As I'm sure others have noticed, Osama Bin Laden is still at large, but hey, the Justice Department does have priorities, especially with the congressional budget hearings looming. Finding Public Enemy Number One is hard work, and rounding up petty thieves and narcotics users is a lot easier.
Justice officials also showed a keen awareness of the public relations value of their effort, augmenting the Washington news conference with dramatic video footage of arrests for local television stations, and also holding regional news briefings, including one in Chicago.TribuneThe Washington briefing was Gonzales' first at the Justice Department headquarters since being confirmed as attorney general....The April 4-10 span of Operation FALCON was timed to coincide with Crime Victims Rights Week and it occurred during the season for congressional budget hearings.
“We want to show Congress that we've done what they asked us to do”--catch criminals, said Bob Finan, the Marshals Service assistant director for investigations, who coordinated the overall effort. He and other officials said they likely would try another national roundup.
But it was not immediately clear how much of a dent the sweep put in the nation's at-large population of criminals.
Finan said that last year the Marshals Service was involved in the capture of about 92,000 fugitives wanted on federal, state or local warrants
But Finan said there's no central registry of outstanding warrants, so there's no way to tell how many fugitives are on the loose.
Nor is it clear whether financially pressed local police departments that rose to the occasion with the help of overtime funding from the Marshals Service can sustain efforts on their own to catch fugitives.
The nationwide dragnet also pulled in more than 100 unregistered sex offenders and 150 gang members, with reports on captures still trickling in, officials said.Code-named Operation FALCON, for Federal and Local Cops Organized Nationally, the sweep was aimed at concentrating police resources and sharing information across jurisdictional lines in a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day push to round up fugitives....
It also seemed designed to reap maximum attention for the relatively low-profile Marshals Service as Congress considers federal agency budgets for the coming year. The marshals have coordinated regional sweeps in the past that centered on New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta and Washington, but never attempted to tie together a sweep by law-enforcement agencies across the entire country, Reyna said.
