Press Releases
COMMERCE, JUSTICE, SCIENCE, AND RELATED AGENCIES
FY 2010 APPROPRIATIONS REQUESTS
Agency: Department of Justice
Project Title: Alpine and Calaveras Counties Regional Interoperable and Tactical Communications Microwave Project
Recipient: Alpine County Sheriff’s Office
Location: P.O. Box 278, Markleeville, CA 96120
Amount Requested: $1,000,000
The Sierra Nevada Counties of Alpine and Calaveras are building an interoperable communications system. Due to the elevation differentials and long distances between communications towers, officers are sometimes unable to communicate with each other. These funds will allow the counties to purchase mobile data terminals and install microwave tower sites, with those in Alpine County co-located with federal sites. Once this system is in place, it will also serve as a critical redundant communication link between the Bay Area, Sacramento and Nevada or further east, which will be critical during any disaster. The Federal Government is the majority land owner in both counties, and the sheriffs are contracted by the Forest Service to provide law enforcement. This project serves the taxpayer by providing law enforcement the tools required to communicate across jurisdictional boundaries, allowing for local, state, and federal cooperation, particularly during emergencies.
Project Title: City of Long Beach Youth Career Academy
Recipient: City of Long Beach
Location: 333 West Ocean Blvd., Long Beach, CA 90802
Amount Requested: $200,000
The City of Long Beach’s workforce investment board, school district and the Los Angeles County Probation Department are developing a Youth Career Academy to help young people continue their education or find a sustainable career path. Currently, twenty percent of Long Beach youth, ages 16 to 24, are neither enrolled in school nor employed. In addition, each year the juvenile detention center returns more than 450 students to Long Beach schools. Most of these students are between the ages of 14 and 17 and have been incarcerated for at least one month. The Youth Career Academy will offer job training and career development, mentoring, and educational assistance to help students obtain their high school diploma or GED. The Academy will provide structured employment and educational activities to engage young adults who significantly contribute to delinquency, gang involvement, and other at-risk behaviors in the community, and connect workforce and education activities for younger youth as part of a larger intervention strategy. The total cost for FY10 is $905,000, including $360,000 for staff and $545,000 for the actual youth training activities. This federal funding request is for youth training activities.
Project Title: City of Los Angeles Gang Reduction Youth Development Zones
Recipient: City of Los Angeles
Location: City Hall, 200 North Spring Street, Room 303, Los Angeles, CA 90012
Amount Requested: $1,200,000
The City of Los Angeles’ Mayor’s Office on Gang Reduction and Youth Development (GRYD) has identified twelve areas of the City that face the highest levels of gang activity. Although in the past, resources were split fairly evenly across Los Angeles, the City is now concentrating resources in these “GRYD” zones. Federal funds will augment the work the City is doing in these GRYD zones. The GRYD zone model will initiate a study of the community services available within the zone and determine how to expand and integrate those services with human and financial resources, so that communities are able to combat gang violence independently. This model has served to decrease gang-related crime in the Boyle Heights neighborhood by 44 percent over three years. The gang problem is especially acute in California where membership estimates range from 250,000 to 420,000 gang members, and approximately 3,700 different street gangs. Los Angeles is what is known as a “source city” for both illegal narcotics and gangs, meaning that Los Angeles-based gangs have migrated to other communities across the country. More than 38 percent of the homicides in Los Angeles County are gang-related. This program benefits the taxpayer by intervening early in the lives of at-risk youth to stop the cycle of gang violence – enhancing public safety, and saving the government in future costs that would likely be incurred without this reduction in gang activity.
Project Title: City of Oakland, Law Enforcement Equipment
Recipient: City of Oakland
Location: 1 Frank Ogawa Plaza; 3rd Floor, Oakland, CA 94612
Amount Requested: $500,000
Oakland Mayor Ron Dellum’s top priority remains law enforcement technology. This funding will help the City develop, design, and deploy a centralized criminal data repository. Currently, the City’s public safety agencies maintain dozens of distinct databases that are not compatible and therefore law enforcement is unable to cross-reference information collected in these separate databanks. This program will not only combine information into a single comprehensive system, this project will also allow detectives to use artificial-intelligence searches within the database, which will assist in monitoring, collaborating, and notifying disparate investigations of similarities and connections. This technology serves to benefit the taxpayer by providing local, state, and federal law enforcement with the tools they need to effectively prevent, investigate, and prosecute crime.
