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3 U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL JANET RENO'S
4 ADDRESS TO THE
5 NATIONAL SHERIFFS ASSOCIATION MEETING
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7 February 27, 1997
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15 Held at the J. W. Marriott
16 14th & Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
17 Washington, D.C.
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1 P R O C E E D I N G S
2 MALE VOICE: Our speaker today, of
3 course, is well know to all of us. She's been
4 a loyal friend to all of us who are in law
5 enforcement. Of course, she's the Attorney
6 General of the United States, Janet Reno.
7 Ms. Reno was born, or rather sworn in
8 as the nation's 78th Attorney General by
9 President Clinton on March 12, 1993.
10 From 1978 until the time of her
11 appointment, she served as a State Attorney for
12 Dade County, Florida. She was initially
13 appointed to that position by the Governor of
14 Florida, and she was subsequently elected to
15 that office five times. That says a lot.
16 Ms. Reno was born and raised in
17 Miami, Florida where she attended Dade County
18 Public Schools. She graduated from Harvard Law
19 School in 1963.
20 It is a great pleasure that I present
21 to you our guest speaker, Attorney General
22 Janet Reno.
3
1 (Applause)
2 ATTORNEY GENERAL RENO: Sheriff,
3 thank you so much.
4 I would first like to read to you a
5 letter from the White House. There are two
6 letters and I've delivered one to each of you.
7 Please accept my best wishes for a productive
8 joint meeting of the International Association
9 of Chiefs of Police and the National Sheriff's
10 Association.
11 As the results of the dedicated
12 efforts of your organizations, we've broke six
13 years of congressional deadlock, and in 1994
14 passed the most comprehensive crime bill ever.
15 The strategy was simple and straightforward:
16 More police, proper punishment, and smarter
17 crime prevention. I believe our plan is
18 working.
19 Last year violent crime dropped for
20 the fifth year in a row, marking the longest
21 period of decline in 25 years. None of this
22 success could have been achieved without the
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1 commitment and hard work of your members. I am
2 very proud of the effective partnership that my
3 administration shares with the IACP and NSA.
4 As we move forward I want to continue this
5 relationship so that we can make communities
6 across this country even safer.
7 Each day you and your colleagues put
8 your lives on the line for all of us. You're
9 helping to make America a safer place to live,
10 and I thank you for your dedication and for
11 your accomplishments.
12 Sincerely, Bill Clinton.
13 (Applause)
14 ATTORNEY GENERAL RENO: Sheriff, I
15 thank you very much for the opportunity to be
16 here today. And it's particularly gratifying
17 for me to find the sheriffs and the police
18 chiefs together, an example again of how
19 important it is that all of us work together as
20 partners in this effort against crime.
21 I'll have been in office four years
22 come March 12. I'd like to take this
5
1 opportunity to thank so many people in this
2 room who have been so supportive, who have
3 given me such good advice, who tell me like it
4 is in the field in their particular area, who
5 have helped shape legislation, and shape what
6 we do in the Department of Justice with your
7 insight, because we are truly on the front
8 line.
9 But today is a sad occasion for me,
10 though happy because I think going to see
11 grandchildren or play golf is probably a good
12 thing to do. But I'm going to miss Budd Meeks
13 very, very much. He has been -- he always
14 tells me like it is. He sometimes tells me
15 stuff I don't want to hear.
16 But I always know I can count on him
17 to be there to give me his best advise. And it
18 has been absolutely critical for me. And I
19 thank you for all that you have done for me.
20 It has been important for me to keep
21 in touch, not just to go once, but to keep in
22 touch with the major law enforcement
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1 organizations during my time as Attorney
2 General, not just at annual meetings, but when
3 you come to the Department of Justice to share
4 ideas, whether it be about spectrum issues,
5 about youth violence, about detention problems,
6 it is so important that I hear from you.
7 I certainly hear from Budd, from Pat
8 Sullivan, Dan Rosenblack, and Bobby Moody when
9 I do something bad. And it has been so helpful
10 to me because we almost did something bad,
11 because we really hadn't consulted, and then we
12 get pulled back into the right way to go.
13 And sometimes we end up just
14 disagreeing, period. But we know we've done so
15 out of a good, honest discussion, and we've got
16 different considerations and different
17 interests at stake.
18 I look forward to continuing these
19 dialogues, these meetings, in every way I
20 possibly can. As the President has said, we
21 have made some extraordinary successes in these
22 last four years. You, who are on the front
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1 line, are primarily responsible for these
2 successes.
