CHOICES AND CONSEQUENCES

Recently, Method Man a.k.a. Clifford Smith, a well-known, successful rapper, record producer and actor, was arrested for Operating a Motor Vehicle While Under the Influence of Drugs. He was caught driving with marijuana in his vehicle. He agreed to a plea deal in which he would participate in the Brooklyn DA’s Choices and Consequences program. He will visit 15 Brooklyn high schools and share his experiences with the students.

In 1999, I implemented the Choices and Consequences program, which is a joint effort between the District Attorney’s Office, NYPD and Department of Transportation officials who visit participating high schools to address and combat the issues of reckless and drunk driving. There are currently 52 high schools involved in the program.

 
As part of the program, there is a 90-minute presentation broken down into three segments – information, role playing, and conversation between the audience and victims’ families and defendants. During the presentation, the students are provided a fact pattern from a real criminal case and they participate in the various roles. Police officers from the Brooklyn North Task Force demonstrate some of the screening tests used to establish intoxication. The last segment of the program usually has the most impact.

A family member of a victim tragically killed or a defendant who has inflicted this harm to another person speaks to the audience and relates their experiences. The use of live 911 tapes and real crime scene photos has a tremendous impact.

Automobile collisions are the number one cause of death for young people between the ages of 16 and 24. Collision-related injuries and death can be prevented if individuals are informed of the dangers of drunk driving and the effect that it has on themselves and others.
 

GAYLE DAMPF-LITTMAN
 

Gayle Dampf-Littman is the Bureau Chief in the Vehicular Crimes Bureau of the Brooklyn DA’s Office. She is also in charge of the Choices and Consequences program.

Born and raised in Brooklyn, Ms. Dampf-Littman graduated from the University of Florida and earned her law degree from New York Law School in 1990.

She began her career at the DA’s Office in 1990 in the Early Case Assessment bureau, drafting complaints. She also worked in the Investigations Unit, the Narcotics and Grand Jury bureaus and the Trial Bureau Green and Blue Zones as a Senior Trial Attorney.

 

She then moved to the Vehicular Crimes Unit in 1998 as a Deputy Bureau Chief. In this department, she
tried several vehicular manslaughter cases and supervised all DWI misdemeanor cases.

Ms. Dampf-Littman worked with former Bureau Chief Maureen McCormick in creating the Choices and Consequences program to educate kids about the dangers and the effects of drunk and reckless driving. She was promoted to Bureau Chief in 2006.

As Bureau Chief of Vehicular Crimes, she oversees all of the cases assigned to her Unit and the assistants assigned to those cases. Her duties include getting grants and programs for alcohol treatment and driving improvement classes.

The news articles listed below, courtesy of the National District Attorney’s Association (ndaa.org), may be of interest to you or members of your community.

CITIES TO GANGS: STOP, OR WE'LL SUE

Looking to stem gang violence and alleviate fears of residents who say they are intimidated and terrorized by gangs in their neighborhoods, more city officials are turning to a civil remedy: seeking injunctions against gang members to keep them away from certain areas and from each other.

As an increasing number of cities across the country add gang injunctions to their arsenal of crime-fighting tools, they are also carefully limiting their scope to fend off constitutional challenges. At the same time, cities are defending their policies against criticism by civil rights groups who say the injunctions lead to civil liberties violations and racial profiling.

Within the last year alone, prosecutors in Fort Worth, Texas, West Palm Beach, Fla., St. Paul, Minn., Riverside, Calif., San Francisco and a number of other cities have begun using civil injunctions against gang members.

Cities in California and Texas have been using gang injunctions for years, and other jurisdictions are increasingly looking to those cities for guidance on starting injunction policies of their own.

"We were getting reports from our police departments of increased gang activity, and it was affecting the livability of our downtown area," said John Choi, city attorney of St. Paul, Minn., where a new state law allowing city attorneys and the state attorney general to seek gang injunctions went into effect Aug. 1.

During a convention of community prosecutors several years ago, St. Paul officials spoke with a number of California prosecutors about gang injunctions, and that started the ball rolling for the Minnesota legislation.