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23–040 PDF 2005

HOW CAN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SUPPORT

LOCAL AND STATE INITIATIVES TO PROTECT

CITIZENS AND COMMUNITIES AGAINST DRUGRELATED VIOLENCE AND WITNESS INTIMIDATION?

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE,

DRUG POLICY, AND HUMAN RESOURCES

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

MAY 2, 2005

Serial No. 109–56

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

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

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

DAN BURTON, Indiana

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

DARRELL E. ISSA, California

GINNY BROWN-WAITE, Florida

JON C. PORTER, Nevada

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania

VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina

——— ———

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

MELISSA WOJCIAK, Staff Director

DAVID MARIN, Deputy Staff Director/Communications Director

ROB BORDEN, Parliamentarian/Senior Counsel

TERESA AUSTIN, Chief Clerk

PHIL BARNETT, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE, DRUG POLICY, AND HUMAN RESOURCES

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana, Chairman

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

DAN BURTON, Indiana

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

GINNY BROWN-WAITE, Florida

VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

DIANE E. WATSON, California

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

EX OFFICIO

TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

J. MARC WHEAT, Staff Director

MALIA HOLST, Clerk

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on May 2, 2005 ................................................................................. 1

Statement of:

Johnson, Judge Kenneth, former associate judge, Baltimore City Circuit

Court; David Wright, president, Charles Village Community Benefits

District; and Ricky P., resident, west Baltimore ........................................ 78

Johnson, Judge Kenneth ........................................................................... 78

P., Ricky ..................................................................................................... 99

Wright, David ............................................................................................ 93

Pond, Floyd O., Assistant Director, Washington-Baltimore HIDTA; Lieutenant Craig Bowers, Baltimore County Police Department; and Patricia Jessamy, State attorney, city of Baltimore ........................................... 51

Bowers, Lieutenant Craig ......................................................................... 53

Jessamy, Patricia ...................................................................................... 58

Pond, Floyd O. ........................................................................................... 51

Steele, Michael S., Lieutenant Governor, State of Maryland; and Martin

O’Malley, mayor, city of Baltimore .............................................................. 12

O’Malley, Martin ....................................................................................... 21

Steele, Michael S. ...................................................................................... 12

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

Bowers, Lieutenant Craig, Baltimore County Police Department, prepared statement of ........................................................................................ 55

Jessamy, Patricia, State attorney, city of Baltimore, prepared statement

of ..................................................................................................................... 63

Johnson, Judge Kenneth, former associate judge, Baltimore City Circuit

Court, prepared statement of ....................................................................... 82

O’Malley, Martin, mayor, city of Baltimore, prepared statement of ............ 25

P., Ricky, resident, west Baltimore, prepared statement of ......................... 101

Steele, Michael S., Lieutenant Governor, State of Maryland, prepared

statement of ................................................................................................... 15

Souder, Hon. Mark E., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Indiana:

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 4

Prepared statement of Mr. Carr and Ms. Cartwright ............................ 38

Wright, David, president, Charles Village Community Benefits District,

prepared statement of ................................................................................... 96

(1)

HOW CAN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SUPPORT LOCAL AND STATE INITIATIVES TO

PROTECT CITIZENS AND COMMUNITIES

AGAINST DRUG-RELATED VIOLENCE AND

WITNESS INTIMIDATION?

MONDAY, MAY 2, 2005

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE, DRUG POLICY,

AND HUMAN RESOURCES,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Baltimore, MD.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:47 a.m., in the

Ceremonial Moot Courtroom of the University of Maryland School

of Law, Hon. Mark Souder (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Members present: Representatives Souder, Cummings, and

Ruppersberger.

Staff present: J. Marc Wheat, staff director and chief counsel;

Malia Holst, clerk; and Tony Haywood, minority counsel.

Mr. SOUDER. Good morning. It is a real pleasure to be in Baltimore again, here in the district of our distinguished ranking member, Mr. Cummings, and in Baltimore, also the home of one of our

most active members, Mr. Ruppersberger. And we appreciate him

coming here very much. Today, however, we are revisiting a very

tragic and serious problem, namely the problem of protecting lawabiding citizens from the domestic terrorism of criminal intimidation.

During the last Congress, Mr. Cummings and I held a hearing

right here in Baltimore in response to the horrifying murder in

2002 of the Dawson family. We are here again to consider how the

Federal Government can best work with cities and State and local

governments to support and protect brave individuals like the murdered Angela Dawson who are willing to stand up in their communities against drug dealing and drug violence.

In Baltimore, the pain of drug abuse is especially felt. There

were nearly 500 drug-induced or drug-related deaths in 2001—approximately 10 percent of all deaths in the area. Drug dealers have

taken over many parts of the city, making law-abiding citizens virtual prisoners in their own homes. In the face of this threat, many

citizens and families have stepped forward to try to take back their

neighborhoods from the dealers and gangs, often at great personal

risk.

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The Dawson family is the most poignant reminder. Angela Dawson lived in Baltimore with her husband, Carnell, and their five

young children. In an effort to rid her street of drug dealers, she

repeatedly called 911, reporting suspicious activity to the police.

Her efforts came at a terrible price. In the early morning hours of

October 16, 2002, the Dawson family’s home was firebombed by a

local drug dealer in retaliation. The bombing claimed the lives of

Angela, Carnell, and all five of the Dawson children.

More recently, in January of this year, the Harwood Community

Association president Edna McAbier was the target of another

firebombing for her involvement in reporting drug dealing. Ms.

McAbier has since moved out of her home and five of the men suspected of the crime have been indicted by a Federal grand jury for

witness tampering, conspiracy to commit witness tampering and

the use of a firearm in the commission of the crime.

Crimes of this nature are not confined to cities like Baltimore;

they affect suburban and rural areas too. In January of this year,

10-year-old Katlyn Collman of Crothersville, IN, my home State,

was abducted and killed. Her drowned body was found 5 days later

in a nearby creek, her little hands tied tightly behind her back.

This was a front-page story in the New York Times. And I ask

unanimous consent to insert this into the record: ‘‘Too late for

Katie, Town Tackles Drug Scourge.’’ Authorities believe Katie was

murdered to prevent her from telling others about meth labs she

saw in her neighborhood.

These horrible crimes illustrate the dangers faced by honest citizens when they seek to improve their neighborhoods and the lives

of their families. These crimes, however, have also led local communities and Federal authorities to find ways to protect people like

the Dawsons from retaliation by drug criminals and other criminals as well. The Federal Drug Czar, John Walters, and other officials and Members of Congress have also stepped forward to find

ways to assist State and local authorities in this effort.

In response to the Dawson murders, Mr. Cummings introduced

H.R. 812, the Dawson Family Community Protection Act. I strongly

support this bill as a cosponsor. It directs at least $1 million in

funds to the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas [HIDTA] program to be spent on neighborhood safety measures, including the

protection of potential witnesses and the operation of a toll-free

telephone hotline for use by the public to provide information about

illegal drug-related activities. During the last Congress, the House

passed this bill as part of the legislative reauthorization of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Regrettably, that bill did not

pass the Senate, but we are hopeful that it can be passed this year.

We are holding this hearing to continue our broad-ranging and

open discussion of these pressing issues and potential solutions. We

are pleased to be joined today by the Lieutenant Governor of Maryland, Mr. Michael Steele, and the mayor of Baltimore, Mr. Martin

O’Malley, who have taken time out of their very busy schedules to

discuss this problem. We also welcome Mr. Floyd O. Pond, Assistant Director of the Washington-Baltimore High Intensity Drug

Trafficking Area, administered by ONDCP.

It is equally important for us to talk to State and local law enforcement agencies that do so much to combat drug trafficking on

3

the streets. We are therefore pleased to be joined by Lieutenant

Craig Bowers from the Baltimore County Police Department, as

well as Ms. Patricia Jessamy, State attorney for the city of Baltimore.

Finally, we always need to hear from private and faith-based organizations that dedicate themselves to educating young people

about the dangers of drug abuse and providing treatment to those

burdened by drug addiction. We welcome Judge Kenneth Johnson,

former associate judge, Baltimore City Circuit Court; Mr. David

Wright, president of the Charles Village Community Benefits District, and Mr. Ricky P., a resident of West Baltimore. We thank everyone for taking the time to join us today, and we are looking forward to your testimony. I would like to yield to the distinguished

ranking member, Mr. Cummings.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Mark E. Souder follows:]

4

5

6

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I

again welcome you to Baltimore. I wanted to thank you and your

staff for your cooperation in convening today’s important hearing.

Narco-terrorism is a plague upon our society. With increasing

frequency, the drug traffickers are now targeting anyone who

might interfere with their deadly trade. And, Mr. Chairman, I am

so glad that you raised the issue of little Katie Collman. I noticed

it is the February 10 issue of the New York Times that you are referring to.

But this just goes to show this is not—a lot of people look at

these problems and they think that they are just urban problems,

but they are not. And I have read the Lieutenant Governor’s testimony where he outlines this is a problem that is taking place in

almost every single county in our State. That is why today’s examination of how the Federal Government can better support State

and local efforts to protect the public against witness intimidation

and retaliation is so very, very important.

Mr. Chairman, this is your third trip to Baltimore as chairman

of the House, Government Reform Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources. As the subcommittee’s

ranking minority member, I sincerely appreciate the interest you

have shown in working to address issues of mutual and critical

concern on a bipartisan basis.

Let me also express my thanks to the University of Baltimore

School of Law for providing the venue for this very, very important

hearing. We appreciate your cooperation and we appreciate your

support.

Last, but certainly not least, I want to extend my gratitude and

a very warm welcome to all of our witnesses. I sincerely appreciate

their willingness to participate in today’s hearing. Several of today’s witnesses have endured two postponements, and I deeply appreciate their bearing with us.

Appearing before us today will be our Lieutenant Governor, the

Honorable Michael Steele; the Honorable Martin O’Malley, our

mayor of the city of Baltimore; the Assistant Director of the Washington Baltimore HIDTA program, Mr. Floyd Pond; the Honorable

Patricia Jessamy, State’s attorney for Baltimore City, who has put

this at the very top of her priority list; Lieutenant Craig Bowers

of the Baltimore County Police Department; the Honorable Kenneth Johnson, the former associate judge of the Baltimore City Circuit Court—and I might add, Mr. Chairman, the person who gave

me my first job out of law school—and Mr. David Wright, president

of the Charles Village Benefits District; and a community leader

from west Baltimore, whom we will call, for security reasons, Ricky

P.

All of our witnesses have important perspectives to offer. They

deserve great credit for their efforts to address and to overcome the

interrelated problems that we will be examining today: drug abuse

and addiction, drug-related crimes and violence, and the increasing

obstruction of justice through threats, intimidation, and violent retaliation against witnesses.

I should note for the record that because of the postponements

I mentioned, we are missing three valuable witnesses who would

have testified and had planned to on March 1 and April 12. RevVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:55 Sep 22, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00010 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\23040.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
7

erend Iris Tucker is unable to appear today, as are Baltimore City

Police Commissioner Leonard Hamm and Assistant U.S. attorney

for the District of Columbia, Heather Cartwright. She is with a Victim-Witness Services Unit that serves the D.C. Superior Court, the

U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. I regret that Reverend Tucker, Mr. Hamm, and Ms. Cartwright were unable to appear today, but I appreciate their previous commitments and their

willingness to provide testimony. And with unanimous consent, Mr.

Chairman, I request that their previously prepared statements be

included as a part of the record.

Mr. SOUDER. No objection.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the subject that we have come here today to discuss is a grim

one, a challenge that we have both concluded justifies a more expansive Federal role. The problem of witness intimidation in Baltimore and many other cities around the country has become acute.

We all have a moral duty to search for and achieve a more effective

response. A system of law and order is essential to the maintenance of a free democratic society.

Any action that undermines the integrity and the reliability of a

criminal justice system necessarily undermines the freedoms, life,

and liberty that our Constitutional system of government is designed to protect. The effective operation of a criminal justice system in turn requires the voluntary cooperation of witnesses who

can offer the evidence that can remove dangerous criminals from

our streets. Without this cooperation, the most fundamental laws

of the people cannot be enforced. And the force of a law as a deterrent to crime simply erodes.

Over the past few years we have seen an escalation in threats

and violence directed against people who cooperate with the authorities. You mentioned the tragic Austin murder of the Dawson

family in October 2002 and the firebombing this January of a home

of Harwood Community Association president, Edna McAbier, two

dramatic examples of the many instances of retaliation against witnesses who reported drug-dealing activity to the police.

The surfacing of a now-infamous ‘‘stop snitching’’ DVD in which

NBA player and Baltimore native Carmelo Anthony appears is a

further indication of how brazen local drug gangs have become in

their attempt to instill fear in the hearts of our entire community.

Mr. Chairman, just this weekend, news reports all over our television stations talked about how young people are now buying teeshirts and jerseys that has the ‘‘stop snitching’’ on it, and it has

become a fad. Little do they know that by walking around with

those jerseys, they merely help to send the message, be it innocently or not, of those who want to stop people from testifying.

These are just the most flagrant examples of widespread and ongoing efforts to obstruct justice through fear, intimidation, and yes,

murder, both here and Baltimore City and throughout this entire

country. Every day in neighborhoods and even courtrooms around

the country, criminals and their accomplices send menacing signals

to would-be witnesses and their families.

Mr. Chairman, you will hear testimony perhaps from Ms.

Jessamy today about how people will sit in courtrooms with all

kinds of devices, and as witnesses testify, send messages to their

8

friends letting them know that certain people had just testified and

therefore putting those people’s lives in danger. Sometimes the

messages are contained subtly through body language or cryptic

words. Sometimes it is delivered bluntly to express verbal threats

or physical assault. And I think the Lieutenant Governor will talk

about that a bit.

The content of these messages is the same, do not cooperate with

legal or authorities or else. Unfortunately, all too often, this intimidation is having an effect. In January of this year, Baltimore City’s

State’s attorney, Patricia Jessamy testified before a Maryland State

Senate Committee about a culture of intimidation that has subpoenaed her office’s efforts to secure convictions in criminal cases, and

at times even to bring these cases to trial in the first place. And

I quote her, ‘‘At least 25 percent of non-fatal shooting cases are dismissed due to witness intimidation. And most murder cases are affected by witness intimidation at the same level.’’

Yes, Mr. Chairman, we both know that this serious challenge to

our system of justice is not confined here just in Baltimore. And as

I mentioned a little bit earlier, in Indiana, Ms. Collman, who suffered a very tragic death simply because she observed what appeared to be drug activity. With Ms. Collman and the tragic murders of the Dawson family and the recent Baltimore firebombing

that I mentioned a few moments ago, what they are, Mr. Chairman, they are acts of terror.

Yet at a time when we are investing millions of dollars in U.S.

foreign aid to train law enforcement officers and judges in countries like Afghanistan, Colombia, and Iraq, the Federal Government provides virtually no support for programs to provide assistance and protection to witnesses in State cases here at home. We

must become just as serious about fighting narco-terrorism here at

home as we are in foreign lands.

We already have a solution that would work. In the Federal system, the witness security program, operated by U.S. Marshal Service, has proved to be an effective tool for U.S. attorneys claiming

a 100-percent safety record for witnesses enrolled in the program

and an 89-percent conviction rate in cases involving the cooperation

of these witnesses.

In contrast, however, State and local law enforcement authorities

have relatively small witness protection budgets. Many, if not

most, jurisdictions must choose between spending limited funds to

protect witnesses or to investigate crimes. This is a choice that

they should not have to make. That is why, in my role as Representative in the National Legislature, I am obliged to ask this

very pointed question: what role must a Federal Government play

in helping States and localities to overcome or eliminate the obstacle that witness intimidation presents to prosecutors, as well as the

chilling impact of that intimidation upon the everyday lives of our

citizens?

As you know, Mr. Chairman, I have introduced two bills that

would be important first steps in better addressing these intertwined problems of drug-related violence and witness intimidation.

Mr. Chairman, I am very pleased that you have agreed to cosponsor these bills.

9

The Dawson Family Community Protection Act will require that

at least $5 million in Federal funding from the Federal High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas Program must be devoted to initiatives

aimed at improving public safety and encouraging cooperation with

law enforcement in areas severely affected by drug-related violence.

This would include efforts like Baltimore Targeting Initiative, a

carefully tailored anti-drug campaign that was undertaken by the

Baltimore City Police Department with additional funding from the

HIDTA program in response to the Dawson tragedy.

Second, the Witness Security and Protection Act will establish a

short-term State witness protection program within a U.S. Marshal

Service to provide protection for witnesses in State and local trials

that involve homicide, a serious, violent felony offense, or a serious

drug offense. The bill would provide grants that district attorneys’

offices could use to pay the cost of providing witness protection

themselves, or to pay the cost of enrolling witnesses in a State

short-term witness protection program that would be operated by

the Marshal Service.

The war on drugs has become a real war. It is a war that we can

win, but we must do far more at the Federal level to support the

brave Americans who are on the front lines. As we consider the expanded Federal response that is necessary to successfully address

the intersecting problems of drug-related violence and witness intimidation, it is essential that we gain the insights and advice of

the citizens of the community, at State levels, whose efforts we intend to amplify and to reinforce.

And I thank Mr. Ruppersberger today who has worked so hard,

not only as a part of our subcommittee, but also in our community

here in Baltimore and the greater Baltimore area to address this

problem for many, many years.

Today’s hearing offers an important opportunity to do all that we

can do to make a difference. Thank you, again, Mr. Chairman, for

providing this forum. I look forward to the testimony and the discussion and yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SOUDER. That was really disturbing to hear about people

campaigning against people who give us information. After the Columbine school massacre, in the Education Committee we held several hearings where we had students in, teachers in, and found

that the only way you are really going to stop student violence is

if the students themselves turn people in and work with each other

to try to do that. Otherwise, we have to have police officers all over

the schools. I mean, the alternative to people coming forth themselves is not pleasant.

And second, it is the same thing as Mr. Ruppersberger knows on

intelligence that we deal with all the time and how we are going

to break the intelligence groups. What about if every community of

Arab or Asian or any group where it is close-knit, if people inside

that community don’t tell us who the terrorists are, we are helpless, because I don’t know who is new to the community. It is

groups inside the community. We don’t know what is going on in

a school and what is going on in a neighborhood many times from

outside. It requires people inside who care about safety to do that.

