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.
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 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.
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.
They 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," Kane said.
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 Federal Bureau of Investigation, 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, 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 Area 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 stopping 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.
Also, 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, DeAndrea said of the city of about 25,000, and he credited 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.
In addition, school security at West Hazleton Elementary/Middle School has reported an influx of children who appear to be involved in gang activity.
"Are they bona fide gangs? I don't know that," Buglio said, adding that he once attended a police course where the instructor said, "wannabees are gonna-bees."
An FBI gang task force officer, who asked that his name not be used, said Hazleton often is given a bad name as a mecca for gang violence, but that gang members travel to surrounding communities as well to commit crimes or even to patronize the same businesses law-abiding people do. That means the city's problem has become a regional problem, he said.
The officer said he has personally interviewed hundreds of gang members and found that though some of them eventually end up conducting a violent act, others don't, so as to not attract attention to themselves. When gangs act violently, he said, they mostly are doing it to rival gang members, not average citizens.
Whether they're quiet or loud about their activities, however, they are involved in criminal acts - from drugs and weapons violations to even white-collar crimes such as identity theft, he said.
Dealing drugs, however, is still one of the primary - and quickest - ways that gangs make money, he said.
He said the FBI task force, which already works with local law enforcement and other justice agencies, has laid the groundwork for gang investigations and identified "targets," but extra manpower is needed to make arrests.
State Sen. John Yudichak, D-14, Nanticoke, has offered his support for Kane's mobile street crime unit and marketed it to colleagues in the Legislature.
Kane is from Scranton, less than an hour's drive from Hazleton, but said she has become very familiar with Hazleton since information about its crime problems was passed along to her.
Hazleton residents aren't alone when they say they don't recognize their town. She said people across the commonwealth, in other communities, say the same thing about the places where they grew up. They are afraid and unhappy because of crime, she said, and it is not fair.
"We care about getting into these communities and returning them to what they use to be," she said.
Buglio said he believes the more serious crimes that have been committed in the area are somehow connected to gangs. He said the borough has a "transient population" that commits crimes in one community and then moves onto another.
Criminals are moving between the Hazleton area and Wilkes-Barre and Scranton, he said, and more recently, Pottsville. Criminals are people of opportunity, and if they see a place where they can commit crimes, they take advantage of it, he said.
The mobility of the criminals is making it "extremely difficult" to investigate crimes for small police departments like West Hazleton, which don't have the resources to handle the complexity of gang-related crime or traveling criminals, Buglio said.
DeAndrea said a town like Hazleton cannot afford to have 20 additional officers saturate the community for a period of time specifically to target gang activity without something like the mobile street crime unit.
He also said there is no other way to move gangs out of a community.
As for the $3 million annual cost, Kane said it equates to less than 30 cents a year for each of the state's 12 million residents. That money will pay for salaries, overtime, equipment and insurance.
Plans call for the unit to saturate three communities in its first year, reducing crime while helping to fix the economic toll that it has taken on the communities, the hardship on local police investigating street crime and the costs associated with addicts in society.
The unit is critical to the survival of communities in the commonwealth, Kane said, as high-crime areas typically have a low economic base because people are afraid to do business there.
Kane 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 combating street crime.
Ganging up
Kane said Yudichak "called to light" the gang problem in Northeastern 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, 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 for gangs in the early 2000s but Kane's strike force should be a "priority" for all communities in the commonwealth.
Hazleton is only one example of a Pennsylvania community with gang problems, Yudichak said. On top of that, he said, criminals do not know municipal boundaries, so a problem in one town becomes a problem for neighboring communities.
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. Yudichak said the law, which was enacted in 2012, will complement Kane's proposal.
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, Yudichak said, he considers the mobile street crime unit a "smart investment."
Corbett's office offered no comment when contacted about Kane's plans, though in published reports the governor has questioned if it is duplicating existing services.
DeAndrea said any resistance to 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.