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., Wisconsin, Chairman 

LOUIE GOHMERT, Texas, Vice-Chairman 

BOB GOODLATTE, Virginia 

DANIEL E. LUNGREN, California 

J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia 

TED POE, Texas 

JASON CHAFFETZ, Utah 

TIM GRIFFIN, Arkansas 

TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania 

TREY GOWDY, South Carolina 

SANDY ADAMS, Florida 

MARK AMODEI, Nevada 

ROBERT C. ‘‘BOBBY’’ SCOTT, Virginia 

STEVE COHEN, Tennessee 

HENRY C. ‘‘HANK’’ JOHNSON, JR., 

Georgia 

PEDRO R. PIERLUISI, Puerto Rico 

JUDY CHU, California 

TED DEUTCH, Florida 

SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas 

MIKE QUIGLEY, Illinois 

JARED POLIS, Colorado 

CAROLINE LYNCH, Chief Counsel 

BOBBY VASSAR, Minority Counsel 

(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

JULY 25, 2012 

Page 

OPENING STATEMENTS 

The Honorable F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr., a Representative in Congress 

from the State of Wisconsin, and Chairman, Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security .......................................................................... 1 

The Honorable Robert C. ‘‘Bobby’’ Scott, a Representative in Congress from 

the State of Virginia, and Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security .......................................................................... 11 

WITNESSES 

Robert F. Green, Assistant Commanding Officer, Operations-South Bureau, 

Los Angeles Police Department 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 14 

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 16 

Richard W. Stanek, Sheriff, Hennepin County, MN 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 22 

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 24 

Tim King, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Urban Prep Academies 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 25 

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 27 

Constance L. Rice, Co-Director/Attorney, Advancement Project 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 31 

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 33 

LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING 

Statement of the United States Department of Justice submitted by the 

Honorable F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr., a Representative in Congress from 

the State of Wisconsin, and Chairman, Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, 

and Homeland Security ....................................................................................... 3 

(1) 

BEYOND THE STREETS: 

AMERICA’S EVOLVING GANG THREAT 

WEDNESDAY, JULY 25, 2012 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIME, TERRORISM,

AND HOMELAND SECURITY, 

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY, 

Washington, DC. 

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:01 a.m., in room 

2141, Rayburn Office Building, the Honorable F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr. (Chairman of the Subcommittee) presiding. 

Present: Representatives Sensenbrenner, Forbes, Chaffetz, 

Gowdy, Adams, Scott, Johnson, Chu, and Quigley. 

Staff Present: (Majority) Caroline Lynch, Subcommittee Chief 

Counsel; Toni Angeli, Counsel; Lindsay Hamilton, Clerk; (Minority) 

Bobby Vassar, Subcommittee Chief Counsel; Ron LeGrand, Counsel. 

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. The Subcommittee will come to order. 

Without objection, the Chair will be authorized to declare recesses 

during votes in the House. 

Today’s hearing examines the ongoing threat posed by gangs and 

the evolution of gangs in America. Over the past 20 or more years, 

gangs have evolved from localized criminal organizations to international criminal enterprises vying for control of sophisticated 

criminal schemes, often with the threat or use of violence. 

Today, gangs are increasingly engaged in non-traditional gangrelated crimes such as alien smuggling, human trafficking and 

prostitution. Gangs are also engaging in white-collar crime such as 

counterfeiting, identity theft and mortgage fraud. They have become transnational criminal organizations and compete with many 

other criminal organizations. 

According to the 2011 National Gang Threat Assessment, there 

are approximately 1.4 million gang members belonging to more 

than 33,000 gangs in the United States. It has been reported that 

the number of gang members in the U.S. increased by 40 percent 

since 2009. 

Today’s tough economic environment has made it even easier for 

gangs to recruit new members. In the year 2000, more than 50 percent of all American teens had a job. Last summer, less than 30 

percent had a job. More teenagers on the streets with nothing to 

do fosters opportunities that gangs now have to increase their 

membership. 

2 

As the traditional family unit continues to change in America, 

young people seek a sense of belonging. For many teenagers, a 

gang becomes a new family for them. Unfortunately, the values 

taught by these new families include aggression, brutality and violence. 

Another significant threat is the acquisition of high-powered 

military-style weapons and equipment by gangs. Typically, gangs 

acquire firearms through illegal purchases, straw purchases and 

thefts. Gang members also target military and law enforcement officials’ facilities and vehicles to obtain weapons and ammunition, 

body armor, police badges, uniforms, and official identification. 

This increases the potential for lethal encounters with law enforcement officers and civilians. 

Gangs continue to evolve and become more violent. According to 

the FBI, gangs are responsible for an average of 40 percent of violent crime in most jurisdictions, and up to 90 percent in several 

others. Gangs are also becoming more sophisticated, employing 

new and advanced technologies to facilitate criminal activity discreetly and to enhance their criminal operations. They use the latest methods of communication to connect with other gang members, criminal organizations, and potential recruits nationwide and 

worldwide. 

Accordingly, the current threats posed by gangs are quite serious. There are many stories of success which I hope will reverse 

the current trend. In 2007, the City of Los Angeles, with the recommendations of the Advancement Project, implemented two programs aimed at reducing gang violence. In just 5 years, these programs have significantly decreased the number of homicides and 

violent crimes in city parks that are located in so-called gang violence hot zones. 

Sometimes community policing and intervention must give way 

to enforcement and suppression due to the frequency and intensity 

of gang violence. Chicago is in the grips of a deadly gang war. Over 

275 people have been killed in Chicago so far this year, and many 

more have been shot, many of them innocent bystanders to the 

gang violence. The Chicago Police Department has 200 officers assigned to its gang enforcement unit, versus 100,000 gang members 

in Chicago. Last month, Chicago Police Sergeant Matt Little likened Chicago’s gang problem to tribal warfare. He said, ‘‘It continues to build unless we manage to interdict it and manage to stop 

it long enough for the blood to stop boiling and the heat to die 

down.’’ 

This discouraging situation will hopefully be tempered by efforts 

by educators such as Mr. King, who are working hard to reduce the 

susceptibility of recruitment by gangs. Other large U.S. cities are 

experiencing varying degrees of success in addressing recruitment 

into gangs and gang-related crimes. This hearing will explore the 

tools available to address gang recruitment, crime and violence, 

which range from enforcement and suppression to community policing and intervention, and are often a combination of both. The 

hearing will specifically examine the evolving gang threats in Chicago, parts of Minnesota, and Los Angeles. 

We are joined today by four witnesses who have dedicated their 

efforts to put a stop to violent gangs and to prevent the recruitVerDate Aug 31 2005 17:42 Oct 24, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00006 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\WORK\CRIME\072512\75310.000 HJUD PsN: 75310
3 

ment of America’s youth into these criminal organizations. I look 

forward to hearing about their experiences and successes in addressing this serious national challenge. 

Without objection, the statement of the Department of Justice 

will be submitted into the record at this point. 

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Mr. SENSENBRENNER. It is now my pleasure to recognize for his 

opening statement the distinguished Ranking Member of the Subcommittee, Congressman Bobby Scott, who has made one of the 50 

Most Beautiful People on the Hill. [Laughter.] 

Mr. Scott? 


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Mr. SCOTT. Since you’re going to mention that, I also made the 

50—the 25 Hardest Working. I made that list, too, a couple of 

years ago. [Laughter.] 

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. I agree with that. 

Mr. SCOTT. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want 

to thank you for scheduling this hearing on gangs. 

As you and the longer-serving Members of this Subcommittee are 

aware, preventing violence and crime by young people, particularly 

gang violence and crime through gangs, has been an issue which 

we have worked on for a significant amount of time since I’ve been 

in Congress. 

We have recently passed through the Judiciary Committee a reauthorization of the Juvenile Accountability Block Grant Program, 

which resulted from a collaborative effort with former Crime Subcommittee Chairman Bill McCollum of Florida and every Member 

of the Subcommittee, with each Member on both sides serving as 

co-sponsors. The bill was first passed in the Committee in 1999. It 

was passed from the Committee a total of six times with the help 

of former Crime Subcommittee Chairman Smith and Cobles during 

their terms there and beyond. 

We have also led or supported reauthorization of the Juvenile 

Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974 on several occasions. 

Unfortunately, despite what the science and evidence strongly 

say, my 35 years of experience as a legislator at the state and Federal level has been one that, when it comes to crime policy, we almost never pay any attention to science and evidence. That is why 

we have seen a 90 percent reduction in the amount of money spent 

on prevention and intervention since 2000, and that is why we 

have not been able to pass legislation such as the Youth Promise 

Act. 

When it comes to crime, we have a choice. We can do what the 

science and evidence says and reduce crime, or we can participate 

in the politics of crime. The politics of crime involve the tough-oncrime slogans and sound bites, such as poll-tested slogans like 

‘‘three strikes and you’re out,’’ ‘‘abolish parole,’’ ‘‘truth in sentencing,’’ ‘‘mandatory minimum sentences,’’ or if we can get it to 

rhyme, it’s even better, ‘‘if you do the adult crime, you do the adult 

time.’’ Research and evidence show us that while these tough-oncrime approaches sound good, they range from having little to do 

with preventing crime to actually increasing the crime rate. 

Under the get-tough-on-crime approach, no matter how tough we 

were last year, you have to get tougher this year, and we have been 

getting tougher year by year for about 30 years now, since 1980. 

We have gone from around 200,000 prisoners incarcerated in the 

United States to over 2 million, with annual costs going up accordingly. 

As a result of these approaches, today the United States is the 

world’s leading incarcerator, by far, with an incarceration rate 7 

times that of the international average. The world average is about 

between 50 and 200 prisoners per 100,000. The rate in the United 

States is over 700 per 100,000, African Americans at about 2,200. 

Ten states lock up Blacks at the rate of almost 4,000 per 100,000. 

And yet, the violence and crime and gangs persist, and we can look 

12 

at what is happening in Chicago and New Orleans, we can show 

that it is growing. 

Regardless of all the people we have incarcerated from our 

tough-on-crime approaches, the situation still persists. Research as 

well as common sense tells us that no matter how tough we are 

on people we prosecute today, unless we are addressing the underlying reasons for crime, young people will follow the same trajectory and nothing will change. The next crime cohort will simply replace the ones we take out and crime continues, so just getting 

tough will not reduce crime. 

All the credible research and evidence shows that a comprehensive strategy of evidence-based interventions and supports aimed at 

at-risk youth will greatly reduce crime. They will save much more 

money than they cost when compared to money that otherwise 

would have been spent on law enforcement and other criminal justice and social welfare system costs. 

These approaches are the most effective when provided in a context of a coordinated, collaborative strategy involving law enforcement, education, social services, mental health, non-profit, faithbased and other groups, business representatives who work with 

identified children at risk of involvement with the criminal justice 

system. We saw a demonstration of this in my district, in the City 

of Richmond, Virginia, through a grant program costing $2.5 million from the Federal Gang Reduction Program, a collaborative effort of Federal, state and local governments and community organizations that established an anti-gang strategy which reduced the 

murder rate in the targeted area from 19 to 2. 

Due to medical advances, there are about four to five times more 

shooting victims that survive for every one that dies. So the 19 

murders represented about 80 shootings, all of which were likely 

to be indigent care patients of the Medical College of Virginia 

emergency facility in Richmond. When you compare the cost of 80 

shootings to that of around 8, the difference alone probably saved 

more than $2.5 million, and when you add the fewer arrests, prosecutions and incarcerations, the savings really add up. 

Los Angeles had a similar pilot project and experienced similar 

results, so much more of that has become part of the foundation 

for establishing its comprehensive city-wide, anti-gang program, 

which we will hear about today. 

So as we look at issues of growing threats from gang crime in 

this country, I believe that we again will be faced with a choice of 

doing what has been proven to reduce crime or what has proven 

to be good politics, and unfortunately the two do not match. I can 

only hope that we will consider seriously this time the science, evidence, and demonstrated effectiveness which I expect we will hear 

about today as to what has been proven to be effective and what 

has not. 

This does not mean that we stop addressing serious crimes with 

strong law enforcement. We must do that, and we will continue. 

But it simply means that we shouldn’t stop there. We need to focus 

on fewer crimes being committed. 

So, thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I look forward to the testimony of the witnesses. 

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Thank you very much. 

13 

It is now my pleasure to introduce today’s witnesses. 

Commander Bob Green has been the Assistant Commanding Officer of Operations, South Bureau of the LAPD, since 2010. Previously he held many other positions with the LAPD. He became 

a police student worker in 1978 and entered the Police Academy 

in 1980. Commander Green was promoted to Lieutenant in 1999 

and assigned as a watch commander. In 2004, Commander Green 

was promoted to Captain and was assigned as a Patrol Commanding Officer. The following year, Commander Green was promoted to Captain 2, and assigned as the Commanding Officer 

LAPD Field Services Division at the Los Angeles International Airport. In 2007, he was promoted to Captain 3. 

Commander Green attended Cal State University at Long Beach, 

the Loyola Marymount University and Union Institute. He holds 

an Associate Arts degree in Administration of Justice and a Bachelor of Science degree in Law Enforcement Leadership and Management. 

Sheriff Richard Stanek is the 27th Sheriff of Hennepin County, 

Minnesota, which is the largest county there. He was first sworn 

in on January 1, 2007 and was reelected in 2010. In January, Sheriff Stanek began a 2-year term as President of the Major County 

Sheriffs’ Association. He serves on the Board of Directors of the 

National Sheriffs’ Association and co-chairs the NSA Homeland Security Committee, as well as being active in the International Association of Chiefs of Police. 

Sheriff Stanek began his career in the Minneapolis Police Department. He rose through the ranks from patrol officer, detective, 

precinct commander, to Commander of Criminal Investigations. 

While a police officer, Sheriff Stanek was elected five times to the 

Minnesota House of Representatives, and he chaired the House 

Crime Policy and Finance Committee. In 2003, he was appointed 

by the governor as Commissioner of Public Safety and Director of 

Homeland Security. 

He earned a Criminal Justice degree from the University of Minnesota and a Master’s degree in Public Administration from 

Hamline University. 

Tim King is the Founder, President and CEO of Urban Prep 

Academies, a non-profit organization operating a network of public 

college prep boys’ schools in Chicago, including the Nation’s first 

all-male charter high school and related programs aimed at promoting college success. Mr. King also serves as an adjunct lecturer 

at Northwestern University and has contributed to the Chicago 

Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, and the Huffington Post. 

