Minor and miscellaneous bills : hearing before the Subcommittee on Crime of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, One Hundred Fourth Congress, first session, on H.R. 1241, H.R. 1533, H.R. 1552, H.R. 2359, and H.R. 2360, September 28, 1995 (Volume Pt. 2) online

H.R. 2980, Interstate Stalking Punishment and Prevention Act,
the proposed Interstate Stalking Punishment and Prevention Act of
1996 would enact an interstate stalking offense. The proposed of-
fense is modeled on the existing interstate domestic violence of-
fense, which is at 18 United States Code, section 2261. The Depart-
ment of Justice supports the enactment of this legislation.

H.R. 2996, the Law Enforcement and Industrial Security Co-
operation Act, this bill would create a commission that would be
tasked with studying issues of public private cooperation in law en-
forcement, recommending revisions in Federal, State and local laws
to the Congress to promote such cooperation and otherwise encour-
aging such cooperation. We support the goals of this bill and want



126

to work with the subcommittee and the bill's sponsor regarding
some of the specific provisions proposed.

That concludes my oral statement, and I will be happy to — ^I will
be happy to answer any questions you have or try to answer any
questions.

Mr. McCoLLUM. You really raced through that, and I think we
just made it in time for the chairman to be able to go vote with
Mr. Barr.

We will be right back and thank you.

The committee is in recess.

[Recess.]

Mr. McCoLLUM. This hearing of the Subcommittee on Crime is
called to order again.

When we recessed for the vote a few minutes ago, Mr. Di Greg-
ory had been testifying.

And I believe you l>ad completed your statement for the Depart-
ment of Justice at that point on these various bills that we have
before us today.

I have a few questions to ask, and I am sure that my colleagues
likewise have some questions that they perhaps would like to put
to you.

There are some many different bills I don't want to ramble from
one to the other too rapidly, but I want to touch base on a couple
of things.

With regard to the Anti-Car Theft Improvement Act of 1995, that
is H.R. 2803, the Department of Transportation has indicated that
a titling information system cannot be established until all States
are required to participate in the system or at least have uniform
titling definitions.

Do you believe this is the case? And the question is whether or
not these changes among the States need to take place before the
system can operate? Do you have any information on that at all for
us?

Mr. Di Gregory. The only thing — excuse me.

Mr. McCoLLUM. Certainly.

Mr. Di Gregory. I seem to recall that — I don't think that the
FBI believes that this is necessary before there needs — before the
system can be put in place.

Mr. McCoLLUM. OK. So you

Mr. Di Gregory. But that is my best recollection. But I am not
100 percent sure of that.

Mr. McCoLLUM. We can present some of these to you in terms
of getting responses as we move through the bill. That was a ques-
tion that I had about that bill in particular.

With regard to, while we are on car theft and car issues, the air-
bag bill, 2804, since its inception in 1984, I am curious as to wheth-
er the Parts Marking System has been shown to reduce auto theft;
do you have any data to collaborate or not?

Mr. Di Gregory. I don't have any data, Mr. Chairman, I am
sorry, on whether that is the case.

Mr. McCoLLUM. And we were also curious as to what studies
had been done as to the effectiveness of the marking system which
I am equally sure you would not have here today, but again we
would like you to produce it.



127

One of the questions raised with me about this bill has to do
with the fact that my understanding is that there are — that this
bill would require a ViN number to bwe put on the actual airbag and
the auto industry is saying that there are already markings on
these bags and that the problem is that the VIN number would be
a separate thing they would have to do because they don't manu-
facture the airbags.

In other words, it is a more difficult and costly process and they
were questioning whether or not it was necessary to put the VIN
number on as opposed to either the existing markings or markings
which could be put on the airbags by the manufacturers at an ear-
lier stage in the process. And I am sure Mr. Schumer and I both
don't want to go to unnecessary expense if there is either another
kind of marking that could be done to the bags before they get to
the car manufacturer or some alternative that would not require
that expense. So I just throw that out. You don't know the answer
today, but it would be helpful for us to know that.

Mr. Di Gregory. No, I don't.

Mr. McCoLLUM. I have other questions I can ask, but I am going
to let my colleagues have their chance at this point. Mr. Heineman.

Mr. Barr.

Mr. Heineman.

Mr. Heineman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

In reference to that last subject, the marking of the airbags, and
I am not a — I am not an attorney and it is just a very simple ques-
tion which would call for a very simple answer.

Do we do that?

Do we tell the private sector that we have to— this wouldn't be
an unfunded mandate in any stretch of the imagination, would it?

Mr. McCoLLUM. Well, in a way it is because we do require the
marking of parts already and the VIN number is part of this, too.

But mavbe, Mr. Di Gregory, you could explain, as you under-
stand it, the law as it exists today.

Mr. Di Gregory. I would think that vou could require these com-
panies to do it because of the control tnat you have over interstate
commerce and that these parts would move in interstate commerce,
but I would have to get back with you as to an absolute answer
on that.

Mr. Heineman. Well, it is a very important issue and it is a very
valuable resource for law enforcement as it relates to chop shops,
as — even aside from the fact that people can steal parts out of
autos themselves. But these professional chop shops, I know back
in 1970, I was involved in that stuff not as a bandit but as a police
officer, and it was so important to be able to identify that particu-
lar — even if you couldn't identify where it came from, but that par-
ticular — but we didn't have airoags then — part did not come with
that car. So I would be interested to know about whether we do
have the authority to do that.

