2009 PSN - Western District of Pennsylvania

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 Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency (PCCD), serving as the fiscal agent for the Western District of Pennsylvania, will use the PSN grant to increase intelligence gathering capabilities, increase prevention and detection resources, and community-based gang prevention efforts. Specifically, the PCCD will support the following: 1) ATF Violent Crime Impact Teams (VCIT): The goal of this initiative is to target Pittsburgh's most violent communities and the armed individuals/gangs which perpetuate the cycle of violent crime through the use of firearms. Part I crime statistics will be compared from prior to the initiation of this initiative to the duration of the project for the targeted areas to quantify the initiative's progress. Funds will be utilized for overtime for the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police Firearms Tracking Unit to assist with the increase in the backlog of entering recovered firearms into the ATF e-Trace system; 2) Gang Free School and Communities (Pittsburgh Youth Intervention Project): A full-time outreach worker position will be funded to work with gang-involved youth and participate in support services with their families to dissuade them from gang involvement. 3) United States Marshals Service Fugitive Task Force: The primary mission of the fugitive task force is to seek out and arrest, in a joint and coordinated manner, persons who have outstanding state and/or federal felony warrants for their arrest. State parole agents will be provided overtime. 4) Project Safe Neighborhoods and Anti-Gang Grant Program Evaluation: Funds will be used to support a portion of the research partner and research assistants' salaries. Together, they will be responsible for data analysis and report preparation, preparing files for analysis, and submitting reports to the task force and fiscal agent; and 5) Gang Awareness Conference: This annual conference is free and open to federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies throughout Pennsylvania and neighboring states. Funds will be used to defray the cost of the 2010 Gang Awareness Conference.

NCA/NCF