Project Title: Butte County Drug Endangered Children Program
Recipient: County of Butte
Location: 25 County Center Drive, Oroville, CA 95965
Amount Requested: $500,000
Butte County is an epicenter for methamphetamine use. The Drug Endangered Children Program provides services to children who must leave their homes because of meth manufacture or use by their parents or guardians. On average, 300 children are removed annually, in a county of 220,000. The County had received a grant from the State to finance its team of investigators, prosecutors, and social workers, but this funding ended in 2003. Butte County has continued to keep the program running. This program not only serves the children who are living in deplorable conditions with immediate and long term intervention and treatment services, but also allows law enforcement to focus on gathering evidence and handling the arrest. Butte County’s program was the first in the state and its members have helped establish other programs across the nation. Federal funding will allow the program to continue. Taxpayers benefit when state and local law enforcement have the tools they need to maintain public safety. For this reason, the federal government, through a variety of state and local law enforcement assistance programs, has made providing grants to support a broad range of activities that prevent and control crime and improve the criminal justice system a national priority.
Project Title: East Bay Regional Communications System Authority
Recipient: East Bay Regional Communications System Authority
Location: 4985 Broder Blvd., Dublin, CA 94568
Amount Requested: $1,000,000
Alameda and Contra Costa Counties are no strangers to the devastating effects of natural disasters: The experience of both the Oakland Hills Firestorm and the Loma Prieta earthquake demonstrated firsthand that public safety communication systems must be integrated. In order to build a federally-compliant, regional communications system, Alameda and Contra Costa counties, their 27 cities, and 4 special districts formed a Joint Powers Authority in 2007. The total cost is $67 million, with each jurisdiction (the two counties, 27 cities, and four special districts) paying a portion of the system’s cost. To date, $32 million in local funds has been spent on the system’s central processor and the microwave network. Once completed, the system will enhance public safety throughout the region by assisting state and local law enforcement agencies to investigate, respond to, and prevent crime, and help protect 2.5 million residents. These federal funds will assist with the development of three microwave sites to link the two counties. Without the implementation of this interoperable communications system, the disparate nature of the regions current communications network will continue to hinder any coordinated disaster response and will remain an obstacle to effective emergency response. Taxpayers will benefit from this project because it will bolster public safety by providing local, state, and federal law enforcement with the tools they need to communicate with one another effectively to prevent and respond to emergencies.
Project Title: Fresno County Regional Data Interoperability
Recipient: County of Fresno
Location: 2281 Tulare Street, Fresno, California 93721
Amount Requested: $1,000,000
Fresno County, the most populous region in the San Joaquin Valley, is seeking federal assistance to complete its interoperable communications system, to facilitate the sharing of information across jurisdictional boundaries between the County’s public safety agencies, in order to better serve and protect its more than 909,000 residents. The final segment of this project is the installation of a new Computer Aided Dispatch system to provide complete connection of all major police, fire, and emergency services in Fresno, Kings and Madera counties, and part of Tulare. 47 first responder agencies will be on the system. The total cost of the system is $28.3 million.
Project Title: California Gang Suppression Enforcement Teams (GSET)
Recipient: California State Department of Justice / Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement
Location: 1300 I Street, Sacramento, CA 95814
Amount Requested: $1,000,000
California Department of Justice’s Gang Suppression Enforcement Teams (GSET) were created in 2006 to assist local law enforcement agencies in attacking a gang’s hierarchy. While local police typically only have the resources to go after the low-level drug dealers and enforcers, the GSET teams brings extra manpower, expertise and technology to an investigation to identify and take down a gang’s top leadership, in order to prevent it from reestablishing itself. To date, the teams have completed eleven major cases, resulting in the arrest of 320 gang leaders and the seizure of significant quantities of firearms, ammunition, cash, and drugs. The current program costs $4.5 million. The requested funds will be used for training, equipment, translation services, wiretapping, overtime compensation, and travel expenses for the GSET teams. Criminal gang activity is a national problem. Today, gangs plague all 50 states, with about 30,000 criminal gangs in the United States, and more than one million gang members across the country. California is on the frontlines of the fight against gangs, where gang-related murders of law enforcement officials have spiked dramatically in recent years. Federal investment in the statewide fight to counter gang-violence benefits taxpayers by mitigating the detrimental effects of gangs throughout California, and preventing their spread to other states.
