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Residents, committee getting 'Fed Up'
Date:
8/01/2008
By
Nita Birmingham
The Post and Courier
Ninth
Circuit Solicitor Scarlett Wilson plucked a gold-finished .50-caliber Desert
Eagle handgun from a table of firearms Thursday during a news conference to
announce a state and federal initiative to combat gun violence.
"This gun
is about looking cool," she said.
Not so
cool: doing federal time for having a firearm if you're prohibited by law from
doing so.
"The
message we want to get out is if you have a gun, you're done," Wilson said as
she stood with U.S. Attorney W. Walter Wilkins and local law enforcement
officials to announce the initiative she dubbed "Operation Fed Up."
Residents
are fed up with people who have been convicted of violent crime and yet continue
to "plague our community," Wilson said. The 9th Circuit encompasses Charleston
and Berkeley counties.
Operation
Fed Up is an attempt to refocus efforts that began in 2002 under Project
CeaseFire, a program to reduce gun violence. By 2006, more than 2,000 offenders
had been locked up through CeaseFire, according to federal statistics.
Operation
Fed Up offers advantages the state system doesn't have, such as harsher
penalties and a federal grand jury that has the authority to investigate cases,
Wilson said.
A
coordinating committee reviews gun cases to determine if they should go through
the state or federal judicial system. Wilkins said four assistant U.S. attorneys
have been designated to work with Operation Fed Up. The committee already has
identified cases that are expected to be presented to a federal grand jury in
August, Wilkins said, though he didn't say how many cases.
Hanahan
police Lt. Mike Fowler said his agency has sent a case to the committee for
review. It originated from a suspicious-person call, he said. The suspect, a
convicted felon, tossed a gun, but officers found it underneath a car.
If the
suspect were prosecuted by the state and convicted, he'd probably get probation.
If he were prosecuted in federal court and convicted, he could receive a maximum
penalty of up to 10 years in prison.
"The
beauty of it for us is it gets these guys off the street longer," Fowler said.
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