[Senate Hearing 110-563]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 110-563
NEW STRATEGIES FOR COMBATING VIOLENT CRIME: DRAWING LESSONS FROM RECENT
EXPERIENCE
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
SEPTEMBER 10, 2008
__________
Serial No. J-110-116
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
44-972 PDF WASHINGTON DC: 2008
---------------------------------------------------------------------
For Sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office
Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800; (202) 512�091800
Fax: (202) 512�092104 Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC 20402�090001
COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont, Chairman
EDWARD M. KENNEDY, Massachusetts ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania
JOSEPH R. BIDEN, Jr., Delaware ORRIN G. HATCH, Utah
HERB KOHL, Wisconsin CHARLES E. GRASSLEY, Iowa
DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California JON KYL, Arizona
RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin JEFF SESSIONS, Alabama
CHARLES E. SCHUMER, New York LINDSEY O. GRAHAM, South Carolina
RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois JOHN CORNYN, Texas
BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas
SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, Rhode Island TOM COBURN, Oklahoma
Bruce A. Cohen, Chief Counsel and Staff Director
Stephanie A. Middleton, Republican Staff Director
Nicholas A. Rossi, Republican Chief Counsel
C O N T E N T S
----------
STATEMENTS OF COMMITTEE MEMBERS
Page
Biden, Hon. Joseph R., Jr., a U.S. Senator from the State of
Delaware, prepared statement................................... 29
Feingold, Hon. Russell D., a U.S. Senator from the State of
Wisconsin, prepared statement.................................. 52
Leahy, Hon. Patrick J., a U.S. Senator from the State of Vermont. 1
prepared statement........................................... 64
Specter, Hon. Arlen, a U.S. Senator from the State of
Pennsylvania................................................... 3
Whitehouse, Hon. Sheldon, a U.S. Senator from the State of Rhode
Island......................................................... 4
WITNESSES
Blumstein, Alfred, Professor, H. John Heinz III School of Public
Policy and Management, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania................................................... 6
Esserman, Dean M., Colonel, Chief of Police, Providence Police
Department, Providence, Rhode Island........................... 11
Kelling, George L., Professor, School of Criminal Justice,
Rutgers Newark University...................................... 16
Summey, James, Reverend, English Road Baptist Church, High Point,
North Carolina................................................. 14
Travis, Jeremy, President, John Jay College of Criminal Justice,
City University of New York, New York, New York................ 8
SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD
Blumstein, Alfred, Professor, H. John Heinz III School of Public
Policy and Management, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, statement........................................ 31
Esserman, Dean M., Colonel, Chief of Police, Providence Police
Department, Providence, Rhode Island, statement and attachments 38
Kelling, George L., Professor, School of Criminal Justice,
Rutgers Newark University, statement........................... 54
Rosenfeld, Richard, Curators Professor and Director of the Ph.D.
Program, and Brian Oliver, Ph.D. Student, Department of
Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Missouri-St.
Louis, St. Louis, Missouri, joint statement.................... 66
Summey, James, Reverend, English Road Baptist Church, High Point,
North Carolina, statement...................................... 90
Travis, Jeremy, President, John Jay College of Criminal Justice,
City University of New York, New York, New York, statement and
chart.......................................................... 94
NEW STRATEGIES FOR COMBATING VIOLENT CRIME: DRAWING LESSONS FROM RECENT
EXPERIENCE
----------
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2008
U.S. Senate,
Committee on the Judiciary,
Washington, D.C.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:07 a.m., in
room SD-562, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Patrick J.
Leahy, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Leahy, Whitehouse, and Specter.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. PATRICK J. LEAHY, A U.S. SENATOR FROM
THE STATE OF VERMONT
Chairman Leahy. Good morning. The Committee will come to
order.
Today the Committee turns to the critical issue of violent
crime. While we saw a great reduction in violent crime in the
1990s, that seems to have suddenly stalled.
The rate of homicide per person in the United States is
nearly six times that of Germany, four times greater than Great
Britain or Canada--and I watch that in Canada because my home
is less than an hour's drive from the Canadian border. Since
2000, the number of murders and armed robberies has remained
nearly unchanged across the Nation.
But the statistics do not tell the whole story. Nationwide
trends no longer effectively explain what is truly happened in
our cities and towns. Too many communities have seen a
resurgence of violent crimes, and one such community is
Rutland, Vermont. Senator Specter and I went up last spring to
hold a hearing there to study that city's effective responses
to a disturbing spike in violent crime, and picked Rutland
because we are just not used to violent crime in Vermont. And
there we had had a sudden spike of it. I again want to publicly
thank Senator Specter for taking the time to come up to
Rutland.
Now, some communities have seen declines in violent crimes
since 2000, and some major cities, like New York, that have the
resources to try out new strategies, they are reporting
historically low crime rates. I want to look behind the
national statistics and trends. I want to know about new
community-based strategies that have proven to be more
substantial than ever, or they could well lead to another era
of substantial crime reduction.
I know Senator Biden, the former Chairman of this
Committee, he knows these issues very well. He has been at the
forefront of these crime-fighting issues, with his leadership
in writing and passing legislation to create and fund the COPS
program and other innovative programs saw a drop in violent
crime we saw through the 1990s. And I appreciate Senator
Specter calling him a leader on crime control. He has long
supported Senator Biden's efforts.
Of course, we are fortunate in this Committee to have
Senator Specter with his own experience as a prosecutor and
Senator Whitehouse with his experience as a prosecutor.
Violent crime statistics are a new disturbing dilemma. The
rates of incarceration over the past 8 years has spiked to
levels once thought unimaginable. We imprison more than 2.3
million adults in America. That is more than any other Nation
in the world. For the first time ever, 1 every 100 adult men in
America is in prison or in jail. The rates are even more
startling for certain minorities. For Hispanics, 1 out of every
36 men is locked up; African-Americans, 1 out of every 15.
Black men between the ages of 20 and 34, it is 1 out of every
9. And if simply locking people up was the answer, that would
be very simple. But we lock them up and crime does not drop. In
fact, in places where we have locked up the most offenders,
crime continues to cripple our communities, particularly in
poor and minority neighborhoods.
I have always felt when I was prosecutor that this had to
be something all of us had to get a handle on. But most veteran
police chiefs will tell you, as Los Angeles Police Chief Bill
Bratton told this Committee earlier this year, you just cannot
arrest your way out of a problem. We can have real success in
combating violent crimes if we focus on our communities.
Supported by the COPS program, during the last administration
we saw community policing do a great deal. And new community
initiatives have focused on combating youth violence. I think
of High Point, North Carolina, where the local police had all
but written off the West End. For decades, it was dominated by
drugs and prostitution, but in 2002, they decided on a new
approach building on earlier models proven successful in the
Boston Cease Fire initiative. And I remember Senator Kennedy, a
valued and the most senior member of this Committee, telling us
over and over again to look at what they are doing with Cease
Fire and how effective it was. Instead of just doing more
sweeps and arresting the usual suspects, police met with local
community leaders, clergy, service providers, united all the
parts of the community to attack the problem together.
One of our witnesses, Reverend Summey, who is here, is
going to tell us the results are clear. Within weeks, drug
dealers and prostitutes were gone from the street. Crime fell
by more than 50 percent. Five years later, it is still down.
Now, it involved more than just the police making arrests.
We cannot make the mistake of thinking this is simply a problem
for the police. The police will do their job. But it needs the
community, it needs the business community, families,
educators, religious leaders. All have got to work on doing
this and have a real spirit of unity.
[The prepared statement of Senator Leahy appears as a
submission for the record.]
So I am not telling these witnesses anything they do not
know, and I notice we have been joined by Congressman Kennedy
of Rhode Island. He has a wonderful first name, Congressman
Patrick Kennedy.
[Laughter.]
Chairman Leahy. I have known and admired him for so many
years. I am delighted to have him here. And I see, Colonel, you
know him, and I assume you know him in your professional
capacity, not because he has been one of those miscreants you
might have back in Rhode Island.
[Laughter.]
Chairman Leahy. Senator Specter?
STATEMENT OF HON. ARLEN SPECTER, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE
OF PENNSYLVANIA
Senator Specter. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank you
for convening this hearing on this very important subject with
a very distinguished array of witnesses who are here today.
I have long believed that we could cut violent crime very
substantially if we did a few things. One is to incarcerate
career criminals for life, and the second facet is to have
realistic rehabilitation for those who go to jail but who are
going to be released.
When I was district attorney of Philadelphia, I found the
recidivists were the big problem, the robbers and the burglars.
And one of the first bills I introduced, which ultimately
became law after having help from Senator Thurmond and Senator
Leahy and others, was the armed career criminal bill, which
provides the life sentence in the Federal system. It is 15
years to life for criminals who commit three major offenses.