3 When I go before the Congress as I
4 did yesterday, I can fully agree with them when
5 they say now, isn't it true that local law
6 enforcement has 90 percent, or 99 percent of
7 the cases involving juvenile violence. And I
8 say yes. And my role is to do whatever I can,
9 as a partner with local law enforcement, to
10 address this issue with their considerations in
11 mind.
12 Four years ago though, when people
13 asked me about an issue I had to again, and
14 again say, well, have you talked to the
15 sheriff, have you talked to the IACP.
16 I'm pleased to report now that I
17 don't have to ask that anymore. Because when I
18 get my briefing materials, this is the position
19 of the NSA, this is the position of the IACP.
20 They say if you do this, this, and this, you
21 get a link to a better product. And so I think
22 the message is out through the Department of
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1 Justice.
2 I think we face some important issues
3 together though. Critically for me is the
4 issue of youth violence. Last year we saw the
5 violent crime arrest rate, and the murder rate
6 for juveniles, the murder arrest rate go down
7 for the first time in a number of years.
8 But as we all know, the number of
9 young people will increase significantly in the
10 next 15 to 20 years. And we're seeing young
11 people do things that we never dreamed was
12 possible. We have got to work together in
13 these next four years to make sure that we turn
14 this around. And I think we have made a good
15 beginning.
16 But as I was reminded yesterday, we
17 can't just rest there. We have got to continue
18 to do everything we can.
19 And the President has announced the
20 youth violence package that I think is one of
21 those critical pieces of legislation that you
22 will see in this Congress.
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1 Chair Pat Sullivan was with me
2 yesterday at the meeting of a joint committee
3 of an education subcommittee that has
4 responsibility for the office of juvenile
5 Justice and delinquency prevention, and
6 Congressman McCullen's Crime Subcommittee of
7 the House Judiciary Committee.
8 Some people say it's no fun
9 testifying before Congress. And I will agree
10 with him on those occasions. But yesterday was
11 a wonderful experience for me. People bought a
12 bipartisan thoughtfulness to this issue. There
13 was a good dialogue. There was a good
14 exchange. People were interested in solving
15 the problems. And I found it one of the most
16 awarding times that I have been before
17 Congress.
18 What impressed me so much was the
19 bipartisan attitude of everyone there. We need
20 to work together to take that spirit, to take
21 the spirit that was reflected when the
22 President met with the Senate and House
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1 leaders, and agreed that this will be one issue
2 that we ought to reach bipartisan consensus on.
3 I think we have the opportunity to
4 draft a bill that can truly, truly begin to
5 address, in a comprehensive way, the problems
6 of youth violence. I know that many of you
7 say, now I don't want the Federal Government
8 federalizing all of these youth crimes.
9 And we are -- as you know, I have
10 said I don't want to be taking cases in Federal
11 Court. I don't want our prosecutors and
12 investigators involved unless local law
13 enforcement thinks it's the right thing to do,
14 and we can share the right way.
15 I do want to make sure that I am
16 providing you with every information that can
17 be possibly helpful in solving these crimes,
18 whether it be about gangs that cut across
19 district lines. And if you and the prosecutors
20 think that we can better handle it in Federal
21 Court for some reasons due to the law, then let
22 us know.
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1 We've got special responsibility in
2 Indian country, but we want to work with
3 everybody concerned to do it the right way. So
4 just understand that I am very, very sensitive
5 to the issues of federalism.
6 And my instructions to the U.S.
7 Attorney is, don't go in there just taking
8 cases for credit's sake. Go in there in a
9 partnership and either share information, or
10 assist the local prosecutor and the local
11 sheriff. Or if they want us to take it, let's
12 take it. But let's take it giving credit to
13 those --
14 (Applause)
15 ATTORNEY GENERAL RENO: What this
16 legislation does, though, that is so important
17 is, it first of all provides for an additional
18 $50 million, bringing to a total of $75
19 million, moneys for at-risk children's
20 initiative, truancy prevention programs,
21 mentoring programs, intervention programs that
22 can make a difference.
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1 Now, people ask me, well, describe
2 the programs. We want to work with you so that
3 you describe what could be needed in your
4 community. It might be a deputy sheriff
5 working with a probation officer in one county,
6 touching bases with those that are not quite
7 yet ready for detention, but need very intense
8 supervision, in terms of community supervision.
