[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 85 (Thursday, June 25, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H5388-H5389]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             PROJECT EXILE

  (Mr. GOODE asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. GOODE. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to talk about an anti-crime 
program that has been successfully implemented in several cities across 
America. The program, which was the topic of a June 18 article in the 
Washington Post, is known in Virginia as Project Exile. Project Exile 
includes a program that imposes automatic five year sentences on felons 
caught carrying guns.
  The program is being credited by Richmond police with helping to 
dramatically cut the city's homicide and armed robbery rates. The idea 
behind the program is simple: To get guns out of the hands of those who 
are caring them illegally, felons who are most likely to use the 
weapons in the commission of a crime.
  Mr. Speaker, I include the Washington Post article for the Record.

               [From the Washington Post, June 18, 1998]

                      Richmond Gun Project Praised

                            (By R.H. Melton)

       Richmond--A program that imposes automatic five-year 
     sentences on felons caught carrying guns is being credited by 
     Richmond police with helping to cut dramatically the city's 
     homicide and armed robbery rates.
       The program, under which authorities generally prosecute 
     gun cases as federal crimes--ensuring stiffer bond rules and 
     tougher sentences--is known as Project Exile and has received 
     high marks from two unlikely allies: Handgun Control Inc. and 
     the National Rifle Association.
       The federal prosecutor's office here is one of only a 
     handful in the nation--Boston and Philadelphia are two 
     others--to launch an experimental attack on gun crimes. The 
     idea behind the program, authorities say, is to get guns out 
     of the hands of those who are carrying them illegally, people 
     who are most likely to use the weapons in other crimes.
       In Richmond, which in recent years has had one of the 
     nation's highest homicide rates, authorities credit Project 
     Exile with helping to reduce gun-related homicides 
     dramatically. Police say there were 140 gun-related homicides 
     last year; so far this year there have been 34. Gun-related 
     armed robberies, meanwhile, are down by a third.
       On a morning talk show Sunday, NRA President Charlton 
     Heston told a national television audience that ``in less 
     than a year, they reduced deaths, murders, in the city of 
     Richmond by half'' through the Exile project.
       Handgun Control Chairman Sarah Brady, in a letter to the 
     U.S. attorney here, said: ``Your work is succeeding in 
     getting guns out of the hands of criminals . . . The results 
     in Richmond are impressive.
       Cynthia L. Price, a Richmond police spokeswoman, said Exile 
     has had a profound effect on the number of violent crimes and 
     the nature of those offenses, leading to far fewer instances 
     in which guns are drawn in anger.
       ``It's a great program,'' Price said.
       So how did Exile help cut homicides and armed robberies? A 
     cadre of aggressive federal prosecutors, including a lead 
     attorney who earned his spurs hounding Mafia dons in New York 
     City, determined that Richmond's number one crime problem 
     was similar to that plaguing Washington: street-level 
     violence fueled largely by an evidently insatiable 
     appetite for weaponry.
       They then brought to bear on city gun cases the full force 
     of the federal government, using statutes dating from the 
     late 1960s to seek mandatory minimum prison sentences of five 
     years for gun-related crimes. That expedited many of the gun 
     cases, ensuring stiffer penalties and, in many cases, 
     eliminating parole.

[[Page H5389]]

       In some instances, steering a local criminal into the 
     federal system was as simple as a Richmond police officer 
     paging the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to 
     double-check for federal gun violations, such as the 
     obliteration of serial numbers on weapons, use of a gun while 
     possessing a controlled substance or possession of guns buy 
     fugitives.
       Several federal judges here have complained that their 
     caseloads now seem to resemble reruns of the ``Night Court'' 
     television show, but city officials and community leaders 
     delight in the lower homicide rate.
       n the year that ended last week, 363 guns were seized, 191 
     of 251 of those arrested on gun violations were convicted, 
     and 137 of those were sentenced to an average of 56 months in 
     jail.
       James B. Comey, the executive assistance U.S. attorney who 
     helped craft the Exile program, said the numbers in part 
     reflect the unusually large number of people who were 
     carrying guns in Richmond.
       ``Richmond is a weird place,'' he said. ``The world is 
     flooded with guns here.''
       Comey, a tall, boyish prosecutor who spins hair-raising 
     tales about his Mafia wiretapping days in New York, said the 
     gun ``carry'' rate--the number of times police confiscate a 
     gun when arresting suspects--has dropped from 135 a month to 
     67.
       ``It's an amazingly high carry rate,'' he said. ``I've 
     never seen a place like 'Richmond. Dealers in cities like 
     Chicago, New York or Cleveland have access to guns, but 
     they're not standing on a street corner with a gun!''
       Of Project Exile, he added: ``It's a cultural war. It's 
     totally apolitical. It's about locking up criminals with 
     guns.''
       Gun violence has long plagued Richmond, sending its 
     homicide rate higher than the District's several years this 
     decade. In the fall of 1994, for instance, Richmond passed 
     its previous homicide record, outpacing every city in the 
     country except New Orleans.
       S. David Schiller, the senior litigation counsel in the 
     U.S. attorney's office, said police have passed out 17,000 
     hand bills detailing the program. There are Exile billboards, 
     television spots and even a giant black city bus that runs 
     through the city with a message in stark white paint: ``An 
     illegal gun gets you five years in federal prison.''
       A coalition of civic and merchant groups has raised $40,000 
     and pledged an additional $60,000 to fund the marketing 
     efforts.
       Though the Exile prosecutions have not been glamorous--
     ``These cases are not sexy: These are mutts with guns,'' said 
     Schiller--they are getting notice in other urban centers. 
     Seventeen cities nationwide, including the District and 
     Baltimore, are now participating in a federal pilot program 
     to trace illegal guns, and there has been talk of extending 
     Exile elsewhere.
       ``Richmond has one of the most involved programs in the 
     country,'' said Joe Sudbay, a spokesman for Handgun Control 
     in Washington. ``It's a great combining of resources to 
     combat violence.''
       NRA Executive Director Wayne R. LaPierre said that Exile 
     ``ought to be in every major city in the country where 
     there's a major crime problem.''
       ``The dirty little secret is that there is no enforcement 
     of federal gun laws,'' LaPierre said. ``What Exile's doing--
     which I think is great--is for the first time in a major 
     American city, if a criminal picks up a gun, he'll do major 
     time. It's a message the NRA cheers, a message police 
     cheer.''
       ``That's the magic of what they're doing in Richmond. The 
     word is out on the streets of Richmond that the U.S. attorney 
     is dead serious about stopping gun violence.''

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