He holds a doctorate honoris causa from the Adler School and received a Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service and Juris Doctor 

degrees from Georgetown. 

Ms. Constance Rice has been co-director and attorney at the Advancement Project since 1998. She is also a partner at English 

Munger and Rice. Previously, she spent 9 years in the Los Angeles 

office of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Prior to 

this position, she was President of the Board of Commissioners at 

the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, Special Assistant 

to the Associate Vice Chancellor at UCLA, and previously was an 

associate attorney at Morrison and Foerster. She received her 

14 

Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard and her J.D. degree from 

NYU. 

Without objection, all of your statements will be printed in full 

in the record. Without objection, all Members’ opening statements 

will be printed in the record. 

As you know, we ask you to summarize your testimony in 5 minutes. There will be lights in front of you to coach you when your 

time is up. 

The Chair recognizes Commander Green. 

TESTIMONY OF ROBERT F. GREEN, ASSISTANT COMMANDING 

OFFICER, OPERATIONS-SOUTH BUREAU, LOS ANGELES POLICE DEPARTMENT 

Mr. GREEN. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, council members. It is 

an honor to be here. I think it is important I put my testimony in 

context. For three decades, I have done very aggressive law enforcement work in Los Angeles. I believed that it was all about 

handcuffs and, as Ms. Rice would say, shock and awe. 

We spiked in violent crime during the late ’80’s and early ’90’s 

in Los Angeles, and we were seen as the murder capital of the 

country, and we responded with very aggressive suppression. We 

would bring in 500 cops to an area of the city, and anything that 

looked like criminal activity we would address, a lot of citations, a 

lot of people went to jail. 

For a short period of time it reduced violence and gang violence. 

But overwhelmingly, we eroded our relationship with the community, we lost community trust, which ultimately set the stage for 

the civil unrest in Los Angeles in 1992. 

We struggled with our programs for about 10 years, and in 2007, 

with the leadership of Ms. Rice, the Urban Peace Institute, the Advancement Project came together with our strategy and call to action in Los Angeles, and Mayor Villaraigosa followed that up with 

his gang initiatives and established the Gang Reduction Youth Development Office. 

For me initially, it was extraordinarily distasteful that I would 

have to partner with ex-offenders and Shot Callers to reduce violent crime. I sit humbly before you today saying that I could not 

have been more wrong. Based on those relationships with the exoffenders, the wrap-around programs that we have in Los Angeles, 

we have reduced crime dramatically, and gang crime. 

To have intervention workers respond after a shooting in partnership, true partnership with law enforcement to reduce potential 

additional shootings or retaliation shootings has been very, very 

successful. Building those relationships with people that have influence in a neighborhood that we do not has paid significant dividends. 

The Community Engagement Programs, Summer Night Lights, 

where we bring in gang members, community members, law enforcement and intervention workers together at a recreation center 

to role model expected behavior has been very successful. 

The Community Safety Partnership, we have gone into four of 

the most troubled housing developments in the City of Los Angeles. 

We have put 10 cops in each one of those developments, not for 

suppression but for community programs. In the 8 months that 

15 

they have been in existence, we have seen a dramatic reduction in 

crime. But most importantly, we have seen an unprecedented improvement in the relationship between those communities and law 

enforcement. 

The Watts Gang Task Force, where we used to have nothing but 

conflict and finger pointing, has been impressively successful in our 

ability to get along and ensure progress. 

Now, that doesn’t mean that suppression has gone out the window. Suppression is an important element, but it needs to be strategic, and it needs to be done in a partnership with the community, 

with the community, not for the community. 

Our Federal partnerships and local partnerships with the City 

Attorney’s Office and District Attorney’s Office for injunctions and 

enhancements is a vital part of the overall cocktail that has helped 

in L.A. The FBI’s programs for Save Our Streets Task Force has 

given us the ability in the last 2 years to increase our homicide 

clearance rate by 20 percent, to an unprecedented 80 percent, 

which is important because once an individual starts to shoot, 

there is nothing to slow him down. So the quicker we can get that 

individual off the street and target just the violent offenders, the 

better off we are, and we are able to reduce additional shootings 

and homicides. 

The Safe Street Partnership working with our gang officers to 

give us additional logistics and technology and financial support is 

critical to us. The relationships with the DEA and ATF on these 

task forces to be able to partnership and have strategic suppression 

for violence, not just for gang suppression but for the violent element in that community, to remove them from the community so 

they can’t continue to offend, we have got to do all that with wraparound. 

The ability to work with Shot Callers, ex-gang members, in partnership with law enforcement does tremendous things when we 

walk into recreation centers, and even walk up and hug a thug, 

and he can hug a cop. That’s what we call it. But ultimately, that 

role modeling has done tremendous things for us in our ability to 

establish those relationships in the community. 

So as we move forward in L.A., we will continue strategic suppression, but without a doubt, the intervention prevention programs are the root of a lot of our success now in Los Angeles. 

[The prepared statement of Commander Green follows:] 

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Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Thank you very much, Commander. Believe me, your reputation has come in advance of you here, and we 

are happy to see something that works rather than hear about 

things that don’t. 

Sheriff Stanek. 

TESTIMONY OF RICHARD W. STANEK, SHERIFF, 

HENNEPIN COUNTY, MN 

Mr. STANEK. Well, thank you, Chairman Sensenbrenner, Ranking Member Scott, and Members of the Subcommittee. Thank you 

for the opportunity to be here today. I am Rich Stanek, Sheriff of 

Hennepin County. I am here today on behalf of the National Sheriffs’ Association, where I serve on the Board of Directors, and I am 

the Chair of their Homeland Security Committee. This year I also 

began a 2-year term as President of the Major County Sheriffs’ Association. 

I have been asked to testify today about the specific emergence 

of Somali gang-related issues we are having in my county. The 

Minnesota Somali population has been estimated in the range of 

80,000 to 125,000, and the majority of them live in Hennepin County. Whereas the African population represented 4 percent in the 

United States in 2008, in Minnesota Africans represent 18 percent 

of our population because Minnesota is a designated U.S. refugee 

resettlement area. 

I would like to state for the record that the Somali community 

as a whole is made up of law-abiding citizens who came to Minnesota as refugees and are now an important part of our community. 

Mr. Chair and Members, Somali gangs are unique in that they 

are not necessarily based on the narcotics trade, as are other traditional gangs. The most successful gang prosecutions require a narcotics nexus. Somali gang criminal activities are not based on a certain geographical area or turf. The gang members will often congregate in certain areas but commit their criminal acts elsewhere. 

The criminal acts are often done in a wide geographic area that 

stretches outside of the Twin Cities seven-county metro area, and 

their mobility has made them difficult to track. 

Mr. Chair and Members, let me describe several typical crimes 

committed by Somali gangs. First, credit card fraud. Recently, Somali gangs have committed a high volume of credit card skimming 

and credit card fraud. Credit card skimming is a high-reward and 

a low-risk crime. The skimming is done by acquiring a skimming 

device, computer, and the necessary software. In Minnesota, we are 

seeing trends where gangs recruit individuals, often restaurant employees, to perform skimming during work hours, and then give the 

skimming device back to the gang members. 

These cases are difficult for law enforcement, often requiring a 

large amount of time since the cards are often not used locally. In 

credit card fraud cases, an investigator must find a victim and the 

location of the initial skimming. There can be numerous victims 

from one skimming operation. Surveillance video is necessary, and 

computer forensics are essential in order to identify suspects. 

A second would be witness intimidation. Somali gangs readily engage in witness tampering and intimidation. In Somali culture, if 

23 

a crime is committed against a family, clan or tribe, remittances 

are paid to family members. Somalis in Hennepin County have continued this remittance payment practice. We have learned that victims’ families often prefer to negotiate financial remittances rather 

than follow through with judicial prosecution. Oftentimes, the payments are made directly to relatives in Somalia. 

This remittance payment continues to interfere in the successful 

prosecution of gang members, and witness intimidation by Somali 

gang members has become an ongoing threat to successful prosecutions. In a recent homicide trial in Hennepin County, a witness recanted his earlier testimony, and another witness refused to return 

from London in order to testify. We believe there were direct 

threats of violence made to witnesses and family members. The 

suspect in this case, a known Somali gang member, was tried but 

acquitted by a jury. The homicide is believed to have been in retaliation for previous testimony provided by opposing gang members 

in another homicide. 

The third are gun store burglaries. In July of 2008, a gun store 

in Minnetonka, Minnesota was burglarized. The suspect took 57 

handguns. Through the investigation, it was determined that the 

guns were taken by members of the Somali Outlawz. Through 

tracking the recovered guns, it was determined that the majority 

of guns were either traded or sold to other known gang members. 

These same guns were then used in homicides, aggravated assaults, shootings and robberies. Twenty-seven of those stolen handguns have yet been recovered. 

Fourth is a terrorism nexus to gang activity. In 2007, a local Somali community started to report that some of the youth in the 

area had essentially disappeared without warning. It was later 

learned that 20 young men had left Minneapolis to travel to Somalia to receive training and fight as members of al-Shabaab. One individual had moved to Minneapolis as a teenager in 1983, and following a shoplifting arrest he fell into the violent street gang called 

the Somali Hot Boyz. After a short period of time, he emerged as 

a recruiter for al-Shabaab, which eventually led him to leave Minneapolis for the Horn of Africa in 2008. Later it was learned this 

individual was killed in fighting between al-Shabaab and Somali 

government forces. 

Mr. Chair and Members, in conclusion, the Somali gangs have 

emerged as a serious threat to community safety both in Hennepin 

County and as a unique challenge to our law enforcement resources. These gangs are involved in multiple criminal activities 

that require sophisticated and resource-intensive law enforcement 

investigations. They are growing in influence and violence. They 

demonstrate the importance of multi-jurisdictional law enforcement 

information sharing, and practice certain cultural behaviors that 

render some traditional U.S. criminal justice tools less effective. We 

are clearly faced with a challenge that requires an innovative approach, including new investigative tools and focused resources. 

Mr. Chair and Members, I look forward to working with Congress and our law enforcement partners to identify and implement 

smart and cost-effective solutions. I am happy to answer any questions you might have. Thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Sheriff Stanek follows:] 

24 

Prepared Statement of Richard W. Stanek, 

Sheriff, Hennepin County, Minnesota 

Chairman Sensenbrenner, Ranking Member Scott, and members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to be here today. I am Rich Stanek, Sheriff of Hennepin County in Minnesota. I am here today on behalf of the National 

Sheriffs’ Association where I serve on the Board of Directors and am the Chair of 

the Homeland Security Committee. I currently serve on the Department of Homeland Security’s Inter-agency Threat Assessment and Coordination Group and this 

year, I also began a two-year term as President of the Major County Sheriffs’ Association. 

I have been asked to testify today about the specific emergence of Somali gang 

related issues we are having in my county. Minnesota’s Somali population has been 

estimated in the range of 80,000 to 125,000 and a majority of them live in Hennepin 

County. Whereas the African population represented 4% in the United States in 

2008, in Minnesota, Africans represent 18% of our population because Minnesota is 

a designated U.S. Refugee Resettlement Area. I would like to state for the record 

that the Somali community as a whole is made up of law abiding citizens, who came 

to Minnesota as refugees and are now an important part of our community. 

Why are Somali gangs unique? 

Somali gangs are unique in that they are not necessarily based on the narcotics 

trade as are other traditional gangs. Most successful gang prosecutions require a 

narcotics nexus. Somali gang criminal activities are not based on a certain geographical area or turf. Gang members will often congregate in certain areas, but 

commit their criminal acts elsewhere. Criminal acts are often done in a wide geographic area that stretches outside of the Twin Cities seven county metro area. 

Their mobility has made them difficult to track. 

Typical Crimes committed by Somali Gangs include the following: 

First, Credit Card Fraud: Recently, Somali gangs have committed a high volume 

of credit card skimming and credit card fraud. Credit card skimming is a high reward, low risk crime. The skimming is done by acquiring a skimming device, computer, and necessary software. In Minnesota we are seeing trends where gangs will 

recruit individuals, often restaurant employees, to perform the skimming during 

work hours and then give the skimming device back to the gang member. 

These cases are difficult for law enforcement, often requiring a large amount of 

time since the cards are often not used locally. In credit card fraud cases, an investigator must find a victim and the location of the initial skimming. There can be numerous victims from one skimming operation. Surveillance video is necessary and 

computer forensics are essential in order to identify suspects. United States commerce is far behind other countries in credit card security. Encrypted chip technology is proposed to begin use in the United States in 2013. 

Sadly, because the sentences for credit card skimming are short, criminals are 

less concerned with the legal consequences. The resources needed to investigate 

credit card fraud and the sentencing guidelines make enforcing these laws very 

challenging. 

Second, Cell Phone Store Burglaries: Cell phone stores in Minnesota also have 

been targeted by suspected Somali gang members where suspects smash the glass 

of the front doors, move to storage areas and target high-end smart phones. They 

can be in and out of the store in less than 2 minutes. Suspects have learned to travel to different metro areas in the United States to avoid the heightened awareness 

of law enforcement in certain communities. 

One strategy we’ve implemented is to work with cell phone companies to identify 

security weaknesses at their retail venues. One weakness we found was in the handling of merchandise stock overnight. Phones were not being placed in vaults, making them easy targets. By moving their stored phones into vaults a number of stores 

have reduced their risk for stolen merchandise. 

Third, Witness intimidation: Somali gangs readily engage in witness tampering 

and intimidation. In Somali culture, if a crime is committed against a family, clan, 

or tribe, remittances are paid to family members. Somalis in Hennepin County have 

continued this remittance payment practice. We’ve learned that victims’ families 

often prefer to negotiate financial remittances rather than follow through with judicial prosecution. Oftentimes the payments are made directly to relatives in Somalia. 

This remittance payment continues to interfere in the successful prosecution of gang 

members. 

Witness intimidation by Somali gang members has become an ongoing threat to 

successful prosecutions. In a recent homicide trial in Hennepin County, a witness 

25 

recanted his earlier testimony, and another witness refused to return from London 

in order to testify. We believe there were direct threats of violence made to witnesses and family members. The suspect in the case, a known Somali gang member, 

was tried, but acquitted by a jury. The homicide is believed to have been retaliation 

for previous testimony provided by opposing gang members in another homicide. 