Thank you.

Mr. Di Gregory. Yes, sir.

Mr. McCoLLUM. Mr. Barr.

Mr. Barr. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

If I could, Mr. Di Gregory, ask you to take a look at or at least
give you a document here that was attached to my opening state-



128

ment, which just graphically and I think fairly clearly lays out the
reason why H.R. 2092 is being proposed. And frankly, in light of
the fact that it is designed simply to provide a mechanism for
streamlining the procedure and shortening the procedure in many
instances, whereby an employer cait know whether or not the pro-
spective security employee has a rt ;ord, in light of that being its
goal, in light of the fact that it is not mandatory, in light of the
fact that it does not close off in ?my way, shape or form going
through the State mechanism and jhecking the State records, and
so forth, in light of the fact that it has a fee mechanism in it and
in light of the fact that the Department agrees with the overall
goal, I very, frankly, am somewhat mystified by the lengthy objec-
tions, and maybe they are not objections.

Maybe I am reading too much into it. They may be, as your letter
States or as the letter from the Department States, they are merely
concerns of the Department. But I just would like to state for the
record and ask the Department to take a very careful look at this
legislation and if there are some — any specific areas where we can
make clear that the legislation is not designed, and certainly we
want to avoid any misimpression of the legislation, specific lan-
guage that we could propose to it and amend it to make clear that
it is not designed to mandate anything. It is not cutting anything
out of the checks and balances in our system.

And very simply I know that sometimes it may be a matter of
which comes first, the chicken or the egg. Do you go to the State
first or the Federal?

Very frankly, I and my colleagues that are supporting this bill
on both sides of the aisle, as well as the professionals in the private
security industry, frankly, this bill is really a kudos to the FBI.
What we want to do is go to the very best people that have the
broadest ability to make a first cut at this, that can avoid a lot of
the problems in the first place.

And I know I sort of see from the Department's letter here, they
would prefer for that first cut to be done at the State level. And
this legislation doesn't cut that out at all. It just provides a mecha-
nism for those States that want to sort of the top guys first and
cut out problems where we have somebody applying who has a
record in some other State, or whatnot, to streamline the process
and really meet what the Department's goal is, I think, also.

So if you have any reaction to that, I certainly would appreciate
it, but I would simply appreciate the Department taking a close
look at this and if there are some specific concerns that we can
work on to make those goals even clearer to address any concerns,
any lingering concerns, that the Department might have, we cer-
tainly would be more than willing and welcome the opportunity to
do so.

Mr. Di Gregory. I can only tell you that in discussing this with
persons from the FBI, they expressed a concern that they might
perhaps be overburdened, because of the lack of winnowing that
will occur, if people decide that they want to go directly to the FBI
as opposed to going through the State identification systems.

They suggested to me that sometimes the State and local back-
ground checks will uncover disqualifying information which then



129

will limit the number of total inquiries that are sent to the Bureau
after those State and local checks are done.

Mr. Barr. And hopefully, the clearinghouse mechanism that is
provided here would do that, and, again, it is not my intent and
nor the intent of the legislation, and I know the security profes-
sionals, through their organization, they are not interested in over-
burdening the FBI either because that would — ^that would destroy
the whole purpose for doing this, to streamlining and making the
process move more swiftly, but the whole point of this, setting up
the clearinghouse and having that be the conduit through which
these are funneled, hopefully will, and I think will, streamline it
and make the whole process work smoother.

But again if maybe you could talk to your colleagues at the Bu-
reau, and we would be happy to work with them as well to make
that even clearer in the legislation, that we don't want to do that,
and we have tried to set up a mechanism in here through the clear-
inghouse that will do that. But if we need to tighten it up a little
bit, we certainly would be amenable to looking at it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Di Gregory. Yes.

Mr. McCoLLUM. Thank you very much.

I want to make — since there is no other Member here, I have got
a couple of other questions or points to make.

Mr. Barr. Mr. Chairman, I apologize.

Mr. McCoLLUM. Sure.

Mr. Barr. There is just one other point in shuffling papers here
that I noticed.

Mr. McCoLLUM. (jo ahead.

Mr. Barr. I would like also to make clear for the record, Mr.
Chairman, we do have an existing law. Public Law 92-544, that has
been addressed in I know the Department's material, and I don't
know that it refers to it explicitly, but it is implied in here, the
reach of Public Law 92-544, which does provide authority for the
FBI to deal directly with State institutions in providing these serv-
ices really is fairly narrow.

It applies simply to federally chartered or insured banking insti-
tutions and, therefore, relying on that as a reason not to enact this
legislation, I am not quite — I think sort of misses the point.

There is nothing wrong with the existing law. What we are say-
ing is in light of the reality of today, where there are more and
more private security officers — and again, this bill doesn't do any-
thing at all to expand them. I know that there is at least one orga-
nization here that sort of raised a bogeyman out there that this
legislation would expand the number of private security officers as
opposed to police officers. It wouldn't. That is not anybody's intent.

But in light of the reality of today's world, where there are a lot
of private security officers, we want to do everything we can to en-
sure that they are properly qualified and that there is not some-
thing that would be disqualifying — ^that would disqualify them. I
think it is very appropriate and realistic to look at this legislation
and pass it rather than rely on something that has been around
for a number of years and that really is much more narrowly fo-



130

cused than the concern today with the number of security officers
out there.

I just wanted to make that point for the record as well and ap-
preciate, Mr. Di Gregory, your lookin