[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 5 (Wednesday, January 22, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S581-S584]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   FEDERAL GANG VIOLENCE ACT OF 1997

  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I rise today to discuss the Federal 
Gang Violence Act of 1997 which was introduced yesterday by Senator 
Hatch on behalf of himself and this Senator from California. I also 
believe my sentiments and cosponsorship are joined by Senators Harkin, 
Reid, and D'Amato.
  Mr. President, this legislation makes the Federal Government a much 
more active partner in the war on criminal activity that, I am 
regretful to say, has become violent and deadly and is perpetrated by 
organized street gangs. This bill was introduced with some differences 
in the last Congress, but the need for the legislation has only 
increased, and today I hope to lay out the case for the need for the 
legislation.

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  Gang violence has become a problem in the United States of America of 
epic proportions, and I think few people really understand the degree 
to which street gangs are crossing State lines and perpetrating 
violence.
  Today, the Department of Justice reports that in the United States 
there are some 25,000 different street gangs. There are more than 
652,000 members of these gangs. And they are not loosely organized. 
They are not the street kids glamorized in West Side Story.
  Today's gangs are very different. They are organized. They are 
sophisticated. They are traveling crime syndicates much like the Mafia. 
They regularly cross State lines to recruit new members. They traffic 
in drugs and weapons, they smuggle illegal aliens, they steal, and they 
murder. In just one city, Los Angeles, consider this: Nearly 7,300 of 
its citizens were murdered in the last 16 years from gang warfare--
7,300 citizens. This is more people than have been killed in all of the 
fighting in Northern Ireland.
  Gangs were responsible for 43 percent of all homicides in Los Angeles 
in 1994. They were responsible for 41 percent of homicides in Omaha, 
NE, in 1995; more than half of all violent crimes in Buffalo, NY, in 
1994. In Phoenix, gang-related homicides jumped 800 percent between 
1990 and 1994. In Wichita, KS, drive-by shootings jumped from 8 in 1991 
to 267 in 1993. That is a 3,000 percent increase in just 2 years. And 
this is a smaller city--300,000 people. A Justice Department survey 
found that gang problems are worsening in 48 percent of the responding 
communities.
  These are just a few examples of the alarming rise in gang terror. 
The problem is we have become numb to it. Let me give you an example. 
In Los Angeles, on a Monday last February, with Mayor Dick Riordan, I 
announced this legislation at a news conference. The Los Angeles city 
councilwoman who is in charge of the public safety committee, Laura 
Chick, reported that just that weekend six people had been murdered by 
gangs on the streets of Los Angeles, and you know what? Not one was 
reported in the press. We have become so numb because this kind of 
violence has become so commonplace all across the United States.
  Last September, a member of the Crips from Los Angeles was arrested 
in Dayton, OH, with two other men for conspiracy to distribute cocaine. 
Police seized approximately $1 million in cash in the raid.
  A 1995 study of gang members by the National Gang Crime Research 
Center found that three-quarters of all gangs exist in more than one 
geographic area. One-half of gang members belong to gangs that did not 
arise locally but arose with contact from a gang outside the area. One-
half of gang members had contact with the same gang in another city. 
And this is the clincher: 61 percent of gang members indicated their 
gang was an official branch of a larger national gang.
  Sergeant Jerry Flowers of the gang crime unit in Oklahoma City 
captured the migration instinct of these gangs when he said, ``The gang 
leaders realized that the same ounce of crack cocaine they sold for 
$300 in Los Angeles was worth nearly $2,000 in Oklahoma City.''
  Let me now tell you about the size and scope of some of America's 
most prominent street gangs. The Los Angeles Times recently conducted 
one of the most intensive investigative reports of major gang activity 
ever conducted by a newspaper in the United States.
  Let me begin with the 18th Street Gang and the picture the L.A. Times 
painted. The 18th Street Gang has as many as 20,000 members in southern 
California alone--20 times the size of the notorious Bloods and Crips.
  The 18th Street Gang is so influential in narcotics trafficking that 
the gang now deals directly with Mexican and Colombian drug cartels. 