Fourth, Gun Store Burglaries: In July of 2008, a gun store in Minnetonka, Minnesota, was burglarized; the suspects initially cut the alarm and telephone lines and 

waited for law enforcement response. After law enforcement and management had 

cleared the area, the suspects returned and committed the burglary. The suspects 

took 57 handguns. Through the investigation it was determined that the guns were 

taken by members of the Somali Outlawz. Through tracking of recovered guns, it 

was determined that the majority of guns were either traded or sold to other known 

gang members. These same guns were then used in homicides, aggravated assaults, 

shootings, and robberies. Twenty seven of the stolen handguns have not yet been 

recovered. 

Fifth, Terrorism Nexus to Somali Gang Activity: In 2007, the local Somali community started to report that some of the youth in the area had essentially disappeared 

without warning. It was later learned that 20 young men had left Minneapolis to 

travel to Somalia to receive training and fight as members of al-Shabaab. One individual had moved to Minneapolis as a teenager in 1993. Following a shoplifting arrest, he fell into the violent street gang called the ‘‘Somali Hot Boyz’’. After a short 

period of time, he emerged as a recruiter for al-Shabaab which eventually led him 

to leave Minneapolis for the Horn of Africa in 2008. Later, it was learned this individual was killed in fighting between al-Shabaab and Somali government forces. 

In conclusion: Somali gangs have emerged as a serious threat to community safety 

in Hennepin County and a unique challenge to law enforcement. These gangs are 

involved in multiple criminal activities that require sophisticated and resource-intensive law enforcement investigations, are growing in influence and violence, demonstrate the importance of multi-jurisdictional law enforcement information sharing, 

and practice certain cultural behaviors that render some traditional U.S. criminal 

justice tools less effective. We are clearly faced with a challenge that requires an 

innovative approach including new investigative tools and focused resources. 

I look forward to working with Congress and our law enforcement partners to 

identify and implement smart and cost-effective solutions, and I am happy to answer any questions you might have. 

Thank you, 

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Thank you, Sheriff. 

Mr. King. 

TESTIMONY OF TIM KING, FOUNDER AND 

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, URBAN PREP ACADEMIES 

Mr. KING. It is a tremendous honor to be asked to give testimony 

to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and 

Homeland Security, and to be able to offer a perspective from the 

field of education. For that opportunity, I would like to thank the 

Chairman, the Vice Chair, as well as Ranking Member Scott and 

the other Members of the Subcommittee. I would also like to recognize Representative Quigley of the Illinois 5th Congressional District, who is no doubt familiar with the issues affecting our city. 

Chicago is in a profound state of crisis. With every weekend 

comes another round of bloodshed. Between June 22nd and the 

24th, four people were killed, including two boys aged 13 and 14, 

and 30 were wounded. Between June 29th and July 1st, 17 people 

were wounded, including a 3-year-old and 9-year-old. Nine people 

were killed. So far this year, more Americans have been murdered 

in the streets of Chicago than in service in Afghanistan. Chicago 

has seen four times as many murders since January as New York 

City, and last week, as the country awoke to the intensely tragic 

news that a mass gunman had opened fire in a Colorado movie theater, I was learning that two teenagers in Chicago had been killed 

26 

and another wounded. That wounded teenager is a rising senior at 

Urban Prep named Demarcus Brown. 

I founded Urban Prep Academies, the country’s first network of 

all boys’ charter public high schools, in large part as a response to 

some of the factors that are currently playing out in the form of 

this summer’s violence. Since our founding, 100 percent of Urban 

Prep’s graduates have been admitted to college. This is a major accomplishment for any school. But given that all of our graduates 

are African American males, and that there are exceptional challenges facing this population, the achievement is even more significant. 

In order to shed light on the state of affairs of being a young 

Black male in a violence-filled community, Urban Prep’s sophomore, Yaviel Ivey, was recently asked to record a month-long video 

diary for CBS News. Toting a camcorder on his way to and from 

school, Mr. Ivey chronicled the daily violence he witnessed. ‘‘I don’t 

expect to have a future in my neighborhood. I want better for myself,’’ he said in one entry. In another entry, Mr. Ivey told about 

being asked by a gang member what gang he was affiliated with, 

narrowly escaping when he responded that he was neutral. 

There are as many as 600 Chicago gangs, with approximately 

150,000 members. Mr. Ivey comes from a home in which he is loved 

and supported. He is a straight-A student who wants to become an 

entrepreneur. Yet, even the advantages of family, intellect and ambition cannot protect him from the violence that threatens his community. For Mr. Ivey, like so many other young people, simply 

walking out of the front door can be a dangerous undertaking. 

To address this problem, we must offer hope to communities and 

people plagued by violence. The only way we will staunch the violence is to persuade those committing violent acts that they have 

something to lose, that there are opportunities for enjoyment and 

advancement that don’t come at the expense of those around them, 

that there are paths to respect that don’t go through fear. 

But hope is not enough. We need further support for schools like 

Urban Prep and others that are committed to educating our cities’ 

most vulnerable children. We need engaged community organizations, empathetic law enforcement, and government that invests 

heavily in the well-being of its citizens. 

In the end, what we need is action, action that will ensure that 

all children, all Americans are safe. Demarcus, the Urban Prep student who was shot last week, is still in the hospital. His older 

brother Eric was also an Urban Prep student. I say ‘‘was’’ because 

he graduated this past year, having been accepted to college, to 

multiple colleges, and receiving the Gates Millennium Scholarship, 

which will cover all of his college and graduate school expenses. 

This fall, he will be enrolled in Howard University right here in 

our Nation’s Capital. What a tragic juxtaposition, one brother on 

his way to college, and another in the hospital fighting for his life. 

Eric Brown is proof that it is possible to end these cycles of violence one child at a time. His younger brother Demarcus is a tragic 

reminder of what happens if we do not. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. King follows:] 

27 

1 Crimesider Staff, ‘‘4 dead, 30 wounded in weekend Chicago violence intensifying search for 

answers,’’ CBS News/AP [Chicago] 25 Jun. 2012, 22 Jul. 2012 <http://www.cbsnews.com/8301- 

504083l162-57459869-504083/4-dead-30-wounded-in-weekend-chicago-violence-intensifyingsearch-for-answers>. 2 ‘‘Chicago Shootings: 3-Year-Old Boy Among At Least 17 Hurt, 9 Killed In Weekend Gun Violence,’’ Huffington Post 7 Jun. 2012, 22 Jul. 2012 <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/02/ 

chicago-shootings-3-year-lnl1643270.html>. 3 Crimesider Staff, ‘‘4 dead, 30 wounded in weekend Chicago violence intensifying search for 

answers,’’ CBS News/AP [Chicago] 25 Jun. 2012, 22 Jul. 2012 <http://www.cbsnews.com/8301- 

504083l162-57459869-504083/4-dead-30-wounded-in-weekend-chicago-violence-intensifyingsearch-for-answers>. 4David Knowles, ‘‘Wild West in Chicago—City officials fight back as murder rate outstrips 

N.Y., L.A.—even Kabul,’’ The Daily 15 Jun. 2012, 22 Jul. 2012. <http://www.thedaily.com/page/ 

2012/06/15/061512-news-chicago-murders-knowles-1-3>. 5 ‘‘Statistics on African-American males,’’ The Morehouse Male Initiative 22 Jul. 2012 <http:// 

morehousemaleinitiative.com/?pagelid=178>. 6Sean F. Reardon, Rachel Baker and Daniel Klasik, ‘‘Race, income, and enrollment patterns 

in high selective colleges, 1982–2004.’’ Center For Education Policy Analysis at Stanford University 15 Jul. 2012, 22 Jul. 2012 <http://cepa.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/race%20 

income%20%26%20selective%20college%20enrollment%20july16%202012.pdf>. 7 United States, Department of Labor, The African-American Labor Force in the Recovery. 

(Washington: 2012) 22 Jul. 2012 <http://www.dol.gov/lsec/media/reports/BlackLaborForce/ 

BlackLaborForce.pdf>. 8 ‘‘Yes We Can: The Schott 50 State Report on Public Education and Black Males 2010,’’ 

Schott Foundation for Public Education. Aug. 2010, 22 Jul. 2012 < http://schottfoundation.org/ 

publications/schott-2010-black-male-report.pdf>. 9 United States, Center for Disease Control, Leading Causes of Death by Age Group, Black 

Males-United States, 2007 (Washington: 2007) 22 Jul. 2012, <http://www.cdc.gov/men/lcod/2007/ 

BlackMales2007.pdf>. 10Kristin Anderson Moor, Zakia Redd, Mary Burkhauser, Kassim Mbwana and Ashley Collins, ‘‘Children in Poverty: Trends, Consequences, and Policy Options,’’ Apr. 2009, 22. Jul. 2012 

<http://www.childtrends.org/files/childltrends-2009l04l07lrblchildreninpoverty.pdf>. 11 ‘‘Criminal Justice Fact Sheet’’ NAACP 22 Jul. 2012 <http://www.naacp.org/pages/criminaljustice-fact-sheet>. 12Melissa Roderick, Jenny Nagaoka, and Elaine Allensworth, ‘‘From High School to the Future: A First Look at Chicago Public School Graduates’ College Enrollment, College Preparation, 

and Graduation from Four-Year Colleges,’’ The University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago 

School Research Apr. 2006, 22 Jul. 2012 <http://ccsr.uchicago.edu/publications/high-school-future-first-look-chicago-public-school-graduates-college-enrollment>. 

Prepared Statement of Tim King, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, 

Urban Prep Academies 

It is a tremendous honor to be asked to give testimony to the House Judiciary 

Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security, and to be able to offer 

a perspective from the field of education. For that opportunity, I would like to thank 

Chairman Sensenbrenner, Vice-Chair Gohmert, Ranking Member Scott, and the 

other members of the Subcommittee. I would also like to offer special thanks to Representative Quigley of the Illinois 5th District, who is no doubt familiar with some 

of the issues that I will be discussing today. 

When we talk about violence in Chicago, the statistics that are regularly cited 

show a city in a profound state of crisis. With every weekend comes another round 

of bloodshed. Between June 22 and 24, four were killed, including two boys aged 

13 and 14, and 30 were wounded.1 Between June 29 and July 1, 17 were wounded, 

including a three-year-old, and nine were killed.2 So far this year, more Americans 

have been killed in the streets of Chicago than in service in Afghanistan 3; Chicago 

has seen four times as many murders since January as New York City.4 And last 

week, as the country awoke to the profoundly tragic news that a masked gunman 

had opened fire in a Colorado movie theater, I was learning that in Chicago, three 

teenagers had been shot, including an Urban Prep student. 

Urban Prep Academies, the country’s first network of all-boys charter high-schools 

and the organization that I represent today, was created in large part as a response 

to some of the factors that are currently playing out in the form of this summer’s 

violence. In Chicago, as in large cities around the country, minorities, especially 

Black males, are grossly overrepresented in prison populations 5 and underrepresented in schools 6 and places of work.7 The statistics tell a story of endemic disenfranchisement. The national high school drop-out rate for Black males hovers 

around 50 percent,8 and the leading cause of death for African-American males age 

15 to 34 is homicide.9 Today, one in three Black children live in poverty,10 and onethird of Black men born this decade will spend some time in prison.11 In Chicago, 

just 2.5 percent of Black males attending public school will graduate from a fouryear college.12

28 

13 ‘‘MCLD College Scholar Program,’’ Milwaukee Center for Leadership Development. 22 Jul. 

2012 <http://milwcld.org/page3.php>. 14 ‘‘2010 College Enrollment For the Class of 2010 Based on the National Student Clearinghouse Data For All Graduates,’’ Chicago Public Schools 25 Apr. 2011: 1–11. 15 Byron Pitts, ‘‘Chicago teen on living amid violence: ‘I don’t expect to have a future here’,’’ 

CBS Evening News 12 Jun. 2012, 22 Jul. 2012 <http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563l162- 

57452004/chicago-teen-on-living-amid-violence-i-dont-expect-to-have-a-future-here>. 16Mark Guarino, ‘‘In Chicago, heat and homicide stoke fear and frustration,’’ Christian 

Science Monitor 18 Jul. 2012, 22 Jul. 2012 <http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2012/0718/ 

In-Chicago-heat-and-homicide-stoke-fear-and-frustration>. 17Fresh Air, WBEZ, Chicago, IL 9 Jul. 2012 18 John Otrompke, ‘‘Nearly Half of Inner-City Youth Suffer From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: Presented at AACAP,’’ P/S/L Group 4 Nov. 2010, 22 Jul. 2012 <http://www.pslgroup.com/ 

dg/25bdd6.htm>. 

Urban Prep’s mission is simple: To provide a high-quality comprehensive education that results in our graduates succeeding in college. While our schools are still 

young, thanks to the efforts of our dedicated teachers, administrators, parents and 

students, Urban Prep is well on its way to increasing the number of African-American males who earn college degrees. Since our first senior class graduated in 2010, 

100 percent of Urban Prep graduates (all Black males) have been admitted to college, and 83 percent are persisting in college, compared to a national persistence 

rate for Black males of 35 percent.13 In 2010, the most recent year for which data 

is available, one in twenty African-American males enrolling in college from Chicago 

Public Schools was an Urban Prep graduate.14

It takes hard work to achieve these outcomes. Our students have a longer school 

day that results in an additional year of instruction when compared to traditional 

public schools, and are required to participate in at least one afterschool activity 

each semester. Many of our young men spend their summers in academic programs 

at universities like Cornell, Georgetown and Oxford. They are the heirs to a unique 

school culture that celebrates even the smallest achievements in order to reinforce 

our belief that doing the right thing is the right thing to do. 

Yet while Urban Prep students experience a safe-haven inside our schools, they 

still must often navigate treacherous streets in their communities. In order to shed 

more light on the state of affairs within one such community, rising Urban Prep 

sophomore Yaviel Ivey was recently asked to record a month-long video diary for 

CBS News.15 Toting a camcorder on his way to and from school as well as around 

his house, Mr. Ivey (in order to promote respect within our schools, we refer to our 

students by their surnames) chronicled the daily violence that is endemic to his 

neighborhood. ‘‘I don’t expect to have a future [in my neighborhood]. I want better 

for myself,’’ he said in one entry. In another entry, Mr. Ivey told about being asked 

by a gang member what gang he was affiliated with (there are as many as 600 Chicago gangs with approximately 150,000 members 16), narrowly escaping when he responded that he was neutral. Mr. Ivey comes from a home in which he is loved and 

supported. He is a straight-A student who wants to become an entrepreneur. Yet 

even the advantages of family, intellect, and ambition cannot protect him from the 

violence that threatens his community. For Mr. Ivey, like so many other young people, simply walking out of the front door can be a dangerous undertaking. 