9 It may be a mentoring program that
10 you want to develop with the schools. You know
11 best what your community needs, what resources
12 are necessary. And that's the reason that
13 we've decided that these monies go to the local
14 government, designed for what you need in the
15 field.
16 And we want to work with you to
17 perfect this through the revised Office of
18 Juvenile Crime Control and Prevention, so that
19 we get the money to you in the right way, so
20 that it's streamlined without a lot of
21 bureaucracy, so that we get it out in a prompt
22 fashion.
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1 And yet, everybody is held
2 accountable for how we use the money. We're
3 going to be working with you in these weeks to
4 come to fashion something that could truly make
5 a difference.
6 We provide additional monies for
7 incentive grants, for new ideas to show what
8 can work and what can't work. And we're very
9 in-tuned to the fact that too often Federal
10 monies have been spent without any assessment
11 of what good they're doing. We've had
12 evaluation and research components in these
13 monies that I think can truly make a
14 difference.
15 What I see happening, it is so
16 exciting, is that communities are making a
17 difference. One sheriff can make a difference.
18 A police chief can make a difference when he
19 reaches out to the schools, to the probations
20 services, when he works with the court in the
21 community court concept. When he involves
22 parks and recreation specialists, when he
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1 involves the private sector, when she involves
2 children, youth, in development programs.
3 I am convinced that we can make a
4 difference. And what I've been asking you to
5 do, is let me know when you have a program
6 that's working. Let me know when you have a
7 community that has come together to address the
8 problem of crime amongst our youth today in a
9 comprehensive way.
10 What America needs, what Congress
11 needs is evidence that prevention programs can
12 work. It has been very gratifying for me to
13 spend time in Boston now for the last two years
14 on three different occasions to see the
15 beginnings of a community police and initiative
16 in Dorchester, Massachusetts, to come back and
17 see it expanded to community probation officers
18 riding with community police officers checking
19 on those that need intense probation
20 supervision at 10:00 at night, making home
21 visits, letting them know.
22 To see a republican DA working with a
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1 Democratic United States Attorney to focus on
2 serious gang members, and take them out in a
3 partnership based on regular meetings as to who
4 should do what, and what is in the best
5 interest of the case.
6 To see the local hospital working
7 with victims of youth violence, children
8 victims of youth violence to interrupt the
9 cycle of violence, to see what happens when
10 Federal monies that are going to the states for
11 domestic violence, intervention prevention and
12 enforcement to focus on a domestic violence
13 seen at a home where children have observed the
14 violence.
15 That child who observes that beating,
16 unless we do something, unless we intervene,
17 will come to accept violence as a way of life.
18 When the hospital joins with the Sheriff or
19 with the police chief in interrupting that
20 cycle of violence by providing counselling to
21 those child victims, we can begin to make the
22 difference.
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1 But I get these ideas not out of my
2 head. I get these ideas from the police chief
3 and sheriffs that are using them now across
4 this nation. Let us get the information to us
5 so that we can show what's working and support
6 this effort that we have undertaken.
7 In addition, the President has also
8 asked, in our budget submitted to Congress, for
9 additional monies in the Department of
10 Education for 1,000 initiatives for after
11 school and evening programs, because it is the
12 police chiefs, the sheriffs, who have been
13 telling me, we need something for these kids to
14 do in the afternoon and the evening before they
15 get into trouble in the first place.
16 But, and this a sensitive subject
17 because I don't talk about police in this
18 context, one of the big complaints I got
19 sometimes from law enforcement, sometime after
20 the Crime Act was, look, you started at the
21 beginning and you start at the end.
22 The Crime Act provided monies for
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1 100,000 police officers, and it provided monies
2 for corrections, but what about the prosecutors
3 in the courts, they're overwhelmed. This
4 proposal of the President provides money, $200
5 million for prosecutors to develop appropriate
6 initiatives aimed at youth violence,
7 initiatives that look at the whole picture.
8 It provides $50 million for the
9 courts. We've been working with the Chief
10 Justice Commerce to try to make sure that they
11 have the opportunity to do bold and innovative
12 things. Because what sheriffs and others are
13 telling me is what I always knew from my
14 experience in Miami.
15 Juvenile court judges are totally
16 overwhelmed. They have no place to put these
17 kids, they have no programs to place these kids
18 in. And everything that the sheriff or police
19 do ends up as a revolving door because the
20 courts have no place to put them.
