[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 56 (Thursday, April 22, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4102-S4104]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            SCHOOL VIOLENCE

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, we are all grieving again for victims of 
school violence. Pearl High School in Pearl, MS; Heath High School in 
West Paducah, KY; Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, AR; Parker 
Middle School in Edinboro, PA; Lincoln County High School in 
Fayetteville, TN; Thurston High School in Springfield, OR; and 
Columbine High School in Littleton, CO.
  The President spoke for all Americans Tuesday night when he expressed 
the shock and sadness of the Nation. He spoke about reaching out to our 
children and our prayers for the families of those who have suffered 
loss.
  I heard Senator Kennedy reach out to the families yesterday from the 
Senate floor. I commend Senator Daschle also for his thoughtful 
statement. I know other Senators from both sides of the aisle have 
spoken to this tragedy, as well.
  This morning, my wife and I watched on television one of the most 
painful and difficult interviews I have ever watched. The father of a 
young African American boy killed in Colorado spoke of his hopes and 
dreams for his son. Sitting next to him was another student, who is 
white and who recounted how his classmate and friend, an African 
American, had died, how he had been selected because he was black and 
because he was an athlete. To compound the tragedy, the young man who 
had spoken also recounted the fact that his own sister died in the 
shooting. It ended with the African American father holding the hand of 
the

[[Page S4103]]

young student, each trying to comfort the other, each seeking solace in 
their faith, but each at a loss, as we are, to what might have caused 
this terrible, terrible event.
  How could students be picked out to be murdered because they were 
athletes, or because of the color of their skin, or because they 
happened to be wearing a certain kind of clothes? What kind of 
nihilistic aberration causes something like this to happen? What causes 
a person to do that? What causes the kind of behavior around the world 
where people die because of their faith, because of their color, 
because of who they are, their ethnic background?
  I suggest the Senate pause for a moment in the wake of this tragedy 
and rededicate ourselves to the work ahead and turn our attention to 
these matters.
  I serve on the Judiciary Committee and we spent a lot of time this 
week and this past year on a proposed flag amendment to the 
Constitution. We spent a lot more time on that than we have on school 
violence. We held three hearings on a proposed constitutional amendment 
within the last year. We have held none on the tragic school incidents 
that have occurred throughout the country. We ought to reconsider the 
agenda of that committee, maybe even of the Senate.
  We have become so polarized and so politicized in this Senate--more 
than I have seen at any time in my 25 years here. We do no good to the 
country, Republican or Democrat, if we allow that to continue. We 
ignore the real problems of this Nation when we allow that.
  We are going to devote our time in the Senate to an artificially 
truncated debate of proposals to limit corporate liability for Y2K 
problems because the business lobby wants us to do that. Yet we cannot 
have a full debate on the needs for a real Patients' Bill of Rights, 
something that would affect not a special interest group, but every 
single American.
  The Senate will turn to a bankruptcy bill to help financial 
institutions extract additional payments from consumers forced into 
bankruptcy instead of considering a much needed increase in the minimum 
wage.
  The majority leader has indicated that we will be debated on the 
proposed constitutional amendment to cut back on the first amendment 
for the first time in our history to make a symbolic statement against 
flag burning, because that will be popular. Mr. President, no flags 
were burned at Columbine High School earlier this week, but children 
and a teacher died at Columbine High School. That is the reality.
  We should start applying ourselves to substance and not symbols in 
the Senate. Let the reality get past the rhetoric. We all need to 
redouble our efforts to find ways to help parents and State and local 
authorities on matters of school safety. We need to redouble our 
efforts to help local law enforcement keep our streets safe. After 3 
years in which we have missed opportunity after opportunity to 
cooperate in a bipartisan way on these matters, it is long past time to 
put partisanship aside and work together with the administration to 
make progress in prevention and security that remains so desperately 
needed.

