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[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 77 (Wednesday, May 10, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6435-S6437]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

                            CRIME IN AMERICA

  Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, in the coming weeks the Senate will once 
again turn to the very important issue of crime. Within the next few 
days I will be introducing on this floor a crime bill of my own. Over 
the next 4 days I intend to discuss on each one of those 4 days a 
different aspect of the crime bill that I will be introducing.
  Today, I would like to start by talking about two truly fundamental 
and basic issues and questions. First, what is the proper role of the 
Federal Government in fighting crime in this country? Second, despite 
all of the rhetoric, what really works in law enforcement? What 
matters? What does not matter? What is rhetoric and what is reality? 
What can the Federal Government do to help local law enforcement? 
Because, Mr. President, the fact is that over 90 percent of all 
criminal investigations, prosecutions, and trials do not occur at the 
Federal level. Rather, they take place at the local and State level.
  This means that one of the criteria for any crime bill has to be the 
impact that bill will have on the ability of local communities 
themselves to fight crime. Of any crime bill, we have to ask this 
question: Does it help or does it hurt the local crimefighters, the men 
and women who are on the front line every single day? Mr. President, if 
it does help, does the help it gives help permanently or just over the 
short run? In other words, are we going to get any lasting impact in 
our battle against crime for the billions of dollars that we are 
talking of spending at the Federal level?
  Mr. President, the role of the Federal Government first and foremost 
is to do those things that the local community cannot do for itself. I 
believe the Federal Government has to provide the tools to a local 
community to fight crime, tools that they could not have but for the 
help of the Federal Government.
  One major Federal responsibility that I would like to discuss today 
is the creation and maintenance of a national criminal records system. 
The idea is really very basic and very simple. We need to make it 
possible for any police officer anywhere in the country to access a 
national data base, a fully automated data base, data bank, which 
includes information on fingerprints, DNA, ballistics, outstanding 
warrants, and complete criminal record history of suspects and of those 
who have previously been convicted of crimes.
  I believe that this system will be an absolutely essential component 
of local law enforcement in the 21st century. We already have much of 
this technology in place today, but, quite frankly, it will only become 
more important in the years ahead. That is why we need to focus on it 
today, this year, this crime bill. We have to build this system 
correctly from the beginning.
  Mr. President, we will soon be considering the single largest crime 
fighting bill in the history of this country. If we do not focus on 
this technology issue now as part of this crime bill, we never will 
again have the opportunity to do it and to do it correctly. I think 
that would be tragic, because if we do not do this it will be much more 
difficult later on for police to fight crime. Conversely, if we do do 
it, we will solve crimes. We will save people from becoming victims. 
Yes, we will save lives. I think that really is what is at stake.
  Mr. President, if we do not do this now, it will be more difficult 
for the police to solve crimes committed by the same individual in 
different cities--to catch, for example, a criminal who used the same 
gun to commit crimes in both Washington, DC, and Baltimore, MD. It will 
be more difficult to keep track of sex offenders and to prevent them 
from repeating their offenses.
  Mr. President, when a felon is fleeing from justice and inadvertently 
falls into the hands of law enforcers in some other jurisdiction, those 
arresting officers will not know through fingerprints that that person 
is wanted, let us say, for kidnapping or a terrorist act--kidnapping a 
child.
  Mr. President, when a brave police officer pulls someone over on a 
deserted highway in the middle of the night, that police officer will 
not know the kind of person he is pulling over, will not know that the 
person he has pulled over is a convicted criminal, maybe a fugitive 
from justice.
  Local police work hard and do a great job. They deserve much better 
than this. They deserve to have the best technology that we can give 
them.
  To do that they need national help. They need the technological 
backup that only a fully functioning national--national--system can 
provide. For local law enforcement to get the maximum benefit from a 
national system, we have to grow this national system locally.
  The unique thing about law enforcement in the United States, a 
country with a Federal system, not a top-down system, of government, is 
that you can only have a national system if the local law enforcement 
people build it up themselves. To attempt to create a national system 
from the top down is like trying to create a TV network if nobody has a 
television.
   [[Page S6436]] We can have all the Federal technology in the world 
in Washington, DC, but if a police officer in Tennessee or in Ohio or 
in Massachusetts cannot pull it up in his or her squad car or at the 
police station, what in the world use is it?