The issue of realistic rehabilitation, we all know and
understand that it takes tremendous resources to have a
starting point of detoxification, since we know that 70 percent
of those arrested have either a drug or alcohol problem, and
then training, education, literacy training to start with, and
then education, so they do not go through the revolving door,
the recidivist problem. And we know that they are going to be
released unless they are career criminals and have life
sentences. But that takes resources, which we have never been
willing to commit.
The cost of crime is really incalculable. Some people put
it at $500 billion, or half a trillion dollars. I frankly think
that is low. And if it is accurate, it does not cover the pain
and suffering or loss of life or the terror which grips cities
and communities where awaiting some strange sound at night
worrying about burglars or where you walk down the streets even
in the biggest cities with very substantial police control.
More recently, a number of us have banded together to try
to get mentoring. We find that there is a resurgence of crime
problems from young people who come from one-parent families,
and even then the mother is working and there is no guidance.
And if we can provide a surrogate parent, something could be
done. And we have appropriated very substantial sums of money
to try to promote the mentoring issue. So these are issues
which we really need to tackle in a much more determined way
than we have so far.
I regret that I will not be able to stay to hear the
witnesses, but I have staff here and I will review the
transcript. I want to pay special note to Dr. Alfred Blumstein,
a 40-year veteran of criminal law expertise from Carnegie
Mellon, and the other very distinguished witnesses I know have
a great deal to contribute on this subject.
As you may know, I have multiple obligations. Right now the
Defense Appropriations Subcommittee is meeting. Senator Leahy
is a member of that Committee as well, so we will split up,
Patrick, and you cover the important stuff, and I will go down
and try to make a contribution on Defense Appropriations.
Thank you very much.
Chairman Leahy. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. It is
a time with many conflicts. Fortunately, we have the staffs of
all the Senators, appropriate Senators here.
Senator Specter. Patrick, one addendum to your comment
about Rutland. I think that hearing in Rutland that this
Committee had was a very important hearing because it focused
on small communities. And too often we think of crime as a big-
city problem. And it is nice to have the Chairman of the
Judiciary Committee in your State because he can give a little
extra attention. I used to do that for Pennsylvania. Maybe I
will again someday.
Chairman Leahy. I will come join you.
Senator Specter. Well, you already have, Pat. But that was
a very important hearing, and you should have seen the turnout.
If we had a proportionate turnout, we would have to put this in
the basketball arena, but the place was mobbed. People were
really interested to see what the U.S. Senate Judiciary
Committee was going to do. And it was symbolic of the terrible
problem which grips the whole country, not just the big cities.
Thank you again.
Chairman Leahy. Thank you. I appreciate that. Again, as we
know, especially in small towns, we are used to not locking our
doors. We are used to not worrying about things. And when
violence hits and people get shot and knifed and killed, it is
doubly shocking.
Senator Whitehouse, I know that you have a constituent--
well, now you have two constituents here, but did you want to
say something before we begin?
STATEMENT OF HON. SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE
STATE OF RHODE ISLAND
Senator Whitehouse. Yes, Mr. Chairman. I would be very,
very proud to have the chance to introduce and say a few words
about Colonel Esserman, who is the Chief of Police of our
capital city of Providence, and I suspect that his presence
here is what has attracted my colleague and the senior member
of our delegation Patrick Kennedy here. We are very honored to
have Representative Kennedy with us, and, of course, I am
keenly aware that I am sitting next to his father's seat here,
and I am looking forward to having him back in January, as he
promised.
He has been a lawyer, he has been a prosecutor, he has been
general counsel to police agencies. He was the assistant chief
in New Haven, the chief of the New York MTA Metro North
Department, the chief of the Stamford, Connecticut, Police
Department. And then he came to the city of Providence. And I
had been the U.S. Attorney for Rhode Island, I had been the
Attorney General. I had had intense, as you can imagine, Mr.
Chairman, relations with the Providence Police Department. And
it would be fair and probably an understatement to describe the
time as a troubled police department. Cars were unaccounted
for. Kilo bricks of cocaine mysteriously disappeared, and then
as mysteriously reappeared. Gold and jewelry from the evidence
impound went missing. Promotion exams were provided in advance
to favored members of the department. Civil rights and criminal
prosecutions were as likely to be brought against members of
the Providence Police Department as with members of the
Providence Police Department, and politics ruled throughout the
department. And it was a challenging atmosphere. I have many
friends in the Providence Police Department who had the
extraordinary patience and courage to hang in there through
these very dark years. And Chief Esserman's arrival brought an
end to that period of darkness. He demanded political
independence and received it from a bright new reform Mayor,
David Cicilline, and began the work of restoring the Providence
Police Department.
And I can tell you firsthand from my friends on the force
who hung in there how relieved and gratified they are to be
able to represent a department that they are now proud of. I
can tell you that this is a man who sees his work as a police
officer in the larger context of the social fabric in which the
police operate, in the larger context of the human nature of
the people with whom the police must deal, and in the larger
context of the community structure that supports police law
enforcement efforts. And he has been extremely successful in
all those ways. And it is not just talk. It is real results.
I have a list that shows some of the successes that have
occurred in Providence in the last 5 years under his watch:
murder rate down 39 percent; rape down 64 percent; robbery down
30 percent; aggravated assault down 17 percent; burglary down
21 percent; motor vehicle theft down 44 percent; larceny down
28 percent; 14,000 major crimes in 2002; now under 10,000 in
2007.
So it is proof that when you go about police work in a
sensible way, when you do it right, you get real results. And
as I think all of our witnesses know, these accomplishments
were done against a tide in which the numbers had been
increasing across the country in the same period, in large part
because of very bad policy choices made by the Bush
administration to emphasize on homeland security with vast
resources, a new, entirely unmanageable Federal Department,
billions of dollars poured all over the country for improbable
vehicles and things like that--all while hometown security was
being sacrificed. And at least in Rhode Island, as important as
homeland security is, the hometown security of 5,000 less
crimes in our capital city will make a larger difference in the
lives of real families than some small police department have a
$250,000 radiation-proof astronaut recovery vehicle, or
whatever it is that they have been getting.
Cops on the streets and a sensible relationship with the
community is the key, and Chief Esserman has produced real
results with that strategy, and I am very proud to welcome him
to this Committee.
Chairman Leahy. Thank you, Senator Whitehouse. And I also
understand that the Chief makes it a point to periodically walk
a beat himself. I commend you for that.
Dr. Alfred Blumstein is the J. Erik Jonsson Professor of
Urban Systems and Operations Research, former Dean of the H.
John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management at
Carnegie Mellon, award-winning researcher and author in the
field of criminology. He was recently awarded the 2007
Stockholm Prize in Criminology; served as Past President of the
American Society of Criminology; served as Chairman of the
Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency, the State's
criminal justice planning agency; served on the Pennsylvania
Commission on Sentencing; a bachelor's degree in engineering
and physics and a doctorate in operations research from
Cornell.
I can see why Senator Specter wanted to welcome you here.
Please go ahead with your testimony. I am going to ask each one
of you to speak, and then we are going to ask some questions.
STATEMENT OF ALFRED BLUMSTEIN, PROFESSOR, H. JOHN HEINZ III
SCHOOL OF PUBLIC POLICY AND MANAGEMENT, CARNEGIE MELLON
UNIVERSITY, PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA
Mr. Blumstein. Thank you very much, Senator Leahy. I am
very honored to be before this Committee, which has had this
wonderful record of trying to bring intelligence, rationality,
thoughtfulness, and care to the whole issue of crime and
criminal justice.
What I want to do is focus first on some of the crime
trends that we have seen and use that to highlight some of the
lessons learned. In my testimony, I have a graph of murder and
robbery rates in the United States, and I have some spare
copies if anyone needs them. What we saw was a peak in about
1980, which was very much of a demographic phenomenon. Crime
rates came down rather sharply after that, and were going to
continue coming down until crack made its appearance in the
early 1980s. And then we saw major efforts at trying to deal
with the crack problem by locking people up to a massive
degree. Unfortunately, the market was resilient and recruited
replacements for those people that were taken off the street.
It is easy to think of the pathological rapist being taken
off the street, and when that happens his crimes are also taken
off the street with him. That's an incapacitation.
When we take the drug seller off, a replacement can easily
come in. The reason crime started going up in 1985 was that
those replacements were young kids, and they had to carry guns,
and they were far less restrained and far more dangerous than
the people they replaced. And they were tightly networked with
each other. So, one of the unintended consequences of that
massive incarceration of crack dealers was the recruitment of
replacements and rising crime, so that we had about a 25-
percent increase in violence between 1985 when those
replacements started to come in until a peak in about 1993.
Then it became evident that crack was pretty dangerous,
unpleasant, undesirable, and so we saw a major turndown in new
users of crack, and so we saw a major reduction in the 1990s of
about over 40 percent in both murder and robbery, which are the
two best measured crimes of violence and certainly the two most
serious ones.
