AG McKenna getting tough on gangs with his latest legislation
Published 4:03 pm Wednesday, January 12, 2011
In December, Don Pierce, executive director of the Washington State Association of Sheriff’s and Police Chiefs, warned that some neighborhoods in the state are “nearly under siege” from gang violence.
On Jan. 3, Attorney General Rob McKenna proposed tougher anti-gang laws to the state Senate and the state House of Representatives. On Jan. 7, McKenna explained his bills to the South Sound Chambers of Commerce Legislative Coalition at Emerald Downs.
“We cannot arrest our way out of this problem, we have to win the battle for the hearts and minds of young people who are being targeted,” McKenna said of his anti-gang legislation.
Added McKenna: “We can’t sit by and let this happen in our state.”
In the broad view, McKenna’s proposed anti-gang law calls for tougher sentences for gang members, dedicates $10 million to gang-prevention and intervention programs, asks for tools to local communities so they can regulate gang activity and allows police to shutter rental properties that gangs use in the same way police board up drug houses.
His proposals are three in number:
1. Prevention and intervention, aimed at young people. By providing after school activities, communities can keep young people busy and off the street, he said.
2. Civil tools to communities so they can take take out a protection order to protect gang-plagued neighborhoods. He said that gang headquarters need to be considered the same as “drug houses.”
3. Criminal provisions targeting adult leaders of street gangs, which will focus on tougher laws and longer jail sentences for gang members.
“We also need to focus on strategies to decapitate the top of the chart, take off the leaders of gangs and put them back in prison. There are more than 36,000 gang members in the Northwest, with leaders in the hundreds. One of the reasons we were effective addressing gang violence back in the ’80s and ’90s was that we took leaders and put them away. It works,” McKenna said.
McKenna has proposed similar anti-gang measures before. In 2008, his proposal to use civil orders against gangs failed when the Senate removed it from another of his gang bills.
And there’s no sure bet this go-around. McKenna is a possible Republican candidate for governor in 2012, and some Democrats may want to thwart him.
During the past three legislative sessions, lawmakers in Olympia, mindful of rising gang violence across the state, have approved some gang-related bills and rejected others.
