Pubdate: Sun, 14 Jul 2002
Source: Lexington Herald-Leader (KY)
Copyright: 2002 Lexington Herald-Leader
Contact:  http://www.kentucky.com/mld/heraldleader/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/240
Author: Dylan T. Lovan, Associated Press

WAR ON TERROR TRUMPS LOCAL CRIME PREVENTION

U.S. Attorney Cites Gun, Drug Crimes As Challenges

LOUISVILLE - The new U.S. attorney for the Western District of Kentucky 
says his office will have to work harder to fight traditional crimes while 
the nation is focused on terrorism.

"We're going to have to find a way to make do," said Steve Pence, who 
returned to the U.S. attorney's office in September after serving as an 
assistant in that office during the BOPTROT scandal of the early 1990s.

"Drug activity, illegal activity, none of those are going to stop because 
those people are patriotic. Drug dealers don't think, 'Well I'm going to be 
patriotic and stop dealing drugs because there's a war on terrorism,'" he said.

Pence, 49, said that because terrorism gets top priority, it might be more 
difficult to give cases involving illegal guns and drugs -- priority Nos. 2 
and 3 -- the kind of attention they got before Sept. 11.

"People are just going to have to do a little bit more," he said.

He said with the FBI's shift to terror, the help his office got with drug 
cases from the feds will have to come from somewhere else.

"If an FBI agent is not going to be able to do it, a local agent will have 
to help us do it," he said.

It's a shift in priorities also acknowledged by Kentucky's new FBI 
director, J. Stephen Tidwell, who took office in May. Tidwell said it would 
take a "large" drug organization to divert the FBI's attention away from 
terrorism.

Pence, who said he's a registered Republican and gun owner, was appointed 
by President Bush in September.

He made headlines in the early 1990s as the lead federal prosecutor in 
Operation BOPTROT, an influence-buying scandal that led to the prosecutions 
of several key political figures, including former House Speaker Don 
Blandford and Bruce Wilkinson, nephew of former Gov. Wallace Wilkinson.

Pence left the U.S. attorney's office in 1995 to work at a law firm in 
Louisville.

In 1998, he ran for Jefferson County attorney, losing to Democrat Irv Maze.

Though terrorism takes top billing these days, Pence said new initiatives 
are helping fight traditional crimes, especially crimes committed with a gun.

He mentioned Project Backfire, which teams local prosecutors with the U.S. 
attorney's office so that gun crimes that meet certain criteria can be 
moved into the federal system, where penalties are harsher.

"Guns in the hands of the right people doesn't bother me," Pence said. 
"It's guns in the hands of people who are committing crime or have 
committed crimes. That's where we need to be focusing."

As for the fight against terror, Pence said he has appointed a full-time 
assistant U.S. attorney, Irwin Roberts, to head the office's Anti-Terrorism 
Task Force.

Roberts reports to Pence once a week.

Pence acknowledged that the way terror is fought in Kentucky may differ 
from New York City, though he declined to comment on possible threats to 
this state.

Pence's office was host to a terrorism summit this spring in Louisville 
that drew about 250 law enforcement officers from around the state.

He said at that summit that though Kentucky may not be a major terror 
target, money laundering and other operations funding terrorist activities 
could potentially be functioning in any part of the state.

The rules have changed after Sept. 11, and we're "dealing in a different 
world," he said.

"We are no longer civilians, any of us. We're all potential combatants in 
this war."
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