    [Senate Hearing 114-874]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

    							S. Hrg. 114-874

                   THE WAR ON POLICE: HOW THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
               	UNDERMINES STATE AND LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT
    =======================================================================

                                    HEARING

                                   BEFORE THE

                       SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT, AGENCY
                             ACTION, FEDERAL RIGHTS
                               AND FEDERAL COURTS

                                     OF THE

                           COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
                              UNITED STATES SENATE

                        ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS

                                 FIRST SESSION

                                   __________

                               NOVEMBER 17, 2015

                                   __________

                               Serial No. J-114-39

                                   __________

             Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary

                     [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                            www.judiciary.senate.gov
                                www.govinfo.gov

                         U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
     52-542                      WASHINGTON : 2025

                           COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY

                      CHARLES E. GRASSLEY, Iowa, Chairman
    ORRIN G. HATCH, Utah                 PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont, Ranking
    JEFF SESSIONS, Alabama                   Member
    LINDSEY O. GRAHAM, South Carolina    DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California
    JOHN CORNYN, Texas                   CHARLES E. SCHUMER, New York
    MICHAEL S. LEE, Utah                 RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois
    TED CRUZ, Texas                      SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, Rhode Island
    JEFF FLAKE, Arizona                  AMY KLOBUCHAR, Minnesota
    DAVID VITTER, Louisiana              AL FRANKEN, Minnesota
    DAVID PERDUE, Georgia                CHRISTOPHER A. COONS, Delaware
    THOM TILLIS, North Carolina          RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut

          Kolan L. Davis, Republican Chief Counsel and Staff Director
          Kristine Lucius, Democratic Chief Counsel and Staff Director

            .........................................................

                   SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT, AGENCY ACTION,
                       FEDERAL RIGHTS AND FEDERAL COURTS

                           TED CRUZ, Texas, Chairman
    CHARLES E. GRASSLEY, Iowa            CHRISTOPHER A. COONS, Delaware,
    ORRIN G. HATCH, Utah                     Ranking Member
    JEFF SESSIONS, Alabama               DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California
    JEFF FLAKE, Arizona                  RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois
    LINDSEY O. GRAHAM, South Carolina    CHARLES E. SCHUMER, New York
    MICHAEL S. LEE, Utah                 SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, Rhode Island
    DAVID VITTER, Louisiana              AMY KLOBUCHAR, Minnesota
                                         RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut

            Ryan Newman, Republican Chief Counsel and Staff Director
           Ted Schroeder, Democratic Chief Counsel and Staff Director

                                C O N T E N T S

                                  ----------

                               OPENING STATEMENTS

                                                                       Page

    Cruz, Hon. Ted...................................................     1
    Coons, Hon. Christopher A........................................     3

                                   WITNESSES

    Alexander, Cedric L..............................................    29
        Prepared statement...........................................    53
    Davis, Ronald L..................................................     9
        Prepared statement...........................................    61
    Driscoll, Robert N...............................................    31
        Prepared statement...........................................    68
        Responses to written questions...............................   144
    Gupta, Vanita....................................................     7
        Prepared statement...........................................    76
        Responses to written questions...............................   126
    Ifill, Sherrilyn.................................................    26
        Prepared statement...........................................    82
    Mac Donald, Heather..............................................    24
        Prepared statement...........................................    93
        Questions submitted with no response returned................   149
    McCarthy, Andrew C...............................................    33
        Prepared statement...........................................    96
        Responses to written questions...............................   140
    Walters, John P..................................................    27
        Prepared statement...........................................   121
        Responses to written questions...............................   141

                                    APPENDIX

    Items submitted for the record...................................   155

                           THE WAR ON POLICE: HOW THE
                          FEDERAL GOVERNMENT UNDERMINES
                         STATE AND LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT

                                  ----------

                           TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2015

                                  United States Senate,
                      Subcommittee on Oversight, Agency Action,
                            Federal Rights, and Federal Courts,
                                    Committee on the Judiciary,
                                                        Washington, DC.
        The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:24 p.m., in
    Room 226, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Ted Cruz,
    Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding.
        Present: Senators Cruz [presiding], Sessions, Lee, Coons,
    Durbin, Whitehouse, Klobuchar, and Blumenthal.

                  OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. TED CRUZ,

                 A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF TEXAS

        Chairman Cruz. This hearing will come to order. Welcome to
    everyone here. Welcome to the witnesses in the first panel, and
    welcome to those who have come to participate in this hearing.
        The purpose of this hearing is to look at the challenges
    facing the brave men and women of law enforcement. A great many
    of us have been growing more and more concerned at seeing
    police officers the subject of public vilification, seeing
    police officers being undermined, and hearing from police
    officers across this country that they are less and less able
    to do their jobs, that they feel their hands are tied, that
    they are scared if they engage in proactive policing in the
    community to keep the community safe that they risk being
    personally hung out to dry, that they risk seeing their
    careers, their livelihoods destroyed, that they risk seeing
    their family held up for public condemnation.
        And, sadly, the consequences of this are significant. The
    men and women of law enforcement risk their life each and every
    day. Police officers go into dangerous neighborhoods with
    criminals, and every day they are taking a risk that their life
    may be lost protecting the community.
        If the police are intimidated, if they are scared, if they
    are not willing to do their jobs, we know the result. The
    result is the loss of life. The result is rising crime.
        Some recent headlines underscore the consequences of this.
    Just 3 days ago, the Washington Post reported that homicides
    have risen in several U.S. cities this year. This, quote,
    ``dramatic surge in killings'' has been confirmed as well by
    media outlets as diverse as USA Today, National Review, The
    Economist, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal.
        Indeed, here in the Nation's Capitol, according to the
    Washington Post, there have been 143 homicides so far this
    year. That is 53 more homicides than at the same point last
    year.
        Nearby, Baltimore has suffered even worse. Baltimore has
    now suffered over 300 homicides this year. This gruesome
    milestone, the Washington Post lamented, resembles the violence
    Baltimore experienced decades ago.
        Similar homicide statistics can be found in Milwaukee, in
    St. Louis, in New Orleans, in Chicago, in cities across the
    country. And of a great deal of concern to law enforcement. The
    number of law enforcement officers killed through acts of
    violence had been on a precipitous upswing, according to The
    Hill, in an article published this past May. Specifically, the
    officers killed in 2014 was nearly double those killed in 2013.
        James Comey, the current Director of the Federal Bureau of
    Investigation, has been vocal about his concerns over crime
    trends. Director Comey has expressed the view that excessive,
    unjust scrutiny of State and local law enforcement may be
    contributing to this trend.
        Now, everyone here agreed that we should enforce the law
    and we should vigorously enforce America's civil rights laws.
    In any government organization, there can be bad actors. In any
    large group of people, there can be individuals who choose to
    violate the law. And anyone who chooses to violate the law
    should be held accountable.
        But in my view, it is deeply harmful not only for the men
    and women of law enforcement but for the safety of the American
    people for the Federal Government to treat police officers as
    the enemy, for the President or the Attorney General to be
    holding up police officers for vilification.
        I will say I was particularly disappointed last year when
    President Obama nominated an individual to serve as the head of
    the Civil Rights Division who had previously represented an
    admitted cop killer--and had not just represented him but had
    represented him pro bono, for free, and had lionized and
    celebrated this cop killer.
        Now, every individual in a criminal proceeding is entitled
    to representation, but those that you go out of the way to
    volunteer your time for for free and those who you lionize and
    celebrate reveal a great deal about your beliefs and where you
    stand.
        I would note I was planned--proud to stand with others,
    including Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey, in helping lead the
    fight against confirming that nominee to the Justice
    Department. And it is worth noting that even with a Democrat
    Senate, even under the leadership of then-Majority Leader Harry
    Reid, the Senate refused to confirm that nominee as a number of
    Democrats joined the Republicans in saying we should not have a
    senior official in the Justice Department be an individual who
    has chosen to celebrate and lionize a murderer who has murdered
    police officers.
        It was a few months ago that I attended the funeral in my
    hometown of Houston for Deputy Goforth. Deputy Goforth was shot
    at a gas station in an act of violence that I believe was a
    manifestation of the growing antipathy directed at law
    enforcement. And I will note that funeral service was an
    incredible and powerful funeral service. It was held at Second
    Baptist Church in Houston. Dr. Ed Young provided the eulogy. It
    was an incredible sight to sit in the sanctuary and to see
    thousands upon thousands of police officers filling that
    sanctuary. Everywhere you could see were men and women dressed
    in blue, in their dress uniforms there to honor that fallen
    officer.
        Dr. Young in the eulogy powerfully observed that in the Old
    Testament, the Levis, the priests, wore blue. And he drew from
    the Lord's Prayer to describe the core mission of police and,
    indeed, in particular, one--one phrase in the Lord's Prayer,
    ``Deliver us from evil,'' which Dr. Young rightly observed, if
    he were to sum up the mission statement of a police officer, it
    would be difficult to do so more effectively or more succinctly
    than ``deliver us from evil.''
        I believe every one of us, Republican and Democrat, should
    stand unequivocally with the brave men and women of law
    enforcement. I do not believe it is beneficial for this country
    to have a culture where the men and women of law enforcement
    feel under siege.
        I will note there was a seminal moment in this country when
    the members of the NYPD stood and turned their back on Mayor de
    Blasio. That was a moment I believe penetrated to the heart of
    millions of Americans. What on Earth are we doing when senior
    Government officials are treating the police officers as the
    bad guys?
        This hearing is to discuss the challenges facing police
    officers, the degree to which they have been vilified publicly,
    and the consequences we are facing in terms of innocent men and
    women facing crime, facing murder, lives that have been lost
    because the police have been unable to do their job. And I
    appreciate everyone for being here for this hearing. I
    recognize Senator Coons.

            OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. CHRISTOPHER A. COONS,

               A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF DELAWARE

        Senator Coons. Thank you, Chairman Cruz, and thank you for
    the opportunity today to discuss the core issue of how it is
    that we can simultaneously honor and respect the constitutional
    rights, the civil liberties, the civil rights that are the very
    foundation of our constitutional order while still securing
    peace and safety, how it is that the law enforcement officers
    with whom I had the honor of serving in county government for a
    decade can meet their call to not just, as has been put,
    ``deliver us from evil,'' but to actually protect and serve.
        While I do think we have an important topic before us
    today, the title of the hearing, quote, ``The War on Police''
    unquote, reflects unfortunately, I think, more overheated
    rhetoric, all too common in Congress when discussing complex
    policy matters rather than any on-the-ground reality. And it is
    belied by the fact that there are no law enforcement leaders
    testifying today, despite there being more than 17,000 law
    enforcement agencies in the United States, in support of the
    proposition that there exists a war on police being waged by
    the Federal Government. In fact, we will hear from two chiefs
    of police to the opposite.
        My hope is that today's hearing can be an opportunity to
    have a constructive, broader discussion about public safety in
    our Nation and the critical need for meaningful support from
    the Federal Government for State and local law enforcement and
    for the vigorous and appropriate enforcement of civil rights.
        When I first arrived in the Senate in November 2011, I
    looked through the very long list of caucuses already in
    existence and discovered none of them was dedicated to the
    issues of law enforcement. So, I was pleased to join with
    Republican Senator Blunt of Missouri and establish the Law
    Enforcement Caucus, which continues on a bipartisan basis to
    meaningfully educate Members and staff on the real issues
    facing State and local law enforcement and their relationship
    with the Federal Government and to advocate for the brave men
    and women of law enforcement.
        I am pleased our caucus includes a strongly bipartisan
    group of 26 Senators--14 Democrats and 12 Republicans--and will
    invite the Chair, should he be so inclined, to join us at some
    point. Together we work to ensure State and local law
    enforcement has a voice in Congress as we honor our commitment
    to public safety by supporting programs like the COPS Hiring
    Program and the Byrne Justice Assistance Grant.
        One of our first events as a caucus in May 2012 discussed
    the Bulletproof Vest Partnership, a program which has literally
    saved the lives of over 3,000 law enforcement officers,
    including two in the New Castle County courthouse in my home
    town of Wilmington. I was honored to work with the champion of
    the legislation to reauthorize this program, Ranking Member
    Leahy. We have also held events that focus on the resources
    shared between Federal, State, and local law enforcement, such
    as Regional Information Sharing Services, funded by the
    Department of Justice, that provides critical equipment and
    specialized services that local law enforcement needs but most
    often can't afford.
        I think these are the sorts of meaningful actions to really
    support law enforcement that we could and should be discussing
    today. So, at this time, I would like to enter into the record
    11 letters, all bipartisan, which have represented the strong
    and continued interest by many Senators, myself include, in
    supporting Federal programs critical to the success of State
    and local law enforcement.
        [The information appears as a submission for the record.]
        Senator Coons. More recently, 4 weeks ago we welcome law
    enforcement leaders from Delaware and Missouri to a Law
    Enforcement Caucus event as they discussed their work improving
    the relationship between law enforcement and the communities
    they serve. It was a productive conversation that highlighted
    the successes and challenges in implementing modern community
    policing programs.
        Which brings us to our topic today: the need to protect the
    civil liberties and constitutional rights of every American
    while providing the public safety services that are the core
    responsibility of Government. We cannot choose between these
    objectives. We must work to achieve both.
        The role of the Department of Justice is both to support
    State and local law enforcement and protect the constitutional
    rights of every American, which sometimes requires
    intervention. The statute enforced by the Civil Rights
    Division, Section 14141, was enacted in 1994 as part of the
    Violent Crime Control Act and was inspired by national outrage
    over the beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles after a high-
    speed car chase. This provision ensures there can be no pattern
    or practice that deprives any of our constituents of the
    rights, privileges, and immunities secured under the
    Constitution. The idea that enforcement of this statute, which
    literally cribs from, is drawn from our foundational documents,
    represents somehow a war on police is, I think, contrary to our
    ideals as a Nation.
        Of course, implementation of any statute, including this
    important one, requires effort and oversight, so I welcome the
    testimony of Ms. Gupta, and I look forward--and I look forward
    to exploring with her how we can work together to further
    advance the twin goals of public safety and civil rights.
        We are aided in this effort by recent reporting, as the
    Chairman referenced, from the Washington Post and the PBS
    series ``Frontline'' in their joint investigation of police
    departments that have undergone reforms, and I will share just
    one of many case studies that I think are illustrative.
        The Justice Department launched investigations of the
    Prince Georges County Police Department after dogs in its K-9
    unit inflicted 800 bites over 7 years, and there were 47
    officer-involved shootings resulting in death. The reforms the
    Justice Department required included provisions that
    supervisors approve the use of police dogs and that a board be
    established to review officer-involved shootings.
        PG County Chief of Police, Mark Magaw, a department
    veteran, was recently quoted in this very article saying,
    quote, ``It was a painful time, there is no question about it.
    But both of these agreements have made us better as a police
    agency hands down.'' The article then notes the number of
    complaints to the NAACP regarding excessive police force have
    been reduced dramatically from nearly 15 calls a month to just
    1 or 2.
        I would also suggest to anyone watching at home and to the
    Chairman and Members of this Committee they might read a
    helpful report that just came out of a summit organized by the
    Police Executive Research Forum, or PERF, entitled ``Civil
    Rights Investigations of Local Police: Lessons Learned.'' The
    summit included police representatives from agencies all over
    this country, and I ask that that full report be included in
    this hearing record.
        [The information appears as a submission for the record.]
        Senator Coons. The report points specifically to the new
    Collaborative Reform Initiative from the COPS Office, and I
    look forward to hearing Chief Davis' testimony on the state of
    that initiative today. I will briefly share one story from that
    instructive report.
        The Las Vegas Review Journal published a series of articles
    on officer-involved shootings by the Las Vegas Metropolitan
    Police and raised questions about accountability. In response
    to those articles, then-COPS Office Director Bernard Melekian
    contacted Sheriff Doug Gillespie and offered the assistance of
    the COPS Office in developing reforms, in policy and
    procedures, training and tactics, investigation and
    documentation. Sheriff Gillespie sent a team of his executive
    command leaders to Washington to meet with the COPS Office and
    its leaders and to discuss the proposal. They reached an
    agreement, and 10 months later, in November 2012, the COPS
    Office released a full report detailing its findings, and I
    think all engaged have concluded this was a constructive and
    positive advance in both policing and civil rights.
        As the most visible form of Government, law enforcement
    officers are at the front line of our responsibility to
    safeguard constitutional rights while ensuring public safety.
    It is unsurprising they are held to a very high standard given
    the tremendous responsibility we empower them with in our
    constitutional order. It is also why I believe when certain
    commentators talk about a so-called Ferguson effect with no
    evidentiary support, it is insulting to the brave men and women
    who do get out of their cars, who do put themselves on the line
    each and every day to protect communities across this country.
    I am not alone in that sentiment, and I might close with a
    quote from one of law enforcement's most important voices, a
    recent statement by national president of the Fraternal Order
    of Police, Chuck Canterbury, who, in response to comments by
    FBI Director Comey, stated:
        ``First, in rejecting FBI Director Comey's claim that when
    politicians use their police to deal with years of inequities
    and urban blight and do nothing to try and build a better life
    for their citizens, then it is these politicians and not the
    police who have failed their citizens. Law enforcement is
    generally left to deal with all the issues that other parts of
    government tend to avoid.''
        And a closing quote, if I might, from FOP President
    Canterbury: ``Police officers have not been chilled and have
    not stopped responding to calls, especially high-priority calls
    that involve violence. This is evidenced by the fact 32
    officers have been killed by firearms in the line of duty
    already this year. Officers who are killed or injured in the
    line of duty do not speak to a lack of engagement. It shows
    real engagement.''
        With that in mind, I would like to thank all of the
    witnesses from both panels for their time today and my
    colleagues for their interest in working together to support
    State and local law enforcement. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Chairman Cruz. Thank you, Senator Coons.
        I would now like to introduce our first two witnesses. Ms.
    Vanita Gupta currently serves at the Department of Justice as
    the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General and the head of
    the Civil Rights Division. A graduate of Yale and New York
    University School of Law, Ms. Gupta has previously worked for
    both the NAACP and the ACLU while also serving as an adjunct
    clinical professor.
        And Mr. Ronald Davis is also with the Department of
    Justice. He serves as the Director of the DOJ's Community
    Oriented Policing Services, COPS Office, and he is also the
    Executive Director of the President's Task Force on 21st
    Century Policing. A graduate of Southern Illinois, Mr. Davis
    has a lengthy and distinguished law enforcement career in
    California before joining the Department of Justice.
        I would ask each of the witnesses to please rise and raise
    your right hand. Do you affirm that the testimony you are about
    to give before the Committee will be the truth, the whole
    truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
        Ms. Gupta. I do.
        Mr. Davis. I do.
        [Witnesses are sworn in.]
        Chairman Cruz. Thank you. Ms. Gupta, you may begin.

                  STATEMENT OF VANITA GUPTA, PRINCIPAL

                DEPUTY ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL, CIVIL

                  RIGHTS DIVISION, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF

                        JUSTICE, WASHINGTON, DC

        Ms. Gupta. Chairman Cruz, Ranking Member Coons, and
    distinguished Members of the Committee, good afternoon. Thank
    you for the opportunity to participate in today's hearing and
    to share with you the Justice Department's efforts to support
    State and local law enforcement and to promote constitutional
    policing and public safety.
        Our Nation is in the midst of an important conversation
    about policing and the relationship between law enforcement
    agencies and the communities they serve. As part of this
    conversation, we must all recognize the dedication and bravery
    of America's law enforcement officers. They put themselves in
    harm's way every day to keep the rest of us safe.
        We must also recognize the pain in communities subjected to
    excessive force, discriminatory policing, or other misconduct.
    We are committed to working together to restore trust between
    law enforcement officers and community members where it has
    eroded.
        We all want the same things: safe streets, officers who
    come home safely every night, and the protection of the rights
    of all people to be treated fairly and justly. We want thriving
    communities in which residents and law enforcement officers
    work hand in hand to ensure peace and safety. Mistrust between
    police and citizens, however, breaks down collaboration. It
    impedes the sharing of information, and it leads to less
    effective policing. This is dangerous for everyone--for
    residents and officers alike.
        The Justice Department is committed to supporting State and
    local law enforcement and to strengthening local communities
    through funding for more officers and vital equipment, through
    training and research, and at times through the investigation
    of misconduct. Let no one mistake this. The overwhelming
    majority of women and men who police our streets do their jobs
    with honor, pride, and distinction. They are driven to the
    police academy out of a commitment to public service and a
    desire to make an impact in their communities. And as several
    recent assassinations of police officers remind us, they do all
    of this at considerable risk to themselves.
        Moreover, the vast majority of law enforcement agencies
    police their communities professionally, successfully, and
    within the bounds of the law. As Congress has recognized,
    however, there are times when the federal government has a role
    to play in protecting Americans' constitutional rights. The
    Department's Civil Rights Division has long-standing authority
    to investigate individual officers for criminal violations of
    constitutional rights. And in carrying out this mandate, we are
    committed to impartial, fact-driven investigations. This means
    pursuing criminal charges when the evidence supports them and
    closing cases when they do not.
        In addition, Congress in 1994 charged the Division with the
    responsibility to investigate law enforcement agencies for a
    pattern or practice of conduct that violates the Constitution
    or Federal statutes and to develop remedies to eliminate such
    misconduct where it is found.
        During the last 20 years, we have incorporated lessons
    learned into our work and continually strive to achieve
    constitutional policing and promote public safety in the most
    effective and collaborative manner possible.
        As part of these civil investigations, we speak directly
    with line officers and learn firsthand what challenges they
    face in their jobs and on the streets and what changes they
    think are necessary. They report often a lack of adequate
    support, training, and even equipment to keep themselves and
    their communities safe. And the truth is really that we ask
    more of our police officers than anyone can reasonably expect.
    Daily, they encounter people in crisis, people struggling with
    mental illness, alcohol and drug addiction, anger management
    problems, all social problems that they never envisioned
    consuming up so much of their time.
        In pursuing remedies then, we aim to ensure that officers
    receive the equipment, the tools, the specialized training that
    they need to do their jobs consistent with the Constitution and
    the law. And we also strive to provide them with critically
    important professional support to cope with the stress and
    trauma that they encounter on the job.
        The remedies that we seek--clearer policy, modernized data
    systems, better training, closer supervision, fairer
    accountability mechanisms, and more positive community
    engagement--are substantially informed by the input of policing
    experts and the work of professional police organizations, such
    as the Police Executive Research Forum, the International
    Association of Chiefs of Police, and the Major Cities Chiefs
    Association. And I routinely engage with these groups and
    others, such as the Fraternal Order of Police, the National
    Association of Police Organizations, and the National Sheriffs
    Association to ensure that we take into account their expertise
    and their experiences.
        And informed by these perspectives and the perspectives of
    the community, the Civil Rights Division's reform agreements
    are helping to reduce unnecessary force, ensure bias-free
    policing, enhance public safety efforts, and strengthen the
    relationship between police departments and the communities
    they serve. From Portland, Oregon, to East Haven, Connecticut,
    from Seattle to Missoula, we are seeing meaningful change in
    building trust.
        Thank you for the opportunity to discuss this important
    work at this very critical moment. I look forward to answering
    your questions.
        [The prepared statement of Ms. Gupta appears as a
    submission for the record.]
        Chairman Cruz. Thank you, Ms. Gupta. Mr. Davis.

