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Breaking The Conspiracy Of Silence

News headlines across the country highlight the impact of what police and prosecutors call an "epidemic" of witness intimidation on our criminal justice system reports CBS News correspondent Armen Keteyian.

In Philadelphia today, two men were sentenced to life in prison for killing a ten-year-old boy, caught in the crossfire of a gun battle between drug gangs. The conviction came even though at least eight witnesses to the crime went silent on the stand — apparently out of fear for their lives.

Greg Thompson runs a community program for juvenile offenders in Philadelphia where breaking the conspiracy of silence surrounding violent crime is not an easy sell. At one recent meeting, 18 of the 20 young offenders had witnessed a shooting firsthand.

"A lot of people get killed for talking to the cops or goin' to court on somebody," says a juvenile offender named Salim.

In Philadelphia alone, witness intimidation is said to affect virtually every case of violent crime.

"We have to market the fact we need people to come forward. I mean, the other side being the thug culture, is certainly marketing the fact that it's not in your best interest to come forward," says Chief Inspector Joseph Fox of the Philadelphia Police Department's Homicide Division.

Community leaders and local law enforcement embraced that message, and two months ago launched a marketing campaign of their own.

Dorothy Johnson-Spite runs Mothers in Charge, a group that encourages people to overcome their fears and cooperate with the police — something no one did after her son was murdered after a dispute in a parking spot.

"If someone had came forward with just some information, that person would have been taken off the street, and today my son would still be alive. So we live with the pain," she says.

But the painful truth is, in urban America, people are afraid — of breaking the code of the street; of threats, beatings, fire bombings, and outright murder.

A jailhouse audio tape released yesterday, and aired for the first time by CBS News, exposes Philadelphia drug kingpin Kaboni Savage, ranting about wiping out a witness and his entire family for cooperating with the federal government.

Savage: I'm going to blow her head off...That's all I dream about…I wanna erase his whole family tree man…Your kids, your mom nobody's getting a pass man...They're going to pay man...That's all I dream about.
What Savage never dreamed of, as he communicated with fellow inmates, was that he was being secretly recorded by the feds.

Savage, who earlier had beaten a murder rap when a key witness was killed two days before trial, was sentenced to 30 years in prison yesterday for drugs and money laundering. To the disappointment of prosecutors, he got no additional time for witness intimidation.

"In my 18 years of prosecuting criminal cases, I have never seen anyone as vicious and cold-blooded as Kaboni Savage, and I've prosecuted some pretty bad criminals," says Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Ehlers.

Faced with unspeakable acts of retaliation like the one posed by Savage, Philadelphia District Attorney's Office has teamed up with the Justice Department extending the federal witness protection program to state cases.

In addition, 18 states from Connecticut to California have enacted some form of witness intimidation legislation, all aimed at taking the likes of Savage off the street, and taking back our system of justice.

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