21 Let us look at the system as a whole
22 and work together to construct legislation, and
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1 then to see that the money is used to make the
2 juvenile justice system as whole and complete
3 as possible so that we can stem this tide of
4 violence.
5 One other area that I would like to
6 address, and I touched on it with organizations
7 on it in separate meetings. But I just want to
8 reiterate how important I think it is, is the
9 whole issue of high-tech crime.
10 As I look at these people that are
11 moving out to rural America, and starting to
12 commute with their office by telecommuting
13 rather than driving, I realize that high-tech
14 crime is going to be affecting us all.
15 We want to work with state and local
16 law enforcement in every way possible to see
17 that law enforcement at every level develops
18 the expertise and has access to the expertise
19 necessary to identify high-tech crime, and to
20 use high-tech tools to identify and to combat
21 high-tech crime.
22 One of the major problems we face is
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1 that the equipment necessary for this changes
2 practically every day. You buy some now, and
3 it's obsolete tomorrow. How can we pool the
4 equipment? How can we share equipment? How
5 can we share expertise and equipment in a
6 prompt fashion that can truly make a difference
7 for you who are on the front lines across
8 America?
9 When a man can sit in a kitchen in
10 St. Petersburg, Russia and steal from a bank in
11 Chicago, he can also steal from a bank in a
12 small town in Louisiana. When somebody wants
13 to invade trade secrets or attack our
14 infrastructure, they can do so across America.
15 I would like to work with both
16 organizations this year to come to see how we
17 can structure the best partnership possible
18 that can provide for sharing of expertise that
19 can make equipment available, and that can do
20 it in an appropriate way that is very sensitive
21 to issues of federalism.
22 But not only do we need high-tech
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1 equipment to attack high-tech crime, we need to
2 take advantage of the emerging technology that
3 staggers the imagination and converts vanity to
4 prayer.
5 Just think of what we can do with the
6 information retrieval systems that are being
7 developed to collect information that might
8 have been dispersed in five different files, in
9 paper files, and bring them together to solve
10 crime.
11 Just think of what can be done in the
12 next five years as we take a DNA chip at the
13 scene and test and exclude from consideration
14 five leads that your police officers or your
15 deputies would have had to follow.
16 We've got to make sure that we use
17 this technology the right way, that we use it
18 to serve our communities. Dwight Eisenhower,
19 when he left the Presidency, gave a farewell
20 address that I think is one of the most
21 remarkable speeches made by an American
22 President. And I always wondered why it didn't
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1 gain more attention.
2 He warned of the undue influence of
3 the industrial-military complex of private
4 industry who had become part and parcel of the
5 complex in the development of expensive
6 equipment for the military.
7 I think we've got to work together in
8 the years to come to make sure that the law
9 enforcement-industrial complex does not
10 overwhelm us, does not lead to waste, but that
11 we work in partnership with private industry,
12 the right way to get the best equipment, to
13 make sure it as interoperable as possible, that
14 it serves us all, and that we keep up with
15 current developments.
16 Many of you have helped educate me
17 along these lines as well. And so, Sheriff,
18 Chief, in this next year, this will be an issue
19 of great concern for me. And we will be
20 looking forward at how we can work with you.
21 But I thought that this group might
22 be small enough, and you might know me well
22
1 enough now so that you can be candid with me,
2 and that we could take the next few minutes and
3 let you ask me questions, or give me thoughts
4 about what should we be doing at the Department
5 of Justice to assist you and support you.
6 So why don't you fire away at me.
7 Yes, sir.
8 MALE VOICE: One problem that we've
9 encountered in Alabama is, we've recently had a
10 bill in Alabama that allowed for sheriffs to
11 incarcerate juveniles that are involved in
12 criminal activities, allowed to incarcerate
13 juveniles for a maximum of seven days and then
14 transfer them back to the juvenile detention
15 facilities.
16 The one problem we ran into
17 immediately, the federal regulations regarding
18 housing of juveniles of (inaudible). That's
19 something that needs to be looked at. If the
20 states are going to try to have (inaudible)
21 incarcerate juveniles in county detention
22 facilities, we must have some parity between
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1 federal regulations and state regulations to
2 allow them to do that.
3 We came back and got the Attorney
4 General (inaudible) to allow us to do so.
5 There are those who feel -- there are some of
6 us who feel we're in violation of it because of
7 the Federal statutes regarding housing of
8 juveniles. And that is a problem I think we
9 will have down the road.
