State Attorney General Kathleen Kane is asking for funding to establish a mobile street crime unit that she says will flush gangs out of Pennsylvania.
The proposed 20-person law enforcement unit would combat gang members, chasing them out of trouble areas in Pennsylvania and following their drug trail to the supplier in an effort to cut off their income.
The unit's first assignment: Hazleton.
Ms. Kane has been pitching the idea to elected officials for months, hoping they earmark $3 million annually for the unit, starting with the 2013-14 budget. If approved, the office would deploy its agents first in Hazleton, which a 2011 federal report highlighted for its gang problems and related crimes.
Hazleton Police Chief Frank DeAndrea said having the city be the "poster child" for Ms. Kane's strike force will show the good that can come from her idea and how a community can be "given back" to its people.
"This is the best idea in law enforcement I've heard in ages," he said.
Ms. Kane said she recognized Hazleton as a place that needed help after speaking with law enforcement officials.
She said 80 percent of the crime in the state is associated with drugs and gangs, creating a workload that local police departments cannot handle.
Her proposed unit would effectively saturate a community with agents, complemented by local and county law enforcement officers and already-designated units within her agency that specialize in narcotics and gangs, for as long as it takes - possibly even months - to arrest the gang members.
The unit will be on the street, in schools and at other public places, she said.
To stop crimes perpetrated by gangs, she said agents need to find out where their drug supply is coming from. Stopping distribution, she said, stops profitability for the gangs.
"(We) want to make sure it is not worth doing business in Pennsylvania," Ms. Kane said.
Ms. Kane said her office is authorized to conduct court-approved wiretaps and also has specialists trained to chase money, along with attorneys capable of working with local district attorneys to provide prosecutorial assistance.
The mobile street crime unit also will partner with the federal Drug Enforcement Agency and FBI, whose agents already frequent the area.
The unit will use information cultivated from informants and by local officers on routine patrol.
The approach, she said, puts additional officers in local communities that otherwise could not afford them.
Once one community is cleaned of gang activity, Ms. Kane said, the mobile street crime unit will move onto another community, using the theory that if "you squeeze out crime in one place, it's like a balloon and will bulge out into another area."
"Wherever they go, we will go," she said.
Gangs 101
On March 15, 2012, school was being dismissed at Hazleton Elementary/Middle School at Ninth and Wyoming streets. A 13-year-old girl, waiting for a ride home, was attacked from behind and stuffed into a waiting vehicle.
She was driven around the area for several minutes before the vehicle stopped at Altmiller Playground, about one block north of the school. The girl ran from the vehicle at the playground but was attacked by a group who began beating her as the vehicle drove away, police said.
The incident was orchestrated by members of a juvenile gang, police said.
Prior to the incident, law enforcement already had informed the public that children as young as fifth grade were being recruited by gangs in the area.
The Hazleton Area School District earlier in the year implemented an anti-gang task force, putting deterrents into place aimed at preventing and stopping gang activity in schools.
In 2011, a U.S. Department of Justice report spelled out the problems in the northeast, including a growing gang concentration along the Interstate 80 and 81 corridors.
Of Luzerne, Lackawanna, Carbon, Columbia, Monroe and Schuylkill counties, Hazleton has the largest gang problem, Chief DeAndrea said of the city of about 25,000, and he credits Ms. Kane for recognizing the problem.
West Hazleton Police Chief Brian Buglio said his officers also have seen gang activity. Most stolen vehicles and home invasions are somehow related to gangs, he said - not that the victims are part of a gang, but were targeted for purposes of marking territory or another reason.
"These things aren't random acts. There is some underlying reason for these things to occur," he said.
State Sen. John Yudichak, D-14, Nanticoke, who has offered his support for Ms. Kane's mobile street crime unit and marketed it to colleagues in the Legislature, said 30 years ago, 60 percent of the 76 municipalities in Luzerne County had full-time police forces. Today, he said, that number has dropped to 6 percent, while the type of crimes they investigate has become more frequent and more violent.
Mr. Yudichak said violent crime spiked 30 percent in Luzerne County last year, and that crime can - and will - travel to surrounding counties.
Ms. Kane, of Waverly Twp., said she came up with the idea prior to taking office and started working on it her first day on the job, beginning with speaking to those in law enforcement who deal with gangs. She feels the approach will work and will become a national model for combatting street crime.
Ganging up
Ms. Kane said Mr. Yudichak "called to light" the gang problem in Northeast Pennsylvania when he and U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta, R-11, started Operation Gang Up, a series of nonpartisan community meetings, about two years ago.
By listening to law enforcement experts, Mr. Yudichak said, the community learned drug trafficking is more influenced by organized gangs than it is by other causes or groups.
He said taxpayers and police began raising concerns about gangs in the early 2000s but Ms. Kane's strike force should be a "priority" for all communities in the commonwealth.
Among the outcomes of the Operation Gang Up meetings was Pennsylvania's first anti-gang law, which defines criminal gang activity and provides for tough sentences, especially if a juvenile is recruited into a gang. Mr. Yudichak said the law, enacted in 2012, will complement Ms. Kane's proposal.
Mr. Yudichak said he has heard Gov. Tom Corbett say many times that public safety is the number one job of government, and for $3 million Mr. Yudichak considers the mobile street crime unit a "smart investment."
Mr. Corbett's office offered no comment when contacted about Ms. Kane's plans, though in published reports the governor has questioned if it is duplicating existing services.
Chief DeAndrea said any resistance to Ms. Kane's unit is purely political. And before anyone "derails" the idea, he said, they need to talk to police chiefs in places like Hazleton to see the problems local police departments across Pennsylvania are facing.
Contact the writer: achristman@ standardspeaker.com