Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 20, 1991 TAG: 9103200425
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"The kind of moral force and national will that freed Kuwait City from abuse can free America's cities from crime," he told a convention of law-enforcement officials.
The comparison of Iraqi-occupied Kuwait City to crime-plagued U.S. cities is overdrawn, of course. Still, Americans are fed up with crime, which is a more direct threat to more of them than was Saddam Hussein.
But look at what Bush has done. As a centerpiece of his challenge to Congress to pass his legislative agenda within 100 days, he has submitted a supposedly new anti-crime bill that offers nothing new, and won't fight crime.
Like the bill Bush submitted last year, most of which was rightly rejected by Congress, this legislation reflects the misguided notion that curtailing constitutional rights reduces crime. It would weaken the exclusionary rule, which bars improperly seized evidence from being used in prosecutions. Police would be allowed to conduct searches without warrants and then use illegally obtained evidence if they claim they acted in "good faith." That's an invitation to abuse.
Bush's bill would also expand the number of federal crimes for which the death penalty could be imposed, and would put drastic limits on death-row inmates' rights to appeal. Those sorts of things will excite execution advocates, but such provisions hardly touch the reality of violent street crime, most of which violates state rather than federal laws.
Indeed, the bill excludes measures that could make streets safer. It entirely omits gun control, for example. Federal legislation is urgently needed to reduce gun trafficking between states with lax laws and those with strict ones. A ban on domestically made military assault weapons and a seven-day waiting period on gun purchases have been endorsed by all the major law-enforcement associations in the country. Bush's bill contains neither.
Nor does his bill support promising innovations in local law-enforcement. Most crime is handled by city police and state courts and prisons. But localities and states are overwhelmed by costs. They could use federal help to try new ideas such as boot camps for young offenders (a suggestion made by Republican Marshall Coleman in his 1989 gubernatorial campaign), community policing to prevent crime in neighborhoods, more drug treatment for convicts, and alternative sentencing with close supervision of released criminals.
Bush's budget proposal would actually cut law-enforcement aid to localities by $100 million. That hardly evinces the kind of "moral force and national will" for controlling crime that Bush showed in prosecuting the Gulf War. The president is responding to public fears about crime by creating only the appearance of action. As crime-control, his bill is a bad joke.
by CNB