In 2000, the rates flattened out. This flat trend in murder
and robbery has persisted within a percent or two since 2000
until 2007. Now, that does not mean that the entire Nation is
flat, but it means that there were real national trends in
demography and in crack markets. But what we are seeing now is
individual city phenomena, much more local rather than
responding to big national trends. Some cities have been going
up, some have been coming down, some down and up, others up and
down. So it is much more a local phenomenon, and that is where
the help is needed at this point.
There is a lot of learning going on in some cities. There
is a lot of experimentation going on. And it is clear that
there are opportunities to tap into the developing knowledge.
And it strikes me that it would be very desirable for the
Congress to encourage the Office of Justice Programs to build
an evaluation center that will evaluate some of these trends
and accompany that with a technical assistance function that
will go out to the cities that are seeing spurts of violence.
When we see the spurts, it is often one of two cases. One
is new violence associated with drug markets, since drug
markets typically resolve their disputes by violence because
they cannot go to the courts. What we see is a major return
from prison of some of the former drug dealers, and often they
generate violence by their demand to regain their territory.
A second major factor when we see a spurt is what Elijah
Anderson talks about in his book ``Code of the Street,'' where
he studied the inner-city areas. He finds that most people
there are decent people, but then there are what he calls the
``street people''. They have little prospect for the future,
they see little opportunity for themselves; and all they see is
the opportunity to engage in violence especially if someone
disrespects them. If we could only do something to shape those
folks up, opportunities abound there.
What we need is a major focus on--in addition to this
technical assistance, we have got to build some capability for
the future through research, statistics, and development, and
we have the opportunity to do that through the National
Institute of Justice and the Bureau of Justice Statistics. That
has been lying fallow for the past administration, and there is
a real need for building some knowledge about how to control
violence better, and to do that requires building their budget.
They have under $50 million for the whole criminal justice
system. Contrast that with the National Institute of Dental
Research, which has almost $400 million to deal with dental
issues.
It is clear that we need a depoliticization of that
research and statistics activity, and the Congress some years
ago made the NIJ and BJS independent of the political
environment in the Department of Justice. But in a
surreptitious move in the PATRIOT Act, that independence was
taken away. And so those agencies are no longer independent,
and more responsive to political pressures. I would encourage
the Congress to deal with the need to maintain that integrity
and independence as their program develops.
I would, furthermore, encourage the Congress in this era,
when we are at a crime rate situation that is lower than we
have seen since the 1960s, to consider more fundamental efforts
like getting at child development and other such issues. I
would encourage the Congress to take seriously the need for
bringing the technical capability that is showing up in various
places out to the smaller cities that are seeing spurts in
violence.
I thank you very much for the opportunity.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Blumstein appears as a
submission for the record.]
Chairman Leahy. I apologize for keeping you on the clock,
but we also have a bill of mine on the floor, if Senator
Whitehouse would help while I go back and forth.
Jeremy Travis is President of John Jay College of Criminal
Justice at the City University of New York. He worked for more
than three decades on criminal justice issues in positions with
the Justice Department and the New York City Police Department,
now in academia. He has been a leader in and out of Government
in developing new approaches to criminal justice policy. He
served from 1994 to 2000 as the Director of the National
Institute of Justice at the Department of Justice. He promoted
the Community-Oriented Policing Services, COPS program; Deputy
Commissioner of Legal Matters for the New York Police
Department; Chief Counsel for the Subcommittee on Criminal
Justice in the House of Representatives, and many other things.
Mr. Travis certainly knows his way around capital Hill.
Good to have you here, sir.
STATEMENT OF JEREMY TRAVIS, PRESIDENT, JOHN JAY COLLEGE OF
CRIMINAL JUSTICE, CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK, NEW YORK, NEW
YORK
Mr. Travis. Thank you very much, Senator, members of the
Committee. I am honored as well to be invited to offer some
thoughts this morning as the Committee undertakes this
important task of looking at violence in America, and I am very
honored to be on such a distinguished panel.
In my time before the Committee, I would like to offer
three perspectives on the current state of violence in America
and then offer three recommendations that might inform
discussions as we now look forward to a new administration and
a new Congress in the coming year.
As the Chairman said at the outset, even though we have
every reason to be pleased with the reduction in violence in
America over the past 15 years, we have no reason to be
complacent. On the contrary, I would like to offer as our
beginning perspective an international perspective, again,
underscored by the Chairman, that if we compare our rates of
violence to those in developed countries, we see that the rates
of homicide in America are four times the rates of homicide in
England and Wales, and in my testimony I have provided other
comparisons. This gives us, I think, reason to work much harder
to bring crime rates down, and particularly to focus on what is
a distinguishing characteristic in America, which is the
availability of illegal guns.
As both the Chairman and Dr. Blumstein pointed out, we have
a new phenomenon in the country, which is the second
perspective, which is a divergence of trends at the local level
from overall national trends. This has not been the case in the
past, but we are seeing now in some cities violence rates are
going up while in other cities they are going down quite
dramatically.
I offer two examples. If you look at the national data,
between 2005 and 2006 homicide rates increased slightly, by 1.8
percent; robbery rates increased slightly by 3 and 6 percent,
respectively. But in those same years, we saw homicides
decreasing by 25 percent in Dallas and 31 percent in Portland,
yet increasing 23 percent in Philadelphia and 25 percent in
Seattle. Similarly, robbery rates were essentially flat over
those 2 years in New York and Los Angeles, but increased by 44
percent and 63 percent in Milwaukee and Oakland.
We do not have a good understanding of why it is that the
local trends are diverging in the ways that they are, and we
need to have that understanding in order to develop a sound
policy.
I want to focus, however, on a third perspective on
violence in America, which is for me the most instructive for
the future policy directions of this Committee and the country.
Crime, as you know, is concentrated in urban America,
particularly in the poorest urban neighborhoods, which are
typically communities of color. In those communities, violence
is a daily fact of life. I will cite two illustrations that I
think make this point quite vividly.
A group of colleagues of mine in Rochester, New York, under
the prior administration did work on reducing violence in that
city and carried out an analysis by Professor John Klofas of
the Rochester Institute of Technology, which found that violent
crime was concentrated in a core urban area that he called the
``high-crime crescent.'' And my guess is we would find the same
phenomenon in every urban jurisdiction.
He then went on to calculate homicide rates in this part of
Rochester and did the following analysis in my testimony
comparing the overall homicide rate in the Nation, which was at
the time 8 per 100,000. He looked within the age group that is
of interest, 15- to 19-year-olds; it was triple that. He looked
at men within that age group; it was quadruple that, it was 36
per 100,000. He looked at African-American males in that age
group in Rochester; it was 264 per 100,000. And for black males
aged 15 to 19 in this high-crime crescent, the homicide rate
was 520 per 100,000, or 65 times the national rate.
So when talk about violence in America, we really do need
to focus our attention on those communities where violence is
most prevalent.
A second example, this one from Cincinnati, this is an
analysis conducted by my colleague, David Kennedy, and others
at the University of Cincinnati. It looked at gang networks in
Cincinnati and found that there were in that city 48 high-rate
offending groups--you can call them ``drug crews,'' you can
call them ``gangs,'' whatever--48 high-rate offending groups
with 1,100 members total. And these individuals, these groups,
were involved either as offenders and/or as victims in nearly
three-quarters of the homicides in Cincinnati.
So these studies from these two jurisdictions underscore
for me the importance of drilling down deep to look at the
phenomenon of violence as it is experienced at the street level
and in communities around the country, and this for me is the
central story of violence in America.
Let me turn my attention then to looking toward the future
and to make some recommendations, if I might, for activities
that this Committee might carry out in the coming years.
I have three categories of recommendations: one is for us
to develop a much better understanding of the problem of
violence in America; the second is to support proven
interventions; and the third is to continue to test new ideas.
If you look at other areas of social policy in America, we
have, in fact, a very limited ability to track, analyze, and
describe the phenomenon of violence. Our Uniform Crime Reports
from the FBI are typically released months after the close of
the year. The National Crime Victimization Survey, which
struggles for appropriations from Congress each year, is a
national survey that cannot capture local phenomena. And even
the ADAM program that we established under the Clinton
administration, which had a goal of looking at offender
patterns in 75 cities, has been cut back from the 35 we
established to 10 today. So we have a very anemic capability to
understand the phenomenon that is of interest to this
Committee.
So my first recommendation is that the new Congress work
with experts in the field to establish a robust way of
understanding and do research on local crime trends, and I have
some recommendations in my testimony.