                STATEMENT OF RONALD L. DAVIS, DIRECTOR,

                 OFFICE OF COMMUNITY ORIENTED POLICING

                 SERVICES, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE,

                             WASHINGTON, DC

        Mr. Davis. Thank you, Senator. Good afternoon, Chairman
    Cruz, Ranking Member Coons, and distinguished Members of the
    Committee. Thank you for this opportunity to discuss the many
    ways in which the Department of Justice is providing valuable
    support and resources to the Nation's 800,000 law enforcement
    officers in the more than 16,000 local, State, and Tribe--
    Tribal police agencies and sheriffs' offices across the
    country.
        I come to you today not just as the Director of the
    Department's Office of Community Oriented Policing Services,
    also known as COPS, but as one who has spent close to 30 years
    as a local police officer. I served 20 years in the Oakland
    Police Department, rising to the rank of captain, and close to
    9 years as police chief for the city of East Palo Alto,
    California. For me, Senators, the decision to become a cop was
    a very easy one. I simply followed my father's footsteps, who
    served 25 years on the Philadelphia Police Department.
        I can tell you as a 30-year, second-generation cop, there
    is no greater, more noble profession than policing, and I can
    also tell you without hesitation that the men and women who
    answer this calling are truly America's finest. As you can
    imagine the great satisfaction it brings me to lead the COPS
    Office and to work for the Justice Department, an agency that
    provides tremendous support to local, State, and Tribal law
    enforcement.
        For example, since 2009, COPS has awarded over $2 billion
    in hiring grants to create and preserve more than 10,000 police
    officer and deputy positions in nearly 2,600 law enforcement
    agencies across this country. For some agencies, providing
    funding for just one officer may mean the difference in having
    a full shift and making sure all officers have sufficient cover
    and safety.
        COPS also supports the development of effective crime-
    fighting initiatives. As a former police chief, I have
    implemented several of these initiatives which contributed to
    dramatic reductions in murders in my city, a city that was once
    dubbed ``the murder capital of the United States.''
        Over the past 20 years, COPS has been providing training to
    over 700,000 officers and deputies and supports valuable
    research, releasing publications on a wide range of issues from
    homeland security to reducing gang violence to building
    community trust to enhancing officer safety and wellness. These
    publications are extremely critical to the field because, as
    you know, most agencies have fewer than 50 officers and do not
    have the capacity to conduct this research on their own.
        Just last month, COPS released two valuable research
    reports--one addressing ambush attacks against police, and
    another presenting models for protecting the physical and
    psychological health of police officers. These reports will
    enhance officer safety and save lives.
        Through our executive session, COPS brings together the
    best and the brightest minds in the field to tackle issues such
    as crime and violence, preventing violent extremism, handling
    mass casualty events, use of force, and officer safety. The
    information gleaned from these sessions is then distributed to
    the field.
        Another way in which we help the field is through our COPS
    Collaborative Reform Initiative. At the law enforcement
    agencies' request, COPS examines key operational areas within
    an agency, such as training, internal investigations, use of
    force, and racial profiling, and provides recommendations that
    we believe will enhance community trust and public safety. The
    COPS Office then works closely with the agency in implementing
    these recommendations.
        As was mentioned in the introduction, the Las Vegas Police
    Department was the first to complete this process, and we now
    have collaborative reform efforts under way in Spokane,
    Philadelphia, St. Louis County, Salinas, Calexico, and
    Fayetteville, with the latest coming last week from the
    Milwaukee police chief.
        This voluntary process has received support from the Civil
    Rights Division and my esteemed colleague next to me, Ms.
    Vanita--Vanita Gupta. It is considered in some cases a viable
    option, when appropriate, over a pattern and practice
    investigation.
        Through our cattle grants, COPS works with and supports the
    major law enforcement organizations in addressing key
    challenges facing law enforcement ranging from the use of force
    to animal cruelty to leadership development to mentoring and
    also safety and wellness. COPS also funds a critical response
    for technical assistance program that offers immediate real-
    time assistance to agencies dealing with major public safety
    incidences and crises.
        For example, within days of the start of the mass
    demonstrations in Ferguson, COPS was able to connect regional
    police leaders with police executives with vast experience in
    dealing with similar issues. We have provided support to nearly
    a dozen agencies at their request and will continue to do so.
    And as with all COPS projects, the lessons learned from these
    cities are then shared with the over 16,000 law enforcement
    agencies throughout the United States.
        This year, the COPS Office also served and provided
    administrative support to the President's Task Force on 21st
    Century Policing, a task force comprised of law enforcement and
    community leaders which issued 59 recommendations to help
    agencies and communities build trust and advance public safety.
        While policing is primarily a local issue, it is clear the
    Federal Government has a critical role to play in helping our
    local law enforcement agencies respond to the challenges of
    policing in the 21st century. Under the leadership of President
    Obama and Attorney General Lynch, the Department of Justice has
    made supporting law enforcement one of the--one of the
    administration's top priorities. As a career police officer, I
    know firsthand just how important this support is, and I can
    say without hesitation that the men and women at the Justice
    Department make this their priority every day.
        Thank you, Senators, and I look forward to your questions.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Davis appears as a
    submission for the record.]
        Chairman Cruz. Thank you very much, both of you, for coming
    and testifying here today.
        On October 13th, I sent a letter to the Attorney General
    requesting some basic information about both the closed and the
    ongoing Civil Rights Division investigations of State and local
    law enforcement agencies, including municipal police
    departments. Yesterday, Monday, November 16th, the Department
    of Justice responded to that letter, and without objection, I
    will move both the letter and the response into the record.
        [The information appears as a submission for the record.]
        Chairman Cruz. In response to our questions on this topic,
    the Department of Justice listed 16 State and local law
    enforcement agencies that have had investigations opened
    against them since January 1, 2011. Those agencies are the
    Albuquerque Police Department; the Baltimore Police Department;
    the Cleveland Division of Police; the Colorado City/Hilldale;
    Arizona, Marshals Office; the Evangeline Parish, Louisiana,
    Sheriff's Office; the Ferguson Police Department; the Los
    Angeles Sheriff's Department; the Meridian, Mississippi, Police
    Department; the Miami Police Department; the Missoula County
    Attorney's Office; the Missoula Police Department; the Newark
    Police Department; the Portland, Oregon, Police Bureau; the
    Seattle Police Department; the University of Montana Office of
    Public Safety, and the Ville Platte, Louisiana, Police
    Department. The letter also mentions that 9 of these 16
    investigations have been closed via consent decree or
    settlements while 7 remain open.
        Are there any additional open investigations against State
    or local law enforcement agencies currently in the Civil Rights
    Division?
        Ms. Gupta. No. The ones that we listed are the ones that
    are actively ongoing.
        Chairman Cruz. So, there are no additional investigations
    that are open?
        Ms. Gupta. No, not to my knowledge.
        Chairman Cruz. I want to turn for a moment to a case that
    has become known as the Danziger Bridge case. I suspect it is a
    case you are quite familiar with.
        Ms. Gupta. I am familiar with it, yes, Senator.
        Chairman Cruz. Can you summarize for this Committee the
    Department's conduct in the Danziger Bridge case?
        Ms. Gupta. Certainly, Senator, and first, thank you for
    the--for the question. The Danziger Bridge case involved
    significant prosecutorial misconduct that was found by the
    Office of Professional Responsibility at the Justice Department
    of two Assistant United States Attorneys who ultimately have
    now left the Department. And it is a case that is currently in
    ongoing litigation, and, therefore, I am not able to comment
    that much more in-depth about the matter. But it is a matter
    that obviously came to my attention as soon as I came into the
    building.
        Chairman Cruz. You know, I will note this began as an
    investigation to a shooting that occurred in Louisiana in the
    wake of Hurricane Katrina, but it has now produced two lengthy
    judicial opinions detailing what has been described as a
    widespread pattern of misconduct by the U.S. Department of
    Justice. Both the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District
    of Louisiana and the Fifth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals
    have had the chance to review--review the facts underlying this
    case.
        District Judge Kurt Engelhardt wrote a 129-page opinion
    chronicling what can be described as an unprecedented pattern
    of wrongdoing by the Department of Justice. Without objection,
    I am going to enter into the record both the district court
    opinion and the Fifth Circuit opinion in that case.
        [The information appears as a submission for the record.]
        Chairman Cruz. The district court found that key attorneys
    in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of
    Louisiana and the Civil Rights Division were repeatedly posting
    online comments against the police officers who they were
    seeking to prosecute. They were doing so anonymously under
    pseudonyms, seeking to stoke up public anger and resentment
    directed at these police officers, agitating the potential jury
    pool.
        One of these attorneys who was posting these anti-police
    online comments, as I understand it, was a Civil Rights
    Division attorney named Karla Dobinski. Ms. Dobinski's conduct
    at the Department of Justice was particularly astonishing given
    that her official responsibility was she was assigned to
    prevent the defendant police officers from having their public
    reputation smeared during the legal process.
        It is more than a little astonishing that the lawyer
    charged with preventing the police officers from having their
    reputation smeared would be going online with an anonymous
    pseudonym smearing the reputation she was charged to protect.
    Is that conduct of which the Department is proud?
        Ms. Gupta. Senator, I share your view about the seriousness
    with which employee misconduct has to be taken at the Justice
    Department, and my understanding is that in light of the facts
    that emerged, that the Department's Office of Professional
    Responsibility conducted a thorough review of all three of the
    individuals of which you speak and concluded that two of the
    members of the United States Attorney's Office had indeed
    engaged in misconduct, but concluded after reviewing Ms.
    Dobinski's limited postings of what were absolutely ill-advised
    and inappropriate comments, that those did not rise to the
    level of misconduct.
        The Civil Rights Division then reviewed the facts and
    circumstances pursuant to the law that governs our disciplinary
    procedures and processes and took appropriate action in light
    of that.
        Chairman Cruz. I will note that the Fifth Circuit described
    the Department of Justice's conduct as what could only be
    described as a, quote, ``online 21st century carnival
    atmosphere.'' That is the Federal Court of Appeals describing
    the Department of Justice.
        It went on to state that it was, quote, ``beyond dispute''
    that, quote, ``three supervisory level prosecutors committed
    misconduct in connection with the Danziger Bridge
    prosecution.''
        Do I understand correctly that Ms. Dobinski remains with
    the Department as a trial lawyer in the Civil Rights Division?
        Ms. Gupta. She remains with the Civil Rights Division. The
    Office of Professional Responsibility did conduct a thorough
    review of all three employees and found that Ms. Dobinski's
    actions, while, as I said, inappropriate and ill-advised, did
    not constitute misconduct, unlike the other two individuals.
        Chairman Cruz. Well, it seems both the Federal district
    court and the Federal court of appeals disagree with the
    Department in that regard. Senator Coons.
        Senator Coons. Thank you, Chairman Cruz.
        Let me just take us back, if I could, to the beginning of
    your testimony, Ms. Gupta, in which you began by observing that
    of the 800,000 law enforcement professionals in this country, I
    think the roughly, is it, 18,000 agencies at the State, local,
    and Tribal level, the overwhelming majority of law enforcement
    officers are honorable, dedicated, and carry out their public
    safety duties with exceptional quality and service. In fact, as
    the Chairman reviewed, you have had, I think, on average three
    cases per year since 2011 and have only seven open today out of
    18,000 agencies. How many staff attorneys are there in the
    United States Department of Justice? How many attorneys are
    serving the whole country as part of the U.S. Department of
    Justice?
        Ms. Gupta. As part of the entire Department of Justice,
    there are over 100,000 professionals.
        Senator Coons. Out of 100,000 professionals, how many of
    them are working for the Civil Rights Division, roughly?
        Ms. Gupta. Just under about 700.
        Senator Coons. About 700. I will agree with you and with
    the Chairman that the conduct of the prosecutors in the
    Danziger Bridge case was absolutely outrageous, conduct
    unbecoming, inappropriate, and there have been sanctions taken
    by the Office of Professional Responsibility. But it is no more
    accurate to describe the entire Department of Justice or the
    entire Civil Rights Division as being out of control or
    outrageous or engaged in misconduct than it is to incorrectly
    smear the entire law enforcement community nationally because
    of a few isolated instances of misconduct.
        In fact, Ms. Gupta, I have been struck by the depth of your
    support from national law enforcement organizations. Some of
    this was reported in a July 15th article in USA Today with the
    headline, ``Department of Justice police unions finding common
    ground.'' It notes your nearly daily contact with the
    leadership of the Baltimore police during the crisis that
    occurred, and I would like to enter that union, excuse me--that
    article from USA Today into the hearing record.
        Chairman Cruz. Without objection.
        [The information appears as a submission for the record.]
        Senator Coons. I think there also was a recent letter
    addressed to you from the executive director of the Major
    Cities Chiefs Association, Darrel Stephens, that states, quote,
    ``Your efforts to reach out to law enforcement to enhance
    communications and establish a collaborative relationship has
    been noticed and has made a real difference,'' unquote.
        Could you just discuss your commitment to working
    respectfully and collaboratively with our Nation's police and
    how your work in upholding constitutional rights actually leads
    to better policing, safer for law enforcement officers and for
    the community, and enhances public safety?
        Ms. Gupta. Thank you, Senator. I would be happy to. You
    know, ever since I came into the Justice Department, it has
    been very important to me to reach out very often and to engage
    with law enforcement, with chiefs from around the country, with
    union leaders, with police officers, as well as with civil
    rights and community groups, in part, because we are all in
    this time together, really trying to assess some of the hard
    questions about how to build trust, because in too many
    communities around the country where there is frayed trust,
    where the community simply does not have the confidence of law
    enforcement, frankly it puts officers' lives at risk, and it
    creates--it undermines public safety. And our work at the Civil
    Rights Division to advance effective constitutional policing
    actually advances public safety. These things are not at odds.
    They are critically important. When the community trusts the
