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Thursday, August 2, 2012

A Victory for Puerto Rico as U.S. House Approves Pierluisi bill to Allocate More Federal Resources to High-Crime Areas

Washington, DC — As anticipated, the U.S. House of Representatives last night unanimously approved legislation introduced by Resident Commissioner Pedro Pierluisi that would direct the U.S. Department of Justice, when it allocates law enforcement personnel and resources among jurisdictions, to give priority to those areas of the country that have high rates of homicide and other violent crime, such as Puerto Rico.

H.R. 1550, the Federal Law Enforcement Personnel and Resources Allocation Improvement Act of 2012, received strong bipartisan support when it was debated on the House floor Tuesday night from the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Lamar Smith (R-Texas); the Ranking Member of the Committee’s Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security, Bobby Scott (D-Virginia); and Congresswoman Donna M. Christensen (D-U.S. Virgin Islands).

“It is clear that my colleagues in Congress recognize the urgency of my efforts to obtain additional federal resources to combat violent crime. This legislation is of fundamental importance for Puerto Rico, as well as for other high-crime areas throughout the United States. Violence is not unique to Puerto Rico, but it is hitting us particularly hard, and it must be addressed,” said the Resident Commissioner.

“I thank my colleagues for their support and solidarity, and I urge the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as other federal law enforcement agencies, to act in a manner that leaves no doubt that they view a life lost in Puerto Rico to be as important as a life lost in Philadelphia, New York, or Miami,” added Pierluisi.

The Resident Commissioner’s bill would require the U.S. Attorney General to designate an existing official within the Department of Justice who will be responsible for developing practices and procedures to implement the directive to prioritize the allocation of personnel and resources to high-crime areas, and for monitoring compliance with the directive by the Department’s component agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the United States Marshals Service.

In addition, H.R. 1550 would require the Attorney General to submit an annual report to the appropriate congressional committees. The report would specify which jurisdictions have a high incidence of homicide or other violent crime, and would identify the steps that the Department of Justice is taking to prioritize the allocation of law enforcement personnel and resources to those high-crime areas. In addition, the report would describe the methodology that the Department is using to determine the total number of authorized federal law enforcement positions nationwide, to allocate those authorized positions among different jurisdictions, and to assign personnel to fill those authorized positions.

In his floor speech Tuesday night, the Resident Commissioner noted that, in recent years, the number of murders and other violent crimes nationwide has decreased substantially. However, certain jurisdictions have been exceptions to this steady downward trend in violent crime, with Puerto Rico being a case in point.

“Puerto Rico may be the most dramatic example of a U.S. jurisdiction where violent crime has increased rather than decreased, but it is by no means alone. For example, Flint, Michigan experienced a 73 percent increase in homicides between 2007 and 2011, while a major metropolitan area in the Central Valley of California witnessed a 100 percent increase in murders,” said Pierluisi.

Moreover, there are numerous other areas where there has been some progress in reducing crime, but where violence remains far too high. Examples of such areas include Detroit, Michigan; St. Louis, Missouri; Memphis, Tennessee; Oakland, California; Little Rock, Arkansas; Birmingham, Alabama; Atlanta, Georgia; Baltimore, Maryland; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Chicago, Illinois; Miami, Florida; and New Orleans, Louisiana.

Pierluisi, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, has urged Attorney General Eric Holder during multiple Committee hearings to “surge” personnel and resources to Puerto Rico until the current situation improves. The Department of Justice is taking that step in other high-crime areas, like Philadelphia and Oakland, pursuant to a new initiative known as the “Violent Crime Reduction Partnership,” which targets federal resources to areas in need of additional law enforcement support.

“This [initiative] is a positive step that should be encouraged and replicated in other high-crime jurisdictions, which is the precise result that H.R. 1550 seeks to bring about,” said Pierluisi.

“My bill does not in any way try to micromanage the Department or to promote a one-size-fits-all approach to fighting crime. H.R. 1550 simply seeks to ensure, in this time of fiscal constraint on both the federal and local levels, that DOJ has in place a carefully-crafted and consistently-applied policy of allocating limited law enforcement personnel and resources to those areas where they are needed the most,” he noted.

Congressman Smith, the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, applauded the efforts of the Resident Commissioner.

“The problem with high-crime areas may increase if there are not sufficient federal law enforcement officers in these communities. To address this situation, the Justice Department started to dispatch surges of federal law enforcement officers to prevent and investigate crime in high-crime cities like Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Oakland, California. H.R. 1550 continues this momentum. It directs the Department of Justice to consider . . . the need to recruit, assign, and retain federal law enforcement personnel in areas of the country with high rates of homicides and other violent crimes, which of course should include Puerto Rico,” said Chairman Smith.

“H.R. 1550 has bipartisan support and has been endorsed by the law enforcement community. The bill was reported out of the Judiciary Committee on a voice vote, and once again I want to thank Mr. Pierluisi for sponsoring this legislation,” he added.

For his part, the senior Democrat on the Crime Subcommittee, Bobby Scott, said that H.R. 1550 is a “necessary . . . measure to focus our crime-fighting efforts on the areas most in need.”

Another Member of Congress that spoke on the floor in support of H.R. 1550 was Donna Christensen, who said that the USVI would benefit from the legislation because it also has a “high incidence of homicide and violent crime,” which was a “by-product of the USVI and Puerto Rico being a transshipment point for illegal drugs traveling from Central and South America to the mainland United States.”

“There are many other communities in our country that are facing the same or similar incidence of violence; and the blame, in most cases, can be traced to drug trafficking. In the case of the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, it stems from the fact that we have become the route of choice for drug shipments to the east coast of the United States,” she added.

In addition to H.R. 1550, which now proceeds to the U.S. Senate, Pierluisi has secured language in a pending appropriations bill that would require the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) to prepare and publish a “Caribbean Border Counternarcotics Strategy,” a document which will outline the federal government’s plan of action to secure the nation’s Caribbean border against the threat posed by drug trafficking and related violence.

Moreover, during a recent trip to Puerto Rico, the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, pledged to develop and implement a federal “law enforcement” strategy specifically tailored to address drug-fueled violence on the Island.