The second recommendation is to support proven
interventions, and I am particularly impressed with the work of
Professor David Kennedy, who is now at John Jay, on developing
what was referred to by the Chairman as the Boston Ceasefire
project and referred to also in the Chairman's opening
statement by Operation--sorry, the High Point work that
Reverend Summey will talk about. Here we have a proven
intervention that has shown remarkable success. A couple
examples. We do see reducing homicide in Indianapolis by a
third; reducing homicide in neighborhoods in Chicago by 37
percent; and the work underway now in Cincinnati reducing
homicide associated with those violent groups I alluded to by
about half.
So we have every reason to believe that there are some
interventions that have proven successful. Work is also now
underway in Providence under the leadership of Colonel
Esserman. And it is, in my view, the obligation of the Federal
Government to help spread those successful strategies to
communities that are experiencing high rates of violence.
Again, in my testimony I have offered some ways to do that.
The second suggestion--or, rather, the third suggestion
here is for the Federal Government, as Dr. Blumstein
recommended, to continue to be the research and development
arm, the capacity that the Nation needs to test new ideas,
evaluate them rigorously, to help communities implement those
that are proven to be successful, not to waste taxpayer dollars
on frivolous ideas--and there are far too many of them in our
field--or pet projects that sometimes garner attention; rather,
to be a serious, scientific enterprise on behalf of the country
and to put the best minds of the country, whether in academia
or in practice, to work trying to design and develop and test
new approaches. If we do that, my expectation is that we can
bring the rates of violence significantly lower than they are
right now, and we could perhaps even approach those European
levels that should be our aspiration.
I thank you for your time and for your invitation.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Travis appears as a
submission for the record.]
Senator Whitehouse. [Presiding.] Thank you very much,
President Travis.
Chairman Leahy has been called away to make a statement on
the floor. As you can imagine, this is an unusually busy time.
He will return.
In the meantime, I think since I have already had the
opportunity to give an introduction to Colonel Esserman, I will
keep it short and simply call on him at this stage to share
with us his testimony. Colonel Esserman, welcome.
STATEMENT OF COLONEL DEAN M. ESSERMAN, CHIEF OF POLICE,
PROVIDENCE POLICE DEPARTMENT, PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND
Chief Esserman. Thank you to the Chairman and to Senator
Whitehouse. I wish my wife and children were here. What you
said, they would not believe it. Thank you.
[Laughter.]
Chief Esserman. I am grateful for the opportunity to
testify before your Committee, and I sit here in front of you
today as one of America's police chiefs. I have been the police
chief of Providence for 5-1/2 years, our State's capital, the
second largest city in New England and, unfortunately, one of
the poorer cities in America--in fact, among the five poorest
cities for children in America. And for too long we were also a
city that saw too much violence, especially violence among our
young, among our children; a city where too many children, our
children, were being shot, too many were being arrested, and,
too many were being buried.
I am proud to say that the men and women of the Providence
Police Department who I proudly represent today, known as
``Providence's Finest,'' have started to make a difference, to
turn the tide. For more than 5 years, crime has been going down
in Providence. Led by an energetic and reform-minded Mayor,
David Cicilline, the Providence Police Department has done more
than transform its strategies and tactics. The department has
undergone an extensive reengineering and has fundamentally
changed the way it thinks about itself and its work.
In the past, the department saw itself like many. Police
were like armed referees who kept an authoritative distance--to
the point of being almost anonymous--while trying to maintain
order in a community that was not their own.
In our reengineering efforts, we have adopted the lessons
learned over the past two decades in American policing of what
works.
First, we have embraced and instituted community policing,
decentralizing the department, and dividing the city into
neighborhood police districts. Each district has a community-
donated neighborhood substation office and a commander
accountable to the residents and to me.
Second, the management tool adopted by the department to
oversee our newly decentralized operations is weekly detective
and command staff meetings driven by timely and accurate crime
statistics--often known as the ``New York City Compstat
Model.'' Accountability is emphasized by detective and patrol
supervisors gathering weekly to review incidents, events,
coordinate activities, and share critical information.
Moreover, the department has embraced the important principles
embodied in Professor Kelling's work, well known as ``Broken
Windows.'' We focus our resources on serious violent crimes and
neighborhood quality-of-life offenses with equal efforts.
We take great pride in Providence in studying, when
necessary modifying, and implementing the best practices from
across our Nation. Let me outline a few of our partnerships and
problem-solving strategies that we believe have made the
difference.
The department formed a gun task force that specializes in
conducting both short- and long-term investigations into
illegal firearms possession, use, and trafficking. The gun task
force works closely with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,
Firearms, and Explosives. For every gun arrest in Providence, a
Providence Police detective and an ATF agent together interview
the suspect. The department also partnered on a Project Safe
Neighborhood Initiative with the United States Attorney's
Office and our Rhode Island Attorney General's office focusing
on the coordination and Federal prosecution of all eligible gun
cases.
The department partnered with the Rhode Island Local
Initiative Support Corporation, known as LISC, to transform
distressed neighborhoods into vibrant and healthy places. We
work with our local community development corporations
encouraging homeownership and providing capital investment for
real estate projects.
The Department partnered with the Institute for the Study
and Practice of Nonviolence. Pursuing an initiative first born
in Boston in the 1990s, as the Chairman referred to, institute
staff known as ``street workers'' are certified nonviolence
trainers and veterans of life on the street--often former gang
members, who teach the principles of nonviolence developed by
Dr. Martin Luther King. Street workers intervene in potentially
violent situations, offering mediation and conflict resolution
services, and put themselves on the line in the neighborhoods
every night.
The department partnered with Family Service of Rhode
Island, which is the oldest and largest nonprofit human service
agency in Rhode Island, to replicate and enhance the Child
Development-Community Policing Program of Police and Mental
Health Clinicians, first pioneered by the Yale Child Study
Center and the New Haven, Connecticut Police Department in
1992. Every night social service clinicians ride with officers
patrolling the streets of Providence and provide counseling and
support services to those in immediate need.
The department partnered with the State Department of
Probation and Parole, where these officers are now assigned to
my neighborhood substations. Their caseload is specific to the
police districts and their geography. They share information
about returning inmates and hold meet-and-greet orientation
meetings in the neighborhood every month.
And finally, in 2006, the National and Rhode Island Urban
Leagues approached the department about working together to
implement a Drug Market Intervention Initiative in the Lockwood
Plaza neighborhood of Providence. The Drug Market Intervention
Initiative is based on the initial work of John Jay Professor
David Kennedy, as mentioned by President Travis, which we
unabashedly copied and which my colleague from High Point,
North Carolina will speak about in a moment. The success
achieved in Lochwood can be attributed to the department's
strong community partnerships and its ability to change its
thought process, strategy, and structure.
Many of the initiatives that I have outlined today, and
others that time does not permit, were born from federally
sponsored research and started with Federal grant funds from
the National Institute of Justice, the Bureau of Justice
Assistance, and, specifically, Project Safe Neighborhoods and
Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant funds, which
have recently been eliminated or dramatically reduced in the
last Federal budget. I ask you today to restore these needed
funds. They make a difference.
In closing, I sit here today speaking for my community and
my children, nearly 26,000 of them in Providence. I believe
that any American police chief worth his salt would tell you
that the best way to fight crime is to invest in our children
and to protect our children, their families, and their
neighborhoods. Too many of our children in our inner cities are
poor and are frightened of the violence around them. They have
come to know the face of violence all too intimately, all too
personally. These are our children. They are American children.
I believe our Nation must not just protect our children at the
borders from the threat of foreign attacks, but also protect
our children from the violence within the communities where we
live.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Chief Esserman appears as a
submission for the record.]
Senator Whitehouse. Thank you, Colonel Esserman.
Our next witness is Reverend James Summey, who has been the
pastor of the English Road Baptist Church in High Point, North
Carolina, since 1992. Reverend Summey has been an active
community leader in High Point and a leading proponent of the
community-based policing strategies that resulted in the
elimination of a decades-old drug market that had long blighted
his neighborhood. In 1999, Reverend Summey, along with several
other local pastors, created West End Ministries, Incorporated,
a nonprofit organization that provided a forum for community
members to voice their concerns and suggestions for their
neighborhood. Reverend Summey's efforts were critical to the
development of the strategies and approaches that led to a
dramatic reduction in violence and drug activity in High Point.
Reverend Summey, welcome.
STATEMENT OF REVEREND JAMES SUMMEY, ENGLISH ROAD BAPTIST
CHURCH, HIGH POINT, NORTH CAROLINA
Reverend Summey. Thank you, Senator. When I came to High
Point in 1992, coming to the West End community, I had some
background information about this semi-infamous part of High
Point. But it really was not until I got there that I realized
the magnitude of the violence as well as just every sort of way
that a neighborhood could be oppressed by a social condition
that was existing in this very concentrated part of town of
approximately 1,400 people.
It was rather frustrating, to be quite honest, in regard to
trying to even minister and work within the context socially of
the area. The churches of the area were rather feeling
oppressed as well.
