AG 2006 07 31 Recessed - Laserfiche WebLink

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PROJECT SAFE NEIGHBORHOODS Project Safe Neighborhoods came to us in Cabarrus County a little over a year ago. Its main goal is to rid the distribution and possession of illegal guns on the streets. It is a federal initiative created under the Bush Administration encouraging local agencies to embrace. Tracing illegal guns is often overlooked by many and can lead to solving numerous crimes. It also exposes potential criminals. Our project includes ridding illegal guns from our streets; but we think our project is much bigger than that. It allows us to look at our reporting data for violent offense crimes (homicide, aggravated assaults, felony gun violations, robbery, etc) in our community and determine which individuals are responsible for them. We have determined that there are a small number of criminals that are responsible for a large number of violent crimes. If we can find a way to target those individuals and begin concentrating on them, we can do one of two things. We can either use community resources to help identify what their problem is and how and can be resolved - and then work with those individuals at ridding themselves of a life of crime OR we can utilize the federal government and federal prison system to house them for us. The federal system has a much stronger system and can have much, much stricter penalties for crime than our state system. The beauty of this project is that we are using many facets of our community resources to reach out to these individuals one last time. However, if they don't wish to change and become productive citizens, we have the lever (federal system) in our hands. The U.S. Attorney's Office in the Middle District is the driving force behind the initiative, so we have Anna Mills Wagoner, Rob Lang, ATF, and others at the table. I will further detail how this system will work; however, this is the nuts and bolts of the program. Thanks Sheriff Riley D-\