Congress focuses on local crime fighting
WASHINGTON — With violent crime on the upswing after more than a decade of decline, Congress is moving to boost federal support for local crime-fighting, which some law enforcement officials say has languished since the 2001 terrorist attacks.
Efforts are underway on Capitol Hill to revive a popular federal grant program begun in the Clinton administration that helped put nearly 200,000 new police officers on the streets in the 1990s. And a bipartisan group of senators is pushing sweeping legislation to expand federal involvement in combating gang violence and increasing prevention efforts in the most gang-infested cities, especially Los Angeles.
The initiatives have yet to produce any new law and have not been endorsed by the Bush administration.
But with recently released statistics showing that violent crime increased last year for the second straight year, law enforcement officials nationwide are increasingly calling for help and criticizing an administration they say has neglected domestic crime.
"We got it right in the 1990s. We can get it right again in the 21st century," Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton said Tuesday on Capitol Hill, where he testified in favor of the gang bill. "But it is essential that the federal government reengage."
Bratton, who compared the federal government to a "one-eyed Cyclops" focused exclusively on international terrorism, was joined by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Villaraigosa has increasingly made containing gang violence a central focus of his administration.
Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales, who last week announced his own crime initiatives, has consistently touted the administration's crime-fighting efforts. And he has downplayed the crime increases.
"Overall, national crime rates by historical standards are at very low levels," Gonzales said in a speech Friday at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. "In general, it doesn't appear that current data reveal nationwide trends."
But the increases threaten to become a political problem for the Republican administration and may give congressional Democrats an opportunity to seize the crime issue.
The FBI's annual report, released Monday, showed violent crime up 1.3% in 2006. Murders were up in eight of the nation's 10 largest cities, with Los Angeles and Dallas recording the only decreases. The 2006 numbers come on top of a 2.3% increase in violent crime in 2005, marking the first back-to-back increases since 1991 and 1992, when crime peaked toward the end of a national crack epidemic. Before 2005, violent crime fell every year except 2001, when there was a small uptick.