    police, they are partners in providing information to solve--
    solve and prevent crimes. They serve as witnesses in trials.
    And, of course, officers' lives are much more likely to be
    enhanced and protected and their jobs made more easier when
    they have the trust of the community.
        And so my outreach really is because I think, frankly, a
    lot of people in law enforcement right now as well as community
    leaders are kind of working together to address and really
    understand how to rebuild trust where that has eroded because
    it is so critical to public safety.
        Senator Coons. Thank you, Ms. Gupta.
        If I might, Chief Davis, thank you for your 20 years of
    service with the Oakland Police Department and your 9 years
    with East Palo Alto. Can you also discuss how mistrust hurts
    public safety and describe the efforts that the Department is
    making, that the COPS Program is making, to address this issue
    and to improve law enforcement officer safety and public
    safety? And then, last, if you would just comment on how
    officers and police chiefs and leaders you know around the
    country are reacting to the idea of a so-called Ferguson effect
    or a war on police?
        Mr. Davis. Thank you, Senator, for the question. To start
    with the first question with regards to trust, I think it would
    be fair to say that trust is the foundation of public safety.
    As Ms. Gupta has said, you really cannot achieve effective or
    sustaining crime reduction, enhanced public safety, or even
    national security if you don't have the trust of the community.
    And so, I think as a former police chief, your focus on
    building trust is your number one crime reduction tool. People
    testify, they give you information, they support you when there
    is trust. So, we know that is very important.
        I think generally where the field is at right now is the
    field is acknowledging and recognizing that there is strain
    within communities, many communities--not all--and the police
    and that we need to do something to strengthen it. So, there is
    a lot of focus, Senator, from local police chiefs and union
    leaders to really focus on building that trust because it makes
    everyone's job easier.
        With regard to the--to the so-called Ferguson effect, I
    think the opening statements that both Senator Cruz and
    yourself made really answers it best: first, that there really
    is no data to suggest that there is a Ferguson effect and that
    somehow that's linked to any increase in crime in certain
    cities, because we know there are some cities where there's an
    increase, but we also know there are cities where there are
    decreases. And so, we do need to find out. And I think Director
    Comey was head on about really making sure we can find out the
    data and to have this conversation.
        But I think we need to be very cautious, and I am just
    concerned we be very cautious that in having this discussion,
    Senator, we're not suggesting that the brave men and women who
    serve in law enforcement--and this is based on my 30 years--are
    somehow scared, which is a word I have heard people say,
    reluctant, or even suggested they are cowards and will not do
    their job because they are afraid of public scrutiny. Public
    scrutiny is not a negative. It is the foundation of policing in
    a democratic society. The officers are not afraid of
    accountability. They want what we want and everyone wants,
    Senator, which is fairness, consistency, and they just want to
    be able to recognize--people recognize the challenges of their
    job.
        And so, I--I reject any notion that would suggest the
    officers are choosing not to do their job, that they are
    reluctant to protect the American people. I think all evidence
    is to the contrary.
        Now, with that being said, Senator, we do have to
    acknowledge this is a very tough time to be a cop. And with
    intense scrutiny, with social media and videotaping, clearly it
    is adding to the stress of being a cop. But these new stresses
    are not an effect. They are going to be the challenge of
    policing in the 21st century. And I think this field is up to
    it. I think the chiefs that I know around the country and the
    law enforcement officers are up to the challenge, and I think
    they are working with the communities to do exactly that.
        Senator Coons. Thank you, Chief. Thank you for your
    testimony.
        Chairman Cruz. Thank you. Senator Lee.
        Senator Lee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Ms. Gupta, I would like to ask you about an issue that is
    likely to come up within your Division at the Department of
    Justice, the Civil Rights Division. As you are probably aware,
    earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Education concluded
    that Township School District 211, located in Palatine,
    Illinois, had violated Title IX when it prohibited a
    transgender student identifying as a girl to change and shower
    in the girls' locker room at the public school that she attends
    without any restrictions.
        Now, the school and the school district had permitted this
    student to participate on the girls' sports teams and to use
    the girls' restrooms at the school. However, to accommodate the
    student's request to use the girls' locker room, the school had
    sought to require the student to change behind privacy
    curtains.
        Now, according to the U.S. Department of Education, in this
    letter that was dated November 2d of this year, just 2 weeks
    ago yesterday, requiring the transgender student to use private
    changing and showering facilities violated the student's rights
    because it resulted in differential treatment of a transgender
    student.
        Even the plan to have the student change behind privacy
    curtains in the girls' locker room would apparently not be
    sufficient, according to the Department of Education in this
    letter issued on November 2d, because requiring only
    transgender students and not all students to change behind a
    curtain, according to this letter, amounts to differential
    treatment based on a sex-based consideration and would,
    according to the Department of Education, therefore, constitute
    a violation of Title IX.
        So, I have got a question for you. Is this--is this also
    the view of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of
    Justice, is it the view of your Division, the Civil Rights
    Division, that requiring a transgender student to change and
    shower behind a curtain while they are in a locker room of the
    opposite biological gender, that asking them to do even that
    would amount to a violation of Title IX?
        Ms. Gupta. Senator, thank you for the question, and I can
    say at the moment that the Justice Department has not taken a
    fixed position on this matter, and I can't get into internal
    deliberations, but we are aware of the matter and are in
    conversation about it.
        Senator Lee. Okay. Well, as I am sure you are aware, if the
    school district does not conform to this standard, the
    Department of Education may well refer this case to your
    Division. Have you or has anyone else within the Civil Rights
    Division of the Department of Justice been in contact with the
    U.S. Department of Education about this matter?
        Ms. Gupta. We are aware that, of course, that could happen.
    It is why we are right now in conversation about this issue.
    But we haven't taken any position on it, and I am not aware of
    direct communications with the Department of Education on this
    right now. There are a lot of deliberations happening in the
    building on the various issues.
        Senator Lee. So, you have been consulted on it?
        Ms. Gupta. We are aware that the Department of Education
    filed that matter and that it very well could be headed over to
    the Justice Department.
        Senator Lee. Will the Department of Justice seek
    enforcement of Title IX on this issue if the school district at
    issue doesn't conform to the demands of the letter issued on
    November 2d by the Department of Education?
        Ms. Gupta. Unfortunately, I am not able to comment on that
    as we have not made any decision.
        Senator Lee. Based on my description of what happened and
    based on what you know about this instance, do you think the
    U.S. Department of Education correctly concluded that it is
    against the law for the school district to say that a
    transgender student who identifies as female but was born male
    needs to shower and change behind a curtain? Do you agree with
    that assessment that that would violate Federal law?
        Ms. Gupta. Senator, it would be inappropriate for me to
    comment on this given that the Justice Department has not yet
    made its position known.
        Senator Lee. Okay. I--I want to make clear that I find that
    surprising, I find it a little stunning that you can't right
    now sit here and tell me that it wouldn't be a problem. Now, I
    have got a 14-year-old daughter. She is in junior high. And if
    what you are telling me is that it is too close to call such
    that if a transgender student at her school who identifies as
    female but was born male would have to be able to shower and
    use the locker room in the girls' locker room, just like any
    other girl, without being asked to use a privacy curtain or
    anything like that, if you cannot tell me that that does not
    violate the law, then what you are telling me is that her
    principal could and should be expected to be hauled into court
    for making that determination on a local basis based on the
    needs of that school. If you can't tell me that, I think you
    are going to have a lot of parents who have a lot of questions.
    A lot of parents of daughters, parents of sons, who are going
    to wonder why it is that our Department of Justice has to get
    so mired in the administration of a school that it is getting
    into questions like who and under what circumstances someone
    who was born male but is a transgender student identifying as
    female must be given full, unfettered access to showers, locker
    rooms, and changing facilities within the school.
        I hope you will follow-up on that. The American people
    certainly deserve clarity on that. And if we're going to start
    taking way educational resources from local school districts to
    fight battles like this in court, that's money that cannot be
    spent on legitimate educational programs. And they need to be
    given discretion so that they can run their school districts in
    a manner that they deem fit. Thank you. I see my time has
    expired.
        Chairman Cruz. Thank you, Senator Lee. Senator Durbin.
        Senator Durbin. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
        Now, the title of this hearing is ``The War on Police: How
    the Federal Government Undermines State and Local Law
    Enforcement.'' I know there was an effort to make this a
    neutral title for this hearing, but I think it leans a little
    bit in a provocative way.
        So, I asked my staff, take a look at the actual
    investigations initiated by the Obama administration of police
    departments. They came up with the fact that there were some
    17,000 departments. I heard Senator Coons say 18,000
    departments in the United States. And under the Obama
    administration, they have opened investigations on 23 police
    departments, about one-tenth of 1 percent of the police
    departments across the United States. And this is being
    characterized by some as a ``war on police.''
        I would like to ask you, Ms. Gupta and Chief Davis, isn't
    it true that many investigations were requested by local
    agencies?
        Ms. Gupta. Thank you, Senator, for your question. That is
    indeed the case. In many of the jurisdictions we ended up going
    into, they were initially requested, and it was only after we
    conducted a preliminary investigation to determine whether
    there was enough evidence that would merit our involvement did
    we get involved. But that is indeed the case.
        Senator Durbin. And isn't it true that the vast majority of
    these investigations, the 23 out of 18,000 police departments,
    were conducted with the cooperation of the jurisdiction and
    resolved on a voluntary basis?
        Ms. Gupta. Yes, that is correct.
        Senator Durbin. Some war.
        Let me ask you a little bit about video cameras, if I can.
    There is going to be testimony in the next panel, Chief Davis,
    that video cameras inhibit police work and lessen their
    determination to pursue crime. It's interesting, when we look
    at the money that's given out by the Justice Department to help
    local law enforcement pay for these video body cameras, in
    September the Justice Department awarded $23 million in funding
    for body cameras under a pilot program, $23 million. Seventy-
    three law enforcement agencies in 32 states, including 3 in my
    State--Chicago, Elgin, Lake County Sheriff--received funds
    under this program. According to the Bureau of Justice
    Assistance, 285 agencies from 42 States applied for these body-
    worn camera funds. There wasn't enough money to serve them all.
    It would have taken more than twice the total amount to pay for
    all the body cameras that police departments across the United
    States were asking for as part of their law enforcement.
        So, what is your take, Chief Davis, from that statistic and
    your experience in dealing with body cameras?
        Mr. Davis. Thank you, Senator, for the question, and I
    think the number is actually larger than that. That would be
    the close to 300 that applied for this specific program versus
    the thousands that are equipping their officers as we speak,
    that are still looking for assistance to do so.
        What made this program unique, the $23 million, Senator, is
    that it was about working with law enforcement, working with
    academia to identify the best practices, policy implications,
    making sure we have policies regarding privacy, so these were
    more demonstrations sites to help the field in using this
    technology.
        Now, what you will hear from most agencies, what I am
    hearing from the field, is that--that the cameras, when part of
    a larger accountability program, are very positive. We know
    there are results from Rialto, California, for example, where
    they see over 70-percent reductions in uses of force. We hear
    stories all over the country where they are reducing use-of-
    force complaints, and I think what the officers are starting to
    see, even in one of my old agencies in Oakland, after decades
    of using them, is that the cameras prove what I think everyone
    in this hearing has said: It captures the overwhelmingly
    outstanding job that the men and women are doing in law
    enforcement, and it clears them more than it ever indicts them.
    But when it is capturing misconduct, it is misconduct that
    needs to be held to account, and it is the righteous thing to
    do.
        Senator Durbin. That is such an important point, because
    cameras may capture misconduct, but they might also capture the
    truth of the situation when charges are made against a person
    in law enforcement that are just plain wrong and unfair. And, I
    think, as we are dealing with this new world, with DNA
    evidence, science behind police work, and this hard body of
    evidence coming out of video cameras, that I would agree with
    you, it would seem to me that most members of law enforcement
    would feel that this body camera will tell a true story about
    what actually happened when specious and wrongful charges are
    brought against them. So, I thank you for that. Thank you, Mr.
    Chairman.
        Chairman Cruz. Thank you, Senator Durbin. Senator Sessions.
        Senator Sessions. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is a
    hearing that I think is important. We need to talk about some
    of these issues, and there is a perception, not altogether
    unjustified, that this Department, the Civil Rights Division,
    goes beyond fair and balanced treatment but has an agenda.
    That's been a troubling issue for a number of years, frankly.
        Your predecessor nominee was rejected for this job, the
    Civil Rights Division job, because, according to the Fraternal
    Order of Police, they wrote a letter that noted that, ``Under
    his leadership the Legal Defense Fund for the NAACP volunteered
    their services to represent Wesley Cook, better known as Mumia
    Abu-Jamal, our country's most notorious cop killer. This
    nomination can be interpreted only one way: as a thumb in the
    eye of our Nation's law enforcement officers. It demonstrates a
    lack of regard or empathy for those who strive to serve you and
    everyone in our Nation and keep them safe in their streets and
    homes. We believe that law enforcement in minority communities
    need to build even greater bonds of trust and respect, yet your
    Civil Rights Division under the leadership of the prior
    officers, Thomas Perez, and Roy Austin, has increasingly built
    obstacles to this goal with this punitive approach toward local
    law enforcement agencies.''
        So, now your nomination. You have been named as Acting, is
    that right, but have not yet been nominated?
        Ms. Gupta. That is correct.
        Senator Sessions. And prior to joining the Department of