The 18th Street Gang actually rents street corners to nongang dope 
peddlers, forcing them to pay so-called taxes of up to $1,000 a day.
  The gang is growing and spreading. They have become the largest and 
fastest growing gang in Oregon, where they gunned down a 15-year-old 
member who wanted out of the gang. Utah officials say the 18th Street 
Gang has arrived there with a vengeance.
  Even internationally, the 18th Street Gang is fighting for turf. In 
El Salvador, 18th Street is warring with rival gangs. Honduran 
authorities have sought advice from Los Angeles law enforcement on the 
gang. 18th Street has a cell in Tijuana, where they often flee to 
escape arrest and prosecution. On the average, someone in Los Angeles 
County is assaulted or robbed by the 18th Street Gang every single day 
of every month of every year.
  While currently the deadliest and most prolific on the streets in 
southern California today, the 18th Street Gang is not the only gang. 
Let us talk for a moment about Bloods and Crips.
  The Bloods and Crips that originated in Los Angeles in the late 
1960's are the Nation's two largest street gangs. They are also 
continuing to expand, and you see this expansion as they move across 
the United States. Local police and the FBI have traced factions of 
these gangs to more than 119 cities in the West and Midwest. Some of 
those cities are on this map. They have more than 60,000 members 
nationally. According to the FBI, narcotics trafficking is their 
principal source of income.
  Let me give another one, the Chicago-born Gangster Disciples. The 
Gangster Disciples, according to the authorities, is a Chicago-based, 
30,000-member, multimillion-dollar gang operation spanning 35 States. 
They traffic in narcotics and weapons and are said to operate much like 
a Fortune 500 company, with two boards of directors, one in prison and 
one outside, a layer of governors and regents, a tax collector, and 
some 6,000 salespersons. Their income is estimated by Chicago 
authorities to be $300,000 daily.
  Let me talk for a minute about Russian gangs. Russian organized crime 
activity in the United States has been expanding for the past 20 years, 
but its most significant growth has occurred during the past 5 years. 
Mr. President, 29 States now report activities by Russian crime groups. 
FBI Director Louis Freeh stated that more than 200 of Russia's 6,000 
crime gangs operate with American counterparts in the United States, so 
they flow from Russia to the United States and back.
  Russian gangs tend to be more loosely organized than other gangs, but 
they have formed networks that operate and shift alliances to meet 
particular needs. The California attorney general indicates that the 
most common activities by Russian organized crime gangs are fraud 
schemes involving fuel taxes, insurance, and credit card fraud. But 
they also engage in more common organized crime activities: extortion, 
loan sharking, drug trafficking, auto theft and prostitution.
  Asian gangs: The Department of Justice indicates that among ethnic 
gangs, Jamaican and Asian gangs are considered by law enforcement 
officials to pose the largest threat. Asian gangs have been identified 
as major threats in more than 17 cities. In Los Angeles alone, there 
are more than 100 Asian gangs with 10,000 members. Illegal activities 
include alien smuggling, murder, kidnapping, extortion, home-invasion 
robberies, high-technology heists, and firearms trafficking.
  Vietnamese gangs, in particular, have become a serious threat in many 
of our cities. They tend to be very violent. They are more 
sophisticated organizationally, and they specialize in stealing 
multimillion-dollar quantities of computer chips. At least 400 Silicon 
Valley companies in my State that deal in computer chips have been hit 
in the last year and a half. That is almost one a day. And they are 
losing tens of millions of dollars. Computer firms lose as much as $1 
million a week in thefts, according to the Justice Department.
  The legislation Senator Hatch and I have introduced does this: It 
doubles the sentence for any member of an organized criminal gang who 
commits a Federal crime. It expands the scope of gang-related criminal 
acts to include activities such as carjacking and drive-by shootings, 
and significantly increases penalties for those crimes. It checks the 
growth of gangs by making the recruitment of minors into criminal gangs 
a Federal offense with stiff penalties.
  Specifically, this legislation doubles the actual sentence for any 
member of an organized criminal street gang who commits a Federal 
crime. Current Federal law increases the penalties for organizers, 
leaders, managers and supervisors of criminal activity, including gang 
leaders. However, members of