Making much of a long story a bit shorter for those who are
listening today, it is very important to understand that the
type of violence that we were seeing was very much related to
the drug market that was going on. Every sort of vice that you
could think of was happening right in front of the community's
residents, and the residents, as I have already stated, felt so
oppressed that they were really not free to move about. The
sense of community and neighborhood was basically vanquished
because of the existing condition of the community.
Efforts to go into the community and talk with people
sometimes led to even greater suspicion because they were
afraid to talk about their neighbor or what was going on. It
was not until some of the pastors, as Senator Whitehouse just
mentioned, got together and we started addressing in our
conversations the situation at hand. We formed a committee of
people to talk to. From that we engaged the city of High Point
with their Community Development Department. With that we
hosted a first meeting in the West End where 117 people bravely
came out after we went door to door and begged them to come and
voice their concerns about the community. In so doing, we came
up with three essentials of that community: Number one, the
crime, the violence; number two, the condition of young people,
youth walking the streets, no place to go, children under age,
no parental guidance, and parents that were working late, and
no one to look after the children after school; and, number
three, just generally the community appearance of the West End.
So we went to work on all of those areas. I will focus on
the one that I was involved in with the crime.
Getting feedback from the residents and finally working
with the police more and more about how they went about doing
their jobs was very comforting in a community conversation.
However, the traditional ways of policing, the sweeps, the
stings, whether it be about drugs or prostitution, or whatever,
the shots still rang out. They could sweep the streets clean
for a week or two, but only for it to startup again. The
traditional methods that had been tried, and not so true maybe
always, that had been going on for, you know, a couple of
decades were not really working.
It was not until 2004, January or February 2004, when I was
introduced to David Kennedy, when he came to High Point and
introduced this particular drug market intervention approach.
The first time I heard it, I thought it made complete sense,
and that is not a promotion or anything. It really did, mainly
because a community can embrace it, because it is absolutely
fair. It involves the community actually taking on their
situation where the perpetrators of violence are actually given
a chance to turn their life around because the community, for
the first time, is able to confront them and say, ``You know,
we do not approve of what you are doing. We are tired of living
scared, and we want you to stop it. And if you cannot stop it,
then we are supporting the police to prosecute you and to do
all that they can to stop what you are doing. However, if you
are willing to turn your lives around, we will do all that we
can to assist you, walk with you, stand with you as you make
this turnabout to reclaim a life that is positive.''
So working together with many resources within the city of
High Point, particularly an organization known as the High
Point Community Against Violence, resources that we garnered
together, working with, of course, our district attorney, the
Middle District of North Carolina U.S. Attorney's Office, and,
of course, the High Point Police Department, with an incredible
partnership of community folks, as well as the police and
prosecutors working together, we confronted these individuals
from the West End community on May 18, 2004. And I can tell
you, since May 18, 2004, it has been nearly night and day
difference.
The 10 years before May 18, 2004, the West End led the
community of High Point in homicides and all sorts of gun and
physical violence. Since May 18, 2004, we have not had one
homicide, nearly no incidents of gun crime, because we have
actually confronted the perpetrators of the violence, we have
worked with them, continued to maintain what we said we would
do by honesty and truthfulness. Community relations are at an
all-time high. Social relations, race relations have all been
improved because of this. Children now can walk the streets.
They can walk to church. They can walk to school. They can go
down to the local store, get a soda pop. It is a night and day
incredible difference, and I am so grateful for the opportunity
to share this with you.
One thing I can say--and, Senator Whitehouse, you said it
very well in your remarks earlier--is that, you know, I am not
so sure this is the answer, but it is a major answer, and it
should be implemented. I am very grateful to the Bureau of
Justice Assistance for how they have been able to take this all
around the country to introduce it to quadrants of the United
States, to police and prosecutors over the past year and a
half. And they have done a tremendous job of getting the word
out about this particular method.
But I would love to see the Senate and, of course, the
Congress, all the factors of Government, to incorporate this
method, support it, and allow this to be an option to all of
the prosecutors and police chiefs of America and to back it up
with your seals of approval because you guys have researched it
very well. And to go ahead and reflect on what you said, this
is certainly an answer to hometown security, Senator, and I
agree 100 percent with what you said on that.
So this is something that really works. I am on the ground
with it. I know the before and the after, and I support it
wholeheartedly, and I am so grateful for the High Point Police
Department having the courage as well as the diligence to see
this through. It has now revolutionized four different distinct
areas of High Point, North Carolina, and all these residents in
these four distinct areas are likewise enjoying some of the new
senses of freedom that this particular method has brought.
Thank you for listening to me.
[The prepared statement of Reverend Summey appears as a
submission for the record.]
Senator Whitehouse. Thank you, Reverend Summey. It sounds
like it took some courage on the part of the community.
Reverend Summey. Absolutely.
Chairman Leahy. As well as on the part of the police
department, and it is really a very, very impressive story. It
makes me think that when you look at crime fighting in our
media, on television and the movies, you always see the same
old paradigm reenacted, and it is law enforcement rushing to a
crime after the fact. It is laying down the chalk lines. It is
trying to figure out who did it, prosecuting them, and throwing
them in jail--which is fine and necessary. But a story like you
have told I think is equally capable of stirring the public
because of that sense of community courage, and I hope that the
media begins to see entertainment opportunities in stories like
yours and not just in the stories that they focus on in the law
enforcement context.
Our next witness is Dr. George Kelling, a professor at the
School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University and a senior
fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Professor Kelling is a
leading scholar in criminal justice policy and helped develop
the Broken Windows policy implemented in New York City in the
1980s and 1990s. Professor Kelling has previously acted as
research fellow and executive director of the Criminal Justice
Policy and Management Program at the Kennedy School of
Government at Harvard University. Professor Kelling began his
career as a child care counselor and probation officer in
Minnesota.
Welcome, Professor Kelling.
STATEMENT OF GEORGE L. KELLING, PROFESSOR, SCHOOL OF CRIMINAL
JUSTICE, RUTGERS NEWARK UNIVERSITY, NEWARK, NEW JERSEY
Mr. Kelling. Thank you, and thank you for the opportunity
to meet with you. Please understand my somewhat casual attire.
I was invited to testify as I was on my way to a bicycling trip
in my home State of Wisconsin and did not have a chance to
return to my New Hampshire home for more appropriate clothing.
Senator Whitehouse. You look fine.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Kelling. Nonetheless, during the last 5 years, I have
worked on the ground in six cities: Newark, Los Angeles,
Denver, Boston, Milwaukee, and Allentown. In Newark, homicide
is down in comparison to 2007 by 40 percent; in Los Angeles, 9
percent--a 2-year decline of 23 percent; Milwaukee, 30 percent;
Boston, 13 percent; and Denver, 22 percent. Allentown's
homicide rate has held steady, but our efforts have just begun
there. In these cities I have worked with political and
community leaders, citizens in neighborhoods, public and
private agencies, and police officials ranging from chiefs to
line police officers. Two common threads run through my
experiences in each of these cities: first, the need for
leadership; and, second, a shift in approach on the part of all
concerned from reacting to crime after it happens to ``stopping
the next crime.''
The sources of leadership in addressing crime problems vary
from community to community: In some locations it is political;
in others, police; in others, both; in yet others, a mix of
private and public agencies. These leaders understood that the
reactive model of crime control had failed miserably and that
they had to take political and organizational risks to field
effective violence prevention.
In the following, I will describe briefly what I consider
to be the basic methods of crime prevention. Second, I will
revisit the experience of New York City, a city enjoying crime
declines that arguably are unparalleled in history and from
which I believe there is much to learn. There is much I will
not discuss that relates to crime prevention and reduction: the
need for social, spiritual, recreational, and educational
services; employment; family assistance and support; and
others. My focus instead will be on five proximate measures
that most communities could move to immediately. None are very
``sexy'' or even new, but conceiving, implementing, and
sustaining the programmatic forms they take can be complicated,
depending on the agency, its resources, and the shape of the
problems.
One, increase the ``felt'' presence of capable guardians.
Starting with police but moving on to prosecution, probation,
and parole, other governmental agencies, and even the courts,
we must increase the real presence of each in neighborhoods.
For police this means getting out of their cars, walking,
riding bicycles, meeting with citizens, and in other ways
becoming an active neighborhood presence. In prosecution, it
would mean having community prosecutors meet regularly with
citizens in neighborhoods to understand their problems and
devise solutions. I could give examples for other disciplines
as well.
Two, persuade people, especially the young, to behave. Law
enforcement agencies and others involved in crime reduction
efforts need to think beyond formal measures. Among the most
fundamental and successful tactics is persuasion. We have heard
about that from Reverend Summey alongside of us. Persuading
people can range from simply ``talking to them'' to complicated
programs that link active law enforcement with persuasive ways
of communicating with young people on the verge of serious
trouble. Both John Jay College Professor David Kennedy and
University of Illinois Chicago Campus Professor Gary Slutkin
have developed model programs to persuade people, especially
violence-prone youths, to back off. Kennedy focuses on
persuasive efforts by law enforcement officials themselves
while Slutkin's program uses reformed young people, especially
reformed gang members.
