FY 2007 Project Safe Neighborhoods - District of CT

Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN), a nationwide commitment to reducing gun crime, links existing local programs together and provides them with necessary tools. PSN 1) takes a hard line against gun criminals, using every available means to create safer neighborhoods; 2) seeks to achieve heightened coordination among federal, state, and local law enforcement; and 3) emphasizes tactical intelligence gathering, more aggressive prosecutions, and enhanced accountability through performance measures. The United States Attorney in each federal judicial district will lead the offensive. The fiscal agent, in coordination with the PSN Task Force, will allocate funds throughout the community.

The District of Connecticut has found through past research using PSN funds that the gun crimes in the District are closely associated with drug trafficking and gang-related drug trafficking. As such, The Connection, Inc. plans to utilize FY07 PSN funding to concentrate on the PSN cities of Hartford, New Haven, Bridgeport, Stamford, and Waterbury to disrupt these crimes.

Some of the goals of the District include: 1) Increasing police presence both physically through the funding of overtime and technologically through the funding of surveillance equipment; 2) Utilizing Title III electronic surveillance intercepts (wiretaps) more often to aid in more informative investigations and more successful arrests and prosecutions; 3) Aggressively pursuing pretrial detention for federal defendants to increase witness and community cooperation and reduce fear of retaliation; and 4) Increasing coordination and communication between initiatives like PSN and Weed and Seed and between federal, state, and local law enforcement and courts to alleviate duplication of efforts and to reduce potential "turf" battles.

The District will fund the following initiatives: 1) Overtime for police officers in the target cities to investigate gun crime; 2) Training for federal, state, and local law enforcement officers on firearms laws, armed gunman characteristics, and firearms identification; 3) Surveillance equipment to increase state and local police presence in the target areas; 4) Media and community outreach through the showing of the video 'inter alia' to state offenders before release from prison, an active Project Sentry program which has become a regular part of the school curriculum, and the juvenile offender meeting which targets students who have received long-term suspensions from school and those who have become adjudicated youthful offenders; and 5) Research to continue data collection and program evaluation.

NCA/NCF