John Conyers: “Let me first remind the chairman of the Subcommittee on Crime that one of the measures that led me to introduce…”

“Let me first remind the chairman of the Subcommittee on Crime that one of the measures that led me to introduce environmental crimes is the fact of the two 9-year-old boys in his State, if not his district in Florida, who were killed from a wreck of hazardous waste illegally disposed of in a dumpster. The two individual defendants, the plant manager and the shop foreman, were convicted of hazardous waste felonies. Each was sentenced to serve 27 months in prison under the terms of a guilty plea that included knowing endangerment. They went to 5 years probation. I think the gentleman would agree that these kinds of crimes are as serious as all the others that we have dealt with. To leave out crimes of an environmental nature where there is deliberate, reckless endangerment, knowledge and intention, would, to me, be an incredibly wrong thing to do. This is the slippery slope that we are on. I am on it.”