And the danger is all too real. A year ago, Leonetta Sanders, the principal of 

Harper High School (located on Chicago’s South Side just two miles from Urban 

Prep’s Englewood Campus) started a list of current and former students who became victims of gun violence in a binder she kept in her office.17 This July, she 

added her 27th name, eight dead and 19 shot. Ms. Sanders says that at the end 

of the school year, her students will talk not about what they will do over the summer, but how many of them will survive to make it back next fall. Sadly, stories 

like this are typical of many Chicago public high schools. 

And the bullets wound many more in addition to those they strike. Research by 

the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry has found that almost 

one-half of all American inner-city youth show signs of post-traumatic stress disorder.18 The fear of personal danger and the knowledge that loved ones may be 

taken at any point weigh heavily on the fragile psyches of our youth. Additionally, 

the steps many families take to safeguard their sons and daughters, including prohibiting them from going outside on their own, have unintended consequences as 

young people miss out on opportunities for exercise and personal enrichment. 

Urban Prep has always been a leading voice in demanding that greater attention 

be paid to addressing the problem of youth violence. And we have not been alone 

in seeking answers from our city, state, and federal governments. The leadership 

of other schools, as well as community groups, has fought for a stronger response 

to the violence sweeping our streets. We want to know what’s being done to make 

29 

19 ‘‘Youth program helps curb violence,’’ United Press International 13 Jul. 2012, 22 Jul. 2012 

<http://www.upi.com/HealthlNews/2012/07/13/Youth-program-helps-curb-violence/UPI-876613 

42236140>. 20 Carol Marin and Don Moseley, ‘‘Chicago Police, Ceasefire Prepare for Partnership,’’ NBC5 

Chicago. 9 Jul. 2012, 22 Jul. 2012 <http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/chicago-policeceasefire-tio-hardiman-161873765.html>. 21 ‘‘Report: Gun Violence Among School-Age Youth in Chicago,’’ The University of Chicago 

Crime Lab 22 Jul. 2012 <http://crimelab.uchicago.edu/page/report>. 22William Harms, ‘‘Study: Chicago counseling program reduces youth violence, improves 

school engagement,’’ UChicagoNews 13 Jul. 2012, 22 Jul. 2012 <http://news.uchicago.edu/article/ 

2012/07/13/study-chicago-counseling-program-reduces-youth-violence-improves-school-engage 

men>. 

our city safer. But before we have answers, we need to know that we’re asking the 

right questions. 

We need to ask what kinds of events lead to violent crime in Chicago, because 

most of it is not, as some would have you believe, the result of gang warfare or 

drug-related robberies. Chicago Police Department data show that the most common 

homicide in Chicago begins as a nonviolent altercation, escalates into violence and 

involves guns.19 Clearly, Chicagoans need to learn that retribution isn’t the answer, 

but they also need to know that justice will be served. Let’s support interactions 

between the community and police force so that Chicagoans feel like their neighborhoods are being protected, not occupied. And let’s increase the penalties for illegal 

weapon possession so that arguments can’t turn so quickly into gunplay. 

We need to ask how we might prevent crime from happening rather than reacting 

to its effects. Last year’s popular documentary The Interrupters brought some muchdeserved attention to CeaseFire, a group that works to end cyclical violence in some 

of Chicago’s toughest neighborhoods. Using staff members who have cachet within 

the community to identify and reach out to those who might be at risk for violence, 

CeaseFire has been able to cool a number of hotspots in the disadvantaged neighborhoods of Englewood, Auburn Gresham and West Garfield Park. Earlier this 

month, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel promised to provide funding for 90 additional CeaseFire staff members, and to instruct the Chicago Police Department to 

work more closely with CeaseFire identifying and reaching out to at-risk individuals.20

We need to ask questions about the type of person most likely to become a victim 

or perpetrator, and then devise strategies to specifically impact these individuals. 

According to the University of Chicago Crime Lab, both victims and perpetrators of 

violent crimes are far likelier than not to be between the ages of 10 and 25, to be 

minorities, and to be male. In predicting the likelihood of involvement in a violent 

crime, the Crime Lab lists several non-demographic variables as well, most notably 

alcohol use, mental health problems, and ‘‘perhaps particularly,’’ school failure.21

Let’s acknowledge that in Chicago, certain populations—young Black men particularly—are far more likely to be perpetrators and victims of violence. But instead of 

blaming these young people, let’s develop and support outreach programs targeting 

these specific groups, so that they know that there are alternatives to gangbanging, 

and that if they follow the difficult path through high school and to college, they 

will be supported every step of the way. 

We need to ask what strategies already in place are having an effect on youth 

and gang violence, and how we can support them. A study released last week by 

the University of Chicago Crime Lab found that young men who participated in an 

athletics-based youth counseling program were 44 percent less likely to be arrested 

for violent crime while participating in the program.22 Investing in targeted programs like these is not only right; it is, in time of budgetary constraints, the fiscally 

responsible thing to do. The same University of Chicago study found that pro-social 

youth programming produces a return on investment of between three and thirtyone times over when compared to the societal cost of violence, incarceration and rehabilitation. Let’s provide further support so that programs like these can be replicated, and new programs tested. 

We need to be able to empathize with those Chicagoans for whom violence and 

danger have become part of a devastating routine. These are individuals whose lives 

and choices are constrained by the constant threat of violence, who spend their time, 

like Leonetta Sanders, memorializing those that they have lost; or, like Yaviel Ivey, 

longing for a life outside the neighborhood; or like our students and others who have 

been shot or shot at, enduring the trauma and the long recovery of victimization. 

Put yourselves in their shoes. Imagine what it’s like for the child who has to pass 

by streets where he might be attacked simply because of where he lives; for the 

mother who has to worry about not when but if her child will come home tonight; 

for the school that can’t have outdoor recess or a hold a homecoming football game 

30 

23 Beckit Pettit and Bruce Western, ‘‘Mass Imprisonment and the Life Course: Race and Class 

Inequality in U.S. Incarceration,’’ American Sociological Review Apr. 2004: 151–169 24Karen Zraick, ‘‘Young Men’s Initiative, Program for Young Minorities, Draws Praise, Questions,’’ Huffington Post 4 Aug. 2011, 22 Jul. 2012 <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/05/ 

young-mens-initiative-bloomberglnl919181.html>. 25 ‘‘Prison Population Around the Globe,’’ The New York Times 22 Apr. 2008, 22 Jul. 2012 

<http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/04/22/us/20080423lPRISONlGRAPHIC.html#>. 26 ‘‘After-School Programs,’’ Education Week 3 Aug. 2004, 22 Jul. 2012 <http://www.ed 

week.org/ew/issues/after-school-programs>. 

for fear of a drive-by shooting. If we cannot stem the violence, we condemn these 

innocents and others like them to suffer for crimes of which they had no part. 

We need to remember that this is not just a South Side problem, not just a Chicago problem, not just a problem for Illinois. The violence in one of America’s greatest cities is an American problem. Harvard sociologist Bruce Western has pointed 

out that sixty percent of Black males who do not complete high school are either 

dead or have spent time in prison by the they’re 34 years old.23 60 percent—well 

over half—are dead or have spent time in prison by the age of 34. This isn’t just 

a sickness within our city but a national epidemic, and we need to address it by 

pursuing strategies that will keep students in school until they graduate. 

We need to learn from other cities that productive partnerships between the public and private sectors can mitigate violence before it becomes a police matter. This 

past fall, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and philanthropist George Soros 

matched $60 million from the City of New York to fund the Young Men’s Initiative, 

which will target 315,000 Black and Latino men between the ages of 16 and 24, 

with an eye towards improving graduation and employment rates while reducing 

criminal recidivism.24 The Young Men’s Initiative recognizes that targeted programs 

are the best means to provide demographic-specific measures like job training and 

culturally relevant teaching. It also acknowledges that prevention is more cost-effective than response. In the past 30 years, the incarceration rate in the United States 

has quadrupled, to the point where the United States now has a higher percentage 

of its population and higher total number of individuals behind bars than any other 

country in the world.25 This is not only a burden on state and federal budgets, but 

is extremely disruptive to communities in which a large percentage of the population has spent time in prison. 

We need to focus on that portion of the population—young minority men—most 

likely to commit and be victimized by violent crime, and in order to create targeted 

interventions, we need to go through the institutions that are already designed to 

impact these individuals. Schools are and must be our best means of breaking the 

cycle of violence that consumes so many young lives. We must equip our schools 

with the expertise and funding to provide enrichment activities that will give young 

people a safe place to spend the dangerous hours between 3:00 and 6:00 p.m.26 We 

have to see our schools not just as places where children go to learn, but as institutions that build communities and community-minded individuals. And we need to 

continue to support parents in their right to choose for their children whichever 

school they think will best suit their children’s needs, whether that be a neighborhood, charter or magnet school. 

At Urban Prep, we’ve recognized the importance of connecting our students with 

mentors and tutors who can provide them with the extra academic and emotional 

support that they need. One of the ways that this is being accomplished is through 

the Urban Prep Fellows Program, which matches recent college graduates with cohorts of around 25 freshmen. These men and women volunteer their time to serve 

our students and are models for the sort of engagement that we need to cultivate 

in our disadvantaged communities, but even they are not above the threat of danger. This past year, one of our Fellows, Will Morris, was mugged at gunpoint while 

he walked with two students to the train station. As I drove to visit him in the hospital (he suffered a broken nose and several other injuries), I was prepared to accept 

the fact that he would probably be dropping out of the program and heading home. 

I certainly wouldn’t have blamed him if he had. Mr. Morris, however, didn’t want 

to go home. He wanted to stay and continue to help our students thrive. His dedication and bravery should serve as an example to others, as should the courage of the 

students who were attacked with him. They too were committed enough to return 

to school and continue the pursuit of their education. 

Finally, we must offer hope to communities and people plagued by violence. The 

only way we’ll staunch the violence is to persuade those committing violent acts that 

they have something to lose, that there are opportunities for enjoyment and advancement that don’t come at the expense of those around them, that there are 

paths to respect that don’t go through fear. But hope is not enough. We need further 

support for schools like Urban Prep and others that are committed to educating our 

31 

cities’ must vulnerable children. We need engaged community organizations, empathetic law enforcement, and government that invests heavily in the wellbeing of its 

citizenry. In the end, what we need is action—action that will ensure that all children, all Americans, are safe. 

RESOURCES FOR FURTHER ENGAGEMENT

Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of 

Colorblindness. New York: The New Press, 2010. Print. 

‘‘Bam—Sports Edition: University of Chicago Crime Lab Research and Policy Brief.’’ 

The University of Chicago Crime Lab, 2012. Print. 

Bruce, Mary; Bridgeland, John M.; Fox, Joanna Horig; Balfanz, Robert. ‘‘On Track 

for Success: The Use of Early Warning Indicator and Intervention Systems to 

Build a Grad Nation.’’ Civic Enterprises, 2011. Print. 

‘‘Reaching Black Boys.’’ Catalyst Chicago and the Community Renewal Society, 2009. 

Print. 

‘‘Failed Policies, Broken Futures: The True Cost of Zero Tolerance in Chicago.’’ 

Voices of Youth in Chicago Education, 2011. Print. 

Kaba, Mariame and Edwards, Frank. ‘‘Policing Chicago Public Schools: A Gateway 

to the School-to-Prison Pipeline.’’ Project NIA, 2012. Print. 

Kotlowitz, Alex. There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up 

in the Other America. New York: Anchor, 1992. Print. 

Kozol, Jonathan. Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools. New York: 

Harper Perennial, 1992. Print. 

Kozol, Jonathan. The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling 

in America. New York: Crown, 2005. Print. 

Petteruti, Amanda. ‘‘Education Under Arrest: The Case Against Police in Schools.’’ 

Justice Policy Institute, 2011. Print. 

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Thank you very much, Mr. King. This is 

very inspiring. 

Ms. Rice. 

TESTIMONY OF CONSTANCE L. RICE, CO-DIRECTOR/ 

ATTORNEY, ADVANCEMENT PROJECT 

Ms. RICE. Good morning, Mr. Chairman. Thank you so much for 

having me, Congressman Scott, all the other Members. It is an 

honor to be here. 

I hail from Los Angeles, the gang capital of—— 

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Can you move your mic a little closer to 

you, please? 

Ms. RICE. Okay. Can you hear me? 

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Is it on? 

Ms. RICE. Okay. Good morning. 

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Better. 

Ms. RICE. Okay, good. Thank you. Again, thank you for having 

me, and it is an honor to be here. 

Mr. King gave a very moving statement, and his work is critically important for one child at a time. 

I come from Los Angeles. There are over 100,000 gang members, 1,000 gangs. We spent $25 billion over 35 years, and we have six 

times as many gangs and at least three times as many gang members. 

You heard Commander Green talk about when we were at war. 

My first reaction to the fundamental belief that I have that the 

first civil right is the right to safety, the first freedom is freedom 

from violence. I am looking at children who die at the ages of 10 

and 11 and get accosted by gangs. In L.A.’s gang hot spots, in L.A. 

32 

County, we have over 850,000 innocent children trapped in gang 

hot spots that Commander Green and LAPD and the sheriffs have 

been patrolling and fighting and battling in a war. That war has cost us $35 billion, and we have far more of the 

problem. It is not that we didn’t need very brave officers to combat, 

but it wasn’t ending the gang mentality, it wasn’t ending the 

spread of gang culture, and it was not ending the violence. The 

kids were more in danger than ever. The cops were more in danger. 

There have been over 60 officers murdered in our gang hot spots, 

and 100,000 Angelinos shot over the last 25 years. 

When we took a look at this issue, we were asked, my group, the 

Advancement Project, was asked by the City of Los Angeles and its 

ad hoc committee at the city council level to tell the region why 

L.A. was stuck on stupid when it came to reducing gangs, reducing 

gang membership, reducing the hold of gang culture on L.A. 

What we did was we pulled together 35 experts. Anytime you put 

lawyers and 35 experts together, you are going to get a big report. 

The report weighed 12.5 pounds and was 1,000 pages long. The 

only good thing about that was that it was too big to ignore, because we had ignored every other report. 