    Justice, you served as deputy legal director for the American
    Civil Liberties Union and director for its Center for Justice.
    And prior to that you were an attorney for the Racial Justice
    Program, and prior to that you served as a lawyer for the NAACP
    Legal Defense and Educational Fund. So, I would just say that
    you come from a background that indicates an aggressiveness in
    these cases.
        The Civil Rights Division can fulfill an important role.
    I've seen attorneys, I've worked with them in a grand jury
    investigating police, and the goal is and must be to obtain
    truth and find out what the real facts are.
        So, let's talk about this a bit here. First, Mr. Davis, I
    talked to an experienced law enforcement officer in Alabama,
    and he said the kind of problems that we are seeing and the
    legal actions that have been taken and the marches and protests
    about police do have the tendency to cause people, as he said,
    ``to stay under the shade tree'' and not walk the streets like
    community-based policing that you advocate and promote.
        We will not go into the details about it, but I truly
    believe community-based policing is a great thing. And police
    are going to be in dangerous situations, I know you'll agree,
    and sometimes they will confront people who are violent, and
    they have to be able to defend themselves, do they not?
        Mr. Davis. Yes, sir, they do.
        Senator Sessions. And sometimes that can lead to
    misunderstandings and false claims by the criminal against the
    police officer sometimes.
        Mr. Davis. That is correct, Senator, and I would say to
    you--and I'm sure that your esteemed colleague in your State
    will share this with you--when it comes to the evaluation of
    those decisions, the officers are more concerned about the
    decisions within their local department and local elected
    leaders and how they are going to be treated for those
    decisions. So, that's always a concern because the officers
    just want fairness and want people to understand the nuance and
    the difficulty of being police.
        Senator Sessions. It is difficult. I keep thinking about
    that Gilbert and Sullivan--I think it is ``Pirates of
    Penzance.''--``When constabulary duty's are to be done-to be
    done...A policeman's lot is not a happy one.'' So, it's not
    easy to go out and arrest people and have to make these
    decisions and put them in the slammer sometimes.
        In your speech that you made to the United States Attorneys
    in New Jersey, Ms. Gupta, you said there--you talk about the
    charges made against police and what police say in their own
    defense and conclude there is truth in both these perspectives,
    presumably what both sides say about it, the criminal or
    arrestee or not. And you also close by saying, ``If we would
    take time to listen, really listen, why--why protesters take to
    the streets, why police officers risk their lives every day, we
    would find that while perspectives may differ, people's
    aspirations and their values tend to be very similar. We all
    want safe streets. We all want stronger communities. We all
    believe in justice.''
        This was an article written by Roger Clegg and Hans von
    Spakovsky, both former members of the Civil Rights Division of
    the Department of Justice, your Division. And they say, ``We
    find it hard to imagine that, for example, Black Lives Matter
    protesters in St. Louis chanting, `Pigs in a blanket, Fry `em
    like bacon,' right after two New York police officers were
    assassinated, have the same aspirations and values as law
    enforcement officers who risk their lives every day.''
        Do you see the concern that police officers might have
    about those kind of comments?
        Ms. Gupta. I find those kinds of comments abhorrent, and I
    think that they do a disservice to the legions of peaceful
    protesters that are raising attention to serious issues around
    the country.
        Senator Sessions. Well, I was really referring to your
    comments. In 2013, while working for the ACLU, you wrote an op-
    ed in the New York Times in which you stated you were elated
    when you learned that Attorney General Holder had, quote,
    ``directed all Federal prosecutors to exercise their discretion
    toward ending the relentless warehousing of inmates the vast
    majority of whom are minorities in Federal prison for low-level
    drug crimes.'' Do you think most of the prisoners are for low-
    level drug crimes?
        Ms. Gupta. Senator, at the helm in my job----
        Senator Sessions. How would you define a low-level drug
    crime? There are only 15 in the Federal penitentiary, I
    understand, for simple possession of drugs.
        Ms. Gupta. Senator, as the head of the Civil Rights
    Division, I enforce the civil rights statutes that we are given
    and do not have a say-so in our sentencing policies at the
    Division.
        Senator Sessions. Well, I am troubled by your comments.
    That is all I am saying. You want to be the head of the Civil
    Rights Division. I don't feel good about that comment.
        How about this? In the Fordham Law Review in 2005, you
    wrote, ``We do not have a criminal justice system whose
    subjugation of people of color is contingent upon''--excuse me.
    ``We do have a criminal justice system whose subjugation of
    people of color is contingent upon individualizing all cases.
    It is how we have managed to rationalize racism in the criminal
    justice system.''
        Now, as I understand this theory--and it has been about for
    some times--it says you should not evaluate individual cases
    based on whether or not a person is guilty of that crime or
    not, but some other theory involving racism. Do you think a
    case should be evaluated simply on the facts whether a person
    is guilty of the crime or not?
        Ms. Gupta. Senator, at the Civil Rights Division, I oversee
    career prosecutors and lawyers who are committed to
    investigating the facts and the evidence and going where the
    law takes them based on that, and that is what we are committed
    to at the Civil Rights Division.
        Senator Sessions. Well, I am very troubled by that radical
    statement you made in that article. You go on to say in that
    article, ``Critical race lawyering is about transforming
    business as usual in the criminal justice system--a business
    that is usually masked as being racially neutral, bias-free,
    and a just-the-crime-facts-ma'am industry. We have to transform
    that ``business as usual'' into a counter-narrative about
    police practices, racial bias, and the irrationality of many of
    our criminal justice policies.''
        Do you still adhere to those views?
        Ms. Gupta. Senator, that was an article that I wrote I
    think over a decade ago, but at the Civil Rights Division, I,
    as I said, enforce the statutes that Congress has given us to
    enforce, and that is what I do, and that is what the career
    lawyers and prosecutors do at the Civil Rights Division each
    and every day.
        Senator Sessions. Well, it is clear that police officers
    all over America are concerned about the Department of Justice,
    and I think based on those writings that the Acting head that
    you now have, about law enforcement and police gives them a
    basis to be concerned.
        Chairman Cruz. Thank you, Senator Sessions. Senator
    Klobuchar.
        Senator Klobuchar. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman,
    Senator Coons.
        I served 8 years as a chief prosecutor in Hennepin County,
    which is our State's biggest county, and our view was that we
    took our role as ministers of justice seriously. That meant our
    role was to convict the guilty and protect the innocent. And
    one of the things I learned is that it is especially vital that
    our law enforcement officers have the training that is
    necessary to do their jobs, that they have the equipment, that
    they have the information systems so that they can better
    coordinated, and our judges can get information on those in
    front of them. And I also saw how effective law enforcement
    could be in reducing crime and working with the community
    through the COPS Program, the Byrne Justice Program. And,
    actually, since I have gotten to the Senate, I have championed
    those programs and led the bills to increase funds for those
    programs.
        The COPS Program has put more than 100,000 cops on the beat
    since 1994. In my home States, COPS grants funded 155
    additional police officers and sheriff deputies. And I guess I
    would start with you, Mr. Davis. You have an extensive law
    enforcement background with the police departments of Oakland
    and East Palo Alto. Thank you for your service. And how has
    your personal experience as a career law enforcement officer
    shaped your belief in the COPS Program? And do you think we
    have sufficient resources for it now?
        Mr. Davis. Thank you, Senator, for the question. As a
    former chief, I was a very happy consumer of COPS grants and
    the support for my agency, which was very challenged--a
    beautiful city but very challenged with high crime and
    violence. To be able add two or three officers made a
    difference.
        But what also made a difference, Senator, is that a lot of
    the research and the publications that the COPS Office put out
    is I used that information because I did not have a research
    component. I was able to implement evidence-based programs that
    actually worked, that were very effective, that reduced crime
    in a very challenging neighborhood because of the research that
    was done nationally.
        Through the COPS Office and their convenings, I was able to
    connect with my peers so that I could learn a lesson that was
    valuable and, quite frankly, when reforming an organization,
    the challenge I had as a chief was an organization in need of
    reform, as I turned to the lessons learned from the consent
    decrees from the Civil Rights Division which now shape the
    lessons learned for the Collaborative Reform Agreement so that
    we could not only reduce crime but do it in such a way,
    Senator, that embraced the core values of this country, that
    embraced the Constitution, to your point.
        So, for me to then be appointed here was a dream come true
    because I was a supporter, a consumer, and it really
    contributed to the effectiveness of my cities.
        Senator Klobuchar. And so, do you think there is--my second
    question was just the funding. As we go into this budget, as we
    go into next year, do you think that our police departments
    could be helped in the pursuit of justice and fighting crime
    with more COPS grant resources?
        Mr. Davis. On behalf of the thousands of chiefs that call
    me and speak to me, the same as you, Senator, they would--they
    really drastically need, they want more resources, more
    support. Policing today is not just local. I think recent
    events will highlight the role that local police will play in
    national security. So, they need the staffing, the resources,
    and the support. That is why I think this hearing is critically
    important. We do need to support them.
        Senator Klobuchar. Yes.
        Mr. Davis. But I think they need those additional
    resources.
        Senator Klobuchar. And, obviously, I invite my colleagues
    to join me on this bill. We are going to be reintroducing it
    again this year.
        The other piece of this is just the protecting the innocent
    piece. In my job for 8 years, we worked really hard on that
    piece of it, with DNA reviews, with--we have videotape
    interrogation in our State. We were one of the first States to
    do that. At first, the police were not big fans of it, and then
    I think they came to see instances where it actually helped
    them to convict the guilty. How people appeared on a videotape
    immediately after committing a crime was useful for the jurors
    to see. And I also think that it obviously improved policing
    because they could see if mistakes were made, and it certainly
    did not limit their interrogation at all.
        The issue we talk about in that vein right now is body
    cameras, and I am just wondering what both of you are hearing
    from the police when you go around and talk to them about that
    issue. What are some of the concerns? And how would that be
    helpful going forward?
        Mr. Davis. I will start, Senator. So, thank you for the
    question. I think the biggest challenge for many agencies
    locally for the body cameras is the cost of storage is a
    challenge, and then also navigating obviously privacy issues.
    And so, in one sense we need them for enhanced accountability.
    The officers are seeing the benefit. The communities are seeing
    the benefit. But as you can imagine, there is a lot of privacy
    concerns, and there is also cost.
        And so, I think we can provide support by helping develop
    best practices--and when we say ``help develop,'' it is not
    that we do it as the Federal Government, but we help the field
    advance the field. We bring the best and brightest to come up
    with model policies, and then we can help them with issues of
    storage, training, and even the ability to purchase, because
    for some agencies even the cost of a camera is too much for
    their general fund budget.
        Senator Klobuchar. Ms. Gupta, do you want to add anything?
        Ms. Gupta. Yes, I would just say that I think right now a
    lot of jurisdictions are really engaged in a lot of thinking
    around the policies that I think they haven't been set, and we
    have a lot to learn at the Justice Department about the ways in
    which local jurisdictions are managing the privacy issues, the
    cost issues, and so we have been in a lot of conversation with
    local jurisdictions about what their experiences are so that
    those can actually--we can take back and it can inform the work
    that we are putting out to support best practices and policies
    around these issues right now.
        Senator Klobuchar. All right. Thank you very much to both
    of you.
        Chairman Cruz. Thank you very much. I would like to thank
    both of the witnesses for your public service and also for your
    testimony today.
        Chairman Cruz. With that, we will move on to the second
    panel. I would like to ask the second panel of witnesses to
    come forward, and as soon as everyone is seated, we will move
    on to the second panel of witnesses.
        [Pause.]
        Chairman Cruz. I want to thank each of the witnesses from
    the second panel for being here. I will briefly introduce them.
    We have six witnesses.
        We will begin with Ms. Heather Mac Donald, who is the
    Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a
    contributing editor of City Journal. A graduate of Yale,
    Cambridge, and Stanford University Law School, Ms. Mac Donald's
    writings on policing, profiling, criminal justice reform, and
    race relations have appeared in a wide variety of respected
    publications over the years.
        Ms. Sherrilyn Ifill is the president and director-counsel
    of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. A graduate of
    Vassar College and the NYU School of Law, Ms. Ifill has also
    worked for the ACLU, served as a professor at the Maryland
    School of Law, and published a book on the legacy of lynching
    in the 21st century.
        Mr. John P. Walters is the chief operating officer at the
    Hudson Institute. A graduate of Michigan State and the
    University of Toronto, Mr. Walters served for 7 years in the
    George W. Bush administration as a Cabinet member and the
    Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control
    Policy. Before that, he worked in the Department of Education
    during the Reagan administration.
        Dr. Cedric Alexander currently serves as the chief of
    police for DeKalb County, Georgia. Dr. Alexander obtained his
    doctoral degree in clinical psychology, a Master's degree in
    marriage and family, and a Bachelor's degree in sociology.
    Prior to leading DeKalb County's Police Department, Dr.
    Alexander worked as the TSA's Federal Security Director at the
    Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. I hope your time in
    Texas was a pleasant one, Dr. Alexander.
        Mr. Robert Driscoll leads the Washington, DC, office of the
    law firm McGlinchey Stafford and serves as co-chair of the
    firm's white-collar government investigations group. A graduate
    of Georgetown School of Business and Law Center, Mr. Driscoll
    previously served as the Deputy Assistant Attorney General and
    Chief of Staff for the Department of Justice's Civil Rights
    Division.
        And, finally, Mr. Andrew McCarthy is a senior fellow at the
    National Review Institute and a contributing editor to National
    Review. A graduate of Columbia and the New York Law School, Mr.
    McCarthy served as a Federal prosecutor for 18 years in the
    United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of
    New York. Perhaps most notably, he was the lead prosecutor in
    the terrorism case against the Blind Sheikh and 11 others
    convicted in 1995 of conspiring to wage a war of urban
    terrorism against the United States. Mr. McCarthy is the author
    of several books on terrorism and national security.
        I thank each of you for being here, and, Ms. Mac Donald, we
    will begin with you.

