A regional task force targeting gangs in Northern Virginia will be able to continue operations now that it has received a $1.7 million Justice Department grant, Rep. Frank Wolf announced Thursday. The grant ends a period of uncertainty overthe group’s future caused by a federal freeze on earmarks.
“Had they not gotten this, there would have been a break [in operations],” Wolf, R-Va., said Thursday. “This task force could have gone out of existence.”
When the Democrats took control of Congress early this year, they moved to strip special project expenditures called earmarks from spending bills until they could reform what leaders called the “fiscal mayhem” inherited from a GOP-controlled congress.
The move left the four-year-old gang task force’s key funding source in jeopardy at a time when it appeared to be making a dent in gang crime. Figures from Fairfax County show a 32 percent drop in gang-related incidents between 2005 and 2006, and more recent figures show that trend may hold true regionwide.
A report from the Northern Virginia Regional Commission about gang trends in recent years is expected to be released next month.
The money, awarded through a competitive grant program, was more than $100,000 more than the task force had asked for. Even so, it won’t be enough to greatly expand its programs, according to Herndon Police Chief Toussaint Summers, co-chairman of the group. He said the task force had set up plans to maintain operations during the interruption.
The task force encompasses 14 state law enforcement agencies as well as the FBI, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Drug Enforcement Agency, and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.