Three, restore order. I am, of course, referring here to an
idea that I helped develop: ``Broken Windows.'' Put simply,
Broken Windows argues that for a community to be safe and
prosperous, minimal levels of order must be established and
maintained. It is no secret that Broken Windows has come under
considerable academic criticism. Certainly, a Broken Windows
approach--that is, aggressive ``paying attention'' to minor
offenses and disorderly behavior--can be done inappropriately.
Yet every city in which I have worked that has achieved
substantial crime reduction has also paid careful attention to
maintaining order--and with considerable success.
Four, solve problems. Until recently, police and other
criminal justice agencies have treated violent acts as
independent incidents rather than symptoms of problems with
both history and future. Right now the effects on communities
have been disastrous. While we certainly want police and other
agencies, especially prosecutors, to be concerned about
individual cases and offenders, they need to be equally
concerned about the community problems that such cases
represent and create.
Five, when formal measures are appropriate, enforce the law
swiftly and fairly. I will not say much about this here. Let me
summarize, however, by noting that a small population of
offenders is busily nominating itself for incarceration by
repeatedly committing both minor and serious offenses. For this
group, we should have no reluctance to imprison them for
extended periods of time. Unfortunately, however, there are at
least two problems: first, in the absence of other preventive
measures, incarceration has been overused; and, second, law
enforcement has been applied so capriciously that it often
fails to serve as a deterrent or to persuade the ``wannabees''
and other youths at the edge.
The primary question facing us now is: Once we have
initially reduced violence in a neighborhood, how do we sustain
those gains? I think that close examination of what happened in
New York will help us answer this question. Let me summarize
what I believe really happened in New York City. I will skip
forward to a very brief summary statement that is explained in
more detail in the document that I have submitted.
I would explain both the steepness and persistence of the
crime decline in New York City as resulting from the fervent
pursuit by a critical mass of public and private agencies
operating out of a congruent understanding of the nature of the
problems and their solutions. Their self-interests included
economic, neighborhood safety, the ability to provide services,
and others. When joined by the NYPD, with its common
understanding and its additional and unique capacities, the
critical mass reached a tipping point.
Summarizing, we now have a lot of knowledge about ways to
prevent crime that, if assiduously applied, reduce violence.
For violence reduction to be sustained, however, a common
theory of action must activate a critical mass of community
agencies and resources. Without such a common theory of action,
cities and communities will pick away here and there at the
edges, never really reaching the tipping point that New York
City has.
Two final comments. Both have to do with the fact that the
war on terror and related assumptions that terror and common
crimes are essentially different problems have resulted in the
virtual gutting of the National Institute of Justice, the
Bureau of Justice Assistance, and the Community Oriented
Policing Services, all in the name of terror prevention. These
assumptions are not only faulty, they have been a disaster for
localities. In fact, terrorists commit common crimes on their
way toward terrorist acts and, in doing so, are vulnerable to
action by local police.
Second, ongoing support for local law enforcement efforts
is crucial to their future success. Their accomplishments in
reducing crime during the last 10 to 12 years is a direct
result of the research conducted during the last 40 years. This
is not just a pitch for resources for research and other types
of support from an academic. Every chief with whom I have
worked over the past years would make the same claim. If we are
to maintain, and improve on, our gains of the recent past, the
Federal Government must view ongoing crime control research and
support as equally essential to that needed for dental or
medical problems. Both crime problems and terrorism in many
senses are local problems and must be resolved locally. Locals,
however, are in need of support.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Kelling appears as a
submission for the record.]
Senator Whitehouse. Thank you, Dr. Kelling.
As I hear the testimony of all five of you, who are
extraordinarily talented and committed individuals, it all
makes perfect sense. But I also have a little sense of sort of
deja-vu. I was the U.S. Attorney in Rhode Island from 1994 to
1998. David Kennedy worked with us in Rhode Island on crime
prevention techniques. I then became the Attorney General. I
opened community prosecutor offices. Throughout that period, we
had the implementation of the COPS program and the advent of
community policing theory. And here we are 8, 10, 12 years
later, depending on which point you pick, and we are still
having this discussion.
My question to you is: When we seem to know this and when
we seem to have known it for some time, what is it that is
discouraging widespread adoption of these techniques by police
chiefs and communities across the country? The payoff in terms
of reduced crime, safer neighborhoods, improved property
values, better sense of community and quality of life seems to
be enough to provide a positive motivation to get there, and
that suggests to me that there are some real institutional
obstacles to these ideas that are now a decade old penetrating
adequately and having their effect. What is your advice on that
subject? Mr. Travis.
Mr. Travis. I will start. I think each of the witnesses
today has commented on the absence of Federal leadership, the
decline in Federal financial support, the need for more
research, the need for more assistance to be provided to local
communities.
It is true--and I certainly agree with your opening
statement--that we know a lot more than we have known
historically about what to do, and this is a time when, in
addition to doing research on new interventions, when there is
a crying need, in my view, to take proven interventions and
replicate them nationally. David Kennedy, whom you mentioned,
is just overwhelmed with interest from jurisdictions around the
country to provide some form of assistance or consultation.
So, at a minimum, that is what is needed, is to take
interventions that have been successful and the Federal role,
in my view, should be to help jurisdictions with some attention
to the integrity of the introduction of those interventions, to
work with those jurisdictions to take proven strategies.
But the second point here is that this is much more than
testing and implementing new ideas, and let me echo something
that Professor Kelling said. What is needed here is to develop
a culture of professionalism within the policing community so
that this attention could be sustained over years. There are a
number of communities that have tried this or tried that, it
has been successful for a while, but it is not often that you
have the type of sustained reduction in crime that we have seen
in New York, that Colonel Esserman referred to, and that
Reverend Summey referred to. That requires sustained managerial
attention over time.
So that is not a question of whether the intervention works
or not. That is a question of whether there is political
leadership and the ability, particularly within the police
department, to sustain a regimen of professionalism and
accountability.
So we tend to move from new idea to new idea in our field
too much, and there are a lot of--there has been a lot of
research over the years, and now is the time to start, in my
view, with providing Federal leadership and Federal resources
to implementing proven interventions.
Chief Esserman. I would echo the President. We did not stay
the course. My wife says that my greatest and only strength is
that I am boring and that I think about the same thing every
day--which is crime.
We got a lot of things right, and we did not stay the
course. And I look at it through the eyes of an American police
chief and a patriot who loves my Nation and is proud to be here
today. But this giant of a Nation that I love and that I think
we all love really does strike me to be a cyclops with but one
eye. And when we pivot as a giant of a Nation to look at
another problem, we forget what we were looking at. And we
pivoted, and we just did not stay the course.
And it is remarkable to me that, as I watch the nightly
news, as I did when I was a child at my parents' legs watching
it during the Vietnam War, and when I hear the body counts of
our American soldiers, some of them police officers who are now
serving in the national uniform overseas, and I hear about that
body count, I do not hear about the American body count in the
country. The American body count in our country is now
approaching 50 murders every day. Sometimes that visits
Providence or Boston or New York or High Point. But we are
becoming a country with a murder rate that I find unacceptable.
And this giant of a Nation knew what to do and started to do
it. And I just think we did not stay the course.
I think the communities of the Nation need help from
Washington to stay focused and to stay the course.
Senator Whitehouse. Dr. Blumstein?
Mr. Blumstein. I think part of the issue you raise is very
much one of inertia, that cities are doing what they have
always done One of the important roles of getting external
interventions--we have seen some excellent police chiefs. Dean
Esserman's story was an excellent example of that, where
innovative individuals, savvy individuals came in and brought
new ideas and brought new approaches. But most places are
merely continuing what they have been doing regardless.
One of the important roles of Federal opportunities and
interventions is that it provides the opportunity for
innovation. It provides an opportunity for transfer of
knowledge, coming into places that have just been doing the
same thing. So that the notion of technical assistance, the
notion of bringing innovative approaches that have been used in
some places into new places is really an important opportunity.
And the stimulus for that comes from the Federal funding for
the new opportunities. It serves to introduce these places to
innovation and recognition, and that makes the Federal
Government an important stimulus for all of that to happen.
Senator Whitehouse. Another area that I am interested in
that I think, Dr. Kelling, you are--
Mr. Kelling. I wonder if I could address the last issue.
Senator Whitehouse. Sure.
Mr. Kelling. Right now I am working closely with Chief Ed
Flynn in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. One of the biggest problems he
faces there is the 911 system, and that is, the rapid response
to calls for service.