Thirty-five experts, including law enforcement, and you want to 

know what they said? They said, you can’t litigate your way out of 

it, looking at me because I had filed I don’t know how many lawsuits. Commander Green, how many times did I sue you? [Laughter.] 

I sued. I woke up every day trying to figure out a new way to 

sue in class actions, not just regular, and I was at war with LAPD 

and the sheriffs, trying to get constitutional policing. They were at 

war with the gangs. We were all fighting each other, and the kids 

were dying. 

So we got unstuck off of stupid, and we said, you want to know 

something? The civil rights litigators don’t have the answer, and 

shock and awe policing suppression doesn’t have the answer either. 

Both may be necessary, but we are not getting the job done. The 

kids are not safer. 

What we did is we wrote that report together, and as Sergeant 

McBride said, ‘‘Connie, I don’t even like you, but you want to know 

something? I’m going to join you on this report because when I retire, after 40 years of being on the Sheriff’s Department, I just arrested the grandson of the man I first arrested when I got 2 weeks 

out of the Sheriff’s Academy, and I arrested his dad 10 years ago. 

I have destroyed three generations of that family, and the next 

generation is going into the gangs.’’ 

So when we decided to take a look, a fresh lens on this problem, 

we came up with a comprehensive violence reduction focus and 

strategy. That is the strategy that Commander Green is talking 

about. Instead of suing each other, we now have each other on 

speed dial. We work all the time together. We have comprehensive 

prevention, comprehensive suppression, strategic suppression, reentry, and wrap-around security for the kids. 

Look at the data. The data tell you the truth. While Chicago is 

going up by 33 percent, L.A.’s gang crime has gone down another 

20 percent. Summer Night Lights, where the GRYD Office works, 

with the GRYD Office, our Gang Reduction and Youth DevelopVerDate Aug 31 2005 17:42 Oct 24, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00036 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\WORK\CRIME\072512\75310.000 HJUD PsN: 75310
33 

ment Office, which is in the mayor’s office, where that works at 

Summer Night Lights, magic. Gang homicides plummet 57 percent. 

Nowhere in the country does that happen. 

Do you want to know why? It is because we are working together 

like a symphony. We are not just playing separate instruments in 

a corner. We are conducted by Deputy Mayor Guillermo Cespedes 

together, by the Chief of Police, and by the Mayor, and we all get 

in the boat and row together to keep kids safe. That is the comprehensive wrap-around. 

Yes, the threat is going up, but please don’t have the Pavlovian 

response of shock and awe. We need strategic responses, and we 

have to understand that what we have been doing in the past isn’t 

getting the job done. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Rice follows:] 

Prepared Statement of Constance L. Rice, Co-Director/Attorney, 

Advancement Project. 

I am a civil rights lawyer who for 30 years has been fighting for our poorest children to enjoy the basic right of safety. All children should, at minimum, be able to 

walk to and from school, play in a park and walk to the corner store without fear 

of getting shot or being accosted by thugs. In my view, the first of all civil rights 

is the right to safety and the first of all freedoms is freedom from violence. In short, 

without public safety there are no civil rights. 

THE LOS ANGELES CONTEXT FOR GANG HOT SPOTS

Since 1980, residents trapped in Los Angeles county’s gang hot zones have suffered 7,000 gang murders, 50 police officer deaths, at least 16 gang intervention 

deaths and an estimated 100,000 people shot. L.A.’s violent gang crime costs California taxpayers more than $2 billion every year, with each gang murder costing 

$1 million dollars in direct costs and up to $16 million in indirect costs. After 35 

years of fighting a $25 billion ‘‘war on gangs,’’ the County of Los Angeles found itself 

in the year 2005 with six times as many gangs, twice as many gang members, a 

gang violence epidemic, high gang homicide rates, and a legacy of hostility between 

police and residents of high crime zones. 

By 2005, despite sustained declines in non-gang crime, L.A.’s gang crime and its 

youth gang homicide rate stayed stuck at epidemic levels. The 35 year ‘‘war on 

gangs’’ had left Los Angeles county as the violent gang capital of the nation with 

over 100,000 gang members and 1,000 gangs, half of which operated in the city of 

Los Angeles. A former World Health Organization epidemiologist who studies violence as a disease, concluded that, in the city’s gang hot spots, ‘‘Los Angeles is to 

violence what Bangladesh is to diarrhea, which means the crisis is at a dire level 

requiring a massive response.’’ Worse, a criminologist for the California Attorney 

General’s office concluded that the Petri dishes of L.A.’s high crime neighborhoods 

had spawned ‘‘a violent gang culture unlike any other. . . .’’—and L.A. was exporting it across the country. 

By 2012, however, the city of Los Angeles had a much better story to tell. The 

city had achieved significant drops in gang crime, the first declines in gang homicides and the end of the youth gang homicide epidemic that had raged since 1985. 

And by summer of 2012, as Chicago posted a 33% increase in gang homicides and 

Boston and Philadelphia struggled with increasing violence, L.A.’s gang homicides 

continued to drop, prevention programs had demonstrated a 35% reduction in gang 

affiliation, and in the city’s Summer Night Lights parks, gang homicides plummeted 

an astonishing 57%. 

What changed? 

THE REPORT: A CALL TO ACTION: THE CASE FOR COMPREHENSIVE SOLUTIONS TO

LOS ANGELES’ GANG VIOLENCE EPIDEMIC

In 2007 the Los Angeles City Council’s Ad Hoc Committee on Gang Violence and 

Youth Development commissioned the Advancement Project to explain why the 

city’s gang reduction efforts had reduced neither gangs nor gang violence. In January 2007, we issued our one thousand page report, A Call to Action: The Case for 

A Comprehensive Solution to Los Angeles’ Gang Violence Epidemic. The report, conducted with over thirty experts in areas ranging from the epidemiology of violence 

34 

and gang anthropology to mental health and law enforcement, explained that the 

‘‘war on gangs’’ was the wrong paradigm to reduce gang violence, culture and crime. 

While police suppression would always play a prime role, suppression alone could 

not dent L.A.’s gang epidemic, and untargeted saturation-suppression (‘‘war’’) had 

increased street gang cohesion and coincided with gang expansion and alienation of 

residents in gang neighborhoods. 

One expert analogized solely arresting gang members to swatting mosquitoes in 

order to fight a malaria epidemic. By arresting one gang member at a time, L.A. 

was swatting mosquitoes—and doing too little to blunt the spread of the gang mentality, ideology or culture. 

In short, the report concluded that Los Angeles could not arrest its way out of 

an entrenched gang culture. L.A. police would always need to remove violent criminals, but by stopping there, we were leaving over 850,000 innocent kids in Los Angeles County gang hot spots, 90% of whom have been exposed to felony violence, 

and a third of whom suffer from civil war levels of post traumatic stress. The report 

recommended to the City that it focus its resources in gang hot zones and switch 

from ad hoc suppression to holistic collaboration aimed at fixing the root causes of 

the gang epidemic. Instead of ‘‘war,’’ the city needed data driven strategies that reduced youth attraction to gang life, prevented gang joining, and aligned law enforcement and other agencies with the comprehensive public health approach. 

Upon its release in January 2007, the Los Angeles Daily News hailed A Call to 

Action as ‘‘A Marshall Plan for Gangs,’’ and LAPD Chief Bratton later cited it as 

the catalyst ‘‘. . . that changed how the city of Los Angeles deals with gangs.’’ 

THE COMPREHENSIVE VIOLENCE REDUCTION MODEL

The comprehensive violence reduction model requires a centrally directed, adequately funded, network-based and relationship-based strategy that forges cooperation and aligns missions across sectors, disciplines, agencies, institutions and individuals. Through the networks and coordinated programs, agencies, advocates, police, families, schools and faith based organizations jointly forge neighborhood-based 

and family-based strategies to reduce violence, keep kids safe, create alternatives 

to gangs and change norms. The comprehensive model’s theory of change is that dislodging an entrenched epidemic of gang culture cannot be done by arresting one 

gang member at a time or rescuing one child at a time. It requires an ‘‘all hands 

on deck’’ collaboration that is centrally coordinated to carry out neighborhood strategies that bring help to families trapped in gang zones. 

Hallmarks of the city of Los Angeles’ comprehensive ‘‘wrap around’’ approach are 

as follows: 

• Mayoral/Executive leadership that strongly insists on focusing funding on gang 

hot zones; that is willing to run the office responsible for executing comprehensive strategies; that accepts the uncertainty inherent to the experimentation 

needed to find out what works; that insists on police department cooperation; 

and that accepts the high risks inherent to effective gang intervention. (In L.A., 

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa accepted responsibility for a new office of Gang Reduction and Youth Development (GRYD), launched the only city-funded gang 

intervention academy, insisted on LAPD cooperation, and refused to cut GRYD 

funding during budget wars.) 

• Law enforcement leadership that aggressively seeks to increase trust between 

police and communities. (In L.A., LAPD Chief William Bratton insisted on ‘‘high 

road’’ and ‘‘public trust policing’’ and current LAPD Chief Charlie Beck has created the first community policing unit that will promote officers based on how 

they helped families keep kids from being arrested.) 

• Law enforcement leadership that is willing to pull back counterproductive and 

overly aggressive suppression; that supports and works closely with Mayor 

GRYD staff; that works in tandem with professional gang intervention. (In L.A., 

Chief Bratton, Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca and LAPD Chief Charlie 

Beck strongly backed the Call to Action mandate to bolster suppression with 

comprehensive community strategies, enthusiastically support working with professional gang intervention, and continue to be key partners in carrying out the 

comprehensive strategy.) 

• Establishment of a single accountability structure under the Mayor’s GRYD Office that has sufficient political insulation to take risks, and sufficient clout to 

command cooperation from disparate departments and sectors. GRYD requires 

a creative, politically skilled director and non-bureaucratic staff who are mission-driven. (In L.A., the five-year-old Office of Gang Reduction and Youth DeVerDate Aug 31 2005 17:42 Oct 24, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00038 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 H:\WORK\CRIME\072512\75310.000 HJUD PsN: 75310
35 

velopment operates out of the Mayor’s office, is headed by Deputy Mayor Guillermo Cespedes and has achieved remarkable milestones in establishing L.A. 

city’s comprehensive footprint—see attached data for GYRD Milestones) GRYD 

Zones are established only in high gang violence, high need areas to focus resources where the violence and need is greatest. Each of the 12 GRYD zones 

receive city resources that support year-round prevention and intervention programs as well as have Summer Night Light parks located inside the zones. 

• Data-driven operations and trial programs that synthesize the best research, examine results, use sensible evaluation and change course to pursue what works. 

• GRYD Office success with the Summer Night Lights safe parks program has 

been key to building the political support necessary to weather the risks taken 

to reduce gang violence: (In L.A., crime reductions in GRYD zones outpaced reductions in comparable non-GRYD areas of the county and city). 

• GRYD coordination of multiple agencies, advocates and neighborhood leaders, 

to carry out strategic suppression, prevention, intervention, re-entry, and community investment. 

• Family-based prevention strategies. GRYD is pioneering a family health and 

treatment regimen designed to reduce gang risk factors. Outside evaluators 

have already documented decreases in participants’ antisocial behavior including a 47.3% reduction in gang fights and 48% decrease in gang activity. 

• Professional gang intervention based on the social networking model of intervention and has the backing of law enforcement as an independent resource in 

a comprehensive violence reduction strategy 

• Gang intervention training to enhance the professionalism of intervention workers, done in a city-funded intervention training academy: the LAVITA (Los Angeles Violence Intervention Training Academy) Academy is conducted for GRYD 

by the Advancement Project’s Urban Peace Academy. 

• Philanthropic, business, faith-based and academic support for the Summer 

Night Lights safe parks program, a successful public-private partnership with 

one half of the $6 million annual budget being contributed by philanthropy. 

• Relationship-based networks that enact congruent programs driven by the same 

theory of change. 

• Sustainable community policing that is backed by departmental leadership and 

by incentive structures that reward problem solving policing. LAPD, in agreement with the Housing Authority of City of Los Angeles (HACLA) established 

its first unit of problem solving police officers through its Community Safety 

Partnership (CSP). These 45 officers are deployed to four housing developments 

for five years, and will be rewarded for developing relationships and innovative 

community driven solutions to achieve safety. For the first time LAPD officers 

will be promoted for demonstrating how they avoided arresting a kid. In the 

first six months of deploying these officers, their areas of Watts saw a 43% drop 

in crime and a notable retreat of gang activity. 

THE OFFICE OF GANG REDUCTION AND YOUTH DEVELOPMENT (GRYD)

The GRYD Office, headed by Deputy Mayor Guillermo Cespedes, was established 

five years ago in response to the Call to Action recommendation to create a single 

accountability structure responsible for implementing and coordinating comprehensive violence reduction, intervention and prevention. It has approximately 40 staff 

who carry out the family treatment prevention program, oversee street gang intervention, develop re-entry strategies, make Summer Night Lights happen and engage 

law enforcement. Deputy Mayor Cespedes would say that GRYD is just getting 

starting, but the office has documented the following milestones: 

GRYD Prevention 

In 2011, outside evaluator Urban Institute documented for the 10 to 14 year old 

program participants: 

• 23% decrease in antisocial behavior 

• 29% decrease in lack of parental supervision 

• 35% decrease in critical life events 

• 47.3% decrease in gang fights 

36 

• 35% decrease in hanging out with gang members 

• 48% decrease in participation in gang activity 

GRYD Summer Night Lights Safe Parks Program 

The Summer Night Lights (SNL) program keeps parks in gang zones open at 

night, offering neighborhood families food, sports, music, games and a chance for 

neighborhoods to keep kids safe. SNL is the most publicly recognized activity of the 

GRYD office and has been noted as a remarkable success. Between 2008 and 2011 

the SNL program had produced significantly higher reductions in crime even compared to comparable county parks with similar programs: 

• 55% reduction in shots fired 

• 43% reduction in aggravated assaults 

• Served over a million meals 

• Served 1.8 million visitors 

• Created over 3,000 job 

• 11 times higher drop in gang crime compared to county park programs 

CONCLUSION

Aggressive law enforcement to counter gang crime will always be necessary, but 

entrenched gang violence and culture cannot be addressed by suppression alone. In 

areas like Los Angeles that have epidemic levels of gang crime and violence, it is 

also necessary to launch comprehensive, wrap-around strategies described in this 

presentation. 