10 ATTORNEY GENERAL RENO: That we have
11 tried to do with the four-core protections, the
12 four fundamental protections that Congress
13 established, that the incarceration in
14 detention facilities of juveniles, the
15 imprisonment, the sight and sound, and the
16 disproportion of minority in custody is found
17 in both organizations, and try to hear from you
18 through hearings, through informal contacts,
19 and otherwise how might we adapt regulations
20 that made these -- turn these requirements more
21 flexible.
22 What I'd like to do is make sure we
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1 get your name, follow up on the issue, get to
2 the benefit of your thought, and do whatever
3 would be appropriate as a follow-up. But this
4 is a continuing matter of concern, and it will
5 be very much a part of the concern expressed in
6 the whole legislation. And it's something that
7 we need to make sure that we're in close
8 communication on. So, Ken or --
9 MALE VOICE: Mr. President, do police
10 have to identify themselves if they ask a
11 question?
12 MALE VOICE: (Inaudible)
13 ATTORNEY GENERAL RENO: Yes. Yes
14 sir.
15 MALE VOICE: Sheriff (inaudible),
16 Marshall Town, Iowa.
17 Ms. Reno, our office is very small.
18 We're in a very rural environment in the State
19 of Iowa. And three years ago we had four 15
20 year olds come up to the State of Missouri and
21 plunge, and cut, and shoot a woman to death
22 just to get her car.
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1 What I'm bringing here, well, I
2 guess, may be asking for your help, or the
3 Federal Government's help, is we had some major
4 discussion on something I thought was very,
5 very simple. And it had to deal with juvenile
6 rights.
7 When we went into the State of
8 Missouri, we followed their administrative
9 rights procedure. The mandates Miranda I
10 always thought crossed the whole country.
11 However, when I got back to Iowa we
12 were shot at, if you will, from the courts
13 because we did not file Iowa's administrative
14 right's procedure. It's still Miranda, it's
15 just done slightly different.
16 We just drug this case out for an
17 enormously long period of time, about two years
18 at a great cost to my office for housing these
19 juveniles.
20 What I don't quite understand is,
21 recently we had a kidnapping and rape situation
22 where they went into Canada. And your office,
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1 the southern district of Iowa, Mr. Dickerson,
2 did a very good job in helping us bringing this
3 person back with no difficulty at all from
4 another country.
5 I just wonder if there might be
6 something the Federal Government can help to do
7 to kind of stabilize this administrative
8 procedure whereby the rights, if you will, are
9 the same across the country as I always
10 thought.
11 ATTORNEY GENERAL RENO: That is a
12 fascinating issue that has not been presented
13 to me. And we will follow up on it carefully.
14 Marshall Town, Iowa.
15 MALE VOICE: Yes, Ma'am.
16 ATTORNEY GENERAL RENO: We will be
17 back in touch with you on that. I will also
18 raise the issue with the State Chief Justices
19 Conference and with the National Association of
20 Attorney Generals to see what we can do to
21 perhaps streamline that whole -- assure the
22 fundamental protections, but avoid the
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1 pitfalls.
2 You raise another interesting point
3 that we'd like to work with you on. I see
4 crime becoming more and more international in
5 these consequences, whether it be juvenile
6 crime, or otherwise with cyberspace before us,
7 and we're going to have to reach beyond our
8 borders in many instances with the Internet,
9 borders are going to become meaningless.
10 It is going to become extremely
11 important, when we have a hacker hacking at
12 your bank in Marshall Town, to know where he is
13 in Paris. And so we're going to need to form
14 new partnerships that mean new concepts of
15 federalism.
16 Again, we'd like to do it, Sheriff,
17 the right way, attending to the states and to
18 the local community's interest that uses the
19 Federal Government as a support to gain the
20 cooperation of foreign authorities. But we'll
21 follow up on the issues of the states right
22 away. Thank you.
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1 MALE VOICE: Thank you.
2 ATTORNEY GENERAL RENO: Yes, sir.
3 MALE VOICE: In the follow-up section
4 -- and I'm Mike Robinson, (inaudible) Michigan,
5 and also third vice president of ICC.
6 With regard to international times
7 and (inaudible) we talked before about the sale
8 of strong encryption technology, and know that
9 there is a bill that we introduced again,
10 towards exports and technology, using the
11 exports and technology.
12 And, as you know, it's vitally
13 important that we maintain some control and
14 ability to get it into those -- that
15 information and to have the key escrow
16 capability to examine that information.