                STATEMENT OF HEATHER MAC DONALD, FELLOW,

                MANHATTAN INSTITUTE, NEW YORK, NEW YORK

        Ms. Mac Donald. Thank you so much. Esteemed Senators, my
    name is Heather Mac Donald. I am a fellow at the Manhattan
    Institute, a think tank in New York City. I am honored to
    address you today.
        For the last year, the Nation has been convulsed by a
    protest movement known as ``Black Lives Matter.'' The movement
    holds that police officers are the greatest threat facing young
    men today and that the criminal justice system is racially
    biased. Cops are now routinely called racists and murderers.
    Policing in urban areas has become dangerously fraught.
        President Barack Obama has done little to rebut the central
    theses of the Black Lives Matter movement; indeed, he has
    amplified them over the last year. Speaking in New York City
    this May, for example, the President claimed, quote, ``[Young
    Black men] experience being treated differently by law
    enforcement--in stops and in arrests, and in charges and
    incarcerations,'' end quote.
        In fact, there is no Government agency more dedicated to
    the proposition that Black Lives Matter than the police. Tens
    of thousands of Black lives have been saved thanks to the data-
    driven policing revolution that began in the 1990s in New York
    City. The police could end all uses of lethal force tomorrow,
    and it would have a negligible effect on the Black death-by-
    homicide rate. Over 6,000 Blacks are murdered each year, more
    than the number of whites and Hispanics combined, even though
    Blacks are less than 13 percent of the Nation's population.
    Their murderers are neither the police nor white civilians, but
    other Blacks. The rate of police shootings of Blacks--less than
    one-third of all police fatalities--is less than what the Black
    crime rate would predict. Blacks commit over 60 percent of all
    robberies and nearly 60 percent of all murders in the largest
    U.S. counties, and they commit 40 percent of all cop lethal
    shootings. I request permission to submit for the record the
    relevant Justice Department documents.
        Ms. Mac Donald. Countless law-abiding residents in inner-
    city communities fervently support the police. At a police-
    community meeting in New York City's South Bronx this June, an
    elderly woman spontaneously exclaimed: ``Oh, how lovely when we
    see the police; they are my friends!'' Residents begged for a
    police surveillance tower to protect them against gang
    shootings and asked the police to break up the crowds of teens
    hanging out on corners and fighting. A routine request at
    police-community meetings in urban areas is for more drug
    enforcement, not less.
        As for the broader claim that the criminal justice system
    is biased, that, too, is false. The overrepresentation of
    Blacks in prison is a function of their elevated crime rates. I
    request permission to submit for the record ``Is the Criminal
    Justice System Racist?,'' from the City Journal, which
    addresses this question in depth.
        Ms. Mac Donald. Crime is now spiking across the country.
    FBI Director James Comey observed in October, quote, ``Most of
    America's 50 largest cities have seen an increase in homicides
    and shootings this year, and many of them have seen a huge
    increase,'' end quote.
        Director Comey also suggested that the cause of this crime
    spike is what I and others have dubbed the Ferguson effect. For
    the last year, activists have relentlessly denounced pedestrian
    stops and public order enforcement as racist. In response,
    officers are doing less of those activities. Rather than
    getting out of their cars to question someone hanging out on a
    known drug corner at 1 a.m., they increasingly now just drive
    on by.
        The available docu--data document this drop in proactive
    discretionary policing, and the key here is this is
    discretionary policing. Certainly the police are responding to
    911 calls, but the whole realm of proactive policing is what is
    under threat. In New York City, for example, summons for low-
    level offenses like public urination and drinking were down 26
    percent in the first half of 2015; arrests in every crime
    category were down 15 percent as of late October, even as
    homicides were up 8 percent. In Los Angeles, arrests were down
    10 percent--even as violent crime is up 20 percent.
        Despite evidence of the crime surge and the reason for it,
    President Obama had the temerity this month to accuse Director
    Comey of ``cherry-picking data'' and pursuing a ``political
    agenda.''
        To be sure, police departments must work relentlessly on
    improving officer courtesy and making sure that officers use
    lethal force only as a last resort. But the President's
    delegitimation of law enforcement is irresponsible. It puts
    officers' lives at risk since suspects are more likely to
    resist arrest with force if they believe that the cops are
    racist. It puts the lives of law-abiding residents at risk
    since, when the cops back off, crime shoots up. But it also
    threatens the very legitimacy of law and order itself, which
    puts our very civilization at risk. Thank you.
        [The prepared statement of Ms. Mac Donald appears as a
    submission for the record.]
        Chairman Cruz. Thank you, Ms. Mac Donald. Ms. Ifill.

                STATEMENT OF SHERRILYN IFILL, PRESIDENT

               AND DIRECTOR-COUNSEL, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION

                FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE'S

               LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND, INC.,

                            WASHINGTON, D.C.

        Ms. Ifill. Good afternoon, Chairman Cruz, Ranking Member
    Coons, and Members of the Subcommittee. On behalf of the NAACP
    Legal Defense and Educational Fund, I want to thank you for the
    opportunity to testify about the crucial role that the
    Department of Justice has played in investigating and
    supporting this country's law enforcement agencies.
        While I am grateful to appear before you today, I regret
    that the name of this hearing so inaccurately describes the
    relationship between law enforcement and the communities they
    serve. There is no ``war on police.'' What has been called a
    war is an admittedly painful but necessary national
    conversation about the police use of excessive, sometimes
    fatally excessive force against unarmed citizens. A
    disproportionate number of these victims are African American.
        The protests that have erupted around the country are in
    response not to just what the entire Nation has seen in graphic
    and disturbing videos over the last year. Instead, they reflect
    the decades-long reality of the relationship between police and
    many communities of color. Our painful confrontation with this
    long simmering issue has compelled us to confront what FBI
    Director James Comey has described as ``hard truths'' about
    race and law enforcement. The conversation we are having is
    long overdue, but I am confident that it will result in better
    policing, stronger and more trusting relationships between the
    police and the communities they serve, and a safer America.
        It's not only appropriate but we believe that Americans
    expect our Federal Government to bring its resources and
    leadership to bear when we find ourselves confronting an issue
    of national magnitude that threatens public confidence in our
    justice system. The Department of Justice is a resource to
    local law enforcement and communities throughout this country,
    and as you heard earlier, the linchpin of their process has
    been collaboration.
        The Department has through the COPS Program provided an
    array of technical assistance to local police departments,
    including training at critical moments as unrest developed in
    communities around this country over the last year. Where
    necessary, they have used their enforcement powers to ensure
    that local police departments are not violating the law. This
    goes to the heart of the function of the Justice Department.
        Some have raised concerns about the cost of the
    Department's pattern and practice reviews, but, in fact, the
    cost to local jurisdictions of police misconduct is
    astronomical. The Wall Street Journal reported this summer that
    between 2010 and 2015, the 10 cities with the largest police
    departments paid out a total of over a $1 billion in
    settlements and court judgments in private police misconduct
    cases. The entire annual budget of the Department of Justice
    Division overseeing pattern and practice investigations is but
    a fraction of that amount.
        I would like to address comments made today and recently
    about the so-called Ferguson effect. There is no credible
    evidence that increased scrutiny of policing has led to an
    uptick in violent crime. What we do know, however, is that a
    lack of confidence in police does exacerbate crime because good
    and effective policing depends on vigilant citizens who not
    only know what is going on in their communities, but are
    willing to share vital information with law enforcement. A
    collaborative relationship between the police and the
    communities they serve produces this result.
        The question is not whether citizens should closely
    scrutinize the professional practices of public servants. In a
    democracy, this is precisely what citizens should do. You are
    doing it today on behalf of those you represent with this
    hearing. The fact that citizens are more closely observing
    police and taking videos of police encounters is not the
    problem. The real questions, Senator, on what that increased
    scrutiny reveals, and, sadly, what the public has witnessed
    over the past year is a disturbing pattern of policing that has
    resulted in the lowest level of public confidence in the police
    in 23 years.
        If there is a Ferguson effect, I would describe it quite
    differently. The effect of the protests and increased scrutiny
    of law enforcement has provoked a conversation that includes
    law enforcement leaders, lawmakers, citizens, and members of
    the general public. We should be encouraged by the widespread
    consensus about the need for several critical reforms. These
    include the need for body-worn cameras and better and more
    effective training. Twenty-first century police officers need
    training in managing encounters with persons with mental
    illness, with young people, and with members of the LGBT
    community, as well as training in implicit bias, which the FBI
    Director recognizes also as critically important.
        Finally, almost all agree that we lack reliable data on
    police-involved killings and assaults. In our view, this
    Committee should applaud the extraordinary work of the
    Department of Justice over the past year. They have carefully
    deployed their resources and expertise to support much needed
    reforms and policing. Where they have used their enforcement
    powers, they are fulfilling a key aspect of their core mission
    to ensure that the rule of law is followed by State and local
    law enforcement and to promote public confidence in our justice
    system. Thank you.
        [The prepared statement of Ms. Ifill appears as a
    submission for the record.]
        Chairman Cruz. Thank you, Ms. Ifill. Mr. Walters.

                  STATEMENT OF JOHN P. WALTERS, CHIEF

                OPERATING OFFICER, AND DIRECTOR, CENTER

                  FOR SUBSTANCE ABUSE POLICY RESEARCH,

                    HUDSON INSTITUTE, WASHINGTON, DC

        Mr. Walters. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Members of the
    Committee. Is that better? I am sorry. I would ask that my
    written statement be submitted to the record. I am just going
    to make a couple of comments to try to get to the points that
    have been covered before.
        I am here as an individual. I served in the past in the
    administration of both George W. Bush, George Bush's father,
    and President Reagan. I got started at the Department of
    Education working on the drug issue when crack and cocaine were
    sweeping our country and a problem even for our schools.
        I think the hearing has shown that in some sense there is
    not a disagreement about the courage and the dedication of
    people in law enforcement. There is not, it seems to me,
    although I am somewhat unclear from the testimony, that there
    are not more instances of misconduct by anybody, that they're
    minor, and they're wrong when they're wrong, but there is still
    an amazing amount of professionalism and courage in our law
    enforcement agencies every day, and we all support that.
        The big difference now, it seems to me, is the indictment
    of the criminal justice system without substance, especially by
    senior Federal officials, past and current in this
    administration, and the indictment of the criminal justice
    system as punishing people wrongly in our prison system. We
    have had a remarkable decline in crime. Most of that crime is
    focused in neighborhoods where people have a lesser voice. We
    have saved thousands, if not tens of thousands of lives through
    reductions in murders, especially among young Black males,
    which have been a particularly concern for every administration
    and every American citizen who cares about the safety of our
    fellow citizens.
        The difference seems to be that the President and past
    Attorney General Holder, at any rate, led the impression that
    our jails and prisons are somehow an example of injustice, that
    people have not been--that even though they have been
    apparently convicted through due process and fairly, there has
    been no massive indictment of unjust convictions, that somehow
    the sheer number of people and the racial composition of our
    criminal justice system is somehow an indictment of the people
    in it, especially the police, who are the ones with direct
    contact with members of the community.
        Now, we know, because the Federal Government has created
    this data, that the victimization of individuals matches the
    results in our criminal justice system, that we are protecting
    the very people of color who are more frequently,
    unfortunately, victims of crime. We are protecting the very
    people who have less money and less resources who are very
    frequently the victims of crime. We know from the very data the
    Federal Government has been collecting that we've been able to
    reduce things like drug crime and addiction in communities in
    the past.
        Nonetheless, the administration has made it a priority to
    indict the criminal justice system, and not just the Federal
    system but the State and local system. And the danger of that,
    of course, is to make everybody in the criminal justice system
    and the institution of Government seen as aggressors,
    perpetrators of wrongdoing, if not victimizers of citizens, the
    very citizens they're sworn to protect.
        This corruption--and I agree with the earlier statement,
    and I think we all know trust is the basis of our Government as
    well as law enforcement. This is the fundamental corrosion of
    the institution of justice and the relationship between
    citizens and communities and the criminal justice system to see
    these acts of protection as acts of wrongdoing. That is what is
    really going on here, and it is unfortunate, and it is wrong,
    and it is false. And it is a situation that has led to reducing
    penalties. You are going to consider reducing mandatory minimum
    sentences that have protected many people from crime, have
    broken down drug organizations, that have victimized the least
    powerful in our communities.
        You are going to be asked to look at changing the structure
    of relationships between the Federal and State government. As
    the Justice Department witnesses earlier testified and as you
    heard, the sentiments that those people presented when they
    were in private life that Senator Sessions raised that are then
    seen in positions of power lead people to believe that people
    that are supposedly fair are unfair, are perpetrating
    falsehoods, are suggesting the criminal justice system is the
    criminals. That's what is wrong here. And that's something that
    needs a voice, and I am pleased that you have been able to get
    people here together for a hearing like this. It has taken--far
    too few people have had the courage to do that.
        So, thank you for doing this, and thank you for giving us
    an opportunity to state what I think most Americans know and
    wonder why they do not hear.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Walters appears as a
    submission for the record.]
        Chairman Cruz. Thank you, Mr. Walters. Dr. Alexander.

                STATEMENT OF CEDRIC L. ALEXANDER, PH.D.,

                 CHIEF OF POLICE, DEKALB COUNTY POLICE

                      DEPARTMENT, TUCKER, GEORGIA

        Dr. Alexander. Thank you, Chairman Cruz and Ranking Member
    Coons and the Subcommittee, for an opportunity to be here with
    you today. I have been looking forward to this.
        It is an honor to be here today to participate as a witness
    in the Senate hearing on, ``The War on Police: How the Federal
    Government Undermines State and Local Law Enforcement.'' I
    would like to acknowledge and thank you very much, Senator
    Cruz, for holding this hearing because I think it is very
    important, and I think it is very timely as well, too.
        I speak to you from the perspective of a law enforcement
    officer for over the last 39 years. And I have been through
    several generations of the profession going back to 1977 to
    today. I've seen law enforcement change tremendously over the
    years. Growing up in Pensacola, Florida, and spending some of
    my early years of life in the great State of Alabama, I've
    learned that, for me, law enforcement and public safety is one
    of the most valued opportunities that we all must have and
    share in order to have safe communities and have a safe country
    as well, too.
        I have also had the opportunity to most recently serve as
    Immediate Past President of NOBLE, the National Organization of
    Black Law Enforcement Executives, whose mission is to ensure
    equity in administration of justice and the provision of public
    service to all communities, and to serve as the conscience of
    law enforcement by being committed to justice by action.
        It is my position that this country has a unique
    opportunity today to address the lack of trust and
    understanding of law enforcement in any cust--communities
    across this country. It is imperative that every citizen that
    we collectively deploy solutions in the areas of training,
    community policing, and technology to ensure that America is
    secure both domestically and internationally.
        Second, through these solutions, we are able to further the
    hopes and dreams of many of our forefathers in realizing,
    excuse me, in realizing the true civil rights and human rights,
    as stated in the Declaration of Independence: ``We hold these
    truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,
    they--that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
    unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the
    pursuit of Happiness.''
        The most recent events that we all are very familiar with--
    Ferguson, Missouri; Staten Island, New York; and other cities
    across this great Nation--when combined with real or perceived
    attacks on civil rights, legislation have created an
    environment where many people--across this country--feel
    disenfranchised by their national and local governments.
        So, what are some of the solutions we can talk about here,
    solutions to building bridges of understanding and partnership
    between law enforcement and communities they are to protect and
    serve?
        Training is a very important element. Cultural competency,
    a word we often hear a lot of, is a critical component to
    bridging this gap among law enforcement and communities of
    color. We know, too, as this country as great as ours, as
    diverse as it is, we all must be sensitive to the variety of
    cultures and attitudes that exist among us. And I think it's
    important that we all have some sense of cultural competency,
    understanding, too, at the end of it all we all are Americans
    at the end of the day.
        It is important to note, too--and I am not going to bore
    you with that, but when I think about community-oriented
    policing, it is a recommendation that law enforcement and
    communities adopt community policing as a philosophy of
    policing in this country. When I started out in law enforcement
    39 years ago in South Florida, Dade County, Florida, it was one
    of those very troubling times in America and a time where we
    had just come off a very major riot, the MacDuffie riots of
    1980, the loss of a lot of lives, a lot of property, a lot of
    civil unrest, and racial issues that extended out of that
    particular event. But we overcame that because we understood
    the importance that that community at that particular time that
    police and community had to find a way to work together. And we
    did, and community-oriented policing is, as you have said,
    Senator Sessions, very important to public safety across this
    Nation.
        And if I could very quickly before my time runs out, I want
    to talk just one moment about advancing policing under the idea
    of this whole war on policing. As a veteran officer and as a
    conservative senior law enforcement administrator, I feel the
    issues deserve much further discussion, and I certainly look
    forward to having that discussion and answering any questions
    that you may have, because I think I would like to share, if
    given the opportunity, some of my thoughts about this whole
    idea, this whole notion of war on police in this country and
    what it means to some as being true and what it means to others
    as being a misperception.
        Thank you very much for this opportunity.
        [The prepared statement of Dr. Alexander appears as a
    submission for the record.]
        Chairman Cruz. Thank you, Dr. Alexander. Mr. Driscoll.

