APRI Highlights - Winter 2003

Combating Gun Violence

APRI welcomes Paula Wulff as a GVP senior attorney. She formerly served as a program manager with NDAA and the National Association of Prosecutor Coordinators.

APRI continues to provide state prosecutors with professional training to reduce gun violence as part of the comprehensive Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN) initiative. The PSN approach emphasizes aggressive prosecution of certain gun law violations in state and federal courts, coupled with community prosecution strategies for community outreach.

APRI’s Gun Violence Prosecution Program (GVP) recently completed the fifth, and final, course on “Combating Gun Violence: Fundamentals of Firearms Prosecution” at the Ernest F. Hollings National Advocacy Center. These courses, offered in conjunction with the National District Attorneys Association and the National College of District Attorneys, were a tremendous success, and there is a waiting list of over 200 assistant prosecutors for the next series. The courses prepared nearly 300 participants to return to their communities and implement a coordinated, aggressive approach to removing illegal guns, and those who illegally carry guns, from their jurisdictions. At the conclusion of a recent course, one prosecutor remarked, “Before I came to this course, I thought I was an island prosecuting gun cases.” Now, he claims, he is ready to sit down with his federal counterparts and local law enforcement to analyze the most effective methods for prosecuting gun crime offenders.

GVP continues to collaborate with our PSN partners, including the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, International Association of Chiefs of Police and the Department of Justice. PSN Enforcement Trainings and PSN Strategic Planning Trainings for federal and local prosecutors and law enforcement officers will be offered 16 times in FY 2003 and will serve to build powerful teams to combat gun violence.

APRI has been intimately involved in PSN since its inception. What was once a nebulous concept is now more defined and being implemented by prosecutors around the country. As more jurisdictions develop their own programs, issues and concerns have arisen. In FY 2003, APRI plans to offer a series of regional gun violence reduction workshops with a new curriculum that will address emerging issues and offer solutions and promising practices to prosecutors in the field.

GVP will soon publish a second monograph, Promising Practices in Combating Gun Violence: A Guide for Prosecutors. This monograph examines how prosecutors in five jurisdictions have implemented gun violence reduction strategies, analyzes the success of those strategies and offers ideas on how to implement Project Safe Neighborhoods.

GVP also provides technical assistance to community gun violence prosecutors and law enforcement officers. For more information on any of GVP’s trainings, publications or technical assistance services, please contact us at (703) 549-4253 or gvp@ndaa-apri.org.