17 ATTORNEY GENERAL RENO: I couldn't
18 agree more with you, Sir. This is one of the
19 topics that is -- I didn't talk with you-all
20 about it because I would be singing to the
21 choir. But this is something that I have tried
22 to raise. I urge that you raise it in your
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1 communities.
2 I think people -- and as you raise it
3 -- let me tell you what I have found when I
4 first talk with people. They say, what do you
5 mean, I don't want the FBI butting into my
6 business. And I explain, look, if somebody
7 stole trade secrets from you right now, and
8 stored them in their computer, and it was not
9 encrypted, the FBI would get a search warrant
10 and go search the computer and get the evidence
11 of the crime and, usually, the victim will be
12 very pleased with the process.
13 But if you have a search warrant and
14 you can't bust the computer, that's a different
15 problem. Oh, I see. But I don't want them
16 wire-tapping me. And I say right now the FBI,
17 local sheriffs in most jurisdictions can go get
18 a wire-tap order, and this is the way you do
19 it, and they just put it into the wire. This
20 is permitting them to do it according to modern
21 technology.
22 And so take the time to explain to
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1 people that the processes are already there.
2 And that's what protects us against drug
3 dealers. That's what enables us to catch them.
4 That's what enables us to catch the people who
5 steal from these corporations that might
6 otherwise be objecting.
7 But be very careful in stressing to
8 people that we're not asking for new authority
9 to snoop, we're asking for the authority to
10 keep up with technology.
11 MALE VOICE: Ms. Reno, I'm Sheriff
12 Pat McGowan from Minnesota. I represent a
13 colony in the excess of a million people. One
14 of the major problems we have in the urban area
15 is the in influx of gangs.
16 One of the biggest stumbling blocks
17 is that we have we have an influx of gangs
18 coming in is to be able to access Federal
19 welfare records for investigating purposes, and
20 drive-by shooting, murder, drug investigations.
21 And you simply can't get into these
22 without a search warrant. If anybody's that
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1 done investigation on it, you go to a drive-by
2 shooting, you go to a murder scene, and
3 somebody says yes, someone said they just came
4 from so and so to here -- last name of McGowan.
5 Where do you look? We get great
6 cooperation from the local utility companies
7 for new hook-ups. But we go to the Government
8 to check on benefits, and we cannot access the
9 records.
10 ATTORNEY GENERAL RENO: I will
11 follow-up on that and address the issue and see
12 what we can do.
13 MALE VOICE: General (inaudible).
14 I'm the sheriff of Massachusetts, (inaudible)
15 County. Frivolous suits, those things that
16 sheriffs and small jurisdictions have to deal
17 with on regular basis. The states have
18 attorney generals that are assigned to various
19 corrections and what-have-you, or they can
20 provide it.
21 At the local level, the county level
22 in many instances, determined by the amount of
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1 money that is available to the sheriff to
2 protect himself, his department and officers
3 and those kinds of things. Frivolous suits are
4 clogging our courts throughout the country.
5 And is there a way that we can look
6 at that so that local jurisdictions can get
7 some help with this. It's, as you know,
8 General, extremely expensive. And, of course,
9 the Federal Government welcomes the suits
10 because they turn money. (Inaudible)
11 ATTORNEY GENERAL RENO: Not recently.
12 MALE VOICE: The rest of us have to
13 do it the old fashioned way. This is really
14 something that has to be looked at. And maybe
15 your office -- I know they've already done it
16 under your leadership in certain areas, but
17 what happens is at the local level,
18 particularly when it has to do with
19 incarceration in local lock-ups or at the
20 county jails (inaudible) of corrections --
21 ATTORNEY GENERAL RENO: Sheriff
22 Hathaway, what I think we might do, I will ask
33
1 somebody, you're not gone yet are you?
2 (Laughter)
3 ATTORNEY GENERAL RENO: -- to get
4 back to Bud. We might put together a small
5 working group of smaller county sheriffs to see
6 what we can do to look at the Prisoner Location
7 Reform Act and we can see if there are steps
8 that we can take.
9 Would that be agreeable?
10 MALE VOICE: Thank you.
11 MALE VOICE: I'm Steve Oldridge. I'm
12 the sheriff of (inaudible) county in Florida.
13 One of the things I wanted to talk to this
14 group, as much as you, is about a program that
15 we've got that really has worked out well with
16 our U.S. Attorney. It's called the MVP
17 program. It's got nothing to do with the most
18 valuable player.
