OCR Text |
Show Atty. General Romney Calls For Stronger Anti-Crime Lavs Attorney General Vernon Vern-on B. Romney Tuesday told police and sheriff's officers offi-cers that "the administra- v tion of criminal justice in this state can be greatly helped by the enactment of strong and effective an-ti an-ti - crime measures by this Legislature." The Attorney General spoke at a luncheon meeting meet-ing at the University of .Utah sponsored by Utah Peace Officers' Standards and Training Division. Mr. Romney called for the enactment of measures measur-es providing for additional addition-al subpoena powers for prosecuting attorneys accompanied ac-companied by immunity for essential witnesses; a sftate - wide grand jury act; measures for licensing licens-ing of bail bondsmen; a uniform crime reporting system; additional electronic electro-nic surveillance controls; a "stop and frisk" law; ,and a measure intended to prevent the possession of dangerous weapons by individuals previously convicted con-victed of crimes of violence vio-lence or addicted to the u,se of drugs. Romney said his Chief Criminal Deputy, Lauren N. Beasley, was finishing the preparation of proposed pro-posed legislation covering these matters, because of the "continued rapid increase in-crease in the incidence of crime in Utah and the growing threat of organized organiz-ed crime within the state." The Attorney General said "the additional subpoena sub-poena and immunity authority auth-ority would be particularly particular-ly useful where criminal schemes are established in more than one localized area of the state and wherever organized crime may attempt to make inroads in-roads into legitimate businesses." bu-sinesses." "A state - wide grand Jury would facilitate investigation in-vestigation of corruption in governmental operations or a breakdown in law enforcement en-forcement on a scale broader broad-er than that which can be handled under the present pre-sent county grand jury system," the Attorney General Gen-eral said. Mr. Romney said the licensing li-censing of bail bondsmen was important in order to guarantee that bondsmen are financially responsible on their bonds and that bondsmen are of adequate moral character. Mr. Romney said the state is in great need of a uniform crime reporting system in order to acer-tain acer-tain correctly the number (and nature oil offenses committed in the various jurisdictions and what disposition dis-position is made in such matters. He said such information in-formation is necessary as a basis for efforts to understand un-derstand the cause and prevention of crime,j the reasons for x-ecidivism, and procedures for rehabilitating rehabilit-ating criminals and juvenile juv-enile offenders. The Attorney General said that the authority sought in the proposed electronic el-ectronic surveillance measure mea-sure would be carefully controlled by judges of the District Courts and that such measures would be used only in certain specified speci-fied criminal areas. Mr. Romney said that '"stop and frisk" legislation legisla-tion is vital to ' ascertain whether or not an individual individ-ual resonabley thought to have committed or be committing com-mitting a criminal offense of-fense is in fact armed with a dangerous Weapon offering offer-ing a threat to the safety of the officer or an other party.- A time limit of fifteen minutes or such lesser period of time as is necessary to complete the search is set in the proposed pro-posed legislation. Mr. Romney emphasized that the dangerous weapon weap-on control law does not intend in-tend in any way to deprive citizens of their right to bear arms but applies only to certain people in whose Ihjands weapons could be reasonably considered dangerous dan-gerous to the safety of the public. Mr. Romney stress-ftd stress-ftd that none of the other measures would impair any constitutional rights as the legislation proposed will he carefully drawn to safeguard safe-guard those rights. |