10

I mean, this is a really disturbing trend that you talked about

on the street, because without people willing to come forward, we

are helpless. Mr. Ruppersberger.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Well, first, Mr. Chairman, I agree with you;

that is why it is so important that we have students from

Edmondson High School here today. You know, you are our future.

You will have children, and it is important that we have a good,

safe community for you and your children.

First, Mr. Chairman, Chairman Souder, thank you for your leadership on the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice and Drug Policy.

You run a tremendous committee, a bipartisan committee, and I

know you are focused on this issue.

And, Ranking Member Elijah Cummings, when I was former

county executive, you were one of my Members of Congress in Baltimore County and the city, and you do a tremendous job in focusing on the issues in your community. And this is probably one of

the most serious issues that we can deal with, and that is the issue

of drugs. Over 80 percent of all of our violent crime is drug-related,

and we must deal with this issue.

I want to acknowledge the fact, Lieutenant Governor Steele, you

are here today; State’s attorney Patricia Jessamy; Mayor Martin

O’Malley; and the other witnesses that we are looking forward to

hearing what we can do from a Federal Government perspective to

support local and State initiatives to protect your citizens against

drug-related violence and witness intimidation.

Now, witness intimidation cannot and should not be tolerated. It

is a sad state of affairs when citizens have to choose between protecting their lives and their families’ lives and performing their

civic duty to report crimes. Many high profile incidents have taken

place in the past few years, one of the most tragic being the murders of seven members of the Dawson family here in Baltimore

City. And my prayers are with them, and I pray that a situation

like that will never happen again.

And that is why we are here today, to see how we, as Members

of Congress, can help local jurisdictions prevent witness intimidation and protect those citizens whose lives may be in danger.

As a former prosecutor, I have seen firsthand how violent and

dangerous some of these criminals can be. And I know how hard

it is as a prosecutor to get witnesses to come forward and testify.

We had to use every available resource we could at the local, State,

and Federal level to get witnesses into the courtroom. If we don’t

get witnesses into the courtroom, we cannot prosecute and convict

those felons and put them in jail.

Now, we must take these drug gangs head-on. We must not allow

them to continue to use their intimidation tactics on witnesses. We

must protect our citizens from these gangs. And this can be accomplished through coordination at the Federal, State, and local level,

and also in the neighborhood level, citizens coming forward.

Now, last month I signed on as cosponsor to Congressman

Cummings’ bill, H.R. 908, the Witness Security and Protection Act

of 2005, and I thank you for that and for your leadership. Thank

you, Mr. Chairman, for cosponsoring that bill. And that is a great

start.

11

This legislation seeks to help local jurisdictions protect witnesses

and is a good step in the right direction along the path to the prevention of witness intimidation. Now, we all acknowledge that witness intimidation is a deadly problem that must be addressed, but

we cannot solve the problem in a vacuum. Gangs to drug trafficking, violence, and witness intimidation must all be addressed as

one, together. To that end, there are many current programs that

seek to address the various parts of this problem—the Office of National Drug Control Policies High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area

Program called HIDTA; the Byrne Justice Assistance Grant Program, Byrne Grants; the Office of Community-Oriented Policing

Services, that is called the COPS program—are all programs that

are funded with Federal dollars.

Now, I am deeply concerned with the administration’s current

budget proposal to significantly reduce the funding of all of these

programs. This is a problem. We must deal with this program, and

we must give those individuals working on this problem the resources to do the job.

I am also concerned that we are moving the HIDTA program

from the Office of National Drug Control Policy to the Justice Department. This makes no sense. The Justice Department is a large

organization, and they have enough problems dealing with the

issues they are dealing with. We must refocus on that issue.

As I have said many times before, I am always concerned about

the issue of accountability and effectiveness. Whenever we give

Federal money, we must hold those individuals receiving the

money accountable for effectiveness and accountability. And we

must make sure that we look at that.

I think it is unwise to cut funding for programs that our State

and local partners find to be useful tools in the fight against drugs,

crime, and violence. We can only assume that with the drastic cuts

proposed by the administration, the progress we are seeing will be

unable to continue.

Adequate funding for the affected programs is not the only solution, though. Changes to State law, such as the recently passed

witness intimidation bill in the Maryland Legislature, and changes

to criminal justice procedures are but two other ways to address

the problem.

But still there are more. We need to be creative. We need to

think out of the box. We need to think and be one step ahead of

these drug gangs. It is a very serious issue. We are here today to

discuss and listen, and I hope that we will have productive dialog.

I look forward to hearing from all of our witnesses today.

Mr. SOUDER. I thank the gentleman. I ask unanimous consent

that all Members have 5 legislative days to submit written statements and questions for the hearing record and any answers to

written questions provided by the witnesses also be included in the

record. Without objection, it is so ordered. I also ask unanimous

consent that all exhibits, documents, and other materials referred

to by Members may be included in the hearing record; that all

Members be permitted to advise and extend their remarks. Without

objection, it is so ordered.

The first panel is composed of the distinguished Lieutenant Governor of Maryland, Mr. Steele. It is our standard practice to ask

12

witnesses to testify under oath. You probably saw this on the baseball hearing if nothing else.

[Witness sworn.]

Mr. SOUDER. Let the record show that the witness responded in

the affirmative. Thank you very much for being patient this morning and coming today to testify. We look forward to your testimony.

STATEMENTS OF MICHAEL S. STEELE, LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR, STATE OF MARYLAND; AND MARTIN O’MALLEY,

MAYOR, CITY OF BALTIMORE

STATEMENT OF MICHAEL S. STEELE

Mr. STEELE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, and certainly to Members of the subcommittee.

I very much appreciate your being here. I appreciate the opportunity also to appear before the subcommittee today on behalf of

our Governor, Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr., on the subject of witness intimidation. Governor Ehrlich extends certainly his personal and

sincere thanks to the members of this subcommittee, many of

whom are his former colleagues, for your willingness to engage in

a meaningful discussion about the appropriate Federal, State, and

local responses to the insidious problem of witness intimidation.

Congressman Cummings, we particularly want to thank you for

bringing this subcommittee here, your colleagues. You have made

this an important battle cry, if you will, for this community. And

we are very, very appreciative of that.

Our administration also wishes to thank Baltimore City State’s

attorney, Patricia C. Jessamy, and Reverend Iris Tucker for

partnering with us to champion the cause of witness intimidation

legislative reform.

In truth, the Governor and I would much prefer that today’s field

hearing take place someplace else, not here in Baltimore City, not

in our State. But unfortunately, here we are because here we have

witnessed 253 homicides which occurred in 2002, 278 in 2004, and

73 so far this year. Indeed, the HBO cable drama ‘‘The Wire’’ is

tantamount to a reality television program in certain parts of our

cities.

Too many individuals in this city live in a state of persistent

fear, while brazen, violent criminals patrol the streets unafraid and

intent on enforcing their own brand of justice. But as the members

of this subcommittee are aware, the problem of witness intimidation is not simply a Baltimore City problem. It affects other parts

of Maryland, like Prince George’s County, my home county, as well

as Washington, DC, and other communities across this Nation, as

the chairman has already pointed out this morning.

Thus, in a growing number of cases throughout Maryland, police

and prosecutors are frustrated by their inability to investigate and

prosecute cases because witnesses refuse to provide critical evidence or are unwilling to testify due to fear of violent reprisals.

Deficiencies in Maryland’s laws and evidentiary rules also contributed to this escalation in witness intimidation. Currently, the

crime of witness intimidation in Maryland is a misdemeanor offense punishable by a maximum penalty of 5 years in prison. Of

course, that is not commensurate with the severity of the crime. InVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:55 Sep 22, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00016 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\23040.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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deed, if a criminal is able to silence a witness’ testimony in the

case of a violent felony crime, the same witness certainly would not

testify in a prosecution where the maximum exposure of the defendant is a 5-year misdemeanor.

Additionally, solicitation and conspiracy to commit witness intimidation are not even statutory crimes in Maryland. Further,

there is also a huge payoff for the crime of witness intimidation—

kill or otherwise silence a witness to your crime and his or her incriminating statement to police and to the grand jury is inadmissible at trial. This means that a criminal defendant who kills a witness silences that witness entirely.

In response to repeated instances of witness intimidation and ineffective laws that threaten the underpinning of law enforcement

and criminal justice in Maryland, the Ehrlich-Steele Administration, joined by Baltimore City State’s attorney, Pat C. Jessamy,

launched an effort that began in 2003 to toughen Maryland’s witness intimidation laws. Reverend Tucker also rallied the faith community and advanced the cause of witness intimidation legislation,

we think, a significant degree.

I am thankful to report that Governor Ehrlich is prepared to sign

his witness legislation into law this month. The legislation, as

passed by the General Assembly of Maryland would permit one,

prosecutors to seek a maximum penalty of 20 years for individuals

who solicit others, conspire with others, or commit witness intimidation if the underlying crime is a felonious drug violation or an

enumerated crime of violence. And two, it would permit the admission of a hearsay statement, written or recorded, of a threatened

or murdered witness against the defendant that attempted or did

produce the absence of the witness in a felony drug or violent crime

case.

These legislative reforms are not a panacea to the problem of

witness intimidation. We remain committed to continuing our examination of the criminal laws in Maryland to ensure that our

State prosecutors and law enforcement officers and their colleagues

have the necessary legal tools to make our communities safer.

Some have criticized our administration for focusing too much on

amending the law. Well, first, if you are able to dismantle criminal

gangs, you move closer to eliminating the witness intimidation

threat permanently. That is what a well-crafted law would provide.

Second, Governor Ehrlich and I also understand the need for witness relocation. The State’s Victim and Witness Protection and Relocation Fund—more fully described in my written testimony—was

created for that purpose—to protect the victims and witnesses of

crime and their families by relocating them for their own protection.

However, the problem the State has found with the State witness

relocation funds and such problems generally is that few people

want to participate. Who wants to leave their home, their community? They shouldn’t have to. The criminals should be the ones

forced out and locked up.

The Ehrlich-Steele administration is helping in that regard not

just with legislation, but also with funding to help prosecutors convict violent criminals. For example, the State of Maryland funds

nine prosecutors in the homicide division of the Baltimore City

14

State’s Attorney’s Office. It provides all of the funding for the city’s

Firearms Investigative Violence Enforcement Division, which prosecutes all gun prosecutions in Baltimore City.

Our administration remains committed to working with our Federal partners, this subcommittee, other Members of Congress,

along with local law enforcement to examine ways to strengthen

the Federal, State, and local response to witness intimidation and

to enact and provide meaningful tools to counteract and defeat

these local, domestic terrorists.

Mr. Chairman, I thank you for the opportunity to participate in

these proceedings this morning. I look forward to any questions you

may have.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Steele follows:]

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19

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Mr. SOUDER. Do you expect some kind of a challenge on the hearsay evidence and do you know other States or locations that have

tried this? Because obviously, if you are going to be protecting witnesses, it is going to be hearsay if it is not proven in court yet——

Mr. STEELE. Right.

Mr. SOUDER [continuing]. I mean, it is kind of a different

legal——

Mr. STEELE. I don’t think—I will ask our deputy counsel, Chris

Kefalas, to join me because he can fill in any blanks that I may

have. But I do not believe we anticipate any legal challenges. We

have tried to—if I recall correctly—tried to hone this law very

closely to the Federal standard and wanted to make sure that we

address the due process concerns, the right-to-confront concerns

that are raised by the Constitution. And so I think with that in

mind, we, I think, crafted a fairly tight bill. I don’t anticipate—

unless——

Mr. KEFALAS. Sure.

Mr. STEELE [continuing]. Counsel, you——

Mr. SOUDER. You will need to——

Mr. STEELE. Be sworn.

Mr. SOUDER [continuing]. Be sworn in. And when you stand,

spell your name for the record.

Mr. KEFALAS. Sure. It is Chrysobalantis Periyotes Kefalas, C-hr-y-s-o-b-a-l-a-n-t-i-s P. K-e-f-a-l-a-s.

Mr. SOUDER. Mayor O’Malley, could you maybe come up as well?

I might as well swear you in at the same time, and then we will—

after we finish we will take your testimony.

Mr. O’MALLEY. Yes, sir.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SOUDER. Let the record show that both witnesses responded

in the affirmative. We will take the answer to this question and

then we will hear your opening statement. Thank you for joining

us this morning.

Mr. KEFALAS. Mr. Chairman, with respect to the hearsay provision, it is our understanding that the hearsay exception, as Governor Ehrlich first proposed, is used in 18 other States now, including Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia, and in other areas that

battle significant witness intimidation issues.

Also, as an aside, in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, there

is a case currently proceeding to the Supreme Court of that State

which will examine the Constitutionality of the hearsay exception

under Massachusetts law.

In addition, the Supreme Court last year rendered opinions in

the Crawford v. Washington case, which found that the Federal

Hearsay Exception was Constitutional. In the opinion, Justice

Scalia went out of his way to say that ‘‘The rule of forfeiture by

wrongdoing, which we accept, extinguishes confrontation claims on

essentially equitable grounds.’’ That statement says if a forfeiture

principle, which is the basic principle, which Rule 804(b)(6), the

Federal Hearsay Exception was Constitutional, and the Court

made that statement, and its opinion was it was not dealing with

the confrontation clause, right of forfeiture by wrongdoing, specifically.

21

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. I thank the mayor again for coming to

one of our committee hearings. I guess we bring good luck to the

Orioles over here.

Mr. O’MALLEY. We hope so.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you for joining us.

STATEMENT OF MARTIN O’MALLEY

Mr. O’MALLEY. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, thank

you very much. Chairman Souder, Ranking Member Cummings,

Congressman Ruppersberger, thank you coming to Baltimore today

and giving me the opportunity to speak with you on this very, very

important issue.

Five years ago the city of Baltimore was actually dubbed by our

FBI the most violent city in America. We have now, over these last

4 or 5 years, actually been leading America’s cities in the rate of

reduction of violent crime, achieving a 40-percent reduction in overall violent crime thanks to courageous efforts not only of police officers, eight of whom have given their lives in the line of duty on

our streets in these last few years, but also because of a lot of really courageous citizens, we have been able to reduce violent crime

to its lowest level since the 1960’s. But obviously, we still have a

long way to go.

And in order to continue on our path to making Baltimore the

safest big city in America—which, Mr. Chairman, is our humble

goal, to become the safest big city in the world—we are committed

to a thorough, comprehensive action in the area of victim and witness intimidation. It is my firm belief of having been a prosecutor

for a couple of years and a criminal defense attorney as well as

being mayor of the city for these last 5 years, that the most effective way to protect witnesses is with more effective prosecution,

more effective law enforcement. Effective prosecution, effective law

enforcement is really the only way to truly combat victim and witness intimidation.

Now, many have identified increased sanctions as a deterrent to

witness intimidation, and increased sanctions certainly do serve a

vital component of eliminating intimidation in Baltimore. However,

these additional measures have to be part of a comprehensive plan

that solidifies safety and security for every victim and witness in

every corner of our city and in every corner of our State.

In addition to increased sanctions, we also have to examine our

criminal justice systems, existing practices, our policies and procedures. We have to be prepared to reengineer the way that we work

so that we can better coordinate and thereby better protect the courageous individuals who chose to partner with our police, prosecutors, and judges to permanently dismantle those individuals who

would rob the rest of us of our freedoms and of our lives.

We must work with urgency, we must share information, and we

also need our Federal partners with us every step of the way,

maintaining the important investments that have been made to

make our country safer.

Virtually all of the citizens that have been murdered in our city,

and there were some 6,000 in the 1990’s if you combine homicides

and drug-related overdoses. It is 6,000 Americans. That is twice the

number that were killed on that awful day on September 11th;

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6,000 in our city. And virtually all of them were American citizens,

citizens of the United States of America.

Our State law permits the release of violent felons on bail when

they are rearrested, which gives them even greater opportunity and

incentive to terrorize their communities while they are awaiting

trial. Actively or by their mere presence back on the streets, in our

communities, in our neighborhoods, those involved in the business

of violence work to intimidate witnesses and commit further acts

of violence while awaiting trial.

Maryland must look to adopt a bail system that is more closely

modeled after the very system that is currently used by our Federal Government where no bail status is given to defendants that

meet one of the following conditions: a defendant charged with a

crime of violence, a defendant charged with a drug offense carrying

a maximum penalty of 10 years or more, a defendant charged with

any felony that has two other convictions within the categories listed above, a defendant who may flee, a defendant who may obstruct

justice or threaten, injure, or intimidate a prospective witness or

juror. These are the rules that guide bail in the Federal system.

We need to revamp those rules with regard to our State system.

In Maryland, our city police department doesn’t even have a direct data feed from the State’s judicial information system, which

could help prevent witness intimidation by enabling police to systematically establish links between witnesses, victims, and suspects in cases, to proactively move to make more arrests, and to

place victims and witnesses in protective programs before and after

the intimidation is allowed to occur.

Currently, Mr. Chairman, citizens can go to our local government

Web site to find out if a crime has been committed in their neighborhood. Shouldn’t they also be able to find out if the criminal who

committed that crime is in jail, made bail, or is still on the street?

And when will that person face justice? There is no reason that it

can’t happen. It is simply a matter of will.

Two years ago our State’s attorney, Ms. Jessamy, who is here

today, led the effort to establish a war room, which creates an information clearing house right up front in our system to target our

city’s worst offenders immediately at the point of booking. One

problem, however, is that the information-sharing needed to make

it work does not exist with some of our partner agencies. The parole and probation information, which is run by our State government, that is needed to target repeated offenders, is actually kept

in notebooks still or in non-network computers. This high-tech war

room relies on a system of paging parole and probation agents in

hoping that they are available and that they are in possession of

the right information about the right offender.

Police officers and assistant State’s attorneys can’t find out, in

many cases, whether the offender they are to lock up and charge

is in compliance with their parole and probation conditions. Probation agents don’t necessarily know Monday morning that an offender who was supposedly under their supervision was even arrested Saturday night because they are not networked. And because only the judge who puts an offender on probation can hear

a violation case in our State, it can take weeks to address a violaVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:55 Sep 22, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00026 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\23040.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
23

tion, which should be an easy way to get criminals off our streets

pending their trials.