LA still wrestles with serious gang threats in its gang hot spots, but 2012 also 

marks the ninth year of significant citywide drops in non-gang crime, the fifth year 

of significant reductions in gang crime, and continued success in the Office Gang 

Reduction and Youth Development’s prevention, intervention, re-entry and Summer 

Night Lights programs. Indeed, through this collaborative model, Los Angeles’ current crime rates have declined to levels last seen in 1952. This progress, while partial, is clearly due to the city of L.A.’s decision to move away from a ‘‘war on gangs’’ 

and move to adopt the comprehensive violence reduction paradigm. 

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Thank you, Ms. Rice. 

The Chair is going to defer his questions to the end and now recognizes the gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Forbes. 

Mr. FORBES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank all of you for 

being here. And we certainly appreciate your expertise and your 

looking at these issues. 

I think all of us agree that we need to work together. I mean, 

there is no question about that. We also agree that we need to have 

prevention programs, we need to work strategically. But I would 

like to just look at a few statistics. 

According to the statistics that I have, we now have about 1.4 

million active gang members in the country, and that is a rise of 

about 40 percent since 2009. Do any of you dispute those statistics, 

or do they seem fairly accurate to you in what we are doing? 

Sheriff, you mentioned the Somali gangs that you have. Where 

do most of those gang members come from? How do they get involved in the gangs? 

Mr. STANEK. Yes. Chairman Sensenbrenner and Congressman, 

generally many of the Somali citizens who live in my community, 

the 80,000 to 125,000, the vast majority of them were refugees who 

came to Minnesota through that resettlement agreement. But now 

you are reaching into the first generation, so many of these young 

people are now 10, 11, 12, 13, maybe even 14 years old. They are 

growing up in a culture in which they are finding that turning to 

37 

gangs is, unfortunately, somewhat a way of life for them, very unfortunate. 

And so we are working hard to try and find ways to reach them 

early on, early childhood family education type programs, intervention, educators, the faith community and others. But some came 

with that, but for the most part the young people who are now entering gangs, Mr. Congressman, are folks who have grown up here 

in the United States into these families. 

Mr. FORBES. How about do any of you have any exposure to MS13 in your areas? Ms. Rice, do you have—Commander? 

Mr. GREEN. Yes, sir. In Los Angeles, we have a sampling component of MS-13. 

Mr. FORBES. Where are they recruiting most of their members? 

How do they get them? 

Mr. GREEN. MS-13, typically throughout the neighborhoods, and 

this is second, third generation. Some of it is built into the family. 

But MS-13 is very embedded in the prison system, and based on 

our current system within the prisons, they have the ability to 

communicate outside and continue to not only force recruitment 

but action from prison. 

Mr. FORBES. How are we going after their networks, you know, 

the leadership of the networks? Because the networks tend to run 

these gangs, and if we continue to just take people off the streets 

that are lower tier, we are not doing anything. They are going to 

replace them over and over again. What are your efforts at going 

after the networks, and how are you effectively taking those networks out? 

Mr. GREEN. In Los Angeles, it is strategy. It is mostly our task 

forces. Our goal of the leadership is to diagram out those gangs, 

target the leadership of the gangs and remove them. Unfortunately, there is a void that is filled almost immediately because it 

is very, very lucrative. 

So as you continue to have that financial incentive, each time we 

remove a top member of that gang, the void is filled almost immediately, and we have to continue our efforts to eradicate it through 

individuals. 

Mr. FORBES. Ms. Rice? 

Ms. RICE. Thank you. I think you have raised a very, very important point. MS is one of the gangs, as Commander Green indicates, 

that is probably one of the most violent, and probably most linked 

in California with the large drug distribution networks which are 

run from our prisons. That is the main vector for the messages that 

go out to control the drug trade, in California anyway. 

If we could get ahold and control of our prisons and break it up, 

MS is one of the gangs that has linked up with the prison gangs, 

and the prison gang has linked up with the cartels. But I don’t 

want us to overreact to that. We need a very focused, hierarchical 

strategy, because with organized, international, transnational 

threats, you have to go for the hierarchy. If you do that with street 

gangs, however, you end up causing a metastasis of the culture in 

the mindset at the local level. 

So you are absolutely right that there needs to be a different 

strategy for hierarchical, organized, international crime cartel type 

of activity, which is all about business and money, and the prison 

38 

nexus there. I don’t understand what we are doing with our prisons 

as gang headquarters for national cartel activity. In California, 

that is the new threat, that the cartels are now merged with some 

prison gang drug distribution, and they are now taking over 

some—just a few—less than 1 percent of the street gangs. 

I don’t want us to go all shock and awe all over the place. I 

would rather see us very strategically and surgically go after this 

threat, but not in a way that destroys the relationships and the 

proactive prevention and intervention and alternating—— 

Mr. FORBES. Ms. Rice, my time is up. 

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. The time of the gentleman has expired. 

The gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Quigley. 

Mr. QUIGLEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to thank 

all our panelists, not just for being here but for the work you do 

in your own homes and communities to make us all safer. 

Mr. King, thank you for what you do in Chicago. You, too, know 

the statistics I am all too familiar with. There are others. We had 

six people shot in 15 minutes two nights ago in Chicago. In 2010, 

we had 700 kids get shot in 1 year. I was fortunate. I grew up in 

a neighborhood where if you were in grade school, your fears were 

bad grades or getting braces or not getting a date to the prom or 

something like that. The number-one fear for kids in Chicago is 

getting shot. So it is something we have to work on. 

Mr. King, you are familiar with my predecessor, who is now the 

mayor of the City of Chicago. He recently has brought on 

CeaseFire, the group, for over $1 million to try to intervene. I assume you are familiar with their work? 

Mr. KING. Yes. 

Mr. QUIGLEY. What is your assessment of a group like this attempting to intervene in the hostilities that take place and stop 

them before they happen? 

Mr. KING. So I think that groups like CeaseFire are integral 

parts of this problem. You mentioned that the number-one fear for 

inner-city youth is getting shot. I would also say that for many people, many young people, getting shot is a badge of honor. And so 

while no one wants to get shot, in certain communities, including 

those in Chicago, there are some young people who believe that by 

getting shot, they have somehow proven something to other gang 

members, to their families, to their communities. And so they aspire to engage in violence for that reason, so they can get that 

badge of honor. 

Groups like CeaseFire and other programs in our city and 

schools have a unique opportunity to engage with young people so 

that they understand not only that they should not be engaging in 

violence but that they should in no way view violence as something 

to be celebrated or something to be aspired to. You should not look 

at violence or a bullet wound as a badge of honor. 

So I am a huge fan and supporter of CeaseFire. One of our campuses is located in the Englewood community. CeaseFire has a very 

strong presence in the Englewood community, and I think they 

make a real positive difference. 

Mr. QUIGLEY. Thank you. 

39 

Ms. Rice, you are familiar with such groups that attempt to intervene. Could you comment on how you have seen them work in 

your community? 

Ms. RICE. Gang intervention for street gang intervention is a 

critical part of any comprehensive strategy where you have a level 

of entrenchment and gang saturation that requires this kind of activity. 

I don’t like having to work with former gang members to help reduce the violence. That is annoying, and it is not something that 

law enforcement likes to do. But Commander Green and Chief 

Beck and Chief Bratton and we have learned that when you have 

100,000 gang members and you have 7 percent of them that are 

violent at an extraordinary level, your city has an epidemic. When 

you have an epidemic, you can’t hand out fly swatters to fight a 

malaria epidemic, and you can’t just arrest one at a time. You have 

to use things like gang intervention. It has to be professionalized. 

L.A. City, under Mayor Villaraigosa, has a gang academy. It is 

the La Vida Academy. Can you believe we have an academy for 

gang intervention workers to train them to work with police to protect funeral homes, to protect emergency rooms? We don’t have 

emergency docs getting shot up anymore because gang intervention 

intercedes. They stop the rumors, and as Chief Beck says, their job 

is to stop the retaliation shooting, the next shooting. 

So I caution people. If you are going to use gang intervention, it 

has to be done carefully. It has to be done with an enormously high 

level of skill. 

Mr. QUIGLEY. Thank you. 

Commander. 

Mr. GREEN. My follow-up comment to that is to be effective, it 

has to work hand in hand with law enforcement. They have to coordinate, because it is a preventive strategy. We have a candlelight 

vigil, and it would get shot up by another gang looking for more 

victims. Now with intervention, they will call us and ask for us to 

put a Black and White out. 

Historically, our only strategy was that after a funeral, when 

emotions are already high, we put gang cops into that neighborhood to make sure we didn’t have retaliation shootings, and that 

only enflamed it more. Now I can have intervention pay attention 

to that and call me if it starts to spin up. As you build that level 

of interaction between law enforcement and intervention, it is extraordinarily successful. 

Mr. QUIGLEY. Thank you. 

Sheriff, in the brief time we have. 

Mr. STANEK. Yes, thank you, sir. I think that intervention also 

goes along with analytics. These folks talked about when you have 

a shooting, you can predict in some cases, particularly with gangs, 

where the next shooting is going to happen, I don’t mean right 

down to the individual, but most of the time law enforcement understands what is the underlying conflict, whether it is something 

ongoing, whether it is turf, narcotics, something else. But using 

analytics and intelligence-led policing, we have a pretty good idea 

where the next shooting is going to occur, and it is our job to work 

with our community outreach workers or whatever resources we 

have available on the prevention side. 

40 

Mr. QUIGLEY. Thank you. I want to thank my mayor for his efforts as well. 

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

The gentleman from South Carolina, Mr. Gowdy. 

Mr. GOWDY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for holding this hearing. 

My first question is for Commander Green and Sheriff Stanek. 

I understand that the majority of the investigations and prosecutions would be at the state level. For those that may find their way 

into the Federal system, are there specific statutory changes you 

would recommend, evidentiary changes that you would recommend, 

or sentencing enhancements or sentencing guideline changes that 

you would recommend for us? 

Mr. STANEK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Members. Well, from 

my perspective, it would be sentencing enhancements for felons 

with guns and a very concerted approach by the U.S. Attorneys to 

prosecute felons with firearms, those that are prohibited. 

You know, every few years we see a new tactic, new approach, 

a new round of whether or not they are going to work with local 

law enforcement or not, or where they set that bar. But we need 

the bar set fairly low. Felons in possession of a firearm, those who 

are prohibited, those are the ones we need prosecuted on the Federal level. The Federal sentencing side versus our individual states 

is a big hammer to hold over their heads and helps us combat 

gangs and the violence on the streets in our communities. 

Mr. GOWDY. Commander, before you answer, let me ask this, because it has been a while since I was in the system. Way back 

when, anyone under the age of 18 was considered a minor by the 

Federal criminal justice system, and it required the specific approval of the Attorney General to wave them up and prosecute 

them as an adult. Is that still the case? Have you tried to wave 16 

and 17-year-olds up? 

Interestingly enough, they are considered adults in most state 

systems, but they are considered minors in the Federal system. 

Mr. STANEK. Mr. Chair and Members, I believe that is still the 

case, and that is one of the things that maybe Congress could help 

us with in local law enforcement efforts. 

Mr. GOWDY. So sentencing enhancements for non-22G cases or 

felon and possession cases, and getting ATF, which would be the 

agency of jurisdiction, to focus on garden-variety felon and possession cases, as opposed to what other priorities they may feel like 

they have. 

Mr. STANEK. Mr. Chair and Members, I would concur with that. 

Mr. GOWDY. All right. 

Snitching. I had an African American chief of police in my home 

city, and the biggest frustration he had was the unwillingness of 

some folks to cooperate with law enforcement. How do we get 

around that, and how do you also brush back allegations of racial 

profiling when the gangs, in and of themselves, are fairly homogenous and might lend themselves to certain kind of profiling? I am 

not suggesting racial, but we are kidding ourselves if we don’t 

think some of these gangs are homogenous. 

Mr. GREEN. I will go back to the first part of that question regarding what you call snitchers. I think it is important to have the 

41 

funding there to relocate witnesses so that they feel comfortable if 

they testify that they won’t be killed. That is a reality in some of 

these neighborhoods, that the people won’t testify because they are 

afraid for their life. 

We come back to talking about gun and gun enhancements. In 

a lot of these neighborhoods, young men feel that they have to be 

armed to survive. They would much rather get caught with a gun 

and prosecuted than they would get caught without a gun and get 

killed. So until that comfort zone is changed, that won’t change. 

The reality is we have to target behavior and violence. No matter 

what community it is, it is about targeting the violent behavior. So 

it doesn’t matter whether it is White, Hispanic, Black. It is about 

the violence. If you go back to the data, as you look at that data 

and you strategically enforce, you have to target the violent individuals and their actions to be successful. 

Mr. GOWDY. Mr. King, my final question would be to you with 

respect to schools. What are they doing that is good, that is right, 

that is helpful? You have the whole aspect of educable neglect 

where parents are—in South Carolina, we experimented with actually holding the parents accountable when their kids don’t go to 

school, which may be a novel concept in some other parts of the 

country, but it made sense to us. 

So what works and what doesn’t work from your perspective? 

Mr. KING. So one of the things that we have been hearing a lot 

during this testimony have been words like ‘‘comprehensive wraparound’’ and ‘‘strategic approaches.’’ I think the same words apply 

inside schools, and if schools take a comprehensive approach toward the education of the child, and by that I mean not just reading, writing and arithmetic, it also means the social and emotional 

development of the child. You mentioned the issue of snitching and 

the perception that if you are a witness to a crime, you should not 

say anything. Either you will be retaliated against or you will be 

perceived negatively. 

Well, an opportunity that schools have is to actually educate 

young people out of that mind of thinking and educate them to understand that they have a responsibility not just to themselves but 

to their communities, and part of that responsibility is bearing witness to what is going on and making sure that they are taking the 

steps necessary to keep themselves and others safe. 

So I believe that schools that engage in those types of practices, 

focusing on the social and emotional development of children, as 

well as the education of their intellects, I think are the schools that 

are going in the right direction. 

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

The gentlewoman from California, Ms. Chu. 

Ms. CHU. Well, as a Congress member from Los Angeles, I am 

so proud to be here with two outstanding witnesses from Los Angeles who have done such great work on this issue, Commander 

Green from the LAPD, and Connie Rice, somebody that I have 

known for many, many years in Los Angeles. In fact, she is an icon 

in the Los Angeles area for doing such outstanding work on so 

many different issues. Welcome to both of you. 

