SLED Announces New Strategy to Reduce Violent Crime in South Carolina

The South Carolina State Law Enforcement Division (SLED) announced a new strategy Monday to reduce violent crime.

SLED Director Reggie Lloyd says, "It's taking the existing resources we have--agents, funding, everything else--and concentrating it on drug trafficking, gangs, just violent crime perpetrators. What we're doing is saying, look, we're not going to be just responders. We're not going to come in after the fact. We're actually going to be proactive about targeting those individuals that are basically destroying communities and neighborhoods around the state."

He says violent crime is hurting the quality of life in South Carolina and has an impact on every other issue, from education to economic development and jobs. Companies don't want to move to a state with a high crime rate and, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's figures, South Carolina has the highest violent crime rate per capita in the nation.

The initiative was announced Monday morning on the campus of the Department of Juvenile Justice in Columbia, SC.

But redirecting SLED's resources to fighting violent crime means resources will have to be taken away from other areas. Specifically, SLED will be offering much less help to local law enforcement agencies.

Lloyd says, "There are requests that come in from sheriffs and chiefs that they would like for us to initiate an investigation and we're saying, 'Look guys, unless it falls really within one of these core areas of violent crime, public corruption, those types of either regional-impact cases or statewide-impact cases, we just don't have the bodies to continue to do that. And so if we're going to utilize our resources, we think that we get a bigger bang if we put it at trying to lower these violent crime numbers."

He says SLED is short of full staff by about 110 agents because of recent state budget cuts. That's been done through attrition so far, without having to resort to layoffs, Lloyd says.

SLED is also offering several training opportunities aimed at bringing groups together to work better. Monday's announcement came at the first, a DNA training conference that brought together law enforcement agencies, victim advocates and sexual assault nurse examiners. The training event focused on sexual assault cases and the collection of DNA evidence, investigative techniques and interviewing skills.

Other training events are also being planned across the state.

One of the main speakers was Debbie Smith, who was raped in 1989 in Virginia. "I left a back door unlocked for less than 5 minutes. My husband, who was a police lieutenant, was upstairs asleep at the time. He'd been up for over 30 hours so, no matter what, he would've never heard me. I was taken out to the woods behind my house, where he robbed and raped me repeatedly," she says.

At the time, DNA was a new technology and it took 6-and-a-half years for her rapist to be caught. Her case was just the fourth "cold hit" in the nation using DNA.

Now that the technology has progressed, she's certain it can prevent a lot other people from ever becoming victims.

"The average rapist will rape 8 to 12 times before he is caught," she says. "So if we can catch him on the first time or if we can get him in burglary, because my rapist had never done anything other than burglary until he raped me--they usually escalate in their crime--and so if we can catch them before they get there, it's absolutely going to prevent" more people from becoming victims.

Laura Hudson, executive director of the S.C. Crime Victims' Council, says taking DNA samples from people when they're arrested for a felony, instead of waiting for a conviction, would also catch a lot of criminals before they can commit more crimes. Director Lloyd says it would cost $3-5 million to do that, though, to collect, process and store all those additional DNA samples, money the state doesn't have.

He says state lawmakers need to make public safety a priority. "We're at the edge of the cliff when it comes to public safety right now," he says.