Project Title: Los Angeles Sheriff Anti-Gang Intelligence Data Sharing and Analysis Database
Recipient: County of Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department
Location: 4700 Ramona Blvd., Monterrey Park, CA 91754
Amount Requested: $300,000
Los Angeles County Sheriff Leroy Baca wants to create a comprehensive, integrated, countywide gang intelligence analytic information database. This project will utilize “Coplink,” an artificial intelligence based software application, to enable Federal, State, and local law enforcement agencies to more effectively share, integrate, search, and analyze information relating to gangs. The database will be available to all law enforcement in the County and allow gang investigators to make connections between gang members, activities, crimes, and geographical areas that otherwise could prove difficult. This funding will be used to purchase the computer equipment and licensing necessary to upgrade the Sheriff’s database. Los Angeles County has 1,000 street gangs with a cumulative membership of 80,000 individuals. Gang members account for forty percent of all homicides in the County and contribute substantially to juvenile delinquency rates, school violence, and drug trafficking. This database serves to benefit the taxpayer by providing local, state, and federal law enforcement with the tools to prevent, investigate, and prosecute gang-related crime.
Project Title: Monterey County Street and Anti-Gang Project
Recipient: County of Monterey
Location: Sheriff’s Office, 1414 Natividad Road, Salinas, CA 93906
Amount Requested: $1,000,000
In 2008, the City of Salinas (approximately 120,000 residents) had 25 murders – only three were not gang-related. In the first four months of 2009, the City’s gang-related homicide rate is three times that of last year’s. The County of Monterey and City of Salinas established a joint gang task force between the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office, Probation Department, District Attorney’s Office, and Office of Education, and the City of Salinas Police Department in 2005 to combat this problem. The task force works on multiple fronts, combining gang suppression activities by local law enforcement such as criminal arrests and probation, with prevention and early intervention efforts intended to reduce gang involvement by County youths. The GTF has also been very active in public outreach, conducting more than 133 gang awareness training sessions to working parents during community outreach presentations. The requested funding will help augment the task force’s gang suppression efforts, which were responsible for close to 750 gang-related arrests last year, including 377 felony arrests. The task force, which was created to combat an overwhelming spike in the rate of gang-related homicides across Monterey County, has made a significant positive impact on gang-related crime, and has become a statewide model and resource for effective gang suppression coupled with the prevention and intervention efforts of the Monterey County Silver Star Gang Prevention and Intervention program. For more than a decade, I have worked to enact legislation to authorize grant programs for gang abatement and prevention. This program is critical to public safety in California, making federal investment in combating gang-violence in Monterey County beneficial to taxpayers by enhancing public safety and easing the costs associated with gang activity.
Project Title: Stanislaus County and City of Modesto, Law Enforcement Communications Equipment
Recipient: City of Modesto
Location: 1010 Tenth Street, Modesto, CA 95353
Amount Requested: $1,000,000
Regional communications between law enforcement agencies in Stanislaus County are inadequate. The current interoperability channel is aging and unreliable, and has greatly hindered emergency response or has been unusable in several high-profile incidents over the past several years. Most recently, radio communications were ineffective during the summer 2006 Canyon Fire that devastated 34,000 acres of the western portion of Stanislaus County. The requested federal funds will upgrade the existing 26-year-old interoperability channel, expand radio coverage, replace aging equipment, and upgrade all 23 emergency service agencies in Stanislaus County to P-25 compliance. Equipment purchased this year will include new towers, transmitters, antennae, and a security system at the primary transmission site. The County estimates the entire project will cost $21 million. Modesto has set aside $7 million in local funding and secured a $1.5 million Homeland Security grant in FY05. This project serves to benefit taxpayers by providing law enforcement the tools required to communicate across jurisdictional boundaries, allowing for local, state, and federal cooperation, particularly during emergencies.
Other
In addition to these projects, Senator Feinstein signed on to a multi-member letter requested funding for national programs authorized under the Adam Walsh Act, including the Rape, Abuse, Incest National Network (RAINN).