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known criminal street gangs currently are not subjected to higher 
penalties when a Federal crime is committed. Many prosecutors and law 
enforcement officials indicate that gang members, in addition to the 
leaders and supervisors of gangs, should see their penalties increased 
to provide a stronger deterrent for children to stay away from street 
gangs.
  This legislation amends the sentencing guidelines so that individual 
gang members convicted of felonies would have their sentencing level 
approximately doubled. For example, currently, if a first-time offender 
who is a member of a gang is convicted of trafficking in 30 stolen 
guns, he or she would receive a minimum sentence of 4\3/4\ to 6 years 
in jail. Under this legislation, that sentence would be increased to 9 
to 11\1/4\ years.
  This legislation makes it a Federal offense to engage in a pattern of 
criminal gang activity, subject to severe and certain penalties. Under 
this legislation, if a person commits two or more predicate gang 
crimes, which include carjacking, drive-by shooting, drug dealing and 
obstruction of justice, in furtherance of a criminal street gang's 
activities within a 5-year period, that gangster is engaging in a 
pattern of criminal gang activity and he can be prosecuted federally. 
This is the Federal-local partnership we envision, to get at gang 
activity that crosses State lines. And this individual, if convicted, 
will be sentenced to at least 10 years in prison, up to life 
imprisonment for a first conviction of this offense; will be sentenced 
to at least 20 years imprisonment up to life imprisonment for a second 
or later conviction of this offense; and would be subject to asset 
seizures and forfeitures.
  This legislation expands the definition of criminal street gangs in 
Federal law to better reflect modern-day gang activity. So it broadens 
the definition of criminal street gangs in title 18 of the criminal 
code to include State crimes such as drive-by shootings, rape, torture, 
carjacking, kidnapping, and assault with a deadly weapon.
  It doubles the penalties for interstate gang-related crimes, and it 
expands the Travel Act to respond more effectively to the growing 
problem of highly sophisticated, mobile and organized street gangs. As 
most of us know, the Travel Act was written in 1961 and it had Mafia-
style activity in mind. While the Travel Act as it is now written 
allows prosecutors to target some gang activities such as drug 
trafficking, the list is not complete. Law enforcement leaders and 
prosecutors, including U.S. attorneys, have recommended to us that the 
act be modernized to better reflect current crimes by gang members.
  (Mr. BROWNBACK assumed the chair.)
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, under this legislation, the list of 
unlawful activities in the Travel Act will be expanded to include the 
following crimes: drive-by shooting; robbery; burglary; assault with a 
deadly weapon; intimidation of witnesses, victims, jurors or 
informants; assault resulting in bodily injury; possession and/or 
trafficking of stolen property; alien smuggling; and firearms 
trafficking.
  In addition, the maximum penalties would be doubled, from 5 to 10 
years, for those who commit nonviolent violations of these provisions. 
A conspiracy provision is also added to the statute.
  We double the base offense levels under the sentencing guidelines for 
traveling in interstate or foreign commerce in aid of a street gang. 
This is to get at those gangs that come from other countries and States 
and operate back and forth. So traveling in interstate or foreign 
commerce in aid of a street gang would increase from 6 to 12 in 
sentencing levels, which increases the base sentencing range from a low 
of 0 to 6 months and a high of 12 to 18 months, to a new low of 10 to 
16 months and a new high of 30 to 37 months. Committing violent crimes 
in aid of a street gang or racketeering activity would increase from 12 
to 24, which increases the base sentencing range from a low of 10 to 16 
months and a high of 30 to 37 months, to a new low of 51 to 63 months 
and a new high of 100 to 125 months.
  One of the most insidious tactics of today's gangs is the way they 
target children to do their dirty work, and they indoctrinate them into 
a life of crime. Let me give you an example.
  According to the Los Angeles Times, the 18th Street Gang, which I 
described earlier, ``resembles a kind of children's army,'' with 
recruiters who scout middle schools for 11- to 13-year-old children to 
join the gang. The gang's real leaders are middle-age veteranos, long-
time gang members who direct this criminal activity from the 
background.
  Chicago's Gangster Disciples recruit not just at high schools, but 
even at elementary schools. One of the gang's members told a Federal 
court about his preference for children 17 and under as armed guards, 
``because they can go to jail and get out quicker.''
  This pattern is not unusual. A report by the National Gang Crime 
Research Center found, ``The term `youth gang' is itself somewhat of a 
misnomer when it comes to the major gangs in America today * * * the 
real leaders at the top of these major gangs are in fact older adults, 
many in their forties and even older * * * 84.8 percent''--85 percent--
``of the gang members in our sample indicated that their gang does in 
fact have such older adult leaders.''
  Current Federal law contains no penalty for recruiting minors to 
participate in gang activity, and this is a critical part of our 
legislation. This legislation makes the recruitment or solicitation of 
persons to participate in gang activity subject to a 1-year minimum and 
a 10-year maximum penalty, or a fine of up to $250,000. If a minor is 
recruited or solicited, the minimum penalty is increased to 4 years.
  In addition, the person convicted of this crime would have to pay the 
costs of housing, maintaining and treating the juvenile until the 
juvenile reaches the age of 18.
  This act also makes violation of this section a predicate offense 
under the racketeering statutes, known as RICO statutes.
  It is now a crime to knowingly transfer a firearm to be used to 
commit a violent crime or a drug trafficking crime. This legislation 
adds a mandatory minimum penalty of 3 years if the gun to be used in 
crime is transferred to a minor.
  This legislation increases penalties for transferring handguns to 
minors. The Youth Handgun Safety Act, passed by Congress as part of the 
1994 crime bill, does not contain sufficient penalties against 
juveniles who possess handguns for criminal purposes. In fact, one 
provision of this act requires only probation for first-time juvenile 
offenders who possess a handgun.
  Such a weak penalty has meant that prosecutors don't bother to target 
and prosecute gang members. I have been told this by U.S. attorneys and 
by district attorneys, and we aim to correct that problem with this 
language. In addition, current law sets different penalties for 
juveniles and adults who transfer a weapon to a minor. The Federal Gang 
Violence Act toughens the penalties against juveniles and adults who 
transfer a firearm to a minor--and subjects juveniles and adults to the 
same penalties for violating this law.