  To make a national system, we really need two things. We need the 
local people to collect data and put it into the national system. And 
then we need to make sure the men and women scattered throughout this 
country, tens of thousands of them, who need this information have the 
ability to get the data back and to use it and to solve crimes and to 
convict criminals. Unless we invest in local technology, the local data 
collection, and retrieval, this just will not happen.
  When I was in Cleveland recently, I saw the future of law 
enforcement. I saw police officers punch a name into a laptop computer, 
no bigger than this. The computer then gave them a picture of the 
individual and a lot of other information, including outstanding 
warrants and a complete criminal record.
  We have the technology today to give this ability to every law 
enforcement officer in the country. For a system like this to work, Mr. 
President, we need local police all over America to be putting in this 
information. It is the kind of system we have to grow locally so that 
it can work nationally. Only the Federal Government can do the national 
coordination that is necessary for this kind of a system. There is an 
important and legitimate Federal role in crime technology, and my bill 
reflects this fact. My bill gives direct assistance to local 
authorities so that they can contribute their knowledge, their 
information to a national crime fighting system.
  Anyone who visits the laboratories of the FBI, as I have, here in 
Washington cannot help being impressed by the tremendous capabilities 
and capacity that they have. Our challenge, though, is to ensure that 
the hub, the FBI's data base, is both expanded by and is useful to 
local authorities.
  While I was at the FBI headquarters recently, the agents looked me 
directly in the eye and told me that the awesome technology we have 
really will not be fully utilized, will not live up to the great 
potential it has unless the local authorities can collect the 
information and put it into the system.
  They expressed to me quite bluntly a skepticism as to whether or not 
there are the funds available today in jurisdictions across this 
country to achieve this type of a national system. They have it here in 
Washington. The FBI has it. But local law enforcement does not today 
have the resources.
  Talk to the police officers of Lucas County, OH. They will tell you 
how crucially important access to this technology really is. Let me 
take one example, something we have heard a lot about in the law the 
last few months on television-- DNA. Let us take DNA in a rape case. 
The police in Lucas County have the technology to collect blood and 
semen in a rape scene. Today, however, the Lucas County police, 
sheriff's office, Toledo Police Department, if they have no suspect, 
there is no quick way to match the DNA samples from the crime scene 
against the DNA samples of past offenders because Lucas County is not 
on line with an existing national DNA data base that might help them 
determine who the predator really was. And even if they already have a 
suspect in Lucas County, proving that the DNA matches that of the 
suspect is a very slow process. It is slow because of the great backlog 
that exists today in getting these samples fully analyzed by a 
competent individual, an expert who later on can come into court and 
testify.
  If we give Lucas County or the Toledo Police Department immediate 
access to a national DNA data base, they could know pretty swiftly who 
committed that crime.
  The same problem exists in regard to fingerprints. Now, when a 
suspect is booked, generally, his fingers get rolled in ink onto three 
or four separate cards which then get headings like name, address, et 
cetera, which are typed by the county sheriff's department onto the 
cards. These fingerprints are then mailed--mailed, Mr. President--in 
1995, still mailed--to the FBI and into BCI in Ohio, which is our 
Bureau of Criminal Identification.
  The technology, though, Mr. President, already exists for the 
computerized fingerprinting of suspects. All they have to do now is 
place their hands onto a computer imager--the technology is available 
today--and the fingerprints go then directly into a data base, what 
could be a national data base.
  That would be a tremendous improvement. But, you know, the folks in 
Lucas County tell me that what they and other police officers 
nationwide really need is a national computer linkup for fingerprints.
  I think that is absolutely correct. If you look at the technology 
they are trying, let us say, in Cleveland Heights, laptop computers in 
a squad car, and if you look at the incredible technology already 
available for fingerprinting, for matching bullet fragments and other 
physical evidence, the conclusion is really inescapable. We need to 
make technology a truly national priority.
  This is something that we in the U.S. Senate can do and, frankly, 
something that we must do. The time is now. This is our opportunity.
  The situation today is almost like a system of stereo components. We 
have a great receiver; we have a great set of speakers; we even have a 
world-class selection of CD's. But we have not hooked the system up and 
we have not plugged it in.
  Mr. President, make no mistake: America's police men and women are 
already the best in the world. If we give them this equipment, they 
will solve the crimes; they will get the job done.
  The U.S. Senate needs to give these local police officers the tools 
they really need. The bill that I will introduce in the next several 
days will accelerate the process of setting up this system of 21st 
century technology. We really will be going from 19th century 
technology, which is how many police carry out their functions today, 
to 21st century technology.
