Getting guns off the street is the top priority for Providence police officers Leo Pichs, left, and Jonathan Primiano, seen in the Violent Crime Task Force office.

The Providence Journal / Kathy Borchers

“We’re putting the word out on the street that he’s going federal.”

–– A Providence police officer at a weekly staff meeting

PROVIDENCE — Detective Angelo A’Vant rooted around some shrubbery outside a suspect’s apartment in the Manton Heights public housing project.

He retrieved two hoodies that had been shoved into a bush. Bent over, he then saw the butt of a handgun protruding from the mulch beneath, and he pulled it out. After having gotten a rake, he dug deeper. The last prize was a second handgun buried in a sock.

In years past, according to the police, the guns probably would not have been there for A’Vant to discover. A gun obtained or held illegally was too valuable as a weapon, as something to brag about, as an item with financial worth. The criminal owner would have kept it closer.

But law enforcers say that was before Project Safe Neighborhoods, a federal campaign against the illegal use of firearms in which criminals are sent to prison.

And before the police and cooperating agencies tackled gun violence with a variety of strategies and tactics, including community policing, a squad now called the Violent Crime Task Force that searches out criminals with guns, the targeted patrolling of crime hot spots and the deployment of street workers to defuse tensions between feuding groups.

“I’m strappin’,” criminals like to boast when they are carrying a handgun. It is a way to get “street cred,” to intimidate. But they are “strappin’” less these days, according to the police, because aggressive law enforcement and the threat of federal prosecution and imprisonment has scared them into altering their behavior.

Homicides in Providence — most are committed with a gun — have been more than halved since 2002, the year before Project Safe Neighborhoods took effect. And shootings have tailed off.

In 2002, there were 23 homicides and, in 2008, 13. In 2002, there were 105 shootings and, in 2008, 78.

Police Chief Dean M. Esserman said Project Safe Neighborhoods has helped to drive down the number of homicides and shootings.

When President George W. Bush launched the initiative in 2001, Project Safe Neighborhoods represented a major change in the nation’s law enforcement policy. The pursuit of gun crimes — largely left to states and localities — was made a federal priority.

“Every gun arrest in the City of Providence is federalized when possible,” Esserman said.

While most Providence firearms cases are still prosecuted in state court, the majority of the 326 cases prosecuted in federal court in Rhode Island since the inception of Project Safe Neighborhoods are from Providence, according to city and federal authorities. No specific record is kept of how many Providence cases are prosecuted in either venue.

Criminals used to flash and even flaunt their handguns, but now they put them away more often, according to the police. In part, the police say, this change in behavior has given rise to a phenomenon called the “community gun” or “stash gun,” in which a criminal hides a gun — sometimes in a public place such as under a fence or in a bush — for use by him or his buddies.

A gun that is less handy, the police say, means less impulsive violence and greater safety for officers when they confront suspects.

Instilling respect and fear in the criminal world is a big part of Project Safe Neighborhoods:

•Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard W. Rose and Robert Clark Corrente, until his recent retirement as U.S. attorney for Rhode Island, lecture soon-to-be-released prisoners at the Adult Correctional Institutions monthly about the risk of picking up a gun or having even one bullet in a pocket.

•The consequences have been advertised by the Justice Department on TV and radio, billboards and the sides of buses.

•In Providence, agents of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives respond around the clock to join every firearms case in the city. Suspects are introduced to an agent.

•The city police have tacked up posters in their headquarters and substations for probationers and suspects to see that display the photographs of those who have been convicted of federal firearms crimes.

“Odds are that they know someone on that chart,” said Maj. Thomas F. Oates III, commander of the Investigative Division. “Oh, it can happen to me,” they conclude, and then they ask, according to Oates, “Where is he now?”

Illegal possession of a gun tends to carry a longer sentence in the federal system than in the state, according to city and federal authorities, meaning that the sentence imposed is greater, as well as the percentage of the sentence that must actually be served behind bars.

Rose declined to cite an average federal sentence, saying that there too many variables from case to case to make it a meaningful figure.

Other factors cited to intimidate suspects are: cases move more swiftly in federal court because there are fewer than in state court; bail rarely is obtained while awaiting trial; a defendant’s juvenile offenses can be counted in determining whether a maximum sentence will apply; incarceration is in a faraway prison where it is difficult for friends and family to visit, and there is no parole per se.

The U.S. Attorney’s office reviews every firearms case with the attorney general’s office, and if a suspect can be punished with a longer sentence in the federal system, according to Rose, then the suspect “goes federal.”

Most cases remain in the state system because, number one, there are few applicable federal statutes against crimes such as murder, assault with a dangerous weapon and robbery and, number two, because many suspects are on state probation or a suspended sentence and can be forced to serve the rest of their time for previous convictions as well as for a new conviction.

Project Safe Neighborhoods has two additional components: the distribution of grants, primarily to law enforcement agencies, and an antigang effort added in 2006. Under the latter program, Rose tries to steer teenagers away from guns and gangs in a presentation that he calls Street Smarts.

Although much of the federal attention is focused on Providence, Project Safe Neighborhoods applies statewide. For example, ATF Special Agent Michael Payne was dispatched to Woonsocket to assist in a current probe of illicit guns and drugs. And the Woonsocket police have received training and help with surveillance equipment.

Criminals continue to draw from the nation’s inexhaustible supply of firearms, according to law enforcers, such as the ones A’Vant found in a shooting investigation in May. Guns fall into criminal hands in a variety of ways, but the two most common, according to James A. McNally, an ATF spokesman, are theft and straw purchases. A straw purchase is one in which a person buys a gun, pretending it is for himself while intending to turn it over to someone else.

“… We have apprehended guys … and the first words out of their mouths are, ‘Oh, you’re not going to take me federal. You’re not going to take me federal,’ ” said Providence Maj. Paul C. Fitzgerald, commander of the Uniformed Division. “ … For every one that does carry, there are a certain number that don’t” now.

Number of shootings

in Providence

In 2005

105

In 2008

78

gsmith@projo.com