We understand that these are local issues, and we are committed

to resolving them. However, there is, Mr. Chairman, an opportunity for this honorable committee to really help us on the Federal

level. We ask that you please help us to insist upon a U.S. Department of Justice commitment to Federal gun prosecutions. It is not

coincidental that in Baltimore our homicide rate has slightly increased over these last couple of years as the Federal Government

commitment to gun prosecution in Maryland has dramatically declined.

In 2000 there were 196 Federal gun indictments. In 2004, that

number dropped to 97; 196 in 2000 has dropped to just 97 in 2004.

What message does that send to witnesses and to victims? The benefits of Federal gun prosecution include no bail to prevent defendants from re-offending and intimidating witnesses and victims,

clear and substantial sentences served in full without parole, and

incarceration in a Federal facility far away from criminal enterprises and networks in Baltimore.

And No. 2, we ask that this committee please help us by demanding adequate Federal support for our police and for our prosecutors. Since 1997, the city’s local law enforcement block grant

from the U.S. Department of Justice, now the Justice Assistance

Grant, has been reduced by 74 percent. In the President’s proposed

budget for this year, there will be no Justice Assistance Grant.

And it gets worse. In the President’s proposed budget, the Office

of Community-Oriented Policing Services [COPS] program, will receive just $118 million. That is down from $606 million, or an 80-

percent decrease. And of that $118 million, $96 million of that are

carry-over dollars from the 2004 budget. As a result, this means

that the President has only proposed $22 million for the whole Nation in new funding for the COPS office, a program which had invested over $208 million in support to Maryland’s law enforcement

professionals since 1995.

The President also proposes to reduce funding to the BaltimoreWashington HIDTA by over 50 percent. I have attached an addendum to the testimony that outlines the destruction that this would

cause if the President is successful with his attempt to dismantle

HIDTA. When combined the proposed fiscal year 2006 funding

level for the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland

Security Assistance Programs is $2.1 billion. That is a reduction of

$1.4 billion, or 40 percent from the combined fiscal year 2005 level

of $3.6. It represents a decrease of $2.5 billion or 54 percent from

2004.

Congressman Cummings, you have supported this city and its

heroic citizens for many, many years. You live in a neighborhood

of this city where neighbors are battling back, where good things

are starting to happen again because of your leadership and the

leadership of your neighbors.

Improved information sharing, bail reform, and harsher sanctions for victim-witness intimidation are things we need to work on

on the local level. But on a Federal level we must request, must

insist, that a commitment to increase Federal firearms prosecutions is a prerequisite for consideration of appointment to the critiVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:55 Sep 22, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00027 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\23040.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
24

cal law enforcement post of the U.S. attorney for the District of

Maryland. We need adequate funding for our local police and prosecutors.

Without the Federal Government as a partner in our fight, our

attempts to ensure the safety of victims and witnesses will be severely undermined. We welcome any thoughts, any questions or

ideas that you or your colleagues may have to assist us in addressing this problem, which is not only a city problem, not only a State

problem, but it is also a problem for the United States. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. O’Malley follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. I would like to yield to Mr. Cummings.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much. I want to thank all of our

witnesses for being here this morning. Lieutenant Governor, I just

want to go back to the whole issue of—when we look at—you know,

we have been trying very hard to get resources, and I know you

have to—to our State. And one of the things we are hoping for at

some point is that we will get more money for the program that

you mentioned in your testimony, and you didn’t talk about it because—I am sure it was because of time——

Mr. STEELE. Yes.

Mr. CUMMINGS [continuing]. But the Maryland Victim and Witness Protection and Relocation Fund——

Mr. STEELE. Yes.

Mr. CUMMINGS [continuing]. And in the testimony is said that to

date $400,000 has been used of that fund by State’s attorneys.

Mr. STEELE. Correct.

Mr. CUMMINGS. How much is in the fund?

Mr. STEELE. About $600,000.

Mr. CUMMINGS. About $600,000?

Mr. STEELE. $600,000 and about $400,000 of that has been used

to date.

Mr. CUMMINGS. OK, so it is quite possible that they will use the

rest of it then? I mean——

Mr. STEELE. It has been the experience, as I understand it, that

fund has never been depleted. It has never gone to zero. It has

never been used up. So whether we will spend the remaining

$200,000 in the next 6 months of this year, 7 months of this year,

I am not sure. I think Ms. Jessamy can address that more directly.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Yes, I hope so because that certainly would——

Mr. STEELE. But as of currently, the dollars that have been appropriated have not been spent to zero in any given fiscal year.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Yes, I just want to—I hope Ms. Jessamy does address that because that is very important, because what we are trying to do is bring more Federal dollars into the system. And if

there is an issue of dollars already being there and not being

spent—although I do realize that we are only one-third of the way

along in the year and two-thirds of the funds are gone, but, you

know, I appreciate the——

Mr. STEELE. But——

Mr. CUMMINGS [continuing]. Historical perspective.

Mr. STEELE [continuing]. If I may, and I think I touched on this

in my testimony—part of that goes to the fact that people don’t

want to enter the program because they don’t want to leave their

homes and their communities on the one hand, and they don’t want

to be exposed on the other. So there is very little incentive for them

to take advantage. And again, I think Ms. Jessamy can speak to

her experience dealing with witnesses in a case by case. There is

a great hesitancy to enter the program on the one hand simply because it means uprooting and moving. And, of course, the question

is how protected am I, etc.

So the other side of that, I think, and one of the challenges you

have with these programs—it was just—there was a Washington

Post article this weekend that spoke about a witness who was

killed because the witness entered the program but then didn’t

29

want to follow the rules of the program and, you know, continued

to, you know, cavort with the members of her former gang, etc. So

there are a lot of features that are involved here in terms of how

the programs function, how they are supported, and how those dollars are maximized to make sure that the witness is protected or

relocated sufficiently and effectively.

Mr. CUMMINGS. The thing that, I guess, that I do applaud you

on, Ms. Jessamy, for the State legislation—and I told Ms. Jessamy

this at least on two occasions—that the legislation is important

from the standpoint of increasing the sentences——

Mr. STEELE. Yes.

Mr. CUMMINGS [continuing]. And it is important from the standpoint of allowing certain testimony to come in, but a lot of people

that I talk to—we need that third leg. Not that the first two aren’t

important——

Mr. STEELE. Right.

Mr. CUMMINGS [continuing]. I mean, very important, but there

are people who are actually afraid to testify. And, you know, they

are afraid for their lives. And I hope Ms. Jessamy will shed some

light on this because if there is on the one hand—I know that there

is a new type of witness, and maybe the witness intimidation program—the Federal program—was aimed at one point when they

first began it, more or less the crime families and things of that

nature, and the mafia and——

Mr. STEELE. Right.

Mr. CUMMINGS [continuing]. And now you have this different

kind of situation. But still I think that if there are people who are

not willing to go into the program, I would guess that it may be

because it is not long enough or it is not necessarily works the way

they want to work. But one thing I do know, after reading the

Washington Post article, that when we are arresting people and

holding them in contempt and putting them in jail to become witnesses later on, that doesn’t seem like that is too much fun——

Mr. STEELE. Not much of an incentive.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Yes. No. So maybe we just need to look at that

program and see exactly whether the changes need to be made

within the program itself.

But, Mayor O’Malley, let me just ask you, you just testified about

this HIDTA, the proposed—basically elimination of the HIDTA program, and I must tell you that Republicans and Democrats on the

Hill are very concerned about this. We have had testimony about

this already. And another thing you talked about was cooperation,

and how important cooperation is. How significant are the proposed

cuts to HIDTA? How do you see that affecting witness protection

types of efforts and the whole area of trying to address crime in

our area?

Mr. O’MALLEY. Well, Congressman, as you know from the hard

work that you have been doing for the people of our city, and Congressman Ruppersberger knows from his days as a prosecutor,

HIDTA is a very, very effective tool for creating that sort of teamwork that must exist between local police and Federal authorities,

in order to combat the narcotics that are being shipped into our

county, shipping through our ports, our airports, over I–95, that

comes in is killing our people in such devastating numbers.

30

HIDTA has been a very effective way for us to combat that drug

trade. You take the resources and the knowledge of the local police

with the Federal team, and you are actually able to bring about

that sort of robust Federal prosecution to actually not only clip the

dandelion, but to actually pull up that dandelion by root and all

and take out drug organizations. It has been one of the most effective programs that we have had in terms of bringing about that

sort of sharing. And it would be absolutely devastating, on top of

all of the other cuts that are being made, not to mention the new,

local, unfunded mandate to provide for the common defense in this

changing world of conflict, and the nature of conflict in this changing world.

So it would be devastating for us to lose HIDTA, and we ask you

to do everything you can to preserve that. And then I am very, very

heartened to see so many Republican Members of Congress recognizing the importance of HIDTA.

Mr. CUMMINGS. With regard to the whole idea of this whole effort

of cooperation, and he was talking about the Federal gun prosecutions, why do you think that there has been a drop in that?

Mr. O’MALLEY. Congressman, I really do not know. I really do

not know. You know, the fact of the matter is there are already dollars budgeted for our U.S. Attorney’s Office. We already pay to

keep the electricity on in the courtrooms. We had a very positive

year in 2003 thanks to your help and the congressional delegation.

And we actually saw an increase in the number of gun prosecutions

that year. Unfortunately, that dropped in 2004. And I really don’t

know why. That is a decision made by the U.S. attorney. Our

former U.S. attorney decided there were other cases more important than Federal gun prosecutions.

There is also a sense—not shared by his colleagues I might add—

in the other neighboring Federal jurisdictions. There was a sense

in our U.S. Attorney’s Office that was a problem that local and

State-level prosecutors had to deal with, and they shouldn’t be

asked to put Federal prosecutorial resources or courtrooms onto

this task.

But if you compare, Congressman, Maryland to the eastern district of Pennsylvania, we did 158 gun prosecutions in 2004; they

did 197. Compare Maryland to D.C., they did 219. Maryland to

eastern Virginia, they did 291. Now, a lot of times at election time,

politicians say we are for Project X, we are for more robust Federal

prosecution of gun crimes. But those hopes have not been realized

to date in Maryland.

And I really don’t know the reason for it because I know President Bush himself and his—in his public pronouncement has said

that he wants the Federal Government to be more involved in taking guns off the streets and out of the hands of those that use them

to commit crimes of violence over and over again.

Mr. STEELE. If I could followup on the mayor’s point, a couple of

things come to mind. One is just from my own cursory conversation

with some prosecutors around the State, typically, you know, gun

violations are the first things that are pleaded out in most cases.

And there is not an aggressive prosecution necessarily because you

are trying to go for, you know, a greater crime if you will. That is

part of, but not, I don’t think, a significant part. I think, as we see

31

it, you know, the Responsible Gun Safety Act of 2000 and its automatic five provisions pretty much handcuffed State’s attorneys.

And I know that Governor Ehrlich has met with the Maryland

State U.S. attorney and talked about how we could work toward

bringing more gun prosecutions to the table, certainly through our

Project Exile efforts. There was an agreement at that time, a year

and a half ago, by the U.S. attorney to do more, at least here in

Maryland. And so we will continue to push forward to make that

happen. But there are handcuffs that have been placed within the

system that I think we should look at as well to make sure that

we have sufficiently freed up our State’s attorneys to prosecute

these gun offenses to get the guns off the streets and to be serious

about it. And working with the mayor, working with the Governor

of the State to make sure that up and down that chain, there is

a level of cooperation and communication with an eye toward getting guns off the street.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Just one last comment. One of the things that

Chairman Souder and I have always been concerned about, particularly after September 11th, is that we saw a lot of effort being

put into homeland security and making sure that another September 11th not happen again, and I think that we all agree that we

don’t want to see that happen. We have to address terrorism.

And one of the things we also became concerned about is the

Federal Government not putting the emphasis on crime and particularly drug crimes that maybe was there before because we got

a little bit out of balance. And, you know, we are convinced that

you have to do both. You can’t just deal with terrorism and have

narco-terrorism happening in our communities. And so I guess I

am hoping that you all will, you know, continue to try to work with

us, because as we speak—Mr. Governor, it is not just in Baltimore

or just not in Maryland——

Mr. STEELE. Absolutely.

Mr. CUMMINGS [continuing]. That is why I emphasize what is

happening in here is happening all over the country. As a matter

of fact, I set my computer to Google for narcotics, and usually I can

get about 20 articles a day, and a lot of them are about witness

intimidation all over the country.

Mr. STEELE. Yes.

Mr. CUMMINGS. And I guess I always think about, Mr. Chairman,

what my mother used to say. She says all that motion, commotion,

emotion and no results.

Mr. STEELE. Yes.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Some kind of way we have to get a hold of this

problem because people are dying. People are literally dying. You

know, there is somebody somewhere right now who is having their

door busted in somewhere in this country and somebody may be

pointing a gun at their head or sending a note or somebody sitting

in the back of a courtroom emailing somebody, messaging somebody saying Jane has just testified, you know, let us take care of

him this afternoon sometime.

So I just really hope that we can all work together to try to address these problems. And I don’t think that enough emphasis has

been put on—as a matter of fact, this Wednesday a family got—

one of your friends, I guess, Mr. Souder, Mr. O’Riley to work with

32

us and Fox to do a special on this, this whole witness intimidation

program. Because as far as I am concerned, if we don’t address

this—I mean, our whole system can fall. And I am sure you all

agree with that. Is that right, Mr.——

Mr. O’MALLEY. Congressman——

Mr. CUMMINGS [continuing]. O’Malley?

Mr. O’MALLEY [continuing]. When these incidents happen, you

know, you just start asking yourself what is going to happen to the

fabric of the United States if we do not come up with the will to

stop it. We could easily go the way of Mexico City or other places

where the whole criminal justice system breaks down. And the sad

thing for us as a hyperpower, attacked as we were in that unprecedented way on September 11th, there was really an opportunity to

put additional resources to the protection of our shores against the

threat of terrorism that could have also inured to our benefit in

fighting the domestic terrorists of drug trafficking and drug intimidators.

Instead, sadly, what we have seen is a very cynical shell game

where we take the resources that were in the glass called local law

enforcement and we have poured that half-full glass into an empty

glass called homeland security. So, I mean, we can say that there

is more in this glass now for homeland security, but if there is less

for local prosecutors, less for local police, and the COPS program

has been eliminated, HIDTA is on the chopping block, we are really

not advancing the cause and making our cities and our shores

safer.

And that is the sad predicament that we are in. For a little bit

of additional money, the same security that could keep the nukes

out of our port could also keep the cocaine and the heroin out of

our port in greater numbers. For the amount of dollars that are

going into putting cameras up to protect some critical infrastructure, we could be putting more cameras up to protect the most critical infrastructure we have, which is our people in our poorest

neighborhoods who have been on the frontlines of this fight.

It doesn’t have to be this way. It is about choices. And I am really grateful that the committee has chosen to come to Baltimore to

highlight the opportunities—not only the problems, but the opportunities that are out there for us as a Nation if we should so

choose.

Mr. STEELE. I think this is an unprecedented time for mayors

and Governors and Presidents, Congressmen, Senators, to get on

the same page and to recognize that at the end of the day, there

is a limited pool of money. No matter how you cut it, there is going

to be a limited pool of money. And the smart people will figure out

the best way to allocate those resources. I think you have just

opened up a very important door, Congressman, with your comments in that we are beginning to see now, as we watch the minutemen along the Texas border take up the charge, and people

begin to say, hey, maybe Al Qaeda is, you know, sort of slipping

in through, you know, the immigrants who are coming in over the

border, and now they are part of that fabric.

We can’t afford to sit by idly. And we have to be on the same

page. We have to cooperate. And I think we are now getting at that

point. And I know the Governor, myself, when we get the briefings,

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we are asking are we putting the resources that we have to the

best practical use to protect the citizens of Maryland, to take advantage of the dollars that do come in, and coordinate as much as

we can with local law enforcement?

At the end of the day it is the mayor and the city police of large

towns like Baltimore and small towns like District Heights in

Prince George’s County that are going to be on the frontline when

something happens. They are the true first responders, and how we

back them up, both county-wide, Statewide, and federally, I think

will speak to our level of commitment.

And I think the commitment is there. At least the words are

there. Now we are hoping that we can coordinate the dollars and

get the dollars to take advantage of this unprecedented opportunity, as the mayor pointed out, for us to really turn the corner,

to protecting the courts, to protecting neighborhoods, to protecting

the heart and soul of the economic system, but more importantly,

the heart and soul of every community in our State.

It is a challenge and is one that we have never faced before. It

is one that we haven’t quite drilled down on exactly how to do it

and how to cover every base that needs to be covered and how to

focus on every issue that needs to be focused. We are going into

year 5 of post-September 11th, and there being many more years

ahead of us, we have been blessed that nothing else has happened.

But that doesn’t mean it won’t. So we must stay vigilant, we must

stay focused, and we must be comprehensive.

Whether we are talking about witness intimidation or whether

we are talking about preventing the type of attacks that occurred

more broadly on September 11th, we are hoping, and certainly you

can count on this administration’s cooperation with this committee,

with you, with the Members, with our mayor, and all that have

concern about the people of this State.

Mr. O’MALLEY. Mr. Chairman, may I just say, Congressmen, may

I just say a word of thanks to our Federal prosecutors for the way

that they did jump in with both feet not only in the Dawson case,

but also in the more recent case on Harwood. That was a terrific

message to send to all of our citizens to see our Federal Government come in that way. If they could only do the same things with

regard to increasing rather than decreasing Federal gun prosecutions.

We are at, Mr. Chairman, a 7-year low. Last year was our lowest

number in 7 years of Federal gun prosecutions. Currently, the end

of April, we are headed for another 8-year low, because that was

the lowest first 4 months of the year we have ever seen in terms

of Federal gun prosecutions.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Mayor, I am baffled by something in your testimony. You started by saying 5 years ago we were the most violent

city in America. Overall, our violent crime is now down 40 percent.

We are on the way to make it the safest biggest city. Yet later in

your testimony you talked about the gun prosecutions. In fact, 5

years ago was the maximum—that was the date you gave for the

maximum, and your violent crime is down 40 percent now. How do

you reconcile this?

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Mr. O’MALLEY. Actually 2003, Mr. Chairman, was the most robust year in terms of Federal gun prosecutions, almost as many in

2000 as well. The measure that the Federal Government uses with

regard to violent crime are the Part I index crimes: murder, rape,

robbery, aggravated assault. If you measure those four together,

that is where the 40 percent number comes from.

The number with regard to homicides, I believe, went up last

year in our city by about 2 percent, and that was on top of an increase of 3 percent from the year before. We averaged in the 1990’s

about 325 homicides. We have been averaging about 265 in the

year 2000.

So the other crimes have actually gone down at a much bigger

percentage than we have yet been able to get our homicides

down——

Mr. SOUDER. Because we had quite a bit of discussion—will you

have the city provide to us a track of the gun prosecutions in the

city of Baltimore and also the homicide and violent crime rates so

we can see whether they are actually correlated?

Mr. O’MALLEY. Yes, sir.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. Mr. Ruppersberger.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Sure. Well, sitting here listening to the

issues and the testimony, first, it is great to see both the Lieutenant Governor and the mayor sitting at the same table. This is a

bipartisan issue and is something we have to work together with

respect as a team, the State, local, and Federal together.

Now, just a couple of comments first. September 11th did change

a lot in this country. We are putting a lot of resources into intelligence and into our war. But still in my opinion the biggest problem that we have in the world are drugs. Drugs have more impact

on our communities than anything else. Violent crime—over 80

percent, if not more, violent crime is all related to drugs. And we

have not put the resources, yet we are hearing today that there are

cuts.

My concern—and I sit on the House Select Intelligence Committee—we deal with terrorism all over the world. My concern now is

that the terrorists and the drug gangs will come together and even

make our situation worse. We have a very serious situation in Mexico now where a tremendous amount of drugs—probably over 80

percent, I am not sure of the exact percentage—come in through

Mexico. And yet, we don’t have the resources, where our CIA, our

NSA, our DEA all coming together working to deal with the issues

that we have to deal with, including immigration.

Because, as you said, Lieutenant Governor Steele, the money is

limited. So we have to reprioritize where we are going to go. And

that is why I really thank Chairman Souder and Elijah Cummings

for focusing in Baltimore right now. This hearing, hopefully, we

will come away with some results.

Now, you know, with that in mind we have heard the issue of

communication, you know, focusing on where we need to put our

money. I want to ask a question, because we want to walk away

from this hearing with some recommendations so that we can try

to implement these recommendations and not have another hearing

and then it gets lost. And I know Chairman Souder and Ranking

Member Cummings won’t allow that to happen.

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So my question to you, Mr. Mayor, and also Governor Steele, if

in fact we could be chosen to put together a pilot program in Baltimore with Federal, State, and local coming together, and we are

going to have certain resources of money, where would you like to

see the money go? Where would you think that we could get the

best bang for our buck so that we can justify to the President, to

the administration, that we in Baltimore have a team approach—

Federal, State, and local—we are having a bipartisan approach to

deal with the issue of not only drugs and witness intimidation, but

it all comes together. And what I would like you to do is not only

testify to that where you would like to go, but follow it up with recommendations, both the Governor’s office and also you, Mr. Mayor,

to our committee so that we can come with recommendations to try

to implement where we need to go.

And, you know, Lieutenant Governor Steele, you talked about

Governor Ehrlich meeting with the U.S. attorney. And I think that

is great because we have to do that. But I think we need to go a

step forward. We have to not only meet with them, but come away

with a plan. And I would hope that at those future meetings—because the U.S. attorney is going to be in Baltimore——

Mr. STEELE. Right.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER [continuing]. But you would also have the

mayor and Pat Jessamy and maybe the Commissioner all come together so it is a team approach to where we need to go. So my

question, basically—and either one wants to start—if in fact Baltimore was picked for a pilot program, where would you like to see

the resources go? Mr. Mayor, you talked about that we don’t have

a proper system of communication. We don’t have the ability to

track recidivism, to see who is on the street and who is not. And

that is basically resources and management. And management

starts at the top. So where would you like to see the resources go

if we could do something and have a pilot program that would

make a difference and that we could justify this program to the administration in Washington?

Mr. O’MALLEY. The three that come to mind, one requires no additional resources at all, and that is to make sure that the next

U.S. attorney for Maryland makes a commitment to increase gun

prosecutions rather than continuing the back-sliding in the decrease in Federal gun prosecutions.

The second aspect would be to continue the Federal level of funding for local law enforcement efforts on such things as HIDTA

being a No. 1 request, but the COPS program was also a huge help

to us.

While this one was not in my notes, I am going to put it out

there anyway. I think for a very minimal amount of money that the

sort of security that wealthy people who live in gated communities

have from cameras is something that we should be investing in

with regard to our poorest neighborhoods where drug dealers sometimes operate with great impunity. And that would be a huge force

multiplier for——

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Mr. Mayor, from a specific point of view

you mentioned resources in HIDTA. That is a macro issue. What

I am really looking for is a micro issue such as cameras, such as

giving money to put together a communications system that is

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going to work. I mean, these are the specifics that we can then justify to ask for money. So when you followup with a recommendation to the committee, we need to think out of the box on what is

going to work, and to put money into specifics such as cameras if

you think it works; I think your communication issue is extremely

important also.

Mr. O’MALLEY. The communications issue should be something

that—I was almost embarrassed to ask for that, because it is really

something we should be able to fund. I mean, if we can fund it

through a local government, the State should be able to fund it as

well. I mean, it is a matter of just making computers network and

automating parole and probation. It needs to become a priority.

Then again, Congressman, if—you know, I hear your request and

I will try to, you know, list out some specifics——

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Even our FBI is having problems there,

so——

Mr. O’MALLEY. Right. Maybe we could become a national model.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Well, that is what we want. That is what

I am asking for.

Mr. O’MALLEY. OK.

Mr. STEELE. Congressman, thank you. Again, I think the communication issue is a huge piece, and we would certainly love to work

with the mayor and his office to see where the State is out of sync

and try to get us in sync. I know that our secretaries in those departments are looking to revamp and revitalize and see where they

are and get that directly on that point.

I think one recommendation I noted that Governor Ehrlich was

very, very supportive of and would like to see pass was the Witness

Protection and Interstate Relocation Act. And that bill had to

pass—would have surveyed all State and selected local witness protection relocation programs to determine and report to Congress

the extent and nature of the problem.

I don’t know if Congress fully appreciates except outside of anecdotal information that may be reported in a local newspaper exactly what a State attorney like Pat Jessamy has to go through and

what she has to deal with on a day-in and day-out basis. And I

think that would help, again, to go to my point of working with

those limited dollars, making sure that they are going to be appropriated and used in a way that will help her respond, but more appropriately, come back to you and demonstrate through various reductions of witness intimidation cases.

Certainly making available training to assist State and local law

enforcement agencies and developing and managing witness protection and relocation programs. Our law enforcement officers on the

ground play a vital role there, and so it is important that they be

appropriately trained and that their efforts be enhanced.

Certainly establishing again a tighter partnership and stronger

partnership between municipalities like Baltimore and State government who, in turn, will come together to the Federal table and

lay out a model as the mayor noted.

But I think probably the best way to answer this question is to

get the need and desires from the person on the ground, and that

is the State’s attorney. And we have her here, and I would welcome

her comments directly on what she needs and how we can, in comVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:55 Sep 22, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00040 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\23040.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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bining State resources, city resources, Federal resources, assist her

more directly. So we would be in a position of providing you, certainly from the Governor’s perspective, what additional direct efforts should be made or could be made with those dollars. And we

would like to do that in combination with what the city would need

or certainly the State’s attorney would need so that we are——

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Well, specific recommendations——

Mr. STEELE [continuing]. More comprehensive——

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER [continuing]. And there is one last point and

then I have to stop——

Mr. STEELE. Sure.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER [continuing]. Because time is up. And you

talked about the State’s attorney, but also I think the police on the

frontline too.

Mr. STEELE. Absolutely.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. One of the things, in my communication

with local law enforcement, is that the State and local laws, even

though we have done something in Annapolis, and I thank you for

that, but that still the only way we are going to be able to deal

with this issue is the deterrent. And the only deterrent right now

is that the local gang members are deterred by the Federal Government being involved.

Mr. STEELE. Right.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. So we have to make sure—and I hope part

of your specific recommendations to this committee will be in dealing with those laws that need to be strict. And we need to make

sure the Federal laws and the State laws and local laws come together so that somebody is going to pay when they do something

such as——

Mr. STEELE. Absolutely.

Mr. SOUDER. I thank you for your testimony this morning and for

being with us. We appreciate the time and we look forward to trying to work with all of our recommendations today.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. O’MALLEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SOUDER. If the second panel could come forward, Mr. Floyd

O. Pond, Assistant Director of the Washington-Baltimore HIDTA;

Lieutenant Craig Bowers, Baltimore County Police Department;

and Ms. Patricia Jessamy, State attorney for the city of Baltimore.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SOUDER. Let the record show that each of the witnesses responded in the affirmative. Let me also ask unanimous consent to

insert into the record the statement by Mr. Thomas Carr and also

from Heather Cartwright. And also we will receive Reverend Tucker’s testimony. Without objection, it is so ordered.

[The prepared statements of Mr. Carr and Ms. Cartwright follow:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Thank each of you for joining us this morning. Mr.

Pond, thank you for coming, and we will start with you.

Mr. POND. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Congressman Cummings,

Congressman——

Mr. SOUDER. Can you move the mic——

Mr. POND. Sure.

Mr. SOUDER [continuing]. Toward you.

STATEMENTS OF FLOYD O. POND, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR,

WASHINGTON-BALTIMORE HIDTA; LIEUTENANT CRAIG BOWERS, BALTIMORE COUNTY POLICE DEPARTMENT; AND PATRICIA JESSAMY, STATE ATTORNEY, CITY OF BALTIMORE

STATEMENT OF FLOYD O. POND

Mr. POND. I am representing Tom Carr of the Washington-Baltimore HIDTA. Mr. Carr is out of the country at the moment, but

he wishes that I express to you our appreciation for your support

of the HIDTA program. This committee, the leadership of this committee, and the support of its ranking member have been significant in terms of what we have seen now in our efforts on the Hill

in terms of gathering support for the program and moving it back

into the Office of National Drug Control Policy and restoring its

funding. So we appreciate not only the hearings, but your followup

and what we are hearing from Chairman Davis and others in

terms of how they value your recommendations. So that is very encouraging to us as we make our rounds on the Hill.

I am, as you just indicated, submitting Mr. Carr’s prepared testimony for the record, and I would like to provide some brief background and highlight our recommendations. But first, I would like

to acknowledge your outreach efforts, and I am aware that this

committee has gone from the Eastern Shore to the Northwest. It

gets out of Washington. I think those of us, if it hasn’t been expressed previously, really appreciate seeing Washington in our

backyards, especially when you are looking at local issues of national importance.

And finally, on that regard, and it was mentioned briefly, but I

think it is important for everyone to recognize that through the

persistence of Mr. Cummings and his persuasiveness, Director Walters was able to steer $1.5 million back into Baltimore City for the

Baltimore Target Initiative, which was a direct response to the

Dawson family tragedy. And HIDTA was a venue for corrugating

that effort with the Baltimore City Police Department and the Believe Campaign, and we really appreciate those efforts of Congressman Cummings. And I think the public at large should be aware

of those efforts and the support from the chairman. We really appreciate this bipartisan support.

As to the issue of witness intimidation, it is an issue of national

importance. It has been discussed here previously, and is a proper

subject of your review and action. It is driven by violent drug and

gang cultures. Of over the 200 drug-trafficking organizations our

HIDTA currently targets, nearly 50 percent use deadly force to discourage competition and enforce obligations or protect themselves

from the law enforcement or predator groups.

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When you eliminate the money laundering organizations and the

interdiction organizations we target, more of the mid and upperlevel organizations beyond that, I would say nearly 80 up to 90 percent of them use violence as a way of doing business. So this is a

significant culture that reaches all of our population.

Another emerging issue in this region is gangs, many of whom

operate as drug-trafficking organizations. Others are more broadly

criminally involved, but one factor that remains constant is their

predisposition toward violence and witness intimidation. With this

background, I would like to focus your attention on some specific

recommendations for improving witness protection.

It is nearly impossible to generate reliable statistics to illustrate

the growing problem of witness intimidation, as there is no central

reporting agency or task force to which a targeted witness may

turn. While the following recommendations for a comprehensive

witness protection program are not supported by identifiable hard

data, I am confident that prosecutors and the law enforcement

community appreciate the dangers associated with violent drug and

gang organizations and the prevalence of witnesses becoming victims. With this understanding, here are some recommendations for

the committee’s consideration.

Every State should implement a Statewide witness protection

plan with a coordinating board and a paid executive director. It

shall be the responsibility of the executive director to oversee all

program operations, implement policies and the strategy adopted

by the board, acquire sufficient resources for the program’s operations, and manage resources effectively.

Second, each State witness protection plan could be established

through the use of Federal funding. Support, however, should be

provided by court fees and other available State sources similar to

State and local matches currently in place in the Byrne Program.

We have that here in Maryland. The Maryland Witness Protection

Program, as State’s attorney Jessamy can tell you, the relocation

program has funds that are supported through local assessments

and fees. So this would be a perfect match for a Federal-targeted—

either a State program or a targeted city program.

Third, all witness protection plans should include emergency,

short-term, and impermanent relocations procedures and incorporate a management plan.

Fourth, all boards should consider coordination with neighboring

States in an effort to encourage the sharing of resources.

Fifth, overt witness intimidation should be deemed felonious and

punishable as a felony.

Sixth, in each case involving a witness to a gang-related violent

crime, an automatic protection order should be issued specifying

the distance to which the defendant must remain from the witness.

A violation of such an order should constitute a felony and shall

be punishable as a felony.

Seventh, each State should provide guidance in training the

judges, bailiffs, prosecutors, and law enforcement on witness intimidation issues and their roles in responding to such incidents.

Eighth, court security procedure should be regularly reviewed

and updated when necessary. I suggest a prohibition on gang dress

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and color in all courtrooms in which the defendant or the witness

are linked to gang activity.

When dealing with high-profile gang-related cases, the courtroom

should be closed to the public. A central reporting agency should

be established to track all complaints of witness intimidation. It is

nearly impossible to generate reliable statistics to illustrate the

growing problem of witness intimidation, as there is no central authority to which a targeted witness may turn.

And finally, a 24-hour hotline should be established to record all

witness complaints of intimidation or provide swift assistance by

law enforcement.

As a final recommendation, I suggest the committee contact Ara

Crowe, Maryland State’s Attorney’s Association coordinator, about

the operation of a Maryland Witness Protection Program he manages. That program may serve as a model program. Obviously

State’s attorney Jessamy is very familiar with that program, and

she could also testify to that.

I am sure the committee can appreciate the challenges the justice system faces when witnesses fail to come forward or refuse to

cooperate with an investigator or prosecutor. I ask the committee

to consider our recommendations. I believe the implementation of

some or all of these suggestions could fortify and stabilize the witness protection program and consequently strengthen the justice

system. I thank the committee for this opportunity.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. Our next witness is Lieutenant Greg

Bowers of the Baltimore County Police Department.

STATEMENT OF CRAIG BOWERS

Mr. BOWERS. I thank the gentleman. As mentioned, I am a lieutenant with the Baltimore County Police Department with 31 years

of experience in law enforcement. The last 10 years have been in

the homicide division. I have been asked to give a local perspective

from a smaller agency of just how witness intimidation affects us

and to give several examples of what we have.

As I said, I am from one of the outlining counties, Baltimore

County, and we are continually experiencing an increase in the reluctance of those witnessing or having knowledge of criminal activity to share that information with law enforcement. The fear for

their safety and the safety of their family and loved ones is genuine. We only need to look at the cases that have been discussed

here around the State and the publicity surrounding those instances to concur that witness intimidation is a factor affecting the

judicial system.

From our perspective of—I am going to give two examples. One

was a murder that occurred at a local nightclub. It was witnessed

by three individuals, all from out of the county. When initially

questioned by the police, they were very willing to help and were

able to supply descriptions of suspects and vehicles used. One witness became very critical to the case, and we were able to determine that this murder was drug/gang-related. And using in part

her information, made an arrest. She followed through on that by

viewing photographs and also by viewing the lineup in which the

person was identified in both cases.

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After the motions hearing was postponed several times, it finally

came on board as scheduled. As I stated, she was living outside the

county and outside the city. As she was leaving her home, she was

approached by two individuals who she said were rough looking. As

she was walking to her car, they approach her and say are you

going to court? She ignored them, began to walk around. They

blocked the way to her car, opened up their jackets; both were displaying handguns in their waistbands.

Of course, as expected, she came to court that day. However, due

to a defense request to postpone and was over the objections of the

State, the case was postponed. Several months later when the trial

began, she came to court and testified that she couldn’t identify the

suspects. She didn’t recall viewing the photographs or making any

earlier identifications. The jury verdict in that case was not guilty.

They polled the jury afterwards; it showed a concern among the

jury members on how it was possible that the witness could not remember what she had said to law enforcement and questioned the

accuracy of the officer’s testimony.

The second case just happened this summer. We had a 16-yearold who was lured out of her home. She was beaten and burned

and found in a park in Pikesville. Her only crime—not really a

crime. Her only impact was that one of the defendants that were

arrested—and we made four arrests—had thought that she was

going to be a witness in an upcoming case that he had on a sexual

assault. She wasn’t.

Also, in closing, within the past 24 months we have investigated

five solicitations to commit murder involving defendants who had

expressed an interest in having their witnesses, which could have

testified against them, killed. Witness intimidation continues to increase the threat to public safety and to the effective and fair prosecution of criminal cases. Those responsible for carrying out or orchestrating this intimidation are not fearful of imprisonment, and

currently, law enforcement can offer very little short of relocation,

where currently the funds are limited. These otherwise communityinvolved, law-abiding citizens find themselves ultimately faced with

a choice: potential harm to their self, separation from their family,

or not to cooperate with law enforcement. Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Bowers follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. Our next witness is Ms. Patricia

Jessamy, State attorney, city of Baltimore, whose name has almost

become a legend just in this hearing here with all people talking

about you.

Ms. JESSAMY. Yes, I guess I have.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you——

STATEMENT OF PATRICIA JESSAMY

Ms. JESSAMY. Chairman Souder, Congressman Cummings, and

Congressman Ruppersberger, both of whom I consider my Congressmen because even though Congressman Cummings represents

me where I live and work, Congressman Ruppersberger represents

the district just a couple streets above where I live. So we have had

a wonderful relationship over the years. But I want to thank you

all for coming to Baltimore.

This is an issue that I am very passionate about. I go around the

community all the time talking to the community about issues that

affect the criminal justice system, and usually when I am introduced, they introduce me and they say this is Mrs. Jessamy. She

is responsible for crime. Now, after I have recovered and laughed

a little bit at that description, I respond back and I tell them no,

I am not responsible for crime; I am a prosecutor. And my job is

to see that justice is served. Because that is the way I view it, serving justice.

What I have seen, however, over the course of the last few years,

and it is becoming more of what I term a crisis; I have seen that

when witnesses are silenced, justice is not served. And it is becoming a bigger and bigger problem, not just in Baltimore City, but

throughout the country.

So I have been the State’s attorney for Baltimore City for 10

years. Before that I was an assistant prosecutor, and I practiced

law in four States. And I can tell you this is the most challenging

thing I have ever had to deal with in my life.

I want to begin first by thanking Congressman Cummings because he comes in and he doesn’t just go to Washington and come

back home on occasion. He is always here. And he listens to what

we have to say, and he attempts to aid and assist us in addressing

our concerns. Congressman Cummings knows and has indicated

today that witness intimidation is a very important public safety

issue, and I want to commend him for introducing the Witness Security and Protection Act of 2005, which is House Resolution, I

guess, 908. And this bill provides dedicated Federal funds for local

witness protection programs.

I think that this is urgently needed to streamline what we currently have toward a more independently operated victim and witness assistance programs, which are directed by local prosecutors.

A uniform, Statewide program that offers protection by law enforcement officers to crime victims I believe is very much needed.

So when I met with Congressman Cummings last week, I told him

that I would do everything within my power, and I am a very passionate, speak-what-I-say, what-I-think person to support this

House Resolution, because it is very important for us.

But I do want to talk to you a little bit more about this conspiracy of silence. What are we seeing as prosecutors in court every

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day? We are seeing that when witnesses are silenced, our whole

system is in jeopardy. Now, people have set out some examples for

you here, and Congressman Ruppersberger was talking about—and

Congressman Cummings were talking about the text messaging.

But witness intimidation comes in many forms. Some of it is very

subtle.

But I can tell you, since September 2004, we have had seven witnesses shot or killed. That is the reality. Everybody—we can talk

about the Dawsons, and that was a horrendous thing, but things

like the Dawsons continue in our city every single day. Thank God,

no other families have been murdered as a result of arson, but individuals are being killed; they are being shot; they are being threatened; they are being intimidated in many ways.

There are two examples just the last week I want to share with

you. I learned from a district court prosecutor that the victim of an

assault was so terrified of being identified and recognized in court

that he came to court in disguise. The victim had witnessed drug

activity in his neighborhood and had reported this to the police.

The defendant told the victim in front of the police, the police won’t

be here forever. When they leave, you are dead. The defendant was

charged with second-degree assault and he eventually pled guilty.

But he was just sentenced to 6 months in jail.

On Wednesday of last week a witness who was threatened multiple times by the victim and defendants in a shooting, was so reluctant to testify that our witness locator unit was called to serve

a body attachment to detain him in jail because of his previous failure to appear when summoned by the courts.

Now this is—and I know Congressman Cummings alluded to the

Washington Post article—this is a last resort. As prosecutors, we

are struggling. We want our witnesses in court. We want them testifying to what they have seen or heard. And when we talk about

the right to confrontation, I think everybody involved in the criminal justice system would rather have that witness there.

Well, this witness had no criminal history. He was just scared.

But he was arrested because he had failed to come to court. It just

so happened that the witness and the defendant were held in close

proximity to each other, and during the time they were in the bullpen, a note was passed to him. The note was in writing and the

note contained threats on his life. Not only that, but friends and

colleagues also verbally threatened this witness.

But this witness had what I term courage because the witness

did eventually testify. The witness testified that the defendants

and his friend were the people he saw shot the victim. Unfortunately, the victim, however, got on the witness stand and recanted

and said oh, I was mistaken. It wasn’t this defendant. It was someone else.

As a result, these murderers are back on our streets. That is the

effect that witness intimidation has. Those are the things that we

are seeing. And you all know about this DVD. And I can tell you,

if you haven’t seen it, I am going to hand to you today and I hope

it is introduced as a part of this record. Because when you see individuals laughing, smoking marijuana, showing their guns, telling

people how to silence witnesses and what to do for rats and

snitches. It is a very frightening thing.

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Now, what have we done in reference to this what I call plague

on our city? And it didn’t just start really. In 1995, as a result of

a high increase in violence on the streets of Baltimore City as a result of crack-cocaine being introduced to our city, we had a witness

killed. And I was asked—I think it was 1994. I was asked by then

Stu Simms, who was a State’s attorney to draw up a witness security plan. I drew it up, and we became one of the first jurisdictions

in the country to begin to spend money to protect witnesses based

on what we had seen. I have budgeted by the city of Baltimore

every year $300,000 for that. I also utilized the fund that Floyd

Pond and others talked about today, which is a State fund. And

any time I go over my $300,000 budget, I use that money to cover

those additional funds, and I get automatically from that fund anywhere between $50,000 and $100,000 additional a year.

But this amount we don’t have—in my testimony I can tell you

exactly how many witnesses we have used thus far. We have spent

of that $300,000 this year $219,000 for temporary housing. We

have spent $53,000 for security deposits and rent to arrange permanent relocation after temporary relocation has been provided.

We have spent $13,000 for detoxification, because that is all a part

of it. There are a lot of different things you have to do to get witnesses ready, able to come to court to testify. And we have spent

more than $36,000 in storage and moving expenses.

Now these are just out-of-pocket expenses. They don’t account for

the law enforcement officer who—oftentimes when we move people

and take them to relocation—have to go, as they are armed, to protect them, to take them back and forth to their normal, day-to-day

activities. The sheriff’s deputies and the police officers. It does not

entail the moneys spent by law enforcement officers sitting in front

of someone’s house to protect them until we can relocate them to

another place. But those are the kinds of expenses that we are seeing.

What else have we done? We work to provide a change in the law

because, as the Lieutenant Governor said, our current statute provides for a misdemeanor. If you are convicted, it is a misdemeanor

offense punishable by no more than 5 years if you are convicted of

witness intimidation and threats. We felt that was too little.

It also did not provide a provision in there for conspiracy. Oftentimes, we have individuals that even if they are locked up, they call

their friends and their colleagues to do their dirty work for them.

So we felt that conspiracy was an integral part to adding strength

to the current statute.

We also thought that even though it is our desire to have all witnesses in court, that is not the case. Too often because of threats

and intimidation, witnesses go underground and they refuse to be

found. They go into hiding. But sometimes they have given prior

statements as to who the guilty parties are or other statements

that, as law enforcement, we need to be able to use. But because

of restrictions on hearsay, we would not. Well, our Federal partners

had a hearsay exception, which is a forfeiture by wrongdoing exception, which would allow—if we can, as prosecutors, prove unavailability, would allow us to introduce those prior statements.

So we, in conjunction with the Governor of the State of Maryland, worked with him, and he introduced legislation to that effect,

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increasing the penalty to 20 years, adding conspiracy, and providing for the same kind of forfeiture by wrongdoing exception that

our Federal counterparts enjoy.

Well, unfortunately, we didn’t get everything we need. We did

get passage of the legislation. It has now been strengthened to 20

years. We have conspiracy. The hearsay provision was somewhat

watered down. It only applies to felony drug offenses and crimes

of violence. Unfortunately, in the State of Maryland, child abuse

and domestic violence are not considered crimes of violence. Even

though most of those cases involve people we know and intimate

partners, we should not isolate and exclude them from being protected by the same statute that we are protecting people from intimidation by strangers.

So we are hopeful that we will be able to strengthen the hearsay

portion of this statute at next term’s legislative session.

What we did this year as opposed to last year when we initially

worked with the Governor to introduce it is we passed this DVD

out to our legislators. We thought that witness intimidation had to

be a real bipartisan effort. And fortunately, this year we had 118

Members of the House of Delegates signed on to the administration

bill. That is quite a feat in the State of Maryland.

We had 38 senators who signed on as cosponsors of the bill to

change things in the State of Maryland. That is quite a feat. And

it happened, I believe, because this was something that everybody,

whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, whether you are from

a rural or an urban area, that you could agree with. So we are

pleased that we have the statute. I call it a toothless tiger, and we

will be working to add more teeth to it.

What do I think that we need our Federal partners to do? My

prosecutors had told me that in addition to providing witness protection, in addition to strengthening our witness intimidation statute, that we needed detectives to help us find witnesses. The police

department, thankfully, has given us a team of people to go out

and locate witnesses in homicide cases, and since September has

given us two detectives to find witnesses in shooting cases. But

right now, we do need the statute that Congressman Cummings

has introduced. I will be working to strengthen the hearsay statute. But having U.S. Marshals who have experience in this area

working with Maryland State Police, with local police officers, and

with prosecutors would be a wonderful thing to have.

I have been trying to provide witness assistance since 1994, but

I don’t carry a gun. And most of the people in my office don’t either. I was told—I used to say we didn’t carry guns and badges,

but we do have badges. But we are not police officers. And we need

people who know and understand what witness protection is all

about doing it. And we need it to be consistent throughout the

State.

One of the areas where we also need some assistance has to do

with Federal housing. A lot of our witnesses are eligible for Federal

housing. We have an agreement now across the State of Maryland

where we can transfer witnesses when we relocate them, if they

are eligible for Federal housing, to any Federal housing facility in

the State of Maryland. But we are running into problems when it

comes to Section 8. There are no issuance of Section 8 certificates,

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I think, since last year, and there are other problems and provisions within the housing regulations that prohibit us from doing

some of the things that we need to be doing in terms of housing

witnesses who are eligible for Federal housing.

I agree with many of the recommendations made by Floyd Pond

and would be happy to answer any questions that you have at this

time. I also want to thank the Governor and the Lieutenant Governor for their leadership in this whole area of witness intimidation.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Jessamy follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. You all presented a pretty grim picture for much

more even in the edges of urban areas. It is—I think it is fiction,

but what you are describing is real life, and it is kind of scary. I

wanted to also ask Mr. Cummings and Mr. Ruppersberger if we

could—I gave a note to Mark. Did you say Carmelo Anthony is on

this video that you are talking about? That my understanding is

as a followup on the steroids and drug issue, we are going to do

NBA probably after the season, but we ought to request to the

chairman that he be called and forced to explain participation. It

is a way to highlight that type of thing because that is—I have

seen it, but it sounds disgusting and we need to——

Mr. CUMMINGS. Mr. Chairman, I think that is a great idea. My

office has had direct contact with Mr. Carmelo Anthony’s agents

and also the head of the Denver Nuggets, and he sort of flip-flops.

He——

Mr. SOUDER. Well, we——

Mr. CUMMINGS [continuing]. Says he wants to cooperate; then he

says he doesn’t. And I think it would be very helpful. I would love

to have him come and explain things like this——

Mr. SOUDER. Public retraction.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Yes, because he has made some statements on

his Web site and probably some public statements, but he has been

very reluctant. He was very bold, I mean, sitting around in this

tape, and you will see this. He is clearly there. But what is done,

Mr. Chairman, is by him being in it, it just—in the worlds of young

people, it just blew it up. In other words, it has made it a much

more popular piece that has floated, I mean, just all over the place.

And now, to the point, as I said a little bit earlier, where we now

have tee-shirts saying ‘‘stop snitching.’’ I mean, and by the way, the

stores are selling out of these tee-shirts, which is incredible to me.

Mr. SOUDER. It becomes an——

Mr. CUMMINGS. I agree with you.

Mr. SOUDER. It becomes an intimidation factor in and of itself.

We were already having this discussion about in the schools

around the country of the kids’ cooperation, and this just fuels

something like that.

When you have—we were talking earlier about your meeting

that you have had with the attorneys across the country. Do you

see these kinds of problems widespread, more intense in some

areas? Lieutenant Bowers described in a smaller county outside the

city of Baltimore. How widespread is this? How challenging is it?

Ms. JESSAMY. It permeates almost everything we do. Our homicide prosecutors tell me that in about 90 percent of all the homicides, there is some form of intimidation. In our shooting cases, we

have been able to document—because we keep very detailed statistics in reference to those that—between 25 and 33 percent of those

cases are lost as a result of witness problems, the vast majority of

those witness problems having to do with threats and intimidation.

It is a very serious problem. We have even had—and it is not

only in violence cases. That is what we are seeing. Like the other

case was just an assault in the district court, and the witness was

so intimidated had to put on a disguise. But we have had cases

where people were paid $10 to beat someone up, a witness up, with

a bat in a very minor district court case. It is all over the place,

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and what has happened is people are so emboldened. And I refuse

as a prosecutor to ascribe to the theory that criminals are in charge

of the streets of this city. We have to fight back in every way we

can, and that is why this has become such a mission for me.

I know there is a lot that must be done. We are trying to do it

on every level. And we are working with everybody. I know there

has been a lot of discussion relative to the Federal authorities. We

have a meeting scheduled with the acting U.S. attorney Wednesday

afternoon, the police commissioner. And what he has done, he has

pulled together every Federal agency so that we can look, we can

sit down and meet, and we can talk about how we can work together to deal with developing a strategy for fighting crime in Baltimore City that includes everybody. So we are very interested in

working with Federal, State, and local. And we need all the assistance we can get.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Cummings.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Ms. Jessamy, one of the things that—you heard

the Lieutenant Governor’s testimony, did you not?

Ms. JESSAMY. Yes.

Mr. CUMMINGS. And it was very interesting—well, it is in his

written statement, but he talks about this Maryland Victim and

Witness Protection Relocation Fund, and during his testimony he

kept referring to you, that you could provide us with more information. But one of the things that is written in his testimony and I

think he said it, is that they had $600,000 and they spent $400,000

and distributed it to various State’s attorneys for witness protection. And I don’t want us to leave this hearing under the impression that, unless it is accurate, that $600,000 is enough money to

address these problems. And my question is probably about 3-fold.

Ms. JESSAMY. Yes.

Mr. CUMMINGS. One, how does that program work for you and

your situation? I just heard you say when you run out of the

$300,000 that you have locally, you then go and get anywhere from

$50,000 to $100,000. Of course, if that is—let us use the top figure

of $100,000, that is one-sixth of the total $600,000, which means

the other 23 counties have to share the other $500,000. But he also

said something else. He said that we are dealing with witnesses

who don’t even want to take part in the program. Now, if that be

the case, then—and I then said maybe there are things that we

need to do to change that program. So I also want to know why

it is, if it is accurate, that people are not taking advantage of the

program. I want to know that too. And what it is that we might

need to do to change it. I know I said a lot there——

Ms. JESSAMY. Yes.

Mr. CUMMINGS [continuing]. But it is all connected because it

goes to the very essence of what we are trying to do here. I mean,

it is like sort of a counter-argument that says well, maybe they

don’t need the money.

Ms. JESSAMY. Yes, I think that there are two issues. And first I

will talk about our program. Since July 2004 prosecutors have referred for witness assistance 206 victims and witnesses to the program; 111 of these, after prosecutors had talked to them about

coming into the program because they had indicated—we do a little

threat assessment with the police department—that they felt

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threatened and intimidated. We formally interviewed 111. Out of

that 111, 95 individuals did not show up for their interviews out

of the 206. We interviewed 111; out of those, only 46 wanted to be

relocated.

So we started off with 206 people. We interviewed 111; 95 didn’t

even want to—even after repeatedly trying to get a hold of them

didn’t want to have anything to do—only 46 of them eventually

agreed to go into witness assistance. So we are talking about 46

out of 206. Now, that is not to say that all 206 of those individuals

were actually threatened or intimidated, but they did indicate some

level of trepidation, and they said they felt threatened or intimidated. And they had to have exhibited that either to a prosecutor

or a police officer in order to get referred. So that is the beginning.

What we ended up with was 46.

Now, that money that I indicated we have expended was expended on those 46 people. Now, I believe that if we had a program

operated by the U.S. Marshal Service or where we had people who

had experience in this issue, we would begin to send a message to

those people in the community that there is real witness protection.

We don’t operate a witness protection program. We operate a witness relocation program. And as the Lieutenant Governor said, not

everybody wants to leave their homes. When you own a home, you

decide that you are not going to give it up. Some of these people

are deciding the same way I am, that they are not going to let

these people run them away. They are not going to let the criminals take over and be in charge. So they stand there and they defy

them, unfortunately, like the Dawsons did, because they weren’t

going to be intimidated out of their homes. And there are people

like that, courageous individuals who decide they are not going to

be threatened and intimidated, and they aren’t going to let the

criminals control them.

But we, as a community, must be mindful of all this. And then

there is a large percentage of people who are defendants 1 day and

victims the next. So you have a lot of spill-over there, which is another reason, when it comes to using safe houses for certain people,

that doesn’t work because if the criminal element knows where the

safe houses are, then you are not protecting them to the extent

that you should.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Your testimony was that some 25 percent of the

cases not involving fatality——

Ms. JESSAMY. That is right. The shooting cases.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Don’t even get to trial?

Ms. JESSAMY. They get to court, a lot of them. They get indicted,

then they get to court. We can’t find the witnesses or the witnesses

end up coming to court and recanting. So those cases are lost. It

is like the one where we had the witness—the witness ended up

testifying, but the victim recanted. So the jury acquitted. Just like

the case in Baltimore County. You have the jury there having to

weigh the credibility of these people, and they are saying different

things.

Mr. CUMMINGS. The thing that I think concerns me tremendously, why do you think we haven’t, as a society, made this kind

of issue the significant issue that it is? In other words, maybe—just

to me this isn’t rocket scientist stuff. You know, if you don’t have

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the cooperation of the public, if people are not cooperating with the

police, you can’t solve crimes. And if you can’t solve crimes, then

you end up in a lawless society. And it would be one thing if we

did not have evidence of what I just said. We see it every day. But

what do you think is the problem? Are you following me?

Ms. JESSAMY. Well, I think a lot of it has to do with glorifying

a gangster lifestyle. I kind of believe that. There is a certain lure

and sexy depiction of a certain kind of lifestyle that seems to now

permeate across all areas of our society. I just came back from

Asheville, NC where the National District Attorneys Association

was meeting. And these are prosecutors from all over the country.

They are telling me that they have a lot of similar problems.

Daniel Connelly, who is the prosecutor up in Boston, he and I

were, you know, we consider ourselves the twin witness intimidator

crusaders because we are the two most vocal in terms of this issue.

But everybody—they have now, the National District Attorneys Association indicated that this is a priority for them because they are

seeing it all over the country.

Joe Katzly, who is the prosecutor in Harford County, was just

telling me on Saturday how big a problem witness intimidation

threats are in Harford County, MD. And we know the drug problem Carroll County is having in terms of heroin addiction and all

these other things. So Baltimore City is not an isolated, standingalone island when it comes to witness intimidation. This is a problem throughout our country. And I think the fact that you have a

subcommittee such as yours here listening to what we have to say

sends a message across the country that this issue is of national

import.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Last question. Going back to the Federal program, the program that the U.S. Marshals run, it is amazing they

have not lost a single witness in all the years they have been

around. And I think it has been about 30 years. And how does that

program differ? You said we have a relocation program, and apparently you must feel that folks have faith—and it seems reasonable

that they would have faith—in the Federal program. Is it in part

that they don’t have a lot of faith in our program, that it is going

to truly protect them? I know you talked about people that

wouldn’t relocate, but, when you are talking about somebody’s life,

somebody possibly dying, what is the big difference? Do you follow

me?

Ms. JESSAMY. Yes, well, we haven’t lost anybody who signed up

for our relocation one either, but, you know, that is neither here

nor there. I think what happens is that they can change identities.

They can, you know, give people new Social Security cards. Plus

they have the U.S. Marshal Service, they take you in their custody,

they have the pump guns going, they guard you 24 hours a day,

7 days a week. Just the idea and the cost of that alone for local

law enforcement is prohibited. There is no way we could provide

24-hour protection for anybody beyond probably 72 hours. It becomes so prohibitive you can’t do it. So we have a relocation program. We only relocate people.

Now, we do relocate them sometimes across the country. We

have relocated them across the State, sometimes across town in

Baltimore. But it depends. But for the most that is what we do.

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And we provide them all kinds of other assistance. Sometimes witnesses don’t want to be relocated. They do want some other kind

of assistance, just having somebody to walk with them down the

hallway from the witness room to the courtroom because there are

family and friends of defendants sitting in the hallway. Just having

a law enforcement officer hold that person’s hand and walk them

past them in the hallway into that courtroom provides a heightened sense of security for that witness. We can do something just

that slight and that simple, or we can have 24-hour protection, but

it is for a very limited period of time until we can effectuate the

move.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Just one last thing. Do you see any relationship—Chairman Souder and I had a conversation not long ago

where we were kind of discussing the possible relationship between

what happened to the judge’s husband and mother up there in Chicago, and then we look and we see what happened down there in

Atlanta when the fellow broke away from the guards and I think

killed 4 people. This whole attack on law enforcement and judges

and witnesses, I mean, if this virus continues to spread, it seems

like you—as Mr. Ruppersberger I think said, we will get to a point

where we are like some countries that don’t have the sophistication

that we have with regard to the integrity of our system. I mean,

do you see that?

Ms. JESSAMY. Well, I see those as more isolated incidences. Hopefully they stay that way. But what I do see within the system a

lot of times is more retaliation against people who are a part of the

system in those areas of familiar relationships, personal relationship issues, domestic issues. That is why when we were looking at

the statute that has passed but has not yet been signed by the

Governor, that we were concerned that domestic violence and child

abuse are not included in those areas for which we can introduce

prior statements.

And now our statute also limits the statement to have been written or recorded in close proximity. And if you know anything about

what happens, it is usually the night of the event when people

make statements to police, and then it is when the defendant,

weeks or even months later, is ready to go to trial or has been arrested and is ready to go to trial that he becomes aware of who the

witnesses are maybe that the threats and the intimidation begins.

So it is not usually immediate. So people will tell you things immediately. That is why the hearsay exception, forfeiture by wrongdoing, is so important because those statements, given in close

proximity to when the crime occurred, if you can use those statements later, then the, I guess, the threat and intimidation becomes

a non-issue then because you don’t need—why threaten somebody

if you know that their statements will be able to be used against

you.

Profession Lynn McLain used an example of the forfeiture by

wrongdoing exception, and I can say I know Chairman Souder had

asked about the hearsay and the Constitutionality of it. She uses

the example of killing your parents and then throwing yourself on

the mercy of the court because you are now an orphan. Well, when

you threaten and intimidate a witness and it is your own actions

that have caused that witness not to be there, and then you come

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into court and you claim your Constitutional rights are being violated because you can’t confront them. When you explain it like

that to the community, everybody can understand what it is you

are talking about.

And I have been talking about this to community groups, and

when I use those examples, they say yes. It is like a light bulb goes

off. But that is the same thing—even Justice Scalia, he and I don’t

agree in many ways, but when he isolated this forfeiture by wrongdoing exception to say that yes, it is Constitutional. It has been

around since the 17th century. This is a wonderful, equitable principle that we as prosecutors need to be able to use.

So when I call the bill a toothless tiger, that is what it meant.

But I have been told it has claws, and we are glad of the claws.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Ruppersberger.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Ms. Jessamy, I really like your testimony

and I want to follow through with a couple things. Trying to listen

and, again, have a hearing, you find a way to make a difference,

I think, is important that we can walk away from this hearing.

And I want to ask you a question about a couple things I was

thinking about.

Witness intimidation has become a major issue. Just as we specialize in burglary, robbery in our police departments, homicide,

you know, fraud, those type of things, I am wondering whether or

not whenever we have a high-profile felony case or any felony case

whether we could reprioritize and have our police departments

train with the U.S. Marshals so that every single case that you

have where you know that there is a possibility of witness intimidation, that we have an expert a part of that team, that homicide

team, that robbery team, that is specially trained to focus in this

arena. And that is No. 1.

The second thing, you know, we still don’t have the funding that

we need; we hear the cuts today from the Federal Government, but

it seems to me the possibility of grants to local government about

witness intimidation, and you have talked about how most witnesses don’t want to leave their homes, and we should not allow

them to. And if a witness who did not partake in the crime is going

to know that their family is in jeopardy or whatever, they are going

to protect their family and probably themselves too.

Wondering, we have police departments—I know it is a policy in

Baltimore City, Baltimore County when I was county executive—

that we have police officers who want second employment. And the

possibility we have our light rail 24-hour protection now with police

officers who are getting paid not from the department, but in another arena. The possibility of having this 24-hour protection with

off-duty police officers and trying to develop a program where we

can get a Federal grant to focus in these arenas, what do you think

about those kind of ideas?

Ms. JESSAMY. I think those are good ideas. I agree with Floyd

when he talked about this board and people making decisions.

They can also, you know, we need to sit down and plan some strategies around this whole area. And some things are not amenable

through criminal justice solutions. They are probably all kinds of

things that we can do as a community to address some of these

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issues, maybe sitting down with planning in certain communities

and dealing with certain planning issues.

We have been looking at a project, what we call property-based

crime solutions, which means looking at using whatever tool we

have in our toolbox—and it may not be a criminal justice tool—to

address a specific issue. But it would mean everybody sitting down

at the table talking and coming up with how to solve problems.

And this could be the centerpiece of problem solving around

this——

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. And I would ask you——

Ms. JESSAMY [continuing]. Particular issue——

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER [continuing]. If you do get to the table, that

a lot of what we are talking about is money and resources——

Ms. JESSAMY. Yes.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER [continuing]. So if we are going to get——

Ms. JESSAMY. And it is also coordination too.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Well, of course, yes, that is important. But

from a Federal Government perspective, either Federal laws or

Federal money. And if we are going to appropriate Federal moneys,

we need to have a specific program that we know will be well-managed and will get results——

Ms. JESSAMY. Yes.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER [continuing]. And that is why I just brought

up those two ideas. And I think that is important. Floyd Pond——

Ms. JESSAMY. Very good ideas.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Floyd Pond, I look back and count the

years, when you and I were prosecutors, that was 30 years ago in

1975, and you are still in this business, so I assume you still have

a lot of expertise and I thank you for your service throughout these

years.

I am a little concerned about the issue of HIDTA—HIDTA, a program that coordinates Federal, State, and local—and, as you know,

the decision has been made to move HIDTA into the Justice Department. I have great concerns about that because I think it dilutes the program. Could you give me your opinion on why or

whether you think this move with respect to HIDTA is going to

have an impact on drug law enforcement, including the issue here

today, witness intimidation, and all the other issues we talked

about as it relates to drugs?

Mr. POND. It certainly is going to have an impact. We have 28

standing task forces that serve this region. At the request really of

the chairman, we pulled our agency administrators and asked them

what the impact would be if HIDTA left, and they almost uniformly

said that they would have to pull out. We provide them resources,

and everybody is aware of that—money to purchase drugs, vehicles,

overtime, computers, they are co-located so they work with each

other.

But the backbone of HIDTA is this coordination issue. That is

why we are so efficient; that is why we do have performance management results. Because there is no duplication in our investigation. We have de-confliction not only in terms of our cases, so everybody knows what everybody else is working so they don’t work

the same target. But we also have de-confliction in terms of our

vets where officer safety—officers are protected through a GPS sysVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:55 Sep 22, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00079 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\23040.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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tem of making buys or deals against each other in the same neighborhoods.

So the backbone of HIDTA is the intelligence sharing and bringing people together. Pat Jessamy is on the board of HIDTA——

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. So why would moving to Justice make a

difference?

Mr. POND. Because that 800-pound gorilla would eat it up. You

know, I don’t want to talk about OCIDEF because I want to talk

positively——

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Right.

Mr. POND [continuing]. But, you know, this program is efficient,

is effective. I think Director Walters has been disingenuous with

the committee in terms of talking about part because as is well

clear, we have implemented performance management and we can

speak to what happens with our cases and where they are going

and what the results are.

But the key to HIDTA is bringing people together. We have Federal, State, and local—it is not federally dominated. Pat Jessamy

and Leonard Hamm all have a voice, and it is one agency, one

voice. It is not dominated by the Federal agencies. And that is why

it is successful. Because when we started HIDTA, FBI and DEA

wanted to run HIDTA, and it was with local leadership—Mike

Gambril was a chief in Baltimore County, who you know. And we

had local chiefs that stood up and said we are all in this together.

And that is the beauty of the HIDTA program.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Based on your expertise, a long period, how

many years have you been in this business now?

Mr. POND. Over 30.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. 30 years—35 really.

Mr. POND. Yes. You are counting. I am not.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. 35—1975, 1985, 1995, 2005. OK. But based

on your expertise, what impact do you think it is going to have on

drug enforcement throughout this jurisdiction, but throughout the

country?

Mr. POND. Well, when you look at drug enforcement at the Federal level, the FBI has just about dropped out. They do still have

a few drug squads, but their reorganization is constant and it is

redirected. They still have their National Safe Streets programs, so

you do get focus from the FBI in terms of violent gangs. DEA will

always have their budget, but DEA——

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Getting cut.

Mr. POND [continuing]. Is getting cut, and DEA is famous for

taking money from other people before they spend their own dollars.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Smart.

Mr. POND. When you look at ATF, ATF is a marginal player with

HIDTA. They are a good player. You know, we talked about Federal prosecutions of firearms, so this ATF office in Baltimore I

know heard Mayor O’Malley’s comments, but they do use Project

Disarm aggressively. That is not whether the U.S. attorney chooses

that.

The ultimate impact is that we are going to put more and more

pressure on local law enforcement and State law enforcement, drug

law enforcement to fill this void, because there is no way that these

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Federal agencies—and they will tell you themselves that they can’t

maintain these task forces as they are currently situated with

these types of resources.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Lieutenant Bowers, we want to have you

say something. You are on the frontline and you were in homicide.

You have heard the testimony today. From the frontline, what

would you like—from a Federal perspective, what would you like

us to do? Bottom line, I think talking to frontline members like

yourself from law enforcement, one of the biggest issues is the deterrent.

Mr. BOWERS. Right.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. And the Federal deterrent works where it

seems State and local doesn’t. What would you like us to do to take

back to Washington to see how we can effectuate this issue?

Mr. BOWERS. We definitely need a deterrent. When you look at

either the victims or the witnesses to crime, if you give them a

choice of separation from their family or their loved ones or relocating and not having any contact with them, or on the other hand

not testifying, right now they are choosing to not testify. And that

cleans it all off with that. We need to make it a deterrent on those

that either intimidate or conspire to intimidate individuals that it

is not worth it.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Well, it is not like finding the bad guys;

how would you recommend that we provide protection? What mechanism would you use to make sure that those witnesses will be—

that is the backbone of our county, to stand up as a community

against the bad guys.

Mr. BOWERS. Exactly. And as you mentioned earlier, the sources,

to use off-duty or police officers that are funded through to supply

protection, at least until the trial is over, the hearsay exception

would be great. If you can get over the hearsay, then their testimony—you take the emphasis right out of requiring them to stand

up and be confronted, that their testimony will come in one way

or the other. The emphasis is off of eliminating that source. That

source is already there.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Did you have anything else?

Ms. JESSAMY. Yes, in reference to HIDTA, you know, it is one of

those things that prosecutors, especially in the city, find to be outstanding. I have four prosecutors right now that are funded with

HIDTA, two of whom we are losing funding for and don’t know

what is going to happen to the other two, one of whom is prosecuting gun cases over in the Federal system. So HIDTA also provides

analysts for us, and analysts really give you information to allow

you to get better results. And I don’t know what we would do without the kind of technical assistance that we get along with

HIDTA’s participation of what is happening on the streets every

single day by planning the strategy and deploying the bodies to impact crime in Baltimore City.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Is the National College of District Attorneys concerned about this issue?

Ms. JESSAMY. The National District Attorneys Association passed

a resolution this weekend asking that letters be disseminated, and

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ten every Congressman, but, yes, you will be getting letters from

DA’s all across the country.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. I think that is important that they be

heard, and that is major issue with respect to HIDTA.

Ms. JESSAMY. It is.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. OK, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you very much. We are continuing to pursue

that. Obviously, this having a local vote and participation is extremely important. I think the administration—and I wanted to

clarify this in the first panel too—has not cut the drug budget.

What they have done is shifted it to where there is more national

and less local. I have been one who believes that the State and

local can’t just always look at the Federal, and quite frankly, you

all are going to have to put up more money too. I don’t agree with

the mayor’s statement that Homeland Security is just a national

issue. It is everybody’s issue. But as long as all of us are saying

we are not going to spend more money, the question is how do we

cover all this stuff? How are we going to even have a legal system

function if people are afraid to testify? How are we going to get a

hold of crime in this country if we cut all the local and the Federal

interdiction efforts?

I don’t want to be like Colombia. Just a few years ago in Colombia, one-third of the mayor’s slots were not filled because anybody

who ran for mayor was getting assassinated. Finally, after a couple

of intense years of intervention, they have all the mayor slots filled.

But at one point they had a third of their judges killed. I mean,

we can’t have this system happen in the United States. So we have

to figure out how we are going to do this at the local level and what

commitments are going to be made there, at the State level, and

at the Federal level. The last thing we need to be doing right now

is gutting our problems that are working like the HIDTA.

So I thank you all for your testimony today. It has been very enlightening on the witness protection. And with that, we will go to

the third panel. I know it has been a long morning—afternoon now.

[Recess.]

Mr. SOUDER. Subcommittee will come back to order.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SOUDER. Let the record show that each of the witnesses responded in the affirmative. Thank you very much for your patience

today. The first witness is Judge Kenneth Johnson, former associate judge of the Baltimore City Circuit Court. Thank you for coming.

STATEMENTS OF JUDGE KENNETH JOHNSON, FORMER ASSOCIATE JUDGE, BALTIMORE CITY CIRCUIT COURT; DAVID

WRIGHT, PRESIDENT, CHARLES VILLAGE COMMUNITY BENEFITS DISTRICT; AND RICKY P., RESIDENT, WEST BALTIMORE

STATEMENT OF KENNETH JOHNSON

Judge JOHNSON. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, and the Honorable Cummings, and the Honorable Ruppersberger. Thank you very

much for inviting me here today to testify before your committee

at this important hearing. And it is indeed a pleasure, a privilege,

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and an honor for me to be allowed to share my views here today.

In your letter to me dated April 27, 2005, you stated that the hearing was entitled ‘‘How Can the Federal Government Support Local

and State Initiative to Protect Citizens and Communities Against

Drug-Related Violence and Witness Intimidation?’’

On Sunday, June 21, 1992, I published an article in the Baltimore Sun, opinion section entitled ‘‘The War on Drugs Is Mostly

Eyewash.’’ A copy of that article is attached here, my written statement, as exhibit No. 1. Please allow me to read a brief portion from

that article. It reads,

If society postpones the war on drugs much longer, drugs will destroy our institutions. The level of corruption will have so thoroughly infested and corrupted all levels of society as to prevent any effective eradication by law enforcement.

Already we have begun to notice the bribery and murder of potential witnesses

and police officers to prevent criminals from being tried and convicted. We also

know that the profits from the illegal drug trade contribute substantially to the

economy. In the not too distant future, we will see the bribery and murder of prosecutors, jurors, and judges in order to protect drug profits.

When this day comes, the law of the streets will govern and our government will

be too weak to regain effective control. The public will cry out, demanding that

something be done; it will be more than willing to abandon constitutional liberties

in an effort to confront and control the drug trade. Given the sorry state of our

present political leadership, there is little hope that our future political leaders will

resist the sacrifice of civil liberties to the desperation fostered by the pain and ravages of the drug trade. The time to confront and control the drug trade is now.

That was 13 years ago, sir. As a result of my publishing of the

said article and my campaign to make our Nation aware of what

will confront us if we did not address the illegal drug trade at that

time, my life was threatened on numerous occasions and my family

was endangered. The defendant was arrested, pled guilty, and convicted. He was given an extremely lenient sentence. Although at

the time of his arrest he had with him a silencer and my photograph. An ‘‘X’’ had been placed on my photograph with the words

‘‘Kill this one.’’

On May 11, 1992, I asked a Baltimore City Grand Jury to investigate the illegal drug trade and determine why importers, wholesalers, drug dealers were not being pursued and prosecuted. The

Grand Jury concluded that there was a major problem with law enforcement of the laws relating to the illegal drug trade. A copy of

the Grand Jury Report is attached as exhibit 2 to my statement.