                STATEMENT OF ROBERT N. DRISCOLL, MEMBER,

               MCGLINCHEY STAFFORD PLLC, WASHINGTON, D.C.

        Mr. Driscoll. Thank you, Chairman Cruz, Ranking Member
    Coons, and Members of the Committee. I appreciate the
    opportunity to discuss the role of the Department of Justice in
    enforcing its pattern and practice statute--I will refer to it
    as ``Section 14141''--in the context of law enforcement. I had
    the privilege of serving as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General
    in the Civil Rights Division for 2 years under Attorney General
    Ashcroft and Assistant Attorney General Ralph Boyd, and I was
    active in supervising the Special Litigation Section's
    investigations of and resolutions of consent decrees or
    agreements with law enforcement agencies in Cincinnati,
    Columbus, Miami, and PG County, as was mentioned earlier, and
    others.
        The work of the Section is important, and it is difficult,
    and the men and women who do it deserve our respect. But I
    think that the DOJ leadership and those who have oversight over
    DOJ should more carefully analyze the appropriate use of this
    pattern and practice statute to ensure that it's not used as a
    tool to manipulate political outcomes but, rather, is used to
    fulfill its purpose of enforcing constitutional standards where
    there has been a pattern of violations by State and local law
    enforcement.
        Just to add a little bit of law here to put some context
    into this, the statute was passed in the wake of the Rodney
    King beating and trial, and it was essentially patterned under
    an unsuccessful bill that was brought up in 1991. The
    legislative history of the provision made clear that 14141 is a
    ``gap-filler'' statute. It was designed to fill a gap that
    exists in Section 1983, the long-standing civil rights law by
    which private citizens can sue for violations of their
    constitutional rights. The gap in 1983 is that if your
    constitutional rights are violated, if you are beaten by an
    officer, you can recover money damages, but there is no
    mechanism by which to enforce any change in the police
    department. So, you could have success of 1983 actions that
    wouldn't be successful in reforming the police department. But
    14141 was passed to fill that gap, and thus, if there is a
    proven pattern of constitutional violations, the Attorney
    General has authority to get an injunction against a police
    department and say fix that policy or fix that practice or fix
    that procedure and get a Federal court order to do that.
        However, Section 14141--and important if you go back and
    look at the legislative history--did nothing to change the
    constitutional standard of proof for a violation of the
    Constitution, and it didn't make the Civil Rights Division a
    roving police practices review board, with the ability to
    require best practices all around the country.
        But over time, the pattern and practice statute has been
    used much more broadly by DOJ. For example, recently the
    Department will find a pattern or practice of constitutional
    violations without ever proving any individual underlying
    violation of the Constitution. This happened recently in
    Alamance County, North Carolina, where the Division went to
    trial and lost against the sheriff's department down there,
    alleging a pattern and practice of racial profiling, and the
    Federal district court judge found there wasn't proof of any
    constitutional violations, never mind a pattern and practice.
    So, oftentimes the pattern and practice statute is used for
    unsuccessful attempts to prove any individual violation.
        Of more concern, remedies under these consent decrees often
    go well beyond enjoining the specific pattern and practices of
    unconstitutional conduct, but overflow into what appear to be
    explicitly political or regulatory decisions that would and
    should otherwise be handled locally or legislatively. For
    example, if you read the Cleveland Consent Order, which is one
    of the big consent orders the Department has highlighted this
    past summer, it establishes a Community Policing Commission; it
    has specific provisions in the order to ensure diversity of the
    commission and how often it is going to meet and how often it
    is going to issue reports. And the order is 100 pages long, and
    if you read the order, I submit to you it is downright
    statutory in nature. It is as though the Department of Justice
    drafted a new statute under which this Department is going to
    operate.
        Committees like this may or may not be a good idea. I tend
    to think community policing, like everyone else, is a good idea
    and community involvement is good. But the city of Cleveland
    can decide whether or not it wants to create a committee
    through the local political process, and requiring
    establishment of a committee in a Federal consent decree is far
    beyond any remedy necessary to correct a specific pattern of
    constitutional violations. Rather, such provisions use the
    consent decree negotiation as a process through which DOJ and
    local municipalities can obtain political outcomes--such as
    creation of a new committee--through a Federal court order
    rather than the political process.
        If insufficient attention is paid to limiting the pattern
    and practice statute to this use to enjoin specific practices,
    the Civil Rights Division becomes a roving best practices unit,
    appearing periodically to tell a local law enforcement agency
    that it must collect certain racial data, it must use a
    particular discipline system, it must report uses or force in a
    certain way, regardless of the underlying facts. When the
    Division functions in this manner, it operates as a regulatory
    and not as an enforcer. And the regulations in question then
    are not reviewable, are not subject to comment, and are not
    authorized by Congress.
        And, for example, to use raw racial disparities, as the
    Department did in Ferguson, to accuse the Ferguson Police
    Department of racially biased policing, that said as the panel
    has pointed out, those same disparities exist in all law
    enforcement agencies in the country. And so, that is
    essentially letting every law enforcement agency know you had
    better be doing data collection because if we show up, we will
    find a disparity and we will require you to do this kind of
    data collection as a remedy.
        So, this type of broader imposition of policy and political
    structures on local governments breeds resentment by law
    enforcement, who feel they have been accused and convicted of a
    pattern of civil rights violations without proof whenever they
    have agreed to ``settle'' a pattern and practice case, rather
    than simply having the Department enforce constitutional
    standards and target policies and training directed at proven
    constitutional violations. I welcome any questions you have.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Driscoll appears as a
    submission for the record.]
        Chairman Cruz. Thank you, Mr. Driscoll. Finally, Mr.
    McCarthy.

                STATEMENT OF ANDREW C. McCARTHY, FORMER

                CHIEF ASSISTANT UNITED STATES ATTORNEY,

                  SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK, U.S.

               DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, NEW YORK, NEW YORK

        Mr. McCarthy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Senator Coons,
    Members of the Committee. It is an honor to be here. Apart from
    my submitted testimony, Mr. Chairman, I feel compelled to say
    something about the title of the hearing since it has been the
    subject of such debate back and forth.
        I don't see that there could be any conceivable question
    that there is a war on the police. Police have been threatened,
    police have been assaulted, and police have been killed. That's
    not a national conversation. That's a war on the police.
        I took the question of the hearing not to be whether the
    Justice Department was the totality of the war on the police. I
    took the question presented by the hearing to be that there is
    a war on police and has the Justice Department created the
    impression among the police that it is on the wrong side.
        What I would like to direct my limited time to is the ethos
    or culture of police departments and law enforcement. When an
    agency ethos informs police that taking enforcement action can
    at a minimum expose an officer to internal forms of discipline
    and derail the possibility of career advancement; and, in
    addition, may expose the officer to criminal and civil
    liability, entailing all the hardships of the criminal justice
    process, including the need to retain legal counsel, the public
    stigma of being suspected of wrongdoing, and the anxiety of
    worrying about the financial and social well being of the
    officer's family, then inevitably there will be a reduction in
    law enforcement activity. And there is ere is abundant reason
    to believe that this is exactly what is happening in our
    country at the present time.
        My submitted testimony outlines three reasons or rationales
    for this police passivity. First, the Obama administration has
    powerfully signaled in various ways that it is sympathetic to a
    demagogic narrative that depicts the Nation's police as
    systematic violators of the Federal civil rights laws.
        This narrative essentially proceeds on a disparate impact
    theory, which holds that statistical disparities in racial and
    ethnic make-up of people who are subjected to police
    investigative tactics are the result of police bias. This
    simplistic and deceptive method of statistical inference is
    itself systematically skewed: It fails to account for criminal
    behavior--as it occurs and as it is reported by crime victims,
    witnesses, and criminals who confess. When criminal behavior is
    accounted for, the fact is that employment of police
    investigative tactics by police--such as stop-and-frisk
    techniques--to minority suspects actually underrepresents their
    portion in the criminal population even if it overrepresents
    their portion in the general population. Since a great deal of
    crime involves minority offenders preying on minority
    communities, it is those communities that bear the brunt of
    police passivity.
        The second rationale for police passivity involves a
    pattern of extremely destructive--rather extremely destructive
    of effective law enforcement that the Justice Department has
    followed over the past several years.
        A tragic event occurs with racial overtones, whether real
    or manufactured. It will be patent that there is insufficient
    evidence of intentional killing or intentional deprivation of
    civil rights by the police. Yet minority community activists
    will demand prosecution.
        Rather than help the communities understand that not all
    tragic events constitute Federal criminal wrongs, the Justice
    Department and its Civil Rights Division convey the opposite
    message, appearing to confirm the activists' claims that
    violations have occurred--even pressuring State law enforcement
    agencies to embark on prosecutions based on insufficient
    evidence. Naturally, this fans the flames of community discord.
        Inevitably, it becomes obvious that no civil rights or
    other prosecutable violation occurred. Yet while unable to
    bring a case in connection with the tragedy that drew its
    attention, the Justice Department exploits the controversy to
    commence a large-scale civil rights investigation--a so-called
    pattern or practice investigation--not just of the individual
    police officers involved in the tragedy but of the entire
    police department. These investigations and the threat of civil
    suits have been used by the Justice Department to obtain
    effective control over several police departments, as we have
    heard already today in the testimony. While there can be little
    doubt that some real abuses should be addressed and these do
    turn up in these investigations--just as a thoroughgoing
    investigation of the Justice Department itself would turn up
    abuses--the claim that these departments are systematically
    violating people's rights is absurd.
        I would also stress, in light of some of the testimony
    already, it is not the use--number of cases against the police
    department that the Department of Justice has brought that is
    the material thing. It is that these cases are used as a proxy
    for cases the Justice Department can't bring because it lacks
    evidence. It appears under the circumstances in which these
    cases are brought to validate the anti-cop narrative. Thank
    you, Mr. Chairman.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. McCarthy appears as a
    submission for the record.]
        Chairman Cruz. Thank you very much, Mr. McCarthy.
        I want to note at the outset that I, like many Members of
    this Committee, served a number of years in law enforcement,
    both at the United States Department of Justice and as the
    Solicitor General of the State of Texas. We have seen many
    aspersions cast in recent months and years directed at the men
    and women in law enforcement. I want to start, Mr. Walters,
    with you. In your long experience in the world of law
    enforcement, are you aware of any evidence that there is a
    widespread pattern of racism among police officers?
        Mr. Walters. No. To the contrary, they are devoting
    themselves to try to save young people even when other
    institutions fail--the family, education, the care of young
    people--to get them the care they need. They see themselves as
    trying to make--again, there are mixtures of rare people who
    are obviously bad actors in any institution, but the pattern
    that is talked about now way too commonly is not only false,
    but it is an insult to the many people who have dedicated their
    lives to making people who are on the wrong track back on the
    right track.
        Chairman Cruz. Well, Mr. Walters, I will say your
    experience precisely mirrors mine, that in the years I have
    served in law enforcement, I have seen dedicated professionals,
    both police officers and prosecutors, who care passionately
    about following the law. And, indeed, in a very large
    percentage of the cases where you are prosecuting criminals,
    the victims are members of the minority community. The victims
    are African American. The victims are Hispanic. They are the
    ones that are being preyed upon.
        Ms. Mac Donald, there has been considerable discussion in
    this hearing about whether there is a pattern of increased
    crime nationwide. The New York Times, that famed right-wing
    outlet, in August described the murder rates in a number of
    large cities. The city of Milwaukee has seen, from 2014 to
    2015, an increase of 17 percent in the homicide rate as of
    August of this year; New Orleans, an increase of 18 percent;
    Baltimore, an increase of 35 percent; DC, an increase of 30
    percent; St. Louis, an increase of 37 percent; New York, an
    increase of 9 percent; Chicago, an increase of 20 percent.
        Ms. Mac Donald, how do you explain the number of people at
    this hearing and, for that matter, Democratic politicians
    nationwide that keep insisting pay no attention to your lying
    eyes, we have no evidence that crime is increasing?
        Ms. Mac Donald. Senator Cruz, I think it is because the
    rise in crime is seen as a block to their preferred narrative.
    So, the thinking is because we don't like the facts, the facts
    must not be true.
        I find it astonishing that President Obama apparently
    thinks he knows more about crime patterns in this country than
    his own FBI Director, who is the source of the place where
    crime statistics are kept.
        When Director Comey confirms what not only the New York
    Times but the liberal blog 538 has said, which is that when you
    look at all of the 60 largest cities, you have a crime and
    murder increase of 16 percent, which is a huge increase. If
    there was a drop of 16 percent in homicides, we would all be
    high-fiving each other. It is simply preposterous that--that
    Obama thinks he knows more about the crime patterns in this
    country than FBI Director Comey.
        And to pick up on the question about whether the cops are
    racist, the very fact that we are dependent on what Mr.
    McCarthy talks about, the disparate impact theory of racism, is
    because we have so little evidence of intentional
    discrimination. And so, instead we have to fall back upon the
    fact that, sadly, most any enforcement of the criminal law is
    going to have a disparate impact on Blacks because of the
    elevated rates of crime and the breakdown of the Black family.
    But that is because officers are there to protect lives, not
    because they are racist.
        Chairman Cruz. And I want to underscore the point you just
    made. Mr. Comey is the Director of the FBI. He was appointed to
    that position by President Barack Obama. He was confirmed by
    the United States Senate into that position. What do you make
    of the President of the United States impugning the integrity
    and the veracity of the Director of the FBI that he appointed
    simply for having the temerity to speak the truth about the
    rising murder rates and crime rates we are seeing in large
    cities across this country?
        Ms. Mac Donald. I think it is sadly a demonstration of the
    extent to which ideology rules this White House. It is of the
    piece with President Obama claiming that the criminal justice
    system is racist. When the Justice Department's own statistics
    show that the relationship between crime and incarceration,
    when the President can go around claiming that the prison
    population is driven by drug enforcement, when the Justice
    Department statistics show that nationally only 16 percent of
    State prisoners are in for drug crimes and less than 4 percent
    are there for drug possession, and yet our very President is
    going around stating an untruth. That is because this is an
    administration, I think, that is ruled by an ideology that
    claims that law enforcement is somehow racist, and that, as you
    say, is a disservice to officers of all colors who are there to
    help the good people in the community.
        Chairman Cruz. You know, Mr. McCarthy, you rightly observe
    that the title of this hearing, ``The War on Police,'' is
    directed far more broadly than simply the Department of
    Justice. But it is, rather, what I see as a pervasive, to use a
    term of art, ``pattern and practice'' across the Federal
    Government in this administration. And, indeed, I think no one
    bears more direct responsibility than the President of the
    United States.
        As Ms. Mac Donald just noted, President Obama has directly
    tried to attack his own FBI Director for observing that violent
    crime and homicides are increasing. And we saw at the very
    beginning of the Obama administration where the President chose
    in a confrontation in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to immediately
    assume that the police were in the wrong and were demonstrating
    racism.
        There was a time back in the 1968 Democratic convention
    where the radicals and anarchists outside protesting against
    the cops, describing the cops as ``oppressive,'' that used to
    be a fringe view. We now see that vilification coming from the
    very top, from the President of the United States, echoed by
    the Attorney General of the United States, manifested in things
    like appointing as the head of the Civil Rights Division an
    attorney who voluntarily for free represented and lionized an
    admitted cop killer.
        In your view, Mr. McCarthy, does having a President who at
    every turn--in Ferguson, in Baltimore--assumes the police are
    guilty until proven innocent, assumes the police are bad actors
    and blames police officers and holds them up for vilification?
        Mr. McCarthy. I think, Senator, it is a terrible
    development for the country, because in our previous
    experience--and I had the privilege of working in the Justice
    Department under administrations of both parties. The
    Government took it to be, as I understood at least, and
    certainly in the traditions of the Justice Department, its duty
    to clarify narratives that were fraudulent and certainly
    narratives that were evil. And what we are seeing today is a
    Government that puts its thumb on the scale, and it has had a
    terrible effect on the country.
        The one silver lining I would point out from your remarks
    and from also Ms. Mac Donald's, I actually had the pleasure of
    serving in the U.S. Attorney's Office with Director Comey under
    then-U.S. Attorney Giuliani, more years ago than either of us
    would want to admit to. He is a very straight shooter, and I
    imagine he is going to make a lot of people around here pretty
    uncomfortable.
        Chairman Cruz. Thank you, Mr. McCarthy.
        The final line of questions I want to ask, I want to go
    back to you, Ms. Mac Donald. In April, in Baltimore, we saw the
    death of Mr. Gray. There were protests. The police were held up
    for vilification and demonization. In the court of public
    opinion, the police officers were convicted at the outset
    before one shred of evidence was gathered.
        The very next month, the month of May, there were 42
    homicides in the city of Baltimore. Two months later, in July,
    there were 45 homicides in Baltimore, which matches the monthly
    record last set in 1972. The most murders the city of Baltimore
    has ever seen since 1972 occurred in July of this year
    following the protests and vilification of the police officers.
    Forty-five people were murdered. Of those 45 people, 43 of them
    were African American. In the context of protests, talking
    about Black Lives Matter, who pays the price when police
    officers are not able to do their jobs and crime rates and
    murder rates go up and 43 Black lives are taken by violent
    criminals and are murdered? Who pays the price when the police
    officers cannot protect our inner cities?
        Ms. Mac Donald. The people who pay the price when the cops
    back off are the people that the Black Lives Matter movement
    purports to be speaking for, but is inevitably silent about,
    which are law-abiding and sometimes, let us be honest, criminal
    residents of poor inner-city neighborhoods. But those are the
    people who I hear again and again saying, ``We support the
    cops. I need the cops.'' I think about Mrs. Sweeper, an elderly
    cancer amputee in the Mount Hope section of the Bronx, who said
    the only time she feels safe to go down to her lobby and pick
    up the mail is when the police are there. She said, ``Please,
    Jesus, send more police.'' They do not have a problem with the
    cops, and I have spoken to a lot of young Black men who have
    been stopped and frisked by the police. And they'll say the
    police were doing their jobs, because in these communities
    informal social control has broken down. The family has broken
    down. And when that happens, the police are the only thing that
    stands between law-abiding residents and anarchy.
        So, if we want to save Black lives, we have to stop this
    vilification, because the data is clear. The police are not
    engaged in precisely the type of policing that was key to the
    50-percent crime drop that this Nation has experienced over the
    last two decades. It's now reversing because cops are not
    making proactive pedestrian stops. They are not enforcing
    quality-of-life laws, and the people who are going to be hurt
    are going to be residents of inner-city communities.
        Chairman Cruz. And, Ms. Mac Donald, when in July of this
    year 45 people were murdered in Baltimore, the most since 1972,
    when 43 of them were African American, were there any protests
    from left-wing groups about the Black lives that were lost to
    the skyrocketing murder rates? Did President Obama speak out
    about the Black lives that had been taken from skyrocketing
    homicide rates?
        Ms. Mac Donald. It would seem that that crime is taken as a
    matter of course. I have not heard the Black Lives Matter
    movement protest against criminal murderers. No cop starts out
    with criminal intent. That is the difference. We've been
    hearing that somehow it is a miscarriage of justice that grand
    juries do not routinely convict cops of murder. The reason for
    that fact is that grand juries understand the difference
    between a murderer with criminal intent and an officer who in a
    split second of pressure and confusion may make the wrong call
    in retrospect.
        Chairman Cruz. Thank you, Ms. Mac Donald. Senator Coons.
        Senator Coons. Thank you, Chairman Cruz, and I appreciate
    the opportunity to speak to exactly the issue now raised
    repeatedly. Do minority communities plagued by crime welcome
    policing? Absolutely. So, let's review the record of what
    happened in the appropriations process earlier this year. We
    just heard paraphrased a cry, ``Please, God, send more
    police.''
        I'll note that in the appropriations process it was the
    Democrats, led by Senator Mikulski, who offered an amendment to
    the appropriations bill for Commerce, Justice, Science that
    would have added $60 million for U.S. Attorneys, $35 million
    for the U.S. Marshals Service, $58 million for the DEA, $153
    million for assistance to State and local law enforcement, and
    $95 million for the COPS Hiring Program. This amendment was,
    sadly, rejected on a party-line vote.
        This hearing has tolerated a wide range of sloppy,
    unfounded, and unscientific insults to the law enforcement
    community that has suggested somehow that it is citizens
    protesting civil rights violations that are causing increases
    in crime.
        Allow me to read again from the statement from the national
    president of the Fraternal Order of Police, Chuck Canterbury,
    who, in part, in responding to what he views as the offensive
    comments of FBI Director James Comey in suggesting in February
    that police officers need to acknowledge, quote, ``the
    widespread existence of unconscious bias,'' unquote, FOP
    President Canterbury later in his letter says, ``To blame the
    rise in crime on officers' behavior is just not grounded in
    fact and is wrong.''
        I think the sloppy suggestion that there is a so-called
    Ferguson effect in which cops back off because they are afraid
    of accountability was directly addressed by Chief Davis earlier
    who said in a democracy law enforcement officers welcome
    accountability, and in the earlier testimony of Ms. Gupta that
    detailed how successful partnerships between the Civil Rights
    Division and a series of police departments has actually
    improved policing through investments in equipment, training,
    staffing, and accountability.
        I would be interested, Chief Alexander, if you have any
    comments on the valuable program that NOBLE led, in part under
    your leadership, called ``The Law and Your Community,'' to
    improve the relationships between 13- to 18-year-old young men
    of color and minority communities and the law enforcement
    profession, why that is valuable, and the role of the COPS
    Office in helping support proactive policing.
        And, Ms. Ifill, I would just like to invite you to expand
    on a comment that was in your written testimony, and I will
    just remind you: quote, ``This has been referred to as a
    Ferguson Effect....,'' unquote. ``Even if Comey's speculation
    proves to be supported by data, it reveals the need to engage
    even more intensely with police departments and with
    communities to build trust, to promote reforms, and to
    facilitate a culture of collaboration...,'' although earlier
    you say there is no data to support it whatsoever.
        So, if you would first, Chief, and then Ms. Ifill, tell us
    about the investments that are valuable and that NOBLE has
    helped lead to try and restore relations between police and
    community. And, Ms. Ifill, what do you think we should be doing
    to deal with the rise in crime and with some of the assertions
    made today about whether there is or is not a so-called war on
    police. Chief Alexander.
        Dr. Alexander. Yes, sir. If you would also oblige me just
    for a moment or two to give a little backdrop. We keep
    referring to the comments made by Director Comey certainly that
    may across this country see in a variety of different ways. But
    here is what I also need to note as well, too. Back in
    February, I think it was, Director Comey at Georgetown
    University also stated that this country's law enforcement need
    to acknowledge the fact that we have done some things wrong
    over the years, and that is absolutely true. We have to go back
    through this Nation's history and take a look at policing and
    the things that have been done to people across this country,
    particularly people of color and particularly people that may
    have well been white as well, too, but did not have the ways
    and means to do better for themselves.
        The whole notion here is that somehow we just got here
    today. We did not just get here today. This has been a long
    haul. And since the Michael Brown event of last year, which
    really brought all of this pretty much to bear and everything
    that followed, there have been a number of incidents that
    follow one just behind the other.
        But let me say this: I am a 38-year veteran. I am the only
    38-year veteran active-duty police administrator that is
    sitting at this table. So, I am going to talk to you about this
    from a realistic point of view--not a Black point of view, not
    a white point of view, or Republican or conservative point of
    view, but from a police point of view.
        This is a very complex issue. When we start talking about
    engaging in community policing. There is a lot of history, a
    lot of feelings, and a lot of legacy that is still to be lived
    down and moved through. That's what we are in the process of
    doing. That's what this administration, the President, the COPS
    Office, the Department of Justice have made attempts to do.
    They have afforded the opportunities of financing and helping
    departments across this country to be better. Most of the
    police departments across this country that have reached out
    and asked for help, even organizations such as NOBLE, have had
    somewhere to go in order to be able to say what can I do to
    better my police department in my community. And there are a
    number of agencies across this country, a number of them, that
    are reaching out to the COPS Office every day.
        So, I think it is important to note that this is not as
    simple as I am quite sure as a lot of people would like for it
    to be, because this is rooted in the fact that there are men
    and women out there every day. They are not racist. They are
    not sexist. They are dedicated men and women who want to do a
    fantastic job, but you have 800,000 police officers in this
    country. Are you going to have one or two or several here that
    go off the rail? Yes, we are upon occasion. You are going to
    find that in any profession anywhere, and we see it from the
    top of Government to the last individual born on the face of
    this Earth or leaves the face of this Earth. We all have fault.
    But much of what we see as it relates to crime in this country,
    as it relates to this so-called Ferguson effect, which has
    become a term that somehow has gotten coined to be of some real
    significance. Well, I suggest to you today here it is of no
    real significance, Senