Reno dedicates high-tech crime fighting center
BY CLIF LEBLANC
Knight Ridder News Service
COLUMBIA, S.C. -- With the grandeur of a French royal palace, the nation's
first school for prosecutors was dedicated Monday with a challenge from
U.S. Attorney Janet Reno to fight 21st century electronic crime.
``When a man can sit in St. Petersburg, Russia, and steal from a New York
bank with wire transfers, you know you've got a problem,'' Reno told a
conference room full of dignitaries at the National Advocacy Center.
She said the high-tech equipment the center on the University of South
Carolina campus offers will allow prosecutors to ``fight those who would
use cyber tools to invade us.''
An estimated 10,000 federal, state and local prosecutors annually will
learn from the nation's best government lawyers at the $26 million center,
which takes up about 262,000 square feet and has 264 dormitory rooms for
prosecutors in training. Students -- practicing prosecutors from across
the nation -- will be taught to use digital wizardry and conventional
classroom training to win convictions against computer criminals, health
care frauds, employers who discriminate and run-of-the-mill offenders.
The center is a unique facility dreamed up 17 years ago by then-U.S.
Attorney General Griffin Bell so government lawyers at all levels could
learn to prosecute crime better.
Reno, formerly a state prosecutor in Dade County, Fla., said she was
especially happy the center will help state and local prosecuting
attorneys, too. ``I'm a child of the state court system,'' she said. ``It
is my hope that this institution can lead the way in properly defining the
roles of state and local ... law enforcement.''
About 95 percent of all prosecutions in the nation are by local
prosecuting attorneys, said William L. Murphy, president of the National
District Attorneys Association, who attended Monday's opening.
Reno said she also wants the center to tap into University of South
Carolina faculty to teach prosecutors about office management, budgeting,
alternatives to litigation and even to find better ways for citizens and
police to work together to fight crime.
``We can all blaze a trail to make government responsible to its people
and still make people accountable,'' Reno said in a 15-minute dedication
speech.
If the center works as she envisions it, federal prosecutors will get
better at trying capital cases, and DNA evidence will reduce the chances
that innocent people will be wrongly convicted, Reno said.
In her third trip to Columbia, Reno joked good reports from students
trained at the center have put a stop to early complaints of ``who wants
to go to Columbia?''
Reno thanked Sen. Fritz Hollings for pushing the idea of the center. She
recalled that in their first meeting Hollings confronted her with a Forbes
magazine article that reported the Justice Department was too big, ``and
there was this little center he wanted to talk about.''
USC President John Palms said when Hollings first approached him about
placing the center at the school, Palms' immediate answer was: ``Whatever
it is, yes.''
But the center has a much bigger role for USC, Palms said. He described
the dedication as, ``an event that's probably as important as anything
that's ever happened at the university.''
Hollings, who is seeking re-election to a seventh term in the U.S.
Senate, jokingly described the finished facility as, ``a little
Versailles.'' The 1,300-room Palace of Versailles was the opulent home of
the French royal family for more than 100 years.
``This is the most beautiful building the government has ever built,''
Hollings said.
``We've got the best of the best for America's prosecutors,'' Hollings
said. ``Now it's up to us to produce the best.'' [Image]
-o-
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Received on Thu Jun 4 09:02:53 1998