All the evidence demonstrates that 911 systems are
enormously expensive, are very low payoff, and have led to the
de-policing of city streets; that is, police have to be in
their cars waiting for the next call for service; that is, ``in
service'' means riding around.
He is systematically attempting to decrease the amount of
emphasis on rapidly responding to calls for service. He does so
at great risk. There is a conventional wisdom that 911 is the
great protector of citizens when the research demonstrates that
it is not. Somehow what we have to find are ways to take on the
conventional wisdom about what works and what does not work,
and then give the police the flexibility to try things.
The trouble is the special efforts, which really are built
on the research and the work that we have talked about today,
are always special efforts rather than the core competence of a
police department. Because if you go to virtually any city in
the United States, riding around in cars and rapidly responding
to calls for service is what police business is about. And yet
we know it has virtually no--very little payoff. And we
squander police resources catering to the conventional wisdom.
That is why I talked about the idea of leaders taking great
political and organizational leadership, because if something
goes drastically wrong in a call that was delayed deliberately
by police policy, Chief Flynn is going to be having to face
very critical press and a lot of political resistance.
Senator Whitehouse. The second question that I wanted to
ask had to do with an observation that I could not help but
note repeatedly during my years in law enforcement, and that
is, we deploy vast resources on incarcerating people who are
dangerous people and very often deserve to be incarcerated. I
do not begrudge those resources. We also devote vast resources
patrolling the general community and supporting the 911 system
and being out there among the general population. But it
strikes me that the highest-risk area is when you have those
dangerous people from the incarceration system reemerging,
reentering the general population. And in that area where they
are coming out and overlapping, I think as you all know, that
is a high-priority area if you just think of it in those terms.
And yet the additional resources that we spend in that area are
really negligible. We have struggled for years in Rhode Island
to increase the probation presence. One of Chief Esserman's
initiatives has been to collocate probation folks and his
community police officers. But that is being done still in a
context in which the reentry of folks from incarcerative
environments back into the general population is still an area
that gets very little attention and very little funding.
Probation is probably the thinnest spread area of law
enforcement, far more than police and 911 coverage. And yet
there is where the danger is.
As we have shown in Providence, in work that started even
before Chief Esserman, the focus of those folks is in fairly
specific areas. They just bombard, when they are released, a
very few neighborhoods and zip codes, and it creates an
enormous social problem for that often distressed existing
neighborhood now to have to cope with this additional problem
that is highly disproportionate to more affluent neighborhoods
and, therefore, often overlooked.
Do you agree that that is a problem? And if so, what do you
see to be the best ways to focus on the reentry problem?
President Travis.
Mr. Travis. I will start off on that. This is a topic I
have given a fair amount of thought to over the years, and we
are aware, as the Chairman indicated in his opening statement,
that we now have very high incarceration rates in America. Over
the past 30 years, we have nearly quintupled the per capita
incarceration rate in our country and now have the distinction
of having the highest incarceration rate in the world.
Putting aside for a moment a debate about whether that is a
wise investment of resources or not--and I think we have far
too many people in prison--we also have this reality that we
have neglected at our peril, which is that, except for people
who die in prison, everybody we put in prison comes home at
some point. We do not have exile in our country. And so we now
have 700,000 people coming out of our State and Federal prisons
each year. It used to be 150,000 20 years ago. We have 9 to 12
million people, depending on how you count them, coming out of
our jails each year. And these individuals--and 90 percent of
them men--are returning to a very small number of communities,
and these are the same communities that we addressed before and
I highlighted in my testimony that are also facing the burden
of violent crime.
There is an association, there is a connection between the
phenomenon of reentry and violence in communities. Certainly it
is felt by those communities that large numbers of their men
are arrested, sent away for, on average now, close to 3 years,
and return home disoriented, not ready to engage in work, often
returning to habits that involved antisocial behavior and drug
use and the like. And you are absolutely right, Senator, that
the moment of release, the time when they come out of
incarceration, according to the BJS data, presents the highest
risk in terms of their returning to criminal behavior. And we
do not assign our resources where that risk exists.
So we have more people coming out of prison to a small
number of neighborhoods. We have not increased the resources
for the Government agencies that are supposed to be responsible
for their safe return home, and they are returning home to
highly violent communities and often reengaging in violence to
settle scores or whatever.
So part of a national antiviolence strategy, in my view,
has to focus on this phenomenon, unprecedented in our history,
of large numbers of men coming out of prison. And we have to
start before they are released. We have to start while they are
still in prison. Senator Specter talked about the need for
programs and the like. We have also reduced our investment in
drug treatment and education and the like.
But the critical moment is exactly the moment that you
highlighted, which is that moment when they leave the
incarcerated status and return home, and that is the moment
where we literally lose people.
Senator Whitehouse. Dr. Blumstein?
Mr. Blumstein. Let me say something about addiction. The
1980s and 1990s was a period when we saw lots of addiction to
drugs. Part of my concern is the degree to which our
legislative bodies became addicted to being punitive. It worked
very well in terms of the public's concern about crime, the
public's concern about drugs, and the public would cheer as
they saw more and more punitive legislation coming through.
That gave rise to this major growth of incarceration,
particularly of drug offenders, which are now the single
largest crime type in prison.
As I tried to indicate in my testimony, that does not
necessarily stop any transactions because, as long as the
demand is there, you are going to get replacements. And it
turned out that the replacements were far more threatening than
the people they replaced.
So we have got all of these people in prison coming out,
and the prison experience could be rehabilitative, but it could
also be criminogenic. In part, they have greater trouble
getting jobs when they come out, and we all agree that their
prior criminal record eventually becomes stale information. But
no one has developed yet the idea of when it is sufficiently
stale, and that is where some of my research is targeted.
As Jeremy Travis pointed out, getting them before they
leave and as soon as they get back into the community is
absolutely critical, and making sure we make major investments
in getting them back functioning as legitimate members of the
society. But we also ought to deal with the addiction of the
legislative bodies to start rethinking some of the legislation
that is now encased in statute that is now ready to be
rethought. The circumstances are now quite a bit different from
what than they were when the public was clamoring for more
punitiveness.
Senator Whitehouse. Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Leahy. [Presiding.] Thank you.
As you know, Doctor, we finally passed the Second Chance
Act facing filibusters and everything else, which will give us
a start on that. But it is also like we will send billions and
billions of dollars to countries with the intent to stop their
cocaine coming here and close a blind eye to any human rights
violations in those countries and saying we are fighting a war
on drugs. With the billions upon billions dollars we spent to
do that, the price of cocaine has not come down on the street;
the availability has not come down on the street. And we have
not done anywhere near enough to stop the demand. We can stop
any one country's source--let's assume we could--of cocaine and
heroin, but if you do not stop the demand in the most affluent
Nation on Earth, you are not going to stop--another country
will take over.
When we go from more of the macro into the micro, in
reading some of the material for this, Reverend Summey, I was--
am I pronouncing that correctly? Is it ``Sum-me'' or ``Soo-
me''?
Reverend Summey. ``Sum-me.''
Chairman Leahy. Thank you. You should hear all the
pronunciations of my name, especially if you travel in Ireland
where it goes from ``Laff-ay,'' ``La-hay,'' to ``Lee-hee'' and
what not. But I think about High Point, North Carolina, a
community-based--could you kind of give just a thumbnail? What
was it like just a few years ago in the neighborhood around
your church where your parishioners had to go? And what is it
like today? And if you had to pick the two or three things that
helped the most, what were they?
Reverend Summey. The empowerment of the community to know
that they have a right to say that we do not want our community
to be this way that was provided by a voice. You know, the
church is doing some leadership, but mainly working with the
city and us coming together and having a forum where people
could talk. And they were really heard, and then a plan came
up, as we have described, with David Kennedy's plans. And when
they realized that they could actually confront the actual
people that were pinpointed that were the perpetrators of
violence and the drug markets, and they realized that that
could make a difference in their own lives, that they could
finally get it out; second, that the criminal forces of the
community had been going along thinking that because no one
said something, it was approval. When they realized there was
no approval there, it absolutely stymied them. And that was a
great deterrent already for the community to say, ``Stop it,''
because they were reading their passivity as approval.
The result of that, of course, was the lack of violence.
The drug market on the corners and the crack houses literally
shut down overnight, and that is not an exaggeration. There was
none. It stopped, and as well as the other, you know,
subsidiary vices--prostitution--just plummeted after that
because there was not that combination of driving the area
looking for crack cocaine, looking for girls or whatever.
And so the community, when they saw the streets settle down
and they did not have to worry about the intimidation factors
and the fear factors, that power of being able to express right
and wrong just absolutely liberated the community.
Chairman Leahy. By intimidation, give me an example. Say
you are parents with a couple young kids in that area. What
kind of intimidation were they facing?
