Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr. letter to Henry Hyde, June 15, 2000

The Honorable Henry Hyde Chairman - House Judiciary Committee 2138 Rayburn House Office Building Washington, D.C. 20515 Dear Chairman Hyde: [ write to request a House Judiciary Committee review of the practices of the U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland regarding prosecution of federal firearm law violations. I have been working with local officials to initiate a serious campaign of enforcing federal gun laws in the Baltimore/Washington region in an effort to stem a rising murder rate. On August 23, 1999. 1 convened a meeting at my district office with U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland. Ms. Lynne Battaglia, along with numerous federal and local law enforcement officials and local prosecutors. The purpose of the meeting was to gamer support for the implementation of a “Project Exile" type program in the Baltimore/Washington region. Ms. Battaglia indicated she had a program in place. “Project Disarm”, which targets gun crime. Disarm is a federally sponsored task force operation consisting of members of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), Baltimore Police Department, and the U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland. Under the program, the predicate criteria established for prosecution is much higher than required by federal law; accordingly, only a small portion of eligible offenders are prosecuted. The Disarm program, at that time, did not encompass the entire city of Baltimore, let alone the Baltimore/Washington region. Despite the existence of the Disarm program, Baltimore’s murder rate failed to show a decrease comparable to national trends and in fact increased for two years. The screening process by which Ms. Battaglia chose firearm violation cases for prosecution utilized agents from the Baltimore office of the ATF who had been involved since the inception of the program in 1 994. In an effort to monitor federal firearm violations and prosecutions, I requested the ATF supply me a monthly statistical breakdown of the number of firearms related arrests in Baltimore; the number of offenders who have prior firearms related arrests, the number of cases which fit the criteria for prosecution under federal law: and the number of cases accepted for prosecution by the U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland. After receiving the initial data, I was informed by Mr. Larry Stewart, Special Agent in Charge of the Baltimore ATF office, that the ATF was no longer in a position to provide statistical data on firearm violations because Ms. Battaglia had, without warning, unilaterally