FY 2010 APPROPRIATIONS REQUESTS
Agency: Department of Justice
Project Title: Alpine and Calaveras Counties Regional Interoperable and Tactical Communications Microwave Project
Recipient: Alpine County Sheriff’s Office
Location: P.O. Box 278, Markleeville, CA 96120
Amount Requested: $1,000,000
The Sierra Nevada Counties of Alpine and Calaveras are building an interoperable communications system. Due to the elevation differentials and long distances between communications towers, officers are sometimes unable to communicate with each other. These funds will allow the counties to purchase mobile data terminals and install microwave tower sites, with those in Alpine County co-located with federal sites. Once this system is in place, it will also serve as a critical redundant communication link between the Bay Area, Sacramento and Nevada or further east, which will be critical during any disaster. The Federal Government is the majority land owner in both counties, and the sheriffs are contracted by the Forest Service to provide law enforcement. This project serves the taxpayer by providing law enforcement the tools required to communicate across jurisdictional boundaries, allowing for local, state, and federal cooperation, particularly during emergencies.
Project Title: City of Long Beach Youth Career Academy
Recipient: City of Long Beach
Location: 333 West Ocean Blvd., Long Beach, CA 90802
Amount Requested: $200,000
The City of Long Beach’s workforce investment board, school district and the Los Angeles County Probation Department are developing a Youth Career Academy to help young people continue their education or find a sustainable career path. Currently, twenty percent of Long Beach youth, ages 16 to 24, are neither enrolled in school nor employed. In addition, each year the juvenile detention center returns more than 450 students to Long Beach schools. Most of these students are between the ages of 14 and 17 and have been incarcerated for at least one month. The Youth Career Academy will offer job training and career development, mentoring, and educational assistance to help students obtain their high school diploma or GED. The Academy will provide structured employment and educational activities to engage young adults who significantly contribute to delinquency, gang involvement, and other at-risk behaviors in the community, and connect workforce and education activities for younger youth as part of a larger intervention strategy. The total cost for FY10 is $905,000, including $360,000 for staff and $545,000 for the actual youth training activities. This federal funding request is for youth training activities.
Project Title: City of Los Angeles Gang Reduction Youth Development Zones
Recipient: City of Los Angeles
Location: City Hall, 200 North Spring Street, Room 303, Los Angeles, CA 90012
Amount Requested: $1,200,000
The City of Los Angeles’ Mayor’s Office on Gang Reduction and Youth Development (GRYD) has identified twelve areas of the City that face the highest levels of gang activity. Although in the past, resources were split fairly evenly across Los Angeles, the City is now concentrating resources in these “GRYD” zones. Federal funds will augment the work the City is doing in these GRYD zones. The GRYD zone model will initiate a study of the community services available within the zone and determine how to expand and integrate those services with human and financial resources, so that communities are able to combat gang violence independently. This model has served to decrease gang-related crime in the Boyle Heights neighborhood by 44 percent over three years. The gang problem is especially acute in California where membership estimates range from 250,000 to 420,000 gang members, and approximately 3,700 different street gangs. Los Angeles is what is known as a “source city” for both illegal narcotics and gangs, meaning that Los Angeles-based gangs have migrated to other communities across the country. More than 38 percent of the homicides in Los Angeles County are gang-related. This program benefits the taxpayer by intervening early in the lives of at-risk youth to stop the cycle of gang violence – enhancing public safety, and saving the government in future costs that would likely be incurred without this reduction in gang activity.
Project Title: City of Oakland, Law Enforcement Equipment
Recipient: City of Oakland
Location: 1 Frank Ogawa Plaza; 3rd Floor, Oakland, CA 94612
Amount Requested: $500,000
Oakland Mayor Ron Dellum’s top priority remains law enforcement technology. This funding will help the City develop, design, and deploy a centralized criminal data repository. Currently, the City’s public safety agencies maintain dozens of distinct databases that are not compatible and therefore law enforcement is unable to cross-reference information collected in these separate databanks. This program will not only combine information into a single comprehensive system, this project will also allow detectives to use artificial-intelligence searches within the database, which will assist in monitoring, collaborating, and notifying disparate investigations of similarities and connections. This technology serves to benefit the taxpayer by providing local, state, and federal law enforcement with the tools they need to effectively prevent, investigate, and prosecute crime.