Reverend Summey. Well, for one thing, the street corners
and sidewalks are pretty well taken over by the drug dealers
and the prostitutes, and the parents did not want to let the
kids out. They did not want to them walking down the street or
riding their bicycle. Plus, I literally saw and experienced
some of it from the drug dealers, that they would literally say
something to you, ``What are you looking at? Why are you
hanging around here?'' When doing some of the things I did as a
minister in the community, I had personal threats made against
me for even talking to some of the drug dealers and asking them
to not be doing this. And the parents of the kids as well as
some of the older residents of the city just felt fearful, and
they stayed in their homes.
Chairman Leahy. That is amazing. Growing up in a small town
in Vermont, as I did, and as my kids did, you hop on your
bicycle, go on down and visit your friends, go play baseball in
the 3 weeks of summer that we have in Vermont. I will probably
catch heck from the Chamber of Commerce on that. But you know
what I am saying, just being able to go visit friends and do
normal kids' things.
Reverend Summey. That did not happen, sir. Right.
Chairman Leahy. Mr. Travis, this is something that worked
in North Carolina. Are there things we can do at the Federal
level to help with these kind of community-based initiatives? I
know what Senator Specter and I found out when we went to
Rutland, Vermont. We could bring them certain things, but we
saw our community was basically saying enough is enough. And a
mayor who--some were saying, you know, if we talk about this,
maybe it will give us a bad image. He said, ``We will talk
about this, but it is not going to go away.'' And they finally
did it. As Senator Specter said, we had a very large hall. We
figured we would fill about a quarter of it. And it was
overflowing. They had people out in the hallways. Everybody had
a view. I mean, these are from parents, teachers, religious
leaders, business leaders, police, ex-addicts. We had
everybody.
I do not want to do what Dr. Blumstein has referred to,
that somehow we can do a one-size-fits-all, ``let's lock them
all up'' kind of attitude. What do we do? What can we hand you
from the Federal level?
Mr. Travis. Well, I agree that it would be a mistake to
continue to pursue the ``lock them up'' attitude. That is not
going to get us out of the situation that we now face. But I
think there is a real hunger around the country for national
leadership here to help communities around the country take
proven strategies, such as those that have been referenced in
this hearing, and help those jurisdictions figure out what it
takes to implement those strategies.
Yes, perhaps over time we could all sort of learn from each
other, but this is an area where we stand on the verge, in my
view, of a tipping point, where the police executives are
ready, community leaders are ready, local elected officials--
mayors and the like--are ready to implement some of these
proven strategies. And what is required is a sustained effort
over a number of years with appropriate Federal resources--and
it is not a lot of money--to work with those communities to
help them implement proven strategies and bring rates of
violence down. It requires a very different way of doing
business from what we have done historically. And the police
profession over the years that I have observed it and been part
of it is now led by some very thoughtful and innovative and,
indeed, brave leaders who stand ready. And we have at the local
level community leaders like Reverend Summey.
And the national role here is to convene people, to help
develop the technical assistance and training packages, to help
provide on-the-ground analytical support, to bring the research
community into the development and design and testing of these
strategies. And it is not hard. If we had in the health arena
proven strategies around the country that reduced breast cancer
or any form of serious health issue by 40 to 50 to 60 percent,
the professions delivering public health would be obligated to
start implementing those interventions for their patients. We
are at the point where, in my view, we could start to think
about crime policy in the same way. But it is not going to
happen naturally. It is going to require a Federal role and a
different type of a Federal role.
Chairman Leahy. But it is also going to require--you cannot
have an idea and say, ``What is my city government doing? What
is my Federal Government doing?'' I mean, they can put the
tools there, but doesn't it kind of involve everybody?
Mr. Travis. It definitely involves everybody. Crime policy
is ultimately a State and local matter, and it is ultimately
community matter. It requires families and--but there is a
Federal role. The Federal role, in addition to the testing of
ideas and doing the research--which I also advocate strongly.
As the former Director of NIJ, I am here to say it is shameful
what has happened to their budget. But here, when we are
talking about what to do about violence and the great strides
we have made over the past number of years in developing
effective strategies, the Federal role is a leadership role in
working with those communities to implement those interventions
in a systematic way.
Chairman Leahy. And to at least make seed money available
for people who want to do that. I think about Chief Esserman
goes to school, reads to children, they see that the police
officer is not the bad guy. Walk a beat, get to know people on
that. I think that probably makes it very difficult, Chief, for
some of the officers in your department saying that they are
unwilling to go out and walk a beat or read to kids or spend
time with them if the Chief has been doing it.
I think I was an effective prosecutor, and I worry, though,
about people who have not been involved in law enforcement and
think there are simplistic answers, simply lock them up and
throw the key away; this kid committed a crime, throw him in
that old jail. There have to be better ways. There have to be
ways to reach out to them. There have to be ways to have places
for kids to go after school. But there has to be a community
involvement, and that is why I asked Reverend Summey the
questions I did. There is that old expression, ``I have been
down so long, it is beginning to look up.'' But if you have a
community that feels they are helpless and cannot do anything
and it is always going to be this way, then somebody has got to
hit the spark.
We are going to have to wrap up here, but, Dr. Kelling, you
wanted to add something in there?
Mr. Kelling. Well, I just wanted to second what Jeremy said
but take exception to one word that he used regarding the
Federal role, and that is ``leadership'' because I do not
really think the Federal Government can provide leadership.
If one analyzes all the ideas that have influenced and
developed policing over the last 30 to 40 years, they have all
developed locally. What we need is Federal support for local
innovation and allow things to happen locally, because that is
where all the excitement is. If you notice--
Chairman Leahy. The COPS program developed nationally.
Mr. Kelling. It developed nationally, but the techniques
that they use, the ideas of community policing, the ideas of
pulling a lever, David Kennedy's work, the ideas of Broken
Windows, the ideas of problem solving all were developed by
local police departments in collaboration with outsiders such
as me and Jeremy, et cetera. So that the leadership, you see
the leadership in terms of ideas coming locally in practice on
the ground.
The Federal role is important along all the lines that
Jeremy described, but, again, I think we look for programmatic
development on a local level and leadership on a local level.
Chairman Leahy. Mr. Travis, did you want to respond to
that? I am also going to place in the record a statement from
Senator Biden and Senator Feingold, who have worked so hard on
this.
Go ahead, Mr. Travis.
Mr. Travis. Given that we are in the Senate, I will accept
that friendly amendment from my colleague from New Jersey. The
leadership that I spoke about from the Federal Government is
really to support local activities.
I would be remiss, Mr. Chairman, if I did not take this
opportunity as well to commend the Senate for the enactment of
the Second Chance Act, which I did provide some--
Chairman Leahy. It took a lot of work.
Mr. Travis. We were all surprised, both that it took long
and then ultimately that it got done. And I know that you are
providing leadership on getting funding for the Second Chance
Act as well, which will make it a reality. So that is an
important type of Federal leadership.
Chairman Leahy. Thank you.
I talked when we started, my nearest neighbor in Vermont is
a half a mile away. It is my son and his wife. and their little
5-year-old will call up and say, ``I am coming to do a
sleepover.'' And I had to ask, ``Well, this is OK with your
parents?'' ``Mommy, Daddy, Grandpa says I can come to a
sleepover.'' Or grandmother, if she is the one that answered.
And she takes her teddy bear, and I was showing this to Senator
Whitehouse in a picture, she just walks down this dirt road the
half-mile herself, teddy bear under her arm. I hear Reverend
Summey says there was a time when you would not let them go--
not even half a mile. You would not let them go half a block
away like that.
Not every part of the country is going to be totally safe,
but as a country, we have got to get back to that where our
children can do that and our children can think of that and our
children can believe that there is going to be a place for them
in this country. They are going to face enough challenges as
they grow up.
Again, I would strongly suggest--you can have wonderful
police officers, but don't put all the burden on the police
officers. It is not their responsibility. It is all our
responsibility.
And, with that, unless you have something else, Senator
Whitehouse, we will stand in recess. We will keep the record
open. The reason for that, you get a chance to see what you
said, and if you think, ``I should have added...,'' please do.
We will keep it open for that.
Thank you all very, very much.
[Whereupon, at 11:42 a.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
[Submissions for the record follow.]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.001
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.002
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.003
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.004
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.005
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.006
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.007
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.008
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.009
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.010
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.011
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.012
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.013
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.014
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.015
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.016
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.017
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.018
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.019
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.020
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.021
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.022
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.023
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.024
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.025
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.026
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.027
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.028
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.029
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.030
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.031
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.032
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.033
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.034
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.035
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.036
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.037
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.038
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.039
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.040
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.041
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.042
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.043
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.044
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.045
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.046
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.047
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.048
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.049
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.050
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.051
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.052
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.053
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.054
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.055
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.056
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.057
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.058
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.059
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.060
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.061
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.062
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.063
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.064
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.065
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.066
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.067
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.068
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.069
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.070
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.071
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.072
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.073
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4972.074