  Only if we do this can the State and local authorities make their 
crime information readily available to the FBI, the national data base, 
the Federal Bureau of Investigation here in Washington and, frankly, 
more importantly, vice versa.
  My bill makes it possible for States without technology to come on 
line. And if a State is already on line with the FBI, that State can 
use the funds to make further improvements to its data collection 
system.
  Let me give you another example. The combined DNA index system, 
called CODIS, a data base, includes DNA information on criminals 
convicted of rape, murder, and other violent crimes. Under my 
legislation, participation in CODIS will be truly national for the 
first time, and it will be supported by Federal dollars.
  In another area that I think is very important, my bill would require 
convicted sex offenders and other violent criminals to give blood 
samples as they enter or as they leave prison so that we can develop a 
truly national sex offender DNA data base.
  Mr. President, there exists in this country a class of individuals 
who I will call, for want of a better term, sexual predators. A 
predator, as we know, is an animal that preys on other animals, and 
typically on the weak--sexual predators.
  A recent study, Mr. President, found that 28 percent--28 percent--of 
convicted sex offenders were later convicted of a second sex offense. I 
will say, Mr. President, based upon my own experience when I was a 
county prosecutor in Greene County, that that percentage probably is 
even higher than 28 percent. That is a very high recidivism rate and it 
shows how serious a problem we are really up against.
  And so it makes eminent sense to develop a nationwide system where we 
can collect systematically the blood, then the DNA, and develop this 
national DNA data base for sexual predators. If we do this, we will 
solve crimes; we will prevent crimes; we will prevent tragedies.
  I think, Mr. President, we clearly need to do everything in our power 
to stop these predators. That is why we need to give police access to 
this national data base.
  Mr. President, fingerprints and criminal histories would also be 
included in this integrated Federal data base.
   [[Page S6437]] In addition, my legislation would allocate some of 
the crime money to fund the FBI's DRUGFIRE program. This is an existing 
program that, quite frankly, needs to be expanded. We need to help the 
FBI develop and install computer equipment that would match bullet 
evidence to information in the FBI's bullet data base.
  Today, for example, law enforcement officers in my home county of 
Greene County, OH, have a filing cabinet full of bullets. These bullets 
are arranged by caliber--9 mm, .38 slugs, and so on.
  Every gun, of course, as we know from watching TV shows, leaves a 
tell-tale print on a bullet, so police officers in Greene County or any 
county can take a bullet from the crime scene and compare it to the 
bullets they have in their bullet file. They take the bullets that look 
similar and put them under a microscope, quite frankly, in the very 
distant hope they might get a match.
  Tragically, there is absolutely no hope of matching the bullet with 
bullets from other police departments. That is one reason there are a 
lot of unsolved gun crimes in this country today.
  DRUGFIRE changes this dramatically. DRUGFIRE connects each bullet 
microscope to a computer, which takes a picture of the bullet and 
stores an image in its memory. It can then be matched with millions of 
other bullets from all around the country.
  Today, about eight jurisdictions between Baltimore and Washington, 
DC, are linked up through DRUGFIRE. They have already connected 
Baltimore crimes to D.C. crimes--the same gun, the same criminals.
  Thanks to DRUGFIRE, a search through 10,000 bullets takes about a 
minute. Without DRUGFIRE, no one knows how long it will take because no 
one, of course, would even try to do that.
  Mr. President, if everyone in local law enforcement were hooked up to 
each other nationwide, and to the FBI, through DRUGFIRE, they would 
have a huge new advantage in the fight against criminals with guns. Gun 
criminals do not respect State borders--very obvious.
  Mr. President, a key criterion on which any crime bill should be 
judged is: Does it do any permanent good? Not just immediately, but 
does it do permanent good? Does it just spend money, or does it invest 
in something that has consistent, long-term benefits?
  Mr. President, I maintain that the criminal justice records we are 
talking about--indeed, all the technology we are talking about--are a 
crucial long-term investment for this country.
  We are not really just talking about the next 5 years. We are talking 
about a cumulative effect, building, building far out into the future. 
The efficiency of this system will continue to increase each year. It 
will have truly a cumulative effect.
  We want to do for law enforcement, if I could use this analogy, what 
the interstate highway system did for U.S. transportation back in the 
1950's.