Project Title: Butte County Drug Endangered Children Program
Recipient: County of Butte
Location: 25 County Center Drive, Oroville, CA 95965
Amount Requested: $500,000
Butte County is an epicenter for methamphetamine use. The Drug Endangered Children Program provides services to children who must leave their homes because of meth manufacture or use by their parents or guardians. On average, 300 children are removed annually, in a county of 220,000. The County had received a grant from the State to finance its team of investigators, prosecutors, and social workers, but this funding ended in 2003. Butte County has continued to keep the program running. This program not only serves the children who are living in deplorable conditions with immediate and long term intervention and treatment services, but also allows law enforcement to focus on gathering evidence and handling the arrest. Butte County’s program was the first in the state and its members have helped establish other programs across the nation. Federal funding will allow the program to continue. Taxpayers benefit when state and local law enforcement have the tools they need to maintain public safety. For this reason, the federal government, through a variety of state and local law enforcement assistance programs, has made providing grants to support a broad range of activities that prevent and control crime and improve the criminal justice system a national priority.
Project Title: East Bay Regional Communications System Authority
Recipient: East Bay Regional Communications System Authority
Location: 4985 Broder Blvd., Dublin, CA 94568
Amount Requested: $1,000,000
Alameda and Contra Costa Counties are no strangers to the devastating effects of natural disasters: The experience of both the Oakland Hills Firestorm and the Loma Prieta earthquake demonstrated firsthand that public safety communication systems must be integrated. In order to build a federally-compliant, regional communications system, Alameda and Contra Costa counties, their 27 cities, and 4 special districts formed a Joint Powers Authority in 2007. The total cost is $67 million, with each jurisdiction (the two counties, 27 cities, and four special districts) paying a portion of the system’s cost. To date, $32 million in local funds has been spent on the system’s central processor and the microwave network. Once completed, the system will enhance public safety throughout the region by assisting state and local law enforcement agencies to investigate, respond to, and prevent crime, and help protect 2.5 million residents. These federal funds will assist with the development of three microwave sites to link the two counties. Without the implementation of this interoperable communications system, the disparate nature of the regions current communications network will continue to hinder any coordinated disaster response and will remain an obstacle to effective emergency response. Taxpayers will benefit from this project because it will bolster public safety by providing local, state, and federal law enforcement with the tools they need to communicate with one another effectively to prevent and respond to emergencies.
Project Title: Fresno County Regional Data Interoperability
Recipient: County of Fresno
Location: 2281 Tulare Street, Fresno, California 93721
Amount Requested: $1,000,000
Fresno County, the most populous region in the San Joaquin Valley, is seeking federal assistance to complete its interoperable communications system, to facilitate the sharing of information across jurisdictional boundaries between the County’s public safety agencies, in order to better serve and protect its more than 909,000 residents. The final segment of this project is the installation of a new Computer Aided Dispatch system to provide complete connection of all major police, fire, and emergency services in Fresno, Kings and Madera counties, and part of Tulare. 47 first responder agencies will be on the system. The total cost of the system is $28.3 million.
Project Title: California Gang Suppression Enforcement Teams (GSET)
Recipient: California State Department of Justice / Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement
Location: 1300 I Street, Sacramento, CA 95814
Amount Requested: $1,000,000
California Department of Justice’s Gang Suppression Enforcement Teams (GSET) were created in 2006 to assist local law enforcement agencies in attacking a gang’s hierarchy. While local police typically only have the resources to go after the low-level drug dealers and enforcers, the GSET teams brings extra manpower, expertise and technology to an investigation to identify and take down a gang’s top leadership, in order to prevent it from reestablishing itself. To date, the teams have completed eleven major cases, resulting in the arrest of 320 gang leaders and the seizure of significant quantities of firearms, ammunition, cash, and drugs. The current program costs $4.5 million. The requested funds will be used for training, equipment, translation services, wiretapping, overtime compensation, and travel expenses for the GSET teams. Criminal gang activity is a national problem. Today, gangs plague all 50 states, with about 30,000 criminal gangs in the United States, and more than one million gang members across the country. California is on the frontlines of the fight against gangs, where gang-related murders of law enforcement officials have spiked dramatically in recent years. Federal investment in the statewide fight to counter gang-violence benefits taxpayers by mitigating the detrimental effects of gangs throughout California, and preventing their spread to other states.