Commander Green, it is always a pleasure to have someone from 

the district who is sharing information on the positive things that 

42 

are occurring back in the community. With that said, in your testimony you shared that Los Angeles crime is experiencing the lowest 

crime rate it has seen since 1959. That is a remarkable feat for 

such a large urban city. 

The trend also includes a reduction in gang crime. To what do 

you credit this decrease? 

Mr. GREEN. There are a number of different things, Congressman, Congresswoman, that attribute to the success. It is a cocktail 

of suppression, intervention, but it is partnership. It is partnership 

with our city family, with our Federal partners, to actually go out 

and do something other than what we have done before with suppression. 

If we don’t get in and build relationships in the community, effective relationships in all parts of our community, the police are seen 

as the antagonist, and with that relationship we can’t move forward. 

Both the police department and the community want the same 

thing. They don’t want the violence predominantly. So we need to 

get in, and I talked about the community safety partnership earlier 

in the housing developments. For years, it has been antagonistic. 

Seven months’ worth of work in those developments with 10 cops 

doing nothing but community work and not suppression, we have 

seen dramatic reductions in shootings and homicides because we 

are building a community. We are taking on the root causes. Kids 

can get to school safely. They don’t have to worry about getting 

killed walking to and from school. Cops are mentoring people. 

A lot of people say it is not law enforcement’s job to be involved 

in all that. But if law enforcement isn’t, we don’t have the opportunity to build those critical relationships and the role model that 

we need to get information from the community to respond to it so 

we can make it better. 

So it is not one thing. But the Federal and the local partnerships, 

it is more of a task force response. Intelligence gathering, technology, all those things have helped dramatically. 

Ms. CHU. Ms. Rice, DOJ has several grant programs that provide 

funding to state and communities to combat youth gangs, gang-related violence, and juvenile delinquency. Are these grant programs 

sufficiently flexible in their targeted purpose areas to allow funding 

to be used to combat the evolving nature of gangs? If not, what are 

the shortcomings, and would these programs be appropriate to fund 

initiatives that can confront all the street gangs and transnational 

criminal gangs? If L.A. is showing such sustained declines in gang 

violence, shouldn’t some Federal funding go to funding a strategy 

this effective? 

Ms. RICE. Yes. The comprehensive strategy is something the DOJ 

understands. But there are very few places that are getting a comprehensive footprint. It is hard to put this stuff together. It is hard 

to make agencies work together, to make people who are used to 

suing one another work together. It is not easy stuff. But what we 

are saying from Los Angeles is that that is what has made the difference. We all got in the boat and rowed. We decided to become 

an orchestra, as opposed to disparate musicians, and we have a 

conductor, Guillermo Cespedes, and the mayor and the LAPD Chief 

Charlie Beck. 

43 

So it is a quantum leap of improvement, and it is hard to do, and 

it goes against all of the political DNA that we have. We have 

these Darwinian competitive funding strategies. It is inadequate 

levels of funding, and it is not strategic enough. 

So I think that the Federal dollars could go much further if they 

insisted on, where there is a high enough level to warrant it, this 

comprehensive wrap-around approach, as opposed to funding just— 

now, we have to fund the Thousand Points of Light, too. We have 

to fund the individual service-givers. We have to fund the individual schools. Those are very, very critical. It is not either/or. You 

have got to do both/and. 

I am not sure that the Federal level gets what we are talking 

about. It hasn’t been seen anywhere. You have seen intervention 

interruption. You have seen wonderful schools. You have seen disparate points of light. You have not seen the halogen torch of the 

comprehensive strategy yet. And in L.A., we just have a footprint. 

We haven’t done the full wrap-around yet. We don’t have the county agencies yet. We have to reform probation. I may have to do another lawsuit. We may be back in lawsuit territory there. But they 

have $24 billion of our money, and these kids are drowning in 

these institutions. 

So we have a long way to go in L.A. But what we are here to 

say is that war didn’t get us but so far. We backed away from war 

on each other and war on gangs, and started doing war on the violence and the conditions that hurt these kids, and as a result, the 

crime has plummeted, the trust has gone up, and we are seeing 

whole new dynamics. 

What I would love for this Committee to do is to take the new 

threats, which are real, but take a step back and don’t do the normal throw more money. Yes, law enforcement needs more resources, but mainly for cyber crime. We have enough laws. We 

have enough enhancements. We have enough folks going to prison. 

What we don’t have is a strategy that is smart enough to start getting to the cultural mindset, norm change, behavior change that 

will end the cult of death that gets passed on with gang members. 

That is what we need to be after. 

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. The gentlewoman’s time has expired. 

The gentleman from Utah, Mr. Chaffetz. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Thank you. I thank the Chairman for calling this, 

and I appreciate the four panelists here today. I can sense your 

passion about this issue, and so I appreciate you being here today. 

I wasn’t planning to ask you this, but I want to fill up on what 

you just said about more—if I heard correctly, Ms. Rice—more 

money about cyber crime. Explain that to me. 

Ms. RICE. The new threats are fascinating to me. It is from the 

cartels. The cartels have been in L.A. for at least 20 years, but now 

they’re really setting up shop. So the transnational nature has expanded. But the—I’m sorry. What was the question? 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. About the cyber. 

Ms. RICE. Yes, cyberspace. I’m sorry. I’m 56 and I have no shortterm memory. 

That has increased by 1,500 percent. The smart gangsters are no 

longer hanging out on the corners. Those are the dummies, okay? 

The smart guys have gone now—they are online, and the new vicVerDate Aug 31 2005 17:42 Oct 24, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00047 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\WORK\CRIME\072512\75310.000 HJUD PsN: 75310
44 

tim class is the middle class. They are going after our bank accounts, okay? So the smart gangsters, they are all in cyberspace 

now, and they are scary smart, all right? They are probably not 

going to get caught now. 

It is no longer about being on the corner slinging dope or threatening people. They are not into that anymore. So this is morphing 

into the more organized crime area where you are really after 

money. You are not about identity and turf, and we have to make 

sure that our strategies match the ecology of the gang and the psychology of the gang. 

So law enforcement needs money to get really smart, geeky guys, 

like the Big Bang Theory guys, into law enforcement, okay? I love 

that show. I just discovered it. I am so slow, I didn’t even know 

it was on. 

But bottom line, they have got to be super smart. We have to get 

those kinds of brains into law enforcement. That is going to take 

a lot of money. They don’t even have the right kinds of laptops. We 

need the technology reimbursed. 

I am not about taking money from law enforcement. I am about 

boosting the prevention and intervention and the wrap-around 

strategies at the same time you fund them working together. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that. I think in 

many ways you are right, that those are major concerns. 

In the few minutes that I have left, maybe perhaps starting with 

the Commander, I want to talk about the prison aspect of this because I worry that what is supposed to conceptually be the Department of Corrections really ends up being more of a breeding ground 

and a training ground to take somebody who has maybe been a bad 

actor, and instead of putting them in the right direction, the rate 

of recidivism and other things goes up, and they come out with 

more contacts, more information, more knowledge, and become 

more dangerous. 

I mean, is that just a fallacy? Is that just a perception that we 

get on television, or is that the reality of what you are seeing on 

the streets? 

Mr. GREEN. That is the reality of what we see on the streets, sir. 

You send an individual that is a poor criminal into the criminal 

justice system, he comes out a very good criminal. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. So what do we do about that? 

Mr. GREEN. One of the things we have to do is, typically within 

the first 24, 48, 72 hours, those first couple of weeks are critical 

when they get out to stop them from going back to the same pattern that they have had historically when they are on the street. 

They start hanging out with the same folks who start using the 

same substances that they did before. Before you know it, they 

have offended and they are back in custody, and that is why we 

have the recidivism rate that we do. 

We look at the comprehensive strategy of preparing them for life 

on the street, it has to be what tools to avoid that. We have talked 

about it. We have started looking at reentry. We have toyed with 

it, but we haven’t put enough effort into reentry, especially in the 

day we live in now in California. Lots of folks coming back out, and 

unless we are able to give them those tools to survive, they are 

going to go right back into the system. 

45 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Sheriff? 

Mr. STANEK. Mr. Chair and Members, I think it is a great question, and I concur with the Commander about reentry. Many of the 

folks who come out of our prisons—and I come from Minnesota. We 

have one of the lowest incarceration rates, highest probation rates 

anywhere in the country. But reentry is what is important to us. 

We have to give these folks basic job skills, housing, keep them 

out of that life of crime, help turn them around. It starts when they 

are in prison through some of the programs, but really when they 

get out, that support network to help them succeed, because we all 

know that the vast majority of the folks who go to prison are coming back up. 

Mr. KING. If I could just add something, I think it should not 

come as a surprise to any of us that someone who goes to prison 

because they didn’t feel they had any opportunity or any options, 

we shouldn’t be surprised that when they leave prison they don’t 

feel like they have any options and opportunities. 

So it is critical that we do education on both ends, that we educate before to try to keep people from going into prison, but then 

if they do go to prison, we have to make sure we are educating 

them when they come out, as has been said, but also that we are 

making sure that as a society we are providing opportunities as opposed to stigma for folks who come out of prison. Otherwise, they 

will have no choice but to go back to the same ways that got them 

in prison in the first place. 

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

The gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Johnson. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you. It seems to me that all across the Nation, there is a stigma in the urban areas in terms of being Black 

and being a male, and that leads to a disproportionate share of our 

prison system, both state and Federal, being represented by that 

particular demographic, Black males, young Black males in particular. 

But I refuse to believe that there are not other criminal gangs 

who have a different hue than the Latino or the African American 

street gangs. Gangs are doing other things, like trafficking in drugs 

in the suburbs, in the rural areas. There even are prison gangs, 

such as the Aryan Brotherhood or the Nazi Lowriders, and even a 

gang like the Mafia. I know we don’t call them a gang, but those 

kinds of organizations may be a little more difficult to investigate 

and bring charges against than just a street-level group of young 

people calling themselves the Fabulous 25 or some group like that. 

It is easy to get those street-level crack dealers and lock them 

up. Sentencing guidelines, send them away for a long time, it is 

easy to do that. We have assault weapons out there. Have you seen 

an increase in the number of assault weapons on the streets, Commander Green and Sheriff Stanek? 

Mr. GREEN. In Los Angeles, we have seen that increase for the 

last 20 years. We have had assault weapons on the street. It is not 

a new phenomenon. It stayed, and the consistency of those numbers has never slowed down. 

Mr. STANEK. Yes, Mr. Chair and Members. You are absolutely 

correct, Congressman. We have seen a dramatic increase in the 

amount of assault weapons, even some automatic weapons. You 

46 

have seen law enforcement go from 38-caliber revolvers to semiautomatic handguns. We have transitioned from 12-gauge shotguns 

to semi-automatic rifles, just to match the fire power. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Okay. Thank you. Now, the people trafficking in 

those weapons are not street-level drug dealers, but they do end up 

with some of these weapons. There is no doubt about that. What 

kind of focus do we have on where those guns are coming from, 

who is trafficking in those guns? Could it be the folks at the unlicensed gun dealers at the gun shows that make their way around 

the country? Are the unlicensed gun-show dealers criminals themselves? What kind of record do they have? Who organizes all of 

these gun shows going across the country, and what happens to the 

multitude of weapons that end up on the streets of America, in the 

inner cities? What happens with those groups? We don’t see a lot 

or we don’t hear anything about the prosecution of Aryan Nation 

gang members for selling drugs on the outside of prison, some kind 

of a network. 

Can you talk to us about the street-based, racist gangs? Are they 

gangs? Are they considered gangs, and is the Mafia considered a 

gang? 

Mr. GREEN. Sure. When it comes to street-based enforcement, we 

target the most violent areas. As the Sheriff talked about earlier, 

we use data, and that pushes our enforcement so we can try to stop 

the violence. 

As with narcotics, with guns, we partner with the ATF, and we 

have continued partnerships with the Federal entities. And just as 

we do with narcotics, we try to work narcotics backwards from that 

street dealer as with guns. We get guns off suspects in the street. 

We get them in homicide investigations. We roll back in partnership to try to find out where that gun came from. And then as they 

can, we work with our Federal partner for Federal prosecutions if 

you get violations of that Federal law. 

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

Before recognizing the gentlewoman from Florida, Mrs. Adams, 

the Chair will state that if any other Members come in before Ms. 

Adams concludes her questioning, they will be recognized. But if 

they come in once I have recognized Mr. Scott and then myself for 

wrapping up the questions, they won’t be recognized. 

The gentlewoman from Florida is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mrs. ADAMS. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I appreciate the witnesses here. I am going to come at it a little bit different since I 

spent over 17 years in law enforcement and have investigated a lot 

of these crimes. 

I heard my colleague talking about basically racial-based gangs. 

There are those, but there are mostly gangs that have become the 

family, so to speak, ‘‘families’’ of these children or these young 

adults. Would any of you disagree with that fact? 

So with that, what we have seen is, with the breakdown of the 

family unit over the years, a lot of these young adults and young 

children have come to be involved in gangs based on the familystyle unit that they present. And even though I don’t agree with 

the enforcer that they have in the units or those type of things, I 

think they are very dangerous for our communities and for our 

families. 

47 

I have listened to a lot of this, and I am amazed to hear and see 

that we have such international gangs such as the Somali gangs, 

Sheriff, that you have, that you are dealing with in your county. 

Can you explain to me a little bit about that? How are the Somali 

gangs different than other gangs you have seen come into your 

area? I mean, I have seen the multinational gangs come into our 

area in Florida, so I was just kind of curious. 

Mr. STANEK. Sure. Mr. Chair and Members, with Somali gangs, 

as I had indicated earlier, a different way of policing, much more 

culture-centric, different techniques and tactics than maybe some 

of the other traditional gangs we have talked about here this morning, all the way from witness tampering to—you know, they are not 

so much narcotics-based, like some street gangs that are turf oriented, but rather they do so for other reasons, some cultural, some 

specific, but it requires a different law enforcement response. 

Mrs. ADAMS. And isn’t it true that gang members don’t normally 

go to gun shops or gun shows to purchase guns? They are usually 

buying them on the black market or through avenues other than 

anything that would be otherwise seen as legal? 

Mr. STANEK. Yes. Mr. Chair and Members, I think you are right 

on. What we see in our communities across the United States from 

the local law enforcement perspective is primarily through straw 

purchases. Someone who is legally able to purchase a firearm will 

go in, make that purchase, and then sell it to someone else. Either 

they had that intent when they walked into that gun store, or 

bought from an FFL, a Federal Firearms Licensed dealer, or they 

got that idea afterwards. 