  Now, I must admit to my colleagues that this is not a glitzy nor a 
glamorous issue. The first thing I learned, now almost 20 years ago, as 
a young assistant county prosecuting attorney, was that law enforcement 
is very seldom glamorous. It is hard work. What we generally see on TV 
is not an accurate depiction of police investigations. It is not an 
accurate depiction of criminal prosecutions.
  In fact, Mr. President, what we are seeing or we are hearing about, 
day after day after day, as the FBI and other law enforcement agencies 
investigate the horrible tragedy in Oklahoma, what we are seeing unfold 
is typical law enforcement work, just magnified as they go about their 
business--their hard, tough, sometimes very boring business--of looking 
for the lead that will take them to the next lead, the piece of 
evidence, the shred of evidence that will take them to something else, 
and on and on until the crime is solved.
  Good police work is, if I could use this term, Mr. President, largely 
grunt work. It can be downright boring hitting the pavement day after 
day to track down leads. The police in Lucas County, OH, spent a good 8 
years trying to track down a grandfather who abducted his 
granddaughter. They followed his trail from State to State. They 
finally found him, after 8 years, in California.
  Mr. President, a national, easily accessible database would have made 
that capture probably a lot easier and maybe, just maybe, that little 
girl would have been reunited with her parents a lot sooner than 8 
years after her disappearance.
  The Oklahoma City bombing case, as I mentioned a moment ago, 
demonstrates the real value of a usable national database. A scrap of 
metal that was blown 2 blocks away from the crime scene by the bomb 
blast had a vehicle identification number on it. The FBI fed the number 
into the computerized rapid start system. The vehicle identification 
number then led the FBI to the rental company in Junction City, and 
that is where they got the description of the suspect.
  Then it took more legwork around Junction City to match a name to the 
suspect. When the suspect's name was fed into the FBI's national 
computer database, that is how the FBI found that the terrorism suspect 
actually had been arrested earlier in Perry, OH, that he was actually 
in custody.
  Mr. President, local law enforcement officers really need access to 
that kind of technology. The measures I am talking about will help 
provide them with these tools. This technology may not be glamorous--it 
is not glamorous--but believe me, it matters, it makes a difference. It 
will make a huge difference in our national fight against crime. Every 
single time a police officer pulls someone over, we need that police 
officer to know that America is with him or with her, not just our 
encouragement, not just our moral support, but we need to back up that 
by giving that police officer all the relevant facts we as a nation 
have compiled about that person, that individual that the police 
officer has just pulled over.
  Last year, we started down the right path. Last year's crime bill did 
provide some money for this important work. But now we have to 
concentrate on helping the local--the local--law enforcement community 
to participate. That is what this year's crime bill absolutely must do, 
because, Mr. President, if we do not do this, we will be missing a 
major component of our crimefighting arsenal.
  It is no use to have a gold-plated database system in Washington if 
local crimefighters cannot, do not contribute to it and if they cannot 
draw out the information, if they cannot use it. Again, back to the 
statistic that I started this speech with and that is that well over 90 
percent of all criminal prosecution is, in fact, local. And so, you 
have to judge the system you are establishing not just by what it does 
for the FBI, although that is important, you have to judge what it does 
for its component parts, what it does for the tens of thousands of 
police officers and law enforcement agencies around this country.
  Our challenge, Mr. President, is to prepare America's law enforcement 
for the 21st century, and we are falling behind in this task. We have 
the technology, we have the ability to prevent many of the crimes that 
are being committed today. Think of it, that is in and of itself a 
crime, that we have the technology to give law enforcement the tools 
they need to solve crime and to, more importantly, catch criminals and 
put them behind bars and keep them locked up, criminals who, but for 
that technology, will continue to go on and continue to commit crimes 
and continue to prey upon our citizens. We need to get that technology 
to where it is needed the most, and that is the local law enforcement.
  The improvements I am proposing in America's crime information system 
constitute a basic investment in the security of American families well 
into the next century. It is time to move out of the stone age on law 
enforcement. That is the principle behind my crime technology 
proposals.
  I look forward to working on this in our Judiciary Committee process 
and on the floor of this Senate in the next few weeks. I think the work 
we do on this truly has the potential to make a major difference in the 
lives of ordinary Americans for decades to come. I am proud to be a 
part of this effort.
  I yield the floor
  Mr. KENNEDY addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.

  

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