Project Title: Los Angeles Sheriff Anti-Gang Intelligence Data Sharing and Analysis Database
Recipient: County of Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department
Location: 4700 Ramona Blvd., Monterrey Park, CA 91754
Amount Requested: $300,000
Los Angeles County Sheriff Leroy Baca wants to create a comprehensive, integrated, countywide gang intelligence analytic information database. This project will utilize “Coplink,” an artificial intelligence based software application, to enable Federal, State, and local law enforcement agencies to more effectively share, integrate, search, and analyze information relating to gangs. The database will be available to all law enforcement in the County and allow gang investigators to make connections between gang members, activities, crimes, and geographical areas that otherwise could prove difficult. This funding will be used to purchase the computer equipment and licensing necessary to upgrade the Sheriff’s database. Los Angeles County has 1,000 street gangs with a cumulative membership of 80,000 individuals. Gang members account for forty percent of all homicides in the County and contribute substantially to juvenile delinquency rates, school violence, and drug trafficking. This database serves to benefit the taxpayer by providing local, state, and federal law enforcement with the tools to prevent, investigate, and prosecute gang-related crime.
Project Title: Monterey County Street and Anti-Gang Project
Recipient: County of Monterey
Location: Sheriff’s Office, 1414 Natividad Road, Salinas, CA 93906
Amount Requested: $1,000,000
In 2008, the City of Salinas (approximately 120,000 residents) had 25 murders – only three were not gang-related. In the first four months of 2009, the City’s gang-related homicide rate is three times that of last year’s. The County of Monterey and City of Salinas established a joint gang task force between the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office, Probation Department, District Attorney’s Office, and Office of Education, and the City of Salinas Police Department in 2005 to combat this problem. The task force works on multiple fronts, combining gang suppression activities by local law enforcement such as criminal arrests and probation, with prevention and early intervention efforts intended to reduce gang involvement by County youths. The GTF has also been very active in public outreach, conducting more than 133 gang awareness training sessions to working parents during community outreach presentations. The requested funding will help augment the task force’s gang suppression efforts, which were responsible for close to 750 gang-related arrests last year, including 377 felony arrests. The task force, which was created to combat an overwhelming spike in the rate of gang-related homicides across Monterey County, has made a significant positive impact on gang-related crime, and has become a statewide model and resource for effective gang suppression coupled with the prevention and intervention efforts of the Monterey County Silver Star Gang Prevention and Intervention program. For more than a decade, I have worked to enact legislation to authorize grant programs for gang abatement and prevention. This program is critical to public safety in California, making federal investment in combating gang-violence in Monterey County beneficial to taxpayers by enhancing public safety and easing the costs associated with gang activity.
Project Title: Stanislaus County and City of Modesto, Law Enforcement Communications Equipment
Recipient: City of Modesto
Location: 1010 Tenth Street, Modesto, CA 95353
Amount Requested: $1,000,000
Regional communications between law enforcement agencies in Stanislaus County are inadequate. The current interoperability channel is aging and unreliable, and has greatly hindered emergency response or has been unusable in several high-profile incidents over the past several years. Most recently, radio communications were ineffective during the summer 2006 Canyon Fire that devastated 34,000 acres of the western portion of Stanislaus County. The requested federal funds will upgrade the existing 26-year-old interoperability channel, expand radio coverage, replace aging equipment, and upgrade all 23 emergency service agencies in Stanislaus County to P-25 compliance. Equipment purchased this year will include new towers, transmitters, antennae, and a security system at the primary transmission site. The County estimates the entire project will cost $21 million. Modesto has set aside $7 million in local funding and secured a $1.5 million Homeland Security grant in FY05. This project serves to benefit taxpayers by providing law enforcement the tools required to communicate across jurisdictional boundaries, allowing for local, state, and federal cooperation, particularly during emergencies.
Other
In addition to these projects, Senator Feinstein signed on to a multi-member letter requested funding for national programs authorized under the Adam Walsh Act, including the Rape, Abuse, Incest National Network (RAINN).
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Related Files
- Letter urging increased funding for Rape, Abuse, Incest National Network (R - FY10AdamWalshltrwithsigs.pdf (121.2 KBs)
