[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 7]
[House]
[Pages 9136-9137]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             FIGHTING CRIME

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Dent) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DENT. Madam Speaker, fighting crime is an issue that is important 
to most Americans. That is because it is an issue that has a tremendous 
impact on a community's quality of life.
  I think most Members of Congress recognize this simple fact. However, 
this Congress needs to take action in order to address this problem. On 
our side of the aisle, we've tried to do our part. Republicans have 
offered some 100 bills to help fight crime, but so far, only three have 
been considered on this floor.
  These legislative efforts should not be piecemeal, but should instead 
be part of a grand strategy, to wit: we need to aggressively target 
those individuals who are responsible for promoting criminal activity 
in our society.
  Our focus should not be on promoting efforts to decriminalize certain 
drugs, but instead on targeting and jailing drug dealers.
  Our focus should not be on protecting the rights of criminals, but 
instead on protecting the rights of their child victims. More needs to 
be done, for example, to combat the scourge of predators who stalk 
young people over the Internet.
  Finally, our focus should not only be on adult offenders, but on 
youthful ones as well. Gang members, some of whom are as young as 12 
and 13, and we see intergenerational gangs as well, are extorting 
money, dealing drugs, and committing acts of violence. They need to be 
stopped, and that is where my bill, H.R. 3157, the Anti-Gang Task Force 
Act of 2007, comes into play.
  H.R. 3157 will help our local law enforcement communities combat the 
scourge of gang violence. It authorizes $20 million for each of fiscal 
years 2008 through 2011 to establish new multijurisdictional anti-gang 
task forces, bringing together State and local prosecutors with Federal 
officials from the FBI, DEA, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms 
and Explosives, DHS, and others.
  Gangs are mobile, and they often cross jurisdictional lines in order 
to facilitate the dealing of drugs or to avoid detection by local law 
enforcement authorities. Thus, a multijurisdictional approach is 
clearly necessary in order to stop the proliferation of gang violence 
and gang activity.
  My district encompasses a good portion of what is called the Route 
222 corridor.

                              {time}  2015

  This corridor bisects five cites--Easton, Bethlehem, Allentown, 
Reading and Lancaster--located in four southeastern Pennsylvania 
counties. It is 


[[Page 9137]]


uniquely situated in that it is linked directly to New 
York City, approximately 80 miles away via Interstate 78 and through 
other easily accessible roads, including Route 222 to Philadelphia, 
which is 60 miles to the southeast.
  So gang violence along the Route 222 corridor, primarily involving 
drug trafficking and armed robberies, dates back more than a decade and 
has been a chronic problem affecting each of the five cities within 
this corridor. The roadways that have allowed commerce to thrive in the 
region have also strongly benefited the gangs, who can move between the 
cities with relative ease, thereby making their operations much more 
difficult to detect and to track. As a result, the 222 corridor has 
been plagued by gang activity.
  Fortunately, we're not standing idly by and letting the gangs take 
over. The Route 222 corridor is one of six sites around the country 
that has received funds under the Project Safe Neighborhoods program. 
This Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN) initiative involves a cooperative 
law enforcement effort between the counties and cities along the 
corridor, and there have been some notable successes.
  First, there have been successful prosecutions of members of the 
Mafia El Don Gang, which has conspired to distribute more than 50 
kilograms of cocaine in the Lehigh Valley. Meanwhile, two members of 
the 314 and a half Gang, allegedly responsible, according to the U.S. 
Attorney's Office, for approximately 15 to 20 bank robberies in the 
Valley, have been indicted. In addition, the initiative is committing 
extensive resources to outreach of both at-risk youth and their parents 
in order to discourage young people from joining such gangs. And we 
have seen intergenerational gang activity in my community.
  The Congress would do well to emulate the efforts of the U.S. 
Attorney's Office and the local District Attorney's offices and law 
enforcement agencies that are working hard to fight the gang problem in 
my area. More than talk is required if we want to curb gang activity 
and end gang-related violence, we need action. That action should take 
the form of legislation, legislation that targets criminals, promotes 
Federal-State cooperation, and that comes from both sides of the aisle.

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