  We are all Americans in this--not Republicans and Democrats. Let's 
set partisanship aside for a change. How many Senators, as parents, 
worry when our children go to school? How many of the staff and the 
visitors in our galleries have children who go to school and now are 
terrified and worried and are almost afraid to hear the phone ring?
  We all know the Federal Government and Federal law cannot solve the 
problem of school violence or local crime, but we should at least help 
or make help available. I know the Federal Government has been 
providing assistance in Littleton; victims services and counselors are 
being provided. I am proud of the efforts that have been made by the 
Office for Victims of Crime in coordination with States and local 
assistance providers. A special reserve fund from my 1996 amendment to 
the Victims of Crime Act is available to help. These are concrete 
initiatives, not symbolic things.
  I want to praise President Clinton for having convened the October 
1998 White House Conference on School Safety, and those people, 
Republicans and Democrats alike, who joined with him. We are working 
with him to provide additional community police and school resource 
officers across the country. In addition, the Attorney General, the 
Secretary of Education, and the Surgeon General are all working on 
additional initiatives.
  Over the last several years, I have sponsored legislation in this 
area with Senator Biden, Senator Kennedy, Senator Daschle, Senator 
Bingaman and a number of others. A lot of that legislation has never 
even been considered in our committee, although we were able to 
incorporate pieces of it in measures that have been enacted. We 
reintroduced, again, on the first legislative day of the session one of 
the Democratic priorities, S. 9, the Safe Schools, Safe Streets, and 
Secure Borders Act of 1999, which builds on the successful programs we 
implemented in the 1994 crime law, but also addresses emerging crime 
problems.
  It is a comprehensive and realistic bill. We tried to avoid the easy 
rhetoric about crime that some have to offer in this crucial area. 
Instead, we put in legislation that might make a difference. The Safe 
Schools, Safe Streets, and Secure Borders Act targets violent crime in 
our schools, it reforms the juvenile justice system, combats gang 
violence, cracks down on the sale and use of illegal drugs, enhances 
the rights of crime victims, and provides meaningful assistance to law 
enforcement officers.
  Title I deals with proposals for combating violence in the schools 
and punishing juvenile crime. It gives technical assistance to the 
schools, reforms the juvenile justice system, and assists States for 
prosecuting juvenile offenders, but it also protects children from 
violence, including violence from the misuse of guns.
  It includes Senator Bingaman's proposal for a School Security 
Technology Center, an inventive proposal building upon expertise from 
the Sandia National Labs. There are a lot of very real things in it.
  It is short on rhetoric. It is strong on reality. This is a law that 
could work. It could be done without federalizing juvenile offenses. It 
follows what many from the Chief Justice on through have said is 
important.
  Our bill contains important initiatives to protect children from 
violence, including violence resulting from the misuse of guns. 
Americans want concrete proposals to reduce the risk of such incidents 
recurring. At the same time, we must preserve adults' rights to use 
guns for legitimate purposes, such as home protection, hunting and for 
sport. The bill imposes a prospective gun ban for juveniles convicted 
or adjudicated delinquent for violent crimes. It also require 
revocation of a firearms dealer's license for failing to have secure 
gun storage or safety devices available for sale with firearms. The 
bill enhances the penalty for the violation of certain firearm laws 
involving juveniles. In addition, the bill authorizes competitive grant 
programs for the establishment of juvenile gun courts and youth 
violence courts.
  The bill would also make important reforms to the federal juvenile 
system, without federalizing run-of-the-mill juvenile offenses or 
ignoring the traditional prerogative of the States to handle the bulk 
of juvenile crime. One of the significant flaws in the Republican 
juvenile crime bills last year was that it would have--in the words of 
Chief Justice Rehnquist--``eviscerate[d] this traditional deference to 
state prosecutions, thereby increasing substantially the potential 
workload of the federal judiciary.'' The Chief Justice has repeatedly 
raised concerns about ``federalizing'' more crimes. The Democratic 
proposals for reform of the Federal juvenile justice system heed this 
sound advice and respect our Federal system.
  Our bill authorizes grants to the States for incarcerating violent 
and chronic juvenile offenders (with each qualifying State getting at 
least one percent of available funds), and provides graduated 
sanctions, reimburses States for the cost of incarcerating juvenile 
alien offenders, and establishes a pilot program to replicate 
successful juvenile crime reduction strategies.
  Also directly relevant is Title IV of the bill, which includes a 
number of prevention programs that are critical to further reducing 
juvenile crime. These programs include grants to

[[Page S4104]]

youth organizations and ``Say No to Drugs'' Community Centers, as well 
as reauthorization of the Runaway and Homeless Youth Act, Anti-Drug 
Abuse Programs and Local Delinquency Prevention Programs. Additional 
sections include a program to establish a competitive grant program to 
reduce truancy, with priority given to efforts to replicate successful 
programs.
  The bill would also reauthorize the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency 
Prevention Act (JJDPA) in a similar fashion to H.R. 1818, a bill passed 
by the House with strong bipartisan support in the last Congress. This 
section creates a new juvenile justice block grant program and retains 
the four core protections for youth in the juvenile justice system, 
while adopting greater flexibility for rural areas.
  Last year, the Senate Republicans tried to gut these core protections 
in their juvenile crime bill, S. 10. This Democratic crime bill puts 
ideology aside, and follows the advice of numerous child advocacy 
experts--including the Children's Defense Fund, National Collaboration 
for Youth, Youth Law Center and National Network for Youth--who believe 
these key protections must be preserved in order to protect juveniles 
who have been arrested or detained. These core protections ensure that 
juveniles are not housed with adults, do not have verbal or physical 
contact with adult inmates, and any disproportionate confinement of 
minority youth is addressed by the States. If these protections are 
abolished, many more youth may end up committing suicide or being 
released with serious physical or emotional scars.
  I previously described the other titles, programs and initiatives of 
the Safe Schools, Safe Streets, and Secure Borders Act when we 
introduced it. It is a comprehensive and realistic set of proposals for 
keeping our schools safe, our streets safe, our citizens safe when they 
go abroad, and our borders secure. I look forward to working on a 
bipartisan basis for passage of as much of this bill as possible during 
the 106th Congress and to working with the Administration, with the 
Department of Justice and with the Department of Education to do what 
we can to be helpful in the continuing school safety crisis.
  Why I am here today is to join with the Democratic leader in his call 
for a ``thoughtful discussion about how to shape a comprehensive 
national response to the problem of violence in our schools and in our 
communities.'' I commend him for including the Safe Schools, Safe 
Streets, and Secure Borders Act on the priority list that he sent to 
the majority leader on Monday.
  From a personal observation, I recall one time when my children were 
young, they were in grade school, and I was a prosecutor. Without going 
into all of the details, a very credible threat was made against me and 
my family. In fact, one that, had the person been able to carry it out 
before being apprehended, all of us would have died. I recall during 
that time, when the police were coming to me and saying, we will set up 
this cordon of armed police officers around you, my only concern, and 
the natural concern of any parent, was for my children; I recall even 
today the terror I felt in my heart and soul.
  I remember today, almost 30 years later, how I felt until I knew they 
were safe. They were young children. They saw the police officers 
coming to school to pick them up and for them it was a lark, they were 
getting out of school early. For their mother and me, it was a matter 
of some great concern.
  Think how parents around this country feel today when they kiss their 
children goodbye in the morning, and virtually all of them will come 
back safely, but every parent has to have in his or her soul the 
thought, what if they don't come back? How does a parent live through 
this? How do the other students ever go back to a school where this has 
happened? What about our young people themselves, when they read about 
this or see this and wonder are they next?
  There are two areas of great violence in the world today. One we see 
unfolding in the former Yugoslavia, where the United States and our 
NATO allies are trying to stop a person who is exercising war crimes 
that we have not seen in that part of the world since the time of 
Hitler. We see the people who are suffering there. Yet some respond by 
seeing who can get out the best sound.
  Then we see this in Mississippi, Kentucky, Arkansas, Pennsylvania, 
Tennessee, Oregon and Colorado--enough variety of States to tell every 
one of us that our own State and our own community is not immune.
  We are still tempted to dwell on symbols. Symbols do not stop this; 
substance does. It is not symbolic to set up programs that we know will 
work, that will allow teachers and parents and police and others to 
work with students to stop something from happening. That is the key. 
It is not to respond afterward--and we will respond. We are sending out 
counselors and investigators and everybody else to Colorado now. How 
much better, though, if we could respond before it happens.
  So I ask Senators when they go home this weekend, pause and think: Do 
we help solve the problems of Littleton, CO, or the problems of Kosovo, 
or the problems that face our great Nation, by continuing heavy, 
destructive, unnecessarily partisan actions in the Senate and in the 
other body? Or do we come back together, as we have so many times in 
the past, Republicans and Democrats alike, admit the United States 
faces many crises and that we solve them only by working together, not 
in seeking short-term political gain?
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York.

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