Attorney Tim Baker, the U.S. attorney for the District of Maryland from 1978 to 1981, published an article in the Baltimore Sun

on Monday, July 26—my birthday incidentally—1993, entitled, ‘‘A

Rogue Judge and a Runaway Jury.’’ I was the referenced ‘‘Rogue

Judge,’’ and the Grand Jury that I asked to investigate the illegal

drug trade was the ‘‘Runaway.’’ Mr. Baker had little experience as

a lawyer and apparently did not understand the ravages and devastations caused by the illegal drug trade, or perhaps simply chose

to ignore it. A copy of Mr. Baker’s subject article is attached as exhibit No. 3 to my statement. Some public officials of Baltimore City

also criticized the Grand Jury and me for our efforts with reference

to the illegal drug trade. And the Maryland State Prosecutor found

little merit in the Grand Jury’s Report.

Sadly, Mr. Chairman, the predictions that I made in that article

have largely come true. It is my belief that if the Federal, State,

and local officials had taken the Grand Jury’s Report and my stateVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:55 Sep 22, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00083 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\23040.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ments against the illegal drug trade seriously, we would not be in

this desperate position that we are in today.

The problem of violence and witness intimidation brought on by

the illegal drug trade are national in scope. It will take a national

coordinated and funded effort to confront and solve these drug

problems. The so-called war on drugs was never fought and is not

now spoken of. When is the last time any of us have heard two people in authority talk about the war on drugs?

Its numerous failings, including the filling of our prisons and the

ruining of countless young lives by arrest and conviction, are still

with us. It has been a major factor in the breakdown of family life.

Study after study, including studies by our Federal Government,

has shown that the rate of drug use among Whites are significantly

higher than drug use among Blacks. Yet, our prison population

suggests that the rate of drug use among Whites and Blacks is just

the opposite. Does anyone seriously contend that racism is not a

factor here? There was and is a racial component to our drug enforcement policies. That is, for White drug addicts the criminal justice system views their addiction as a medical problem, but views

the Black drug addiction as a criminal problem. Not only is this

policy view unfair and unjust, it has and continues to hinder effective law enforcement. I believe that the Federal Government must

support State and local levels of government and make enforcement fair, just, and consistent.

The rule of law and our institutions have been weakened by the

illegal drug trade. Our criminal justice system is becoming dysfunctional, largely because of the increase in drug and drug-related

cases. The enormous flow of cash from the illegal drug trade has

been undetected, unaccounted for, and unregulated and has spiraled corruption that hinders effective law enforcement and has increased violence. It has contributed to the unraveling of the social

contract between us, the devaluing of life, and the disrespect for

the rule of law, all remarkably similar to the effects of prohibition.

Mr. Chairman, let us not be justifiably accused by the generations that follow us of doing nothing in the face of this national

drug crisis, an internal crisis that threatens our democratic form

of government. Terrorism, the outside threat to us, is no more dangerous to us than the illegal drug threat, the inside threat to us.

We would do well to remember that the Roman Empire was not

felled by outside forces; it was destroyed from within.

I am deeply concerned that our efforts to address the problems

created by the illegal drug trade that we do not abandon our Constitutional rights in the process. The right of an accused person to

confront his accuser is an integral part of the due process of law.

In denying the accused that right, we run the risk of convicting an

innocent person. And the loss of the criminal’s Constitutionally protected right will result in the loss of the Constitutional right for everyone.

We can and must create a society where the desire to use illegal

drugs will decrease. We can set a course in that direction by reducing poverty, increasing education and job opportunities, and by

treating drug addiction as more of a medical problem than a criminal problem. We must also limit the supply of illegal drugs by convicting and jailing the importer and wholesale drug dealers just as

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we have the street-level drug dealer. This has never been attempted on a Federal, State, or local level despite the much-touted

‘‘War on Drugs.’’ Only the Federal Government can make such an

effort.

The Federal Government must guarantee and demonstrate that

all witnesses—Federal, State, and local—will be protected from any

harm from any source. It must also guarantee that our criminal

justice system is fair and just. When it does so, witnesses will know

it, and they will come forward voluntarily.

Mr. Chairman, I urge your committee to sound the alarm on the

illegal drug trade. It is a cancer on our society. A Band-Aid on a

cancer has never been known to cure it. A new, bold, and sustained

effort by the Federal Government is urgently needed. You and your

committee can begin that effort.

I strongly recommend that a national commission be created to

look into the illegal drug trade and its effect on our society. The

Kefauver Commission, relating to organized crime in the 1950’s,

and the Kerner Commission, relating to the causes of social unrest

and violence in the 1960’s, could be used as a model for such a commission. Some of the laws passed by Congress based on the recommendation of the Kefauver and Kerner Commissions were and

are valuable tools in fighting crime and poverty. I speak of the

Kefauver Commission and the reco law and of the Kerner Commission—for example, the Civil Rights Act—the Housing Act of 1968

and related laws.

Thank you very much for allowing me to share my views with

you. I have attached the exhibits, which includes the Grand Jury

Report and several articles I have published, not directly related to

this, but relating to my views on society and a just and fair society.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Judge Johnson follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Thank you very much for your testimony. Our next

witness is David Wright, president of the Charles Village Community Benefits District.

STATEMENT OF DAVID WRIGHT

Mr. WRIGHT. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Cummings, Congressman Ruppersberger, distinguished members of the committee,

I am honored to appear before you today.

Witness intimidation has cost my neighborhood dearly. Earlier

this year my friend, neighbor, and colleague awoke to flames outside her bedroom window. She was the victim of an attempted

firebombing. She was unharmed, but since that time, she has been

in protective custody. Now she has decided that she can never be

safe in Baltimore City. She has lived in the neighborhood for 33

years.

Baltimore and other cities across this country cannot afford to

lose good citizens. Baltimore cannot afford to have good families

terrorized by malicious gangs. My neighborhood cannot afford to

watch as our children become the next generation of thugs. We

cannot sit idly as hopelessness, drug addiction, and crime turn

neighbors against our justice system.

I am here today to urge you to invest in a solution to this plague.

I implore you to invest in the tools necessary to carry out justice

when witness intimidation arises. I implore you to invest in protecting brave citizens. I implore you to invest in a criminal justice

system that works against miscreants and works for the good citizens that I need and have as neighbors. I must also ask you to invest in the tools necessary to prevent this depravity and to restore

hope to neighborhoods desperate to succeed. With help we can be

healthy, peaceful, neighborly, and proud.

My neighbor worked hard to improve our neighborhood. She

swept the streets and alleys tirelessly; she talked with her neighbors; she helped to organize community festivals; she talked to the

police, and she told the police what she saw and heard; she urged

them to act against a wave of drug dealers, against a wave of delinquent adolescents, against the neighborhood being invaded. For

this, her home was attacked.

In the days and hours after the tragedy struck, the system

worked. When Molotov cocktails crashed against her house, the police were quick to respond. My neighbor was whisked away and secured. Federal agencies assisted, and the resources were there. For

this I am thankful. But we must not doubt that the response system must be fortified.

Safety and security for witnesses must never be denied due to a

lack of resources. Witnesses must always receive the swift and enduring assistance my neighbor has received. No witness should

ever receive anything less. This is the cost we must bear to ensure

justice.

We must also bear the cost of reassuring and stabilizing neighborhoods. On the streets of Harwood, our neighborhood, we have

seen more police, but they are already starting to dwindle. Though

Baltimore suffers from a tremendous strain on its law enforcement,

events like this must bring forth a large, sustained deployment of

police. We must have a police presence that makes clear to those

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remaining to conspire that this will not be tolerated. Those good

citizens facing the fear and distress of acts of witness intimidation

must see and take comfort in the presence of protectors. Therefore,

I ask you to fund a strong police presence in areas that are facing

systemic witness intimidation. We must demonstrate our unequivocal commitment to combat this behavior. The police must be on the

streets. Their presence must be felt by every worrying mother and

every conniving drug dealer.

In conjunction with this demonstration of the power of law enforcement, there must be the presence of hope. We must make

clear to our children our commitment to their future. The thugs

and criminals of tomorrow are on the corner now. They are aimless

and unsupervised. They are vandalizing property to pass the time.

Soon they will be approached by drug dealers to serve as lookouts.

These young citizens must receive supervised, structured guidance

and have role models to combat those temptations that would lead

them astray.

Already the foundations exist. The community is concerned and

longs to bring activities to these kids. But the local recreation center is destitute, the local after-school programs overwhelmed. Kids

show up but there are too few staff to manage them. There are no

supplies, and the facility is battered and deteriorating. There is no

excuse for this. Baltimore City is desperately reaching out for public and private partnerships to improve these facilities, but we need

more help. The rec center needs the resources to carry out its mission, the resources to care and promote hope.

Harwood worries about its young people more than anything

else. Funding for a good education, after-school programs, and

other opportunities will eliminate the supply of violent criminals of

the future. Each person in Harwood knows this, and despite very

limited means, good things are underway. But if we fund inventive,

effective programs, you will not have to fund protective services for

witnesses.

The fuel for so much of this crime and misanthropic behavior is

the drug trade. The violent criminals and drug dealers must be arrested, but their clients must receive treatment. Baltimore and

other cities are working desperately to provide treatment, but the

resources are scarce. Effective programs should be embraced and

reinforced in areas where the drug trade is creating a new justice

system based on intimidation. I urge you to continue to support entities like the Washington-Baltimore High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area and Baltimore Substance Abuse Systems, Inc. Demand

these groups pioneer strong, effective programs. They are making

progress.

I am asking, therefore, that as you consider the plague of witness

intimidation that you consider the curable causes that cannot be

divorced from it. Any allocation of resources to law enforcement

should be matched dollar for dollar with the community-building,

youth-building, drug-treating efforts the community needs.

The solutions to witness intimidation are clear: protect every witness that needs protection, provide police and encourage community policing strategies, create opportunities for youth development,

demand tough sentences and high bails, facilitate a responsive and

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transparent justice system, ensure every addict has access to treatment.

I have already lost a very dear neighbor; I cannot bear to lose

the entire neighborhood. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Wright follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. Our clean-up witness today is Ricky P.,

a resident of West Baltimore. Thank you for coming. Thank you for

being patient.

STATEMENT OF RICKY P.

Mr. P. Thank you, chairman. Thank you, Congressman

Cummings and Congressman Ruppersberger. My name is Ricky P.

I live in West Baltimore. Congressman Cumming knows how to

reach me. But with all due respect, I am not making my address

public knowledge to this statement. I am afraid to do that.

I make my living as a barber, and people talk to me while I cut

their hair. What I want to say to you, our elected representatives,

is this: all of the people I know and the people I meet on my job

are just as afraid as I am. They are afraid and they are angry. People are afraid because most all of them know someone who has

been shot or killed, often sometime in their own families—their fathers, their mothers, even their children.

People are afraid because, with all due respect, the drug dealers

and their guns, not our elected officials and police, are the true law

in our city. The drug dealers and their thugs are the forces that

will make their will stick by threats and murder if we go against

them.

Our people are afraid because they know that if we decide to do

the right thing and go against the thugs and their guns, we should

be saving our money to take care of our families after we are dead

and gone. So that is the first thing I need to tell you, my elected

representatives.

And the second thing is this: people are angry because they

know—and with all due respect, you know this is as well—that the

politicians and the police and the people with money have found

ways to make themselves safe while leaving the rest of us to take

care of ourselves. A lot of you have moved to suburbs. Some of you

live in buildings with guards. The garages where you park your

cars are safer than the streets of our community.

This is the truth, honorable representatives. And another truth

is that we pay our taxes that pay for the guards and the metal detectors where the powerful people like you work and live. We don’t

want to take the protection away from you, but the people in my

community have asked you why don’t our tax dollars pay for the

same protection and security where we live and work?

This is the question that people in my community are asking.

And the answer to that question is what makes us angry. The answer in the minds of the people of my community is that we must

pay to protect the rich and powerful while we ourselves are left to

be threatened and killed, especially if we cooperate with the police.

We are being asked to risk ourselves and our families in ways

that no one with power and money would accept for himself and

the people he loves. People believe this because it is the truth, a

truth that we know from the experience of our lives.

Honorable representatives, I respect you because you are trying

to do something to protect my family and my community. You are

trying to convince the Congress to take just a small part of the tax

dollars that we are now using to protect our people, and spend it

on protecting us. You always say that these tax dollars are our

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money. Well, we would like to use some of that money of ours to

protect our families, just as we are trying to protect powerful people here in the United States and people in foreign countries.

If you say that you are determined to uphold the law and that

you want and need our help, that is good. We will support that.

The fact that we are afraid does not mean that we don’t have the

courage to do the right thing. However, we are not going to give

up our lives for nothing.

You and I know that we have only 3 possible choices about protecting witnesses in court from the drug powers in our community.

First, you can spend our tax dollars to put more police officers on

our streets so that people in my community won’t be confronting

the drug dealers face to face and getting themselves killed. Second,

you can spend our tax dollars to allow our city and State to give

those of us with the courage to stand up in court and tell about

the crimes that we see every day the same kind of level of witness

protection that the Federal courts and Marshals give to their Federal witnesses that they need.

These 2 choices are the ones that the people of this community

want you to make. We pray that you will be doing the right thing.

But please don’t pretend to protect us when you are not willing to

do what is required to be effective. If you want to provide us with

more police protection in our community, truly protect us when you

need us to testify about the crimes that we see.

Your only other choice, the unwise choice, is this: your only other

choice is to give up. Your only other choice is to accept the truth

of our community and our streets that the drug gangs are going to

be the true law in this country. I must warn you, though, of one

final truth. If the Congress continues to make this unwise choice,

someday and soon the drug gangs are to be the true law in your

communities as well.

This is the truth as I see it. This is my testimony. Thank you

very much.

[The prepared statement of Mr. P. follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. I have been hearing all day about an incredibly

frustrating problem that is certainly spreading. Do you believe you

could have—let me ask Ricky this question, also the judge and

David—do you believe that we could actually provide enough police

to provide protection to everybody?

Mr. P. No, I don’t believe you can provide that type of protection.

It would be very costly. However, not so much—if we saw more police presence, we would be a lot more willing to step up to the plate

instead of maybe one or two that always steps up to the plate. So

I believe if you had more police presence in the neighborhood, a lot

less would be going on than it is now.

Mr. WRIGHT. Yes, I believe that you can put enough police on the

streets of Baltimore to make a substantial dent in this problem, especially once you have reached the threshold that a neighborhood

like Harwood has reached. Putting police on the streets, out of

cruisers—the cruiser culture really has ruined Baltimore City, that

police are not actually out there getting to know the community,

getting to know the nuances of who is new, who is on what corners,

and really in Baltimore who is brothers with whom.

But I think if you saturate an area for a short time, then you

can actually see the levels of crime go down substantially and stay

low if you get the police in there and visible and actually interacting with the community in a positive way, which is another problem we have here.

Judge JOHNSON. Your Honor, the short answer is no, we cannot

do it that way. In the short run it would be the Band-Aid on the

cancer, and we would be back to where we are. That would not be

the approach that I would recommend.

Mr. SOUDER. And we are trying to be in Colombia again in a few

weeks and we are trying to put a continued full-court press down

there. We functionally don’t control our southwest border, which is

where much of it comes in.

Be in El Salvador because one of the problems we have is El Salvadorian gangs—I mean we get illegal immigrants into the United

States that get convicted of a crime; we sent them back to El Salvador. I remember last time I was in El Salvador there were roughly—I think it is a minimum of 25,000 to 30,000 El Salvadorians

who went to America, weren’t criminals, learned the drug and

crime in the United States. Then we deported them, and now there

are 30,000 criminals in El Salvador and their police force is like

8,000 people. And now they have spread those into our major cities.

It is exasperating to try to figure out how to address this. Clearly, if you pulse the police in a neighborhood, you will get a shortterm reduction. If that neighborhood gets involved, then, and feels

like there are officers in the neighborhood and they get emboldened

and do community policing, that helps, then tends to shift to other

neighborhoods unless you do it simultaneously.

Clearly, we can’t have all the witnesses intimidated out; you

can’t have people afraid to go out on the streets. But it is very hard

to figure out how to do this kind of combination. Like you say, if

we give up it just gets worse. Every time we have backed off it gets

worse. But what you are describing in your neighborhood and your

neighborhood, it is just—I mean, it is intolerable. And how can we

do that? It is in the suburbs, but the level is different in the subVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:55 Sep 22, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00107 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\23040.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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urbs. A lot of the suburban kids will come in and get the narcotics

in the more urban neighborhoods and then it spreads there.

I thought the judge made an interesting point about how we

treat suburban kids versus urban kids and often on racial grounds.

One of the challenges here is that because of the way the dealing

is done and because of witness intimidation, there does tend to be

more—a percentage more of the criminal element in where you

have the hardened networks. But there is no question that ability

to hire—if you are more affluent you get to hire an attorney. We

have looked at some statistics, agreed to do hearings. We have had

some hearings on this. But it is just hard not to get discouraged

and just to keep plugging with this when we hear it. Judge, you

look like you wanted to add something.

Judge JOHNSON. Well, no, sir, except I agree with you. It is frustrating and that is why I recommend that you recommend that we

pawn a commission. And the reason for a commission is because we

can get scholars, retired Congressman, and retired Senators, and

retired police officers, and would have professors from the academic

world, and they can come up with some solution. And that commission recommendation—those recommendations coming from there

have a much higher percentage of being passed by the Congress

than coming from other sources. That has been my experience in

my 42 years at the bar. But that would happen.

Then, we could address the problem. In my view, sir, the reason

why America rightly responded like it did to September 11th, and

I am a veteran. I served 4 years in the JAG corps and 3 of which

in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. I was in the Military

Justice Division for the Pacific Command, and I wanted to go fight

real bad too after September 11th. We don’t have that type of thing

with this inside threat, this drug threat, to make us all real, real

mad. The people who are getting angry is like Mr. Ricky here because he is there where he sees everything, just like the effects of

a September 11th creeping on the rest of it, but he has it. And that

is not going to come any other way in my view unless we create

a commission and centralize, get the whole Nation focused on it,

get the Congress to then pass the laws, and we go after it. We can

never give up. I will never give up.

When I was threatened, I didn’t run. There are causes in life, riveted in oneself that you have to stand for. And I am willing to

stand. And I know others who are willing to stand.

