The Gangbuster Bill

Published 12:00 am Saturday, March 26, 2005

I have a message to gang members:

&uot;It stops now.&uot; Gone are the days of the &uot;Sharks&uot; and the &uot;Jets&uot; from The Westside Story.

No longer are fists and jeers the weapon of choice. Today, drive-by shootings with semi-automatics, brutal group beatings, and machete attacks are the standard.

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No longer are gangs loosely-knit groups of wayward teens.

Today’s criminal gangs are highly-organized, highly-structured bodies, whose ages range anywhere from elementary school to middle-age.

They are trained in military techniques and their primary purpose is to commit illegal violent criminal activities in furtherance of their gang organization.

They are in our schools, on our streets, and in our communities. And if they aren’t yet, they are coming soon. It stops now.

The problem of gangs is not a new one but a different one… a bigger one, and one that is growing more rapidly and more uncontrollably than ever before. According to the U.S. Justice Department, there are currently over 25,000 gangs who are active in more than 3,000 jurisdictions across the United States. Today, the FBI and the U.S. Justice Department estimate that there are somewhere between 750,000 – 850,000 gang members in our nation.

Let me put this in perspective for you: today, in our Army and Navy combined there are 859,000 active duty members.

This is virtually a one-to-one ratio to gang members in the United States.

You can even add the Air Force and the Marine Corps to that figure and we would not reach a 2 to 1 ratio of military personnel to criminal gang members. In fact, if the criminal gang members in the United States were a military force located in another country, they would comprise the 6th largest military in the world in terms of soldiers.

Gangs have declared war on our nation.

They are ravaging our communities – urban, rural, rich and poor – and, like cancer, they are metastasizing from one community to the next as they grow.

This week, with the support of every member of the Virginia Republican Congressional delegation, I introduced legislation called &uot;The Gangbusters Bill.&uot;

With this legislation, we declare war on gangs.

Our message to violent criminal gangs is this:

There is no overriding societal value to being a member of a gang – and if you are a part of a gang, we are coming at you twofold:

First, this bill puts the full force of our nation’s federal, state, and local law enforcement officers and prosecutors behind apprehending gangs.

If you ask our nation’s law enforcement officers what they need to combat gangs they will tell you this: our federal law enforcement officers have the resources but not the intelligence system to combat the gang problem and our local law enforcement officers have the intelligence network but not the resources to combat the problem.

This bill will marry the two and authorize the funding to make this partnership successful.

Second, this bill says that if you are a member of a gang and you commit a violent gang crime, you are going to jail for a minimum of 10 years. Period.

This bill will create new criminal gang prosecution offenses, enhance existing violent crime penalties to deter and punish criminal gangs, and enact violent crime reforms needed to effectively prosecute gang members.

This is a tough bill.

We are not playing around.

We are saying:

Gangs that fuel their activity with narcotics trafficking, carjacking, and illegal gun trafficking: It stops now.

Gangs that engage in human trafficking, rape, and prostitution: It stops now.

Gangs that use firearms and other deadly weapons in the commission of crimes: It stops now.

Gangs that brutally rape, kill, and maim:

It stops now.

The Gangbusters Bill, when enacted, will bring a new force to bear on gang activity in our country.

It will provide increased federal effort to assist local law enforcement in targeting and federally prosecuting violent criminals who are associated with criminal gangs. The bill will encourage partnerships across all levels of government and will ensure the success of these partnerships through the expansion of resources and intelligence.

Make no mistake about it – at the end of this debate, one of two messages will be sent across our country.

We will either say &uot;It stops now!&uot; or we will say, &uot;Coming soon to a community near you.&uot;

For more information on gangs in Virginia and &uot;The Gangbuster Bill&uot; please visit www.house.gov/forbes. J. Randy Forbes represents the 4th district of Virginia in the United States House of Representatives.