19 It's about major (inaudible) program.
20 And we entered in what we found was, that we're
21 getting the same people and, again, that have
22 long, long rap sheets that we don't have
34
1 through our state, we have sentencing
2 guidelines. And you, in our state, can steal 9
3 cars before you go off and qualify for prison.
4 So we've entered into an agreement
5 where we go with the U.S. Attorney. We try to
6 find a Federal hook on these folks. And we try
7 to limit it to a 100 in our community, real bad
8 offenders, they're your repeat offenders. They
9 come back again and again. And it's worked
10 very well.
11 ATTORNEY GENERAL RENO: I will tell
12 Mr. Wal --
13 MALE VOICE: Patterson.
14 ATTORNEY GENERAL RENO: Patterson.
15 MALE VOICE: Mike.
16 ATTORNEY GENERAL RENO: I will tell
17 Mike. And this is an example of what we're
18 trying to do. We're not taking these cases to
19 get credit.
20 MALE VOICE: Right.
21 ATTORNEY GENERAL RENO: It's a
22 partnership. The same thing is true in Boston.
35
1 The U.S. Attorney and the local prosecutor will
2 sit down, representatives from both their
3 offices, go through all the gun or gang cases
4 that come up from these certain areas. You
5 take this one, I take this one, you take this
6 one, we'll do better with this one. And it's a
7 sharing. But we've got to make sure that
8 everybody is involved in the process so that it
9 doesn't look like one's trying to put one up.
10 And we have got to be careful too.
11 Because if we come into court, into Federal
12 Court with some little gun case, the judge is
13 going to look at us and not take us seriously.
14 So it's a balance. And it's
15 something that we can, I think, work together
16 on. I'd appreciate your -- any examples of
17 this. I will talk to Mike and make sure that
18 we share with other U.S. Attorneys.
19 But it really makes a difference. We
20 did it in Dade County. We took three-time
21 armed career criminals to the Federal Court all
22 the time. And it was nice to know that they
36
1 were going away.
2 MALE VOICE: Amen.
3 MALE VOICE: Chief Gill Curley, in
4 Maryland Heights, Missouri. In the
5 community-oriented policing program we take
6 great pride in working in the school district,
7 every school resource office, and so forth,
8 working with the school. And with your
9 emphasis on juvenile crime, we think the
10 juveniles -- one of the things we have found is
11 that it's a sensitive issue.
12 But when we're dealing with some
13 special needs children that have behavior
14 problems, or assaultive behavior in school,
15 Missouri has enacted a pretty far-reaching new
16 juvenile bill, sharing of information for
17 prosecution of juveniles and adults and so
18 forth.
19 The schools are mandated, I
20 understand, by some kind of federal law in the
21 educational department. And that prevents them
22 from disciplining the behavior of students that
37
1 fit into this special category.
2 It will be very helpful to us if
3 somebody can look into that and see if
4 something can be done so that discipline can be
5 maintained. You talk about alternative
6 schools, and these type of resources --
7 ATTORNEY GENERAL RENO: We'll
8 follow-up on that, because we have addressed
9 the issue of sharing information of the Federal
10 law that applies to something similar to the
11 Department of Education. But we'll follow-up
12 on this as well.
13 MALE VOICE: Ms. Reno, I want to
14 compliment -- (inaudible) Sheriff of
15 (inaudible) Virginia. The Fifth Circuit U.S.
16 Attorney has been really helping. Not only the
17 U.S. Attorney, but the Federal Agency,
18 (inaudible).
19 I'd like to comment on this
20 (inaudible) universal hiring. We've been
21 trying to get some information, and it looks we
22 have to keep filling out the form. They say
38
1 the sheriff of the next level.
2 You mind giving us an update on that?
3 ATTORNEY GENERAL RENO: Let me have
4 somebody, because the best way to do it,
5 Sheriff, is to have -- I'll get your name, and
6 we'll have somebody follow-up with you right
7 away and just see what the problem is. You
8 shouldn't have to be asking me where you stand.
9 We try to make the COPS program just as
10 responsive as we possibly can. So we'll
11 follow-up.
12 MALE VOICE: Yes. My name is Ted
13 Bursuel, and I'm with Bureau of Indian Affairs.
14 And I wanted to publicly thank the Attorney
15 General for her work for making the Indian
16 criminal justice system just that much better.
