Agency files 39 indictments for gun crimes in June

June has been an especially busy month for the U.S. attorney’s office in Little Rock, as law enforcement officers and federal prosecutors followed through on promises made earlier this year to step up prosecutions of drug and gun crimes in the Eastern District of Arkansas.

U.S. Attorney Cody Hiland on Friday announced the filing of 73 indictments in June — a substantial number compared with the usual 10 to 30 indictments issued each month.

Thirty-nine of the 73 involved gun crimes, which were filed as part of the Project Safe Neighborhoods initiative that federal, state and local authorities announced in February was being reinvigorated. On that day, the officials announced the arrest of 21 people as part of a larger effort to target gangs and violence in Arkansas’ capital city.

The volume of indictments handed up by a federal grand jury this month in the Eastern District resulted in more than 50 defendants making their first appearances on the charges this week, all before U.S. Magistrate Judge Joe Volpe.

“As I said back in February, when I announced that our office’s top priorities will include the successful prosecution of gun crimes, we will not slow down or back off our commitment to take dangerous individuals off the streets and put them in prison by any means available to us under federal law,” Hiland said Friday in a news release.

He added, “The days of dangerous criminals illegally possessing guns with impunity are over.”