Crime Bill

PRESIDENT BUSH'S supposedly new anti-crime bill is not new and will not fight crime. Worse, Bush is pitching this snake oil as if buying it were an act of patriotism: What better way to honor the the Persian Gulf vets, the president said, than to make the streets safe for their return?Problem is, there's nothing in Bush's crime plan that will make the streets safer for anyone. Like the crime bill the administration submitted last year -- rejected almost in its entirety by both houses of Congress -- it is based on the misguided notion that curtailing fundamental rights reduces crime.

At an early-morning meeting in Towson, just a few hours after the end of the 2009 General Assembly session, Baltimore County Police Chief James W. Johnson was not happy. Two bills that he had vigorously endorsed failed to become law. One would have made it easier to prosecute gang members, he said, and the other was aimed at scrap-metal dealers who traffic in stolen materials. "I'm disappointed," Johnson said after addressing a meeting Tuesday of the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council, a panel that meets every couple of months.

The Omnibus Crime Bill -- which will soon reach President Clinton -- is one of the most disastrous pieces of legislation ever considered in this country. While the differences are to be worked out in conference committee, the House version would allocate $14 billion for incarceration. The Senate's $6 billion is more restrained, but still a chilling attempt at a "final solution" for this country's social ills. I know, because I managed to survive 10 years in a federal penitentiary.My first contact with the criminal justice system came when I stole a bike.

Saying another witness to a crime was gunned down on the streets of Baltimore this week, State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy joined Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. yesterday to intensify their push for the House of Delegates to approve a witness-intimidation bill this year. The bill, a key piece of Ehrlich's legislative agenda this year, would increase penalties for witness intimidation and, in some cases, allow courts to admit testimony from witnesses who do not appear in court. But the proposal is stuck in the House Judiciary Committee, where the chairman, Del. Joseph F. Vallario Jr., has refused to allow a vote.

WASHINGTON -- With the switch of at least three votes, the Congressional Black Caucus made clear yesterday that it would come to President Clinton's rescue on the crime bill.After a meeting at the White House with Mr. Clinton, three Black Caucus members who had voted against bringing the $33 billion measure up for final House vote last week announced that they had succumbed to his appeals to save not only the crime bill but perhaps his presidency."He was selling his presidency, the party and the fact that we will not get a better bill than this," said Rep. Charles B. Rangel, a New York Democrat who found Mr. Clinton persuasive.

WASHINGTON -- The clocks said 2 p.m., but it seemed more like High Noon on Capitol Hill yesterday.Joe Biden, his double-breasted suit jacket tightly buttoned in the 93-degree heat, strode from the Senate and out under a blazing sun."Same ol', same ol'," he said.The massive Crime Bill, 1,100 pages long with a price tag of $31 billion and enough provisions to please (and anger) just about everybody, is in a state of paralysis bordering on rigor mortis.The House and Senate, having passed separate versions of the bill, are supposed to be meeting in a conference committee to work out their differences.

WASHINGTON -- The Senate, heeding public outrage over spreading violence in the streets, moved slowly last night toward passage of a $3.3 billion anti-crime bill that would slap new controls on firearms and greatly increase the number of offenses punishable by death.But critics charged that the bill failed to get at the underlying causes of crime. And even supporters acknowledged that some of its most controversial provisions -- expanding the death penalty, restricting appeals by death row inmates and allowing police to introduce in court evidence now considered illegally seized -- would do little to reduce street crime.

WASHINGTON -- While President Clinton, gun owners, law officials and others lobbied furiously for and against the crime bill, the people who build and operate private prisons were too busy to pay much attention.They're in the midst of a building boom, and their future growth and profits seemed guaranteed long before Congress finally passed the record $30.2 billion measure."We didn't have any lobbyists on Capitol Hill," said Peggy Lawrence, a spokeswoman for Corrections Corp. of America, the nation's largest private prison builder and manager.

WASHINGTON -- The House of Representatives was on the verge early today of resurrecting the $30 billion crime bill, after round-the-clock bipartisan negotiations and extra prodding from President Clinton.The effort hit an eleventh-hour snag, however, when Rep. Bill Brewster, an Oklahoma Democrat, angered at President Clinton's attacks on the gun lobby, offered a scaled-back substitute without a ban on assault weapons or any money for crime prevention programs. The substitute threatened to draw away precious votes.

As this is written, the U.S. Senate diddles with a $30 billion crime package thought to be flawed because, among other things, it includes money for playground basketball as a preventive measure, when everybody knows the proper procedure with wayward kids is to fire several warning shots through their heads.Maybe the Senate reaches definitive wisdom on this crime bill one day soon, but for the purposes of today's message, who RTC cares? Whatever spending decision Washington finally reaches, the political hypocrisy lasts forever.