But each of these guns that we recover on the street, working 

with our ATF partners in these task forces, we trace those guns 

back to the source, and that is what gives us our information and 

an indication of where these guns actually come from and what we 

are seeing today. 

Mrs. ADAMS. And the source could also be from burglaries, thefts, 

things of that nature? 

Mr. STANEK. Yes. Mr. Chair and Members, as I indicated earlier, 

we see a lot of it. I indicated there was a gun store burglary in 

Minnetonka, Minnesota. I think 57 or 58 firearms were taken. 

Twenty-seven of those 58 have not been recovered. But for those 

other 30-plus, we found them at shootings, robberies, homicides. So 

the purpose of that burglary was to put those guns in the hands 

of criminals, primarily the local street gangs. 

Mrs. ADAMS. And, Ms. Rice, I was looking at something that you 

had written on pages 147 and 148 of your book. You tell a very disturbing story about a child soldier who did the killing for his gang 

and merely would have to go to juvenile. It says, ‘‘to JV.’’ I have 

seen that also in my community where I was a law enforcement officer in central Florida, where sometimes the youngest, because of 

their age in the gang, would be given the most violent acts so that 

they would only be given a very small sentence based on their age, 

not like someone in an older age group would get. Would you like 

to elaborate on that? 

Ms. RICE. Yes, thank you. I absolutely agree with you that the 

exploitation of the youngest ones is an outrage, and it is our failure. What are we doing letting gangs take ahold of little kids and 

48 

turn them into assassins? When I met my first child assassin, I 

was appalled at myself first. Where was I when they turned this 

kid? How do we allow children to fall into the hands of these 

fiends? And that started my journey. 

So for me, we have to protect children. If we can’t keep kids safe 

enough to go to school, what are we doing? We are not running a 

democracy here. If we allow this to happen in our backyards, we 

are failing, together we are failing as adults. 

So I am glad that you brought that up. This, for me, is about the 

children. The poorest rural children are now suffering in a methamphetamine economy that we are not addressing, and it isn’t 

going to help to just lock up all of their parents. We have got to 

look at that ecosystem with an eye toward protecting these children 

and dealing with the root causes. You give these families an alternative to cooking meth, they are not going to be doing this stuff. 

So I am really begging the Committee to take a very hard look 

at the harder work of doing these wrap-around ecosystem strategies that get at the root causes. That is how you protect kids. You 

don’t let these neighborhoods and these hot spots sink to a level 

where we can actually find kids being taken out of their families, 

given a gun and instructed in how to murder. That is what I found 

in Los Angeles. That is what I said in my book was unacceptable. 

You don’t let children die like this, and we have no excuse for it 

in this country. 

But if we keep just focusing on locking people up, we are not 

going to get to the wrap-around strategies. 

Mrs. ADAMS. Thank you. 

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. The gentlewoman’s time has expired. 

The gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Scott, the Ranking Member of 

the Subcommittee. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Ms. Rice, we heard about the desirability of trying more juveniles 

as adults. Don’t all the studies on trying more juveniles as adults 

conclude that if you pursue that policy, the crime rate will increase? 

Ms. RICE. I don’t know whether the crime rate is going to increase. What I do know is that our level of failure is going to increase. There are some juveniles that should be prosecuted—— 

Mr. SCOTT. If you increase the number. Not if you try any juveniles, but if you increase the number of juveniles being tried, the 

crime rate will go up? Not just trying any juvenile. Some juveniles, 

like you said, but they are all being tried as adults now. If you increase the number, you are talking about the marginal children 

that the studies have shown the crime rate will go up because they 

will be treated in a situation where they can either be locked up 

or let go, no services that can be provided in the juvenile facilities. 

Ms. RICE. Congressman, you bring up a very important point because the kids that I find, the vast majority of them, if you put 

them into prison, it is like graduate school. It is like college for 

crime. 

Mr. SCOTT. That is what happens when you try more juveniles 

as adults. 

Ms. RICE. That is right. When they get out and we haven’t reformed them, we haven’t rehabilitated them. 

49 

Mr. SCOTT. One of the things you talked about is investing in 

prevention, early intervention, wrap-around services, and obviously 

that costs money. That is what we are trying to do with the Youth 

Promise Act. Can you give me an idea of how much Los Angeles 

County spends right now on incarceration? 

Ms. RICE. On incarceration? 

Mr. SCOTT. Right. Is it fair to say that it is billions? I was told that $11 billion is the state budget for corrections. Forty percent 

of the inmates were from Los Angeles. 

Ms. RICE. It is definitely billions statewide. It is definitely billions statewide. 

Mr. SCOTT. But those from Los Angeles that go into the state 

system, plus Sheriff Baca’s budget, has got to be at least half-a-billion dollars, or more counting juveniles. 

The mayor’s Gang Reduction Youth Development program, do I understand that costs $168 million? 

Ms. RICE. I wish that much was spent on it, but it is more like— my understanding is that it is closer to—it is below $100 million. 

Mr. SCOTT. But compared to the corrections budget, it is peanuts. 

Ms. RICE. It is tiny. 

Mr. SCOTT. Now, Boyle Heights, I understand there is a 44 percent reduction in crime in Boyle Heights? 

Ms. RICE. That sounds right. 

Mr. SCOTT. Do you know whether or not the teen pregnancy rate 

also went down? Because usually when you have a good crime prevention program, you prevent crime, dropouts, drug abuse, and 

teen pregnancy. 

Ms. RICE. Teen pregnancy in Los Angeles County has been going 

down for the last 5 years. 

Mr. SCOTT. You mentioned a difference between MS-13 and other 

street gangs. Why should they be treated different, differently? 

Ms. RICE. Because you want to be effective. If you don’t understand the etymology of the gang, you can respond to it in a way 

that actually makes it stronger and spreads its mindset. So street 

gangs and turf, old-fashioned street gangs where you have kids 

running away from stuff and finding an alternative family, they 

have to be treated differently from folks who are heading up 

Yakuza and the Russian mob and the Italian mob and all of those, 

and the cartels, the cartels, the drug cartels. 

Mr. SCOTT. And for those very serious cartel-type gangs on the 

one side, but the others should be treated with wrap-around services. Can you tell us a little bit about what those wrap-around services are? 

Ms. RICE. Yes. You do an analysis of the hot spot. You figure out 

what the dynamics are and who the players are. Then you design 

a system to go after each cohort of kids, because we focus on children. That is probably because women are heading this. We focus 

on the kids, and we are trying to keep those kids safe, not just the 

kids who are at risk of going into the gang, because there is risk 

prevention—Deputy Mayor Guillermo Cespedes has a pioneered 

prevention strategy that shows that already a 30 percent reduction 

in risk factors, a 49 percent reduction in gang affiliation. We are 

talking about gang families. Everybody in the family is a part of 

the gang. But this newest generation that Deputy Mayor Cespedes 

50 

is working with has now decided that they are going to go with a 

more establishment, mainstream, higher level of values and not 

join the gang. 

We have got to sustain that. That takes money. We are doing 

this at a pilot level. But, Congressman, if we don’t get the investment on this side of Sears, the softer side of Sears, the investment 

healing side, we are going to just have to do more and more shock 

and awe, which doesn’t work. 

Mr. SCOTT. Let me see if I can get another question in to Mr. 

King. When students are in your facility and have other opportunities, do they join gangs? 

Mr. KING. Absolutely we have students who are approached and 

recruited to be in gangs. We view our job or one of our jobs as 

being to make sure that our students understand that they can say 

no and that there is a pathway to avoid that type of life. 

I think that something that we all kind of know but we don’t 

really have an opportunity to think about or articulate is that 

schools can be gangs. We can create very positive gangs within our 

school systems. We have to be intentional about doing that. What 

is it that a person who joins a gang, a young person who joins a 

gang is looking for? Resources, respect, a sense of community, family. These are things that we can provide inside our schools. Many 

of the best schools in this country, whether they be elementary, 

high school, colleges or universities, have very strong cultures. 

What are strong positive cultures but another way of doing gangs. 

And so I think that the work that we do at Urban Prep is very 

intentional around creating a culture of belonging, a culture of 

achievement, a culture of an alternative option and pathway to success. And if all schools or more schools did that type of thing, I 

think we would see greater levels of success with our young people 

and keeping them safe and keeping them out of gangs. 

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. The gentleman’s time has expired. The 

Chair will recognize himself for the final round of questioning. 

Let me start with you, Ms. Rice. I get a little concerned every 

once in a while that various types of law enforcement agencies 

don’t work together, and they don’t likely interact with what I will 

refer to generically as educational and social services agencies. 

Who is out of the loop in Los Angeles? 

Ms. RICE. Who is out of the loop? Well, the folks who are AWOL, 

in my humble opinion, are a number of the county agencies. The 

county has most of the safety net in L.A. We need probation at the 

table. We need the county services to be in conjunction with the cities. What we have done at the city level has got to be expanded 

to the county level. 

The other missing pieces that we do not have are the job creation 

pieces. Father Greg Boyle is absolutely right. The only epidemiological long-term study that correlates with the reduction in violent 

gang crime in Los Angeles is a longitudinal study that showed the 

only factor that correlated with the reduction was job creation. If 

you gave these guys a job—and when we do the Summer Night 

Lights, Congressman, you will be amazed. You know what the 

gangsters ask for? We have to actually ask permission to do these 

programs because they have so much control in L.A. When we ask 

them, when intervention goes in, do you want to know what they 

51 

ask for? They want to be trained as firefighters. They want to become cops. They want mainstream jobs. That piece of it is completely not there. 

So we have a partial comprehensive footprint in L.A. We are 

doing more than any other region in the country. That is why our 

gang crime, in my opinion, is still going down, while everybody 

else’s is spiking. We could lose it in a year. We could get a new 

crack. We could get a new threat from the cartels, and it could all 

go up in smoke. But for this 5 years, Mr. Chairman, we have had 

an incredible run. 

Take a look at our stats. You won’t find them anywhere. 

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. They are very impressive. 

Let me ask one question about the prisons. Are the prisons in the 

loop in having an integrated way of attacking this? Because we 

have had testimony here that the cartels are basically using the 

lock-up as their headquarters. 

Ms. RICE. The prisons are completely out of the loop. In fact, they 

are part of the problem. I can’t crack the corrections guards. I am 

too tired and too old. Somebody else is going to have to take that 

fight. 

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. I think there are a few governors of your 

state that have had that problem, too. 

Ms. RICE. Absolutely. I don’t understand how the prison gangs 

and the cartels control what goes on in the streets. Now, there is 

a double-edged sword here. I think that our drive-bys, you don’t 

hear about drive-bys anymore. We used to have seven, eight, eleven 

a week, drive-bys, drive-by shootings. Nuts, just annihilation of 

people at bus stops and stuff. You don’t hear about that as much 

in L.A. Why? Because the prison gang put out an order that said 

if you do any more drive-bys that hit kids, you are going to be dead 

by noon. 

It is a very complicated, perverted situation because the control 

is so high. They control our prisons. There are days I can’t go into 

California prisons because the gangs are acting up. 

So I think we need to stop our delusion about who is in control 

here. They collect taxes. They run drug cartels. We do need targeted suppression that goes after organized crime, but we need to 

distinguish that from saturating a community, taking all of the 

men and young men out of that community, and then that community dies because we have locked everybody up. 

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Okay. Let me ask one question of Commander Green and Sheriff Stanek. In 2002, Chairman Conyers, 

soon-to-be Chairman Conyers and I as the Chairman of the Committee ended up putting together a Department of Justice reauthorization bill, which was the first that was passed in 23 years, 

which did pass both houses and was signed by the President. 

One of the features of that bill was to try to make the Department of Justice grants more fungible so that you could move money 

around within the various DOJ programs. What has been your experience, each of you, on whether it is fungible enough in terms of 

what you have to do to do your job to combat gangs? 

Who wants to be first? 

52 

Mr. GREEN. I talked about the Federal partnerships earlier. A lot 

of those Federal partnerships are successful because of the funding 

that they bring and the ability to move that around. 

Things on the street change continuously, Congressman, and for 

us to be agile enough to address those problems, that funding 

source has got to be able to move around, whether it is between 

the FBI or DEA or ATF, so that they can—— 

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. I was talking about the local grant programs. Before that, when a local municipality applied for a Federal 

grant, they have to try to make sure that they applied for a grant 

in each of the cubbyholes, and they got money for each of the cubbyholes, and then when they did get the grant, they couldn’t move 

it out of the cubbyhole that they got the grant in. Have you experienced a problem with that? 

Mr. GREEN. I have. Specifically, as we identify those needs, what 

I would like to see is the funding to look specifically at the need 

and be able to move it around for that need, because if we apply 

for grant funding today, it could be months, more like years before 

that grant funding becomes available. By the time it is available, 

the technology has changed, the need has changed. So a quicker 

system—— 

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. So what you are telling us is DOJ ought 

to speed up the grant approval process. 

Mr. GREEN. Yes, sir. 

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Sheriff Stanek, you are last but not least. 

Mr. STANEK. Well, thank you, Mr. Chair and Members, and 

thank you very much for allowing us to testify today. 

On behalf of sheriffs across this country, I would concur with 

what you just suggested, which is to give us the ability that when 

we apply for a grant, that we don’t have to target each individual 

grant but rather can use those monies as the needs dictate. 

Every day in my agency of 1,000-plus personnel and volunteers, 

we re-prioritize, re-focus what we are doing in order to combat 

what is happening on the streets or in our communities. That grant 

funding is important and essential to us to be able to do that, 

whether it is burn JAG monies, whether it is cops monies, you 

name it. But I need to be able to have that flexibility because what 

happens today may change 6 months, 12 months, 18 months down 

the road for us. 

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Well, thank you very much. This has been 

a hearing that is much more enlightening, educational and hopeful 

than I had planned it would be when I walked into the room and 

started it out. I would like to thank all of you for really doing a 

very good job in pointing out differing ways to approach the gang 

problem. So thanks for coming to D.C. and sharing your views with 

us. 

Without objection, all Members will have 5 legislative days to 

submit to the Chair additional written questions for the witnesses, 

which we will forward and ask the witnesses to respond as promptly as they can so that they may be made part of the record. 

And without objection, all Members will have 5 legislative days 

to submit any additional materials for inclusion in the record. 

With that, again, I thank the witnesses, and without objection, 

the hearing is adjourned. 

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[Whereupon, at 11:33 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.] 

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