Mr. SOUDER. Well, I would say at a minimum if you find a guy

with a loaded gun with a picture that said I am going to eliminate

this many, that there ought to be a severe penalty. I mean, that

is a good place to start. It is almost like we have to make some

examples on the witness intimidation because a lot of—what is

really hard to sort is what is bluffing and what is real. But we need

to take down some of the bluffers. And clearly, and what we have

heard today, is there are enough real cases that we can focus then

in on the real cases. If I get some of the people who are taking advantage—it is like if somebody kills 3 people, they can threaten 300

more because those people wonder whether they are going to be

like the 3 who got killed. And we have to somehow separate that.

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But it has been fascinating today to listen to all the different

types of challenges with it and the level of the witness intimidation, what that does in a community. Mr. Cummings.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Yes, and I thank you all too for very outstanding

testimony. Ricky, tell me this, you talked about the fear that people

have and you talked about us as a government protecting people.

And you have heard all the testimony today. What kind of specific

things do you think would be most effective in doing that?

Mr. P. Well, No. 1 would be more money allocated to the local

governments. Like David said here, I would like to see more feet

police. You know, I have been in business now for about 25 years,

and I remember when the police used to know most of the business

owners, used to come in and say hello and had a relationship with

them. Now, most of the police in my community I don’t even know.

It is like sometimes I can’t tell the difference between the police

and the drug dealers. You know, sometimes I can’t tell the difference. The police have just as bad of an attitude as the drug dealers.

And, you know, I listen to a lot of different people and see a lot

of different things, and, you know, over the past 3 days I have

heard of three shootings. And the three shootings come from one

person helping the other person up. And so since he helped the

other person up to take him to the hospital, he got shot. You know,

just things like that I hear every day in my community, you know.

And the police presence, I might see the police locking some young

fellow up for throwing trash in a dispenser and then taking him

off to central booking and locking him up when they are taking 2

and 3 hours at a time taking him away from the community where

there are real issues going on in our community. I see a lot of that

going on.

Mr. CUMMINGS. I would just like all of you to just talk about the

‘‘stop snitching’’ DVD. I don’t know how many of you all are familiar with that. And if you are not, you don’t have to. But it is interesting that when the papers reported on now the tee-shirts with

‘‘stop snitching,’’ one of the things that a lot of the young people

said was that well, it is just a fad. It is not a big deal. You know,

this is what is in style now and we want to go to the outer limits,

but we are not really trying to send a message. Do you think those

kinds of things do in fact have an impact on the public?

Mr. P. Well, to some degree that is true, especially with our

youth. But, see, the drug deals in our community are the per se

role models for a lot of our people. Because a lot of our community,

people who have become successful have moved on and not come

back to the community and give back to the community. So all the

children have to see as they grow up are the drug dealers with the

big cars and the jewelry and the clothes, and they are fascinated

by that. Do you understand?

And it is easier—you know, I have taken on several youth in my

salon and tried to teach them and go to school and the requirements, they do their homework and study when they are in there,

but if I am giving them $50 a week or $40 a week and they can

stand on the corner and make $1,000 a day, I cannot combat that.

How can I change their mind to say well, this is wrong? This is

short-lived. You know, most of society now, they want instant gratiVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:55 Sep 22, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00109 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\23040.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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fication. So they don’t want to hear about the long-term; they want

to know what they can have right now. And as opposed to me hiring your son and giving him $40 or $50 a week to sweep in the barbershop and he can stand on the corner, like I said, and make $500

to $1,500, you know, I lose almost every time.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Mr. Wright.

Mr. WRIGHT. I haven’t seen the ‘‘stop snitching’’ video per se, but

I will agree that we need more people like Ricky on the streets, role

models, because we are now two generations into a drug culture

that is taking young Black males off the streets of Baltimore and

eliminating a whole generation of role models. That worries me

enormously, and I think that is what needs to be disrupted, that

we have to somehow get role models back into the neighborhoods,

back on the streets, give them places to go to bring the kids before

they fall prey to the drug dealers. That is one way you disrupt it.

Because with Edna’s case there are now seven men indicted. Nobody won in that case. Edna has now left the State. Seven more

young men are off the streets. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of

them have children that will no longer have fathers. And we are

just seeing the cycle repeat itself. I think what you need to do is,

you know, get good, tough men in, good working men to say, you

know, shape up. You know, you can’t live to be just 25 and then

go to jail. That is not a proper way to be a citizen in this country.

Judge JOHNSON. Mr. Cummings, I think that we all have to

admit that our society has become more tolerant of the drug culture. And what Mr. Ricky P. has said is correct, and I agree with

what he said. And the drug dealer can make a lot more money—

and he is the role model—than one could make at McDonald’s,

short-term gain. One day the whole country, if we don’t stop this,

will become more tolerant of drugs. It is OK, so if anybody snitches

period, not only the underclass, but the middle and upper-class will

get the same fate. We have to stop it now, stop the tolerance for

it.

I have not seen it, but that is not unusual because I don’t watch

television, didn’t grow up with it, never found any use for it, but

we have to not tolerate that. We have to create a society where

there is no tolerance for that.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Judge, let me ask you this—and this is my last

question. I mean, I know you talked about back in 1992 about what

you saw then and what you saw coming. And how long were you

on the bench?

Judge JOHNSON. 191⁄2 plus years.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Did you see this problem evolving, this witness

intimidation problem evolving when you were on the bench?

Judge JOHNSON. Oh, yes, but it is in attachment 1 in the article

I wrote.

Mr. CUMMINGS. You saw it?

Judge JOHNSON. I saw it. One of the reasons I wrote that article

was because I saw often—I have tried over 100 murder cases as a

trial judge. The witness would get on the witness stand and he recants. Now why was he recanting? He was recanting because the

defendant’s lawyer, the drug dealer’s lawyer who was being tried

for murder, had sent the cousins or brothers or friends or homeboys

so to speak out to visit the witness. And he gets the witness’s adVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:55 Sep 22, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00110 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\23040.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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dress at the time of the arraignment. The first police report contains no witness’ name, but at the time of the arraignment, then

he is entitled to the name and address of all witnesses, the lawyer

is. So the lawyer tells the relatives who the witnesses are. And

they go to him and say we hear that you are snitching on us. And

he said oh, no, no. I never told the police anything. Well, come on

down to my lawyer’s office and tell him that. So he goes down to

the lawyer’s office; the lawyer takes an affidavit saying the police

was lying on him; he never made the statement or what have you.

A year later he comes to trial, the State take him over the police

statement, he says yes, yes, all that happened. And then the lawyer confronts him with this affidavit.

And that is what I meant by those forced affidavits being filed

to get witnesses off. The lawyer has just as much blood on his hand

as the trigger man. And when I wrote the article, they went after

me like I had stolen something, the cartel and the drug lawyers because they knew I knew what I was talking about. I got this information firsthand on numerous occasions from the bench as well as

from police lieutenants and detectives and homicide detectives and

what have you. And I saw it and I called it. So it was there.

But let me say this to you, Mr. Cummings: the price I paid for

this was OK because I never saw another false affidavit since that

time. So it is all right. I stopped it. And you can stop it too. Take

a stand.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Ruppersberger.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Yes. First, I want to thank the panel because you are the frontline. And the battle we are having in our

communities is just as serious as the battle in Iraq. And the first

thing I do want to say as a sidebar, instead of paying for polls as

sometimes we do as elected officials, I find if you go to a barbershop or a hair salon, you will find out more what is going on in

the community. So I like what you are saying.

Try and again find and look at solutions. The first thing, you all

alluded, I think all three of you—we can talk and the previous panels about the resources we need, the money that we need to put

into different programs, but one of the things we didn’t talk about

but you raised the issue was dealing with children, getting children

before they get to the level where we have lost them. And that

takes resources and buddies programs, pal programs, getting children and teenagers off the street.

When I was in Baltimore County we had a very active pal program, and one of the things we knew to get those tough kids is you

had to hook them to get them in because a lot of the street kids

wouldn’t go into these programs. So we developed a karate program. And as soon as you offer karate, a lot of the bad kids would

come in, and then you have them and you hooked them.

But if we don’t deal with end of the spectrum, the young children, getting to them, we are always going to have problems. Now

I think one thing that hasn’t been talked about here today, and I

would like to just develop your opinion a little bit, is about community policing. Community policing is very, very important. And,

Ricky P., do you have a community association where you live?

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Mr. P. Well, yes, I have a strong community association where

I live at. However, when you are dealing with—see you are talking

about community policing when most of the young children belong

to the community. So we are talking about a community policing

where the drug dealers are their kids, you understand? So they

don’t want to tell on their kids or they are not going to snitch on

their kids or they are not going to form a commission to tell on

their kids.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Well, here is my point: community policing,

a part of what community policing is about for someone to go into

the community and developing really a non-confrontational relationship with people in the community that understands and really

gets intelligence about what kids are having problems, what kids’

parents are involved, whatever. And by getting that information

they can direct a problem or solve a problem before it gets started.

The same thing in schools. You put police officers in schools in

a non-confrontational way, they can usually deal with the fight

after school or somebody might get hurt, stabbed, shot, whatever,

by dealing and having those relationships.

And I think, you know, I know, getting to your community, do

you have an active community association where people come and

they meet and talk about community issues?

Mr. P. Yes, but understand this: now, just take for instance last

summer. I live across the street from a school, so a lot of kids tend

to go up on the lot all the time in the summertime and hang out

and everything. So I went up there one time to try to talk to the

kids and ask them, you know, they just built a recreation center.

Why don’t you come to the recreation center and talk about some

of your needs? In the course of that I got my window shot out by

a BB-gun, they burned a fire by my house. You know, every time

you seem like you want to stand up, don’t nobody want to stand

up beside you——

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Well——

Mr. P. In my community I have a lot of elderly people. And a lot

of elderly people are going to go in their doors and stay in their

doors. They are not going to come out.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Let me ask you something else, another

program that I thought was effective that I have been involved

with is the Citizens on Patrol. Now, government can’t do it all.

Now, our country is a great country because we as citizens stood

up and took care of problems. But we need coordination and we

need help, especially in your area, what you are talking about.

And what Citizens on Patrol basically did was get the group of

citizens together, which gave them strength and power. And we

were able to get communication where we would have walkie-talkies. We didn’t want the citizens to stop a crime. And basically it

got to the point 24/7 we had citizens who would take a certain

night that we would have three or four in a car in different hotspot

areas in the neighborhoods. And then the word got out, and believe

it or not, we did a study, and when the word got out that they had

citizens on patrol in communities, the crime started to drop. But

the reason it worked is because the whole community stood up.

Now I would like to hear, Ricky P. and David Wright, your opinion. Do you have any type of Citizens on Patrol, and if not, do you

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think we could develop something in some of these communities to

try to deal with the problem? Because we want to walk away from

here today with solutions, and it is important that we do that.

Mr. P. See, now, I have seen like two blocks or three blocks away

from mine another community having Citizens on Patrol, and let

me tell you how that works. They move from those two-block radius or three-block radius and go down to another two or three

blocks away and still—you know, I mean, I don’t want to get off

your question, but I watch all day long where I see 100 cars come

by my community, coming out of my block, and 98 of them, sir, are

county people. See, and when you look at this and you see this all

day, you got to know that your police know this. And if your

police——

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. There is the point. And you know who the

drug dealers are.

Mr. P. Right.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. You are in the community.

Mr. P. Right.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. But if you have community policing, it is a

different relationship. It is knowing the community, knowing who

the people—so that community police officer knows what you know

and can use their authority and their expertise to get the narcs or

whatever they need to do. But, you know, Citizens on Patrol does

work if it is coordinated. But you can’t have one community two

blocks away and another one not. That is what community policing

is about. And I think it is something we need to focus on, and I

think it might work, in your community especially. And I would

like to hear, David Wright, your position on that too.

Mr. WRIGHT. Citizens on Patrol has been difficult. In the hardest

areas of Baltimore, in the worst areas, we found that we can’t get

people to sign up. It is too dangerous because of what Ricky said,

that as soon as you exert a positive influence, you are singled out

and attacked. But what has worked are things like the crime watch

numbers, which has led people to sign up to have an anonymous

notification system so that when they call 911 to report things,

they are not automatically handing over their information to the

police. Because we found that what happens is that if somebody

calls the police through the regular 911 system, the police show up.

They are looking around to see what happened with the incident.

They go to the person who reported it. That person then gets associated with the police, they get singled out, their car will be vandalized, they will feel threatened.

So that in neighborhoods where theft and burglary are the primary crimes, Citizens on Patrol is wonderful because there you are

looking for people who are demonstrating unusual activity. In the

tougher neighborhoods of Baltimore, the interplay of family and

friends and the harshness of the situation, the harshness of the reality kind of precludes Citizens on Patrol. But things like crime

watch does really have a much better impact.

Let me say as well that I think we have heard today a number

of times that a lot of citizens don’t want to move after they have

been intimidated. And that really what that speaks to is dedicating

resources to having police, because if those witnesses are going to

stay in that neighborhood, they need to feel like there is somebody

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around and that clearly to some extent the resources are there for

moving citizens.

And let me say as well that it is not only the financial burden

of moving and the loss of the community, but for Edna it has been

absolutely a horror and a day-in and day-out anxiety as her world

was disrupted for 3 months. And the psychological anxiety was

enormous. It is facing that kind of trauma that really rules out

moving out of your community. You know, a lot of folks stay in Baltimore for generations and their lives and their grandparents are

here and they won’t move. So the least we can do, I think, is to

put police on the streets out of their cruisers, have them visit the

barbershop.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Well, it is a sad state of affairs when you

can’t have Citizens on Patrol, when citizens can’t come together because of fear and intimidation. So law enforcement has to do the

job. But I really think we have to refocus on that community policing to an extent.

Mr. WRIGHT. Absolutely.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. We need a balance.

Mr. P. But I think law enforcement need to take back that community first.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Well, I don’t disagree.

Mr. P. Once they take back the community, then we can

institute——

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. But they are not going to take back the

community if they don’t get at least source information and resources. Not that somebody has to come out front all the time, but

just to get information. And if you are telling me you know the

neighborhood——

Mr. P. Yes.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER [continuing]. And police aren’t talking to

you——

Mr. P. Yes.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER [continuing]. In a confidential and informant way, that means they are not doing their job.

Mr. P. Yes.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. So hopefully we will learn from this hearing today. Thank you.

Judge JOHNSON. Did you want my response to that?

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Yes, sure. You are the judge.

Judge JOHNSON. I was. I am back to being an old country boy

again, sir.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. If I believe that, you will tell me another

one.

Judge JOHNSON. I agree with what both of my panelists have

said here, and let me just add, Mr. Congressman, the waters and

the fires have gathered too close around us for that community policing to be working anymore. The cancer is here, and that BandAid is the community policing. It is too late.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. I disagree with that. I don’t believe it is

ever too late. We can’t give up. But you are right; we have to have

the big fist first to come forward to give people the confidence to

come forward.

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Mr. SOUDER. Well, these are massive questions that—and one of

the things that—well, history may not repeat itself but often

rhymes, and we need to not repeat mistakes of the past. And the

one thing I learned early on when I was a staffer was working with

the Bloods and the Crypts and gangs in Los Angeles, and we had

this bright idea that we were going to do programs for kids who

were in gangs to try to get them out of the gangs. Guess what? The

number of kids in gangs increased because there weren’t any programs for the kids who weren’t in gangs. So in order to get in the

programs you had to join a gang. So we watched the Bloods and

the Crypts double because of that program. And so you have to figure out logical ways of building.

And what I have come to believe is that you have to have a clear,

swift, certain punishment for violating the law. Then we need to

look at reward systems and how you do other things in the community. But you can never address the fact that you can pay $40 in

your barbershop and they can get $1,000 on the street corner.

Mr. P. No.

Mr. SOUDER. Yet we are continuing to reinvent this stupid policy

internationally. Because down in Colombia the President wants to

give people all this kind of stuff if they will stop growing coca. No,

they need to stop growing coca; then we will talk.

The same thing right now in Afghanistan where we are talking

about heroin. We don’t go into your street and say oh, we will build

you a new road, we will do all this kind of stuff if you just stop,

you know, doing this on the street. We say no, you are going to stop

doing it on the street. And we need to say the same thing to people

growing heroin and the people growing coca, that we are not going

to put up with this. We are not going to buy them because we can’t.

We can never meet the amount of money they can make growing

heroin poppy and coca. Yet we are repeating this in our international budget.

At the local level, some of these problems that you have addressed is we need mixed housing. And I have gotten in an area

of my hometown of Ft. Wayne where we were fifth in crack for a

while. It was just overrun. And we tried to do mixed housing. But

this stuff is hard. We just need to keep at it.

Because as we worked with HUD and I got then Secretary Martinez to come in and we launched this thing to try to put middleclass housing with the Black Ministerial Alliance in Ft. Wayne,

guess what? A house that cost $140,000 to build in the suburbs, I

got—not me. The Democratic mayor, myself, others went to the

homebuilders, said you have to get involved here. They built houses

that were then priced at $90,000 in the urban center to try to get

mixed housing. Because like you say, there aren’t any role models.

How do we get people back in? So to try to do mixed housing.

Well, guess what? Now people are complaining because evaluation of those houses, which cost $140,000, same house in the suburbs but sold for $90,000 are now valued at $65,000 because they

can’t buy them. So they are claiming that their bank loan doesn’t

equal the equity of the house. This is hard. Because here we had

the builders donating, we had the HUD Secretary in, we had a

model thing, and now the equity isn’t there because ultimately the

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crime rates are still there, the school rates are still there. It takes

a long time to re-habit, but we have to have multiple things.

But one thing is for sure, and that is what we got out of this

hearing today, is if you are a witness in a crime, you can’t be shot.

And the police have to have a method to protect the witnesses and

where we have people willing to be brave enough to come forth, we

have an obligation to try to protect those people. And through that,

then focus on those neighborhoods. And where there is a will, we

ought to find a way to defend those people and reclaim. And if it

moved next door or a couple blocks, it moves next door. But where

people are committed, we have an obligation as a society to do that.

And I thank Mr. Cummings and Mr. Ruppersberger for being here

and for Mr. Cummings’ lead in this. Thank you each for your testimony and thank everybody for the patience this long hearing.

Thank you very much. The subcommittee stands adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 2:22 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

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