Rep. Elijah E. Cummings is proposing a bill called the Dawson Family Community Protection Act that would provide up to $1 million annually to Baltimore and other cities that are battling severe drug problems and violent crime. Cummings will hold a hearing on the proposed bill today at the University of Maryland School of Nursing. Named after Angela and Carnell Dawson and their five children, who died from injuries sustained in an arson fire at their East Preston Street home in October, the bill could come up on the House floor as early as this week.

CONCORD, N.H. -- Eddie Hawkins grins when he talks about guns."I like them," he said yesterday at a gun show here. "I want one."But he takes offense when his father tells strangers that he's 6 years old."And a half," he explains, rolling his eyes.Father and son spent yesterday morning strolling through the Sportsman's Show at Concord's Everett Hockey Arena, where 200 tables covered with rifles, pistols, assault weapons, knives, clips, earplugs, holsters and the like were set up under the Concord High School hockey team's state championship banners.

WASHINGTON -- Hours after another school shooting, Democratic gun control advocates in the Senate scored a major political victory yesterday as Vice President Al Gore cast the tie-breaking vote for a measure to impose stricter curbs on gun show purchases.The success of the Democratic measure -- aided by the support of six Republicans -- was capped last night by a 73-25 vote of bipartisan Senate approval for an overall juvenile crime bill to which the gun show curbs were attached.The $5 billion legislation, packed with an array of approaches for combating teen violence, would make it easier to prosecute youthful offenders as adults, provide new money for juvenile courts and prevention programs, and commission a study of the effects of violence in the entertainment industry on child development.

The nationwide anxiety that spawned the 1994 federal crime bill wasn't aimed at Neil S. Kravitz's rural home business -- making special bullets for target shooters -- but it hit his bull's eye anyway.A minor provision requiring local police to ensure that people with federal gun dealers' licenses abide by all local laws, including zoning laws, is threatening to put Kravitz out of business.And he's upset."I just don't understand it," says Kravitz, who lives near Glyndon in Baltimore County.

TO ANSWER the folks who have asked me if I will attend the Million Man March on Monday: Hell no. The reason? I don't follow jackasses and lunatics.The national director of the Million Man March is Benjamin Chavis, the former head of the NAACP. He is the jackass of this tale. The lunatic here would be one Louis Farrakhan, who called for the march. But more on him later.Chavis, holding forth on Congressman Kweisi Mfume's talk show "The Bottom Line" a few weeks back, railed against the "three strikes and you're out" provision of the recently passed anti-crime bill.

Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend unveiled yesterday a Glendening administration bill she said would keep "candy-aisle shoplifters from becoming gun-toting carjackers" by providing swifter, surer punishment for young criminals.At an afternoon news conference, Mrs. Townsend said the legislation was meant to get schools and parents more involved in the early stages of a child's delinquency.The proposed legislation -- House Bill 407 and Senate Bill 343 -- would establish a two-year pilot project allowing police in Allegany, Prince George's, Somerset and Wicomico counties to write civil "tickets" that would require youths who commit misdemeanors to do community service immediately as an alternative to criminal prosecution.

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton has laid down his hardest line since Republicans took power in Congress, vowing yesterday to veto an attempt to rewrite a provision in last year's crime bill that was meant to put 100,000 new police officers on the street.It was the first explicit veto threat from Mr. Clinton since the voters returned a divided government.The threat comes after several months in which the president has swung between broad attempts at conciliation and brief hints of confrontation.

IN THE 1993 crime bill working its way through Congress, the proposals to put more police officers on the beat nationwide and to construct new high-security prisons are sound.Little else deserves support.The bill lacks a coherent national anticrime strategy. It is a potpourri of programs that offers something to everyone -- except perhaps those who live in fear of violent crime.Most disturbing are provisions extending the death penalty to an additional 47 federal crimes and creating more than 60 new federal crimes for conduct already harshly punished under state law. Legislators who think these measures will reduce violent crime fool themselves and the public.

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton has laid down his hardest line since Republicans took power in Congress, vowing yesterday to veto an attempt to rewrite a provision in last year's crime bill that was meant to put 100,000 new police officers on the street.It was the first explicit veto threat from Mr. Clinton since the voters returned a divided government.The threat comes after several months in which the president has swung between broad attempts at conciliation and brief hints of confrontation.

WASHINGTON -- Remember midnight basketball?Scornful Republicans who are taking over the House of Representatives do, and they are planning to reopen this year's angry debate over federal funding for crime-prevention measures in hopes of getting rid of midnight basketball and other so-called prevention programs.The House GOP's "Contract With America" calls for a $5 billion cut in prevention programs that were in cluded in this year's hard-won $30 billion crime bill.Republicans want to see fewer dollars for Democratic "social welfare programs" and more in flexible block grants "to the communities that have the highest crime rates," said Rep. Bill McCollum, a senior member of the House Judiciary Committee and one of three candidates running for House majority whip.