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- Subscribe: mail majordomoat_private with "subscribe isn". Today's ISN Sponsor: Repent Security Incorporated [www.repsec.com]
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