  This legislation changes the Youth Handgun Safety Act by:
  First, setting a one-year minimum sentence for anyone--adult or 
juvenile--who provides a minor with a handgun.
  Second, holding juveniles accountable when they unlawfully give 
another minor a firearm by applying the same 5-year maximum sentence 
now given to adults.
  Third, setting a 1-year minimum sentence and applying the same 10-
year maximum sentence to adults and juveniles who give a firearm to a 
minor and should have known the gun would be used in a crime of 
violence. Currently, the 10-year maximum sentence only applies to 
adults.
  Juveniles under 13 years old, however, would not be subject to these 
mandatory minimum sentences.
  The Armed Career Criminal Act provides that if a person has three or 
more prior convictions for certain crimes--is a ``career criminal''--
and he possesses, ships, transports or receives a gun or ammunition--is 
armed--he will be subject to a mandatory minimum 15 year penalty and 
fine of up to $25,000.
  Serious drug offenses are already in the list of crimes which count 
toward the three-conviction minimum; this bill would allow juvenile 
convictions for serious drug offenses to also count toward that three-
conviction minimum.
  This would not apply to nickel-and-dime possession offenses, but to 
drug

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dealing which is punishable by 10 or more years in prison.
  Many police officers around the country are confronting heavily-armed 
gang members who are wearing bullet-proof vests.
  This legislation increases Federal sentences if a person wears body 
armor in the commission of a Federal offense, by directing the 
Sentencing Commission to provide for a sentencing enhancement under the 
Guidelines of at least two levels.
  Presently, a 30-day time limit exists for bringing juveniles to 
trial. With crimes being committed by juveniles becoming increasingly 
violent and complex, prosecutors need additional time to adequately 
develop cases. This legislation increases the time limit to 45 days.
  This bill adds firearms trafficking violations to the list of crimes 
that can be attacked by prosecutors under RICO. Currently, firearms 
violations are not RICO predicate acts. Prosecutors and law enforcement 
officials indicate an increasing use of firearms by criminal street 
gangs to commit home robberies, business invasions, and attacks on 
rival gangs.
  Since most of the firearms have moved in interstate commerce--and 
because firearms are such an integral part of the gang's activity--law 
enforcement officials have suggested that firearms violations become 
predicate acts under RICO.
  Finally, this legislation authorizes $100 million over the next 5 
years for hiring additional Federal prosecutors to prosecute violent 
youth gangs.
  I don't mean to go into detail, but I really want this body to 
understand that in this Senator's opinion, and I think Senator Hatch's 
and our cosponsors', this Nation's No. 1 criminal threat comes from 
organized street gangs now moving vociferously across State lines and 
across international lines. If we don't move now, I think we surrender 
the independence of this Nation to a kind of underground world of 
street gangs connected in Russia, connected in Asia, connected in 
Japan, connected in Latin America. and Central America.
  What we aim to do is up the penalties and create some new penalties 
which can really be effective in dealing with crime. The addition of 
the RICO statutes, the use of asset seizures and forfeitures, treating 
street gangs today the way mafia organized crime was treated 10 to 15 
years ago can make a big dent and deter gangs. Most important to me is 
that it becomes a Federal offense for anyone to go out there and 
recruit a member of a gang that moves their stolen goods, illegal 
immigrants, drugs, guns, murder, extortion, witness intimidation across 
State lines.

  Mr. President, I would like to make one last comment on another 
subject before I yield the floor.

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