17 The Attorney General has done a lot for the
18 Indian country. There is still a lot that
19 needs to be done.
20 On the same lines, there's Chief
21 Sanders of ICP, certainly it's allowed Indian
22 countries to come into the two organizations,
39
1 in fact, the four organizations. We have an
2 Indian affairs office. And I am certainly
3 grateful for that. And, lastly, special thanks
4 goes to Kevin DeGregory who's the Deputy
5 Attorney General of the Criminal Division, for
6 certainly going out of his way to make our
7 lives easier out in the Indian country.
8 We are a new jurisdiction. Certain
9 criminals do not respect jurisdictions. And it
10 just behooves us to all work together and
11 (inaudible) that we're proud to be part of this
12 organization.
13 ATTORNEY GENERAL RENO: Well, we
14 appreciate all that you do. Thank you very
15 much.
16 Could I turn the tables for just a
17 minute and ask you on a continuing question. I
18 think Pat Sullivan will tell you yesterday, and
19 I don't know whether he's still there, but some
20 of the description from the very thoughtful new
21 members of the subcommittees that participate
22 in this juvenile crime legislation hearing
40
1 talked about the proliferation of guns among
2 young people. And then when you ask young
3 people why you have a gun, I need it for
4 protection, and that you're seeing them in
5 elementary schools.
6 I would be very grateful if you will
7 share with us programs that you believe are
8 on-going in your local jurisdiction, programs
9 that are successful in getting guns out of the
10 hands of kids -- and the person, Kent -- who
11 should be the clearinghouse for this.
12 Kent Marcus, who is my counselor on
13 youth violence, would be the person. If you
14 could just send it to the Department of
15 Justice, call us, let us know through Bud or
16 Dan. It is so important that we are able to
17 give to others examples of what's working. And
18 it's amazing how you put out one example of
19 what's working, and how people want it, and the
20 benefit that they get from it.
21 So I would appreciate very much any
22 suggestions you have.
41
1 MALE VOICE: Well, I'd like to
2 mention that, just out of the way just a good
3 bit.
4 ATTORNEY GENERAL RENO: Yes.
5 MALE VOICE: I'd like to mention two
6 points that we discussed earlier just for your
7 information.
8 One, a while ago you were talking
9 about the district attorneys, and they were
10 asking for money and said that powers are
11 taking care of, I believe officers on the
12 street and corrections. I suspect that was a
13 construction bill that came out of the --
14 construction money that came out of the crime
15 bill.
16 And the concern that we had about
17 that construction money was that there was a
18 maximum. The money went to the states, and
19 there was a maximum of 15 percent, a maximum to
20 parishes and counties, which is not a whole lot
21 of money. And simply a little (inaudible) of
22 correction. And I know that administrations
42
1 are supposed to provide grants. I understand.
2 But that's the way the money is coming down
3 right now.
4 That little change in technical
5 correction might work from maximum to minimum.
6 It might help.
7 (Laughter)
8 It certainly affects not only
9 sheriffs, but it affects chiefs and police
10 officers because that's where we have the
11 felony offenders that they arrest, and,
12 obviously, the chief of police and the police
13 officer arrest the felony offenders.
14 Also the block grant money that came
15 down that gave money to cities and parishes and
16 counties based on part one violent crimes.
17 They listed about seven categories that the
18 money could be expended, and not one of those
19 categories was corrections, which right now it,
20 probably, if you ask the sheriffs what's your
21 biggest problem, I think every one of us would
22 say our jails.
43
1 I know the crowd, the need for
2 additional space, and you ask the chief of
3 police, they will tell you the same thing, that
4 we would want -- that they would want the
5 sheriffs to have adequate bed space for those
6 federal offenders that they arrest. Those are
7 the two critical points I have.
8 ATTORNEY GENERAL RENO: Well, let's
9 follow up on those. I think all of this is
10 going to be in here next, don't you think,
11 Kent, now. And we need -- it's going to
12 require close communication. But I think it's
13 going to be -- I hope. I've got my fingers
14 crossed. It's going to be a different world
15 this time -- a meeting over here, a meeting
16 here.
17 I think they're going to be
18 thoughtful (inaudible) meetings, where we
19 discuss it and try to the shape the best
20 legislation possible.
21 Thank you.
22 MR. HATHAWAY: We appreciate you
44
1 coming very much.
2 (Applause)
3 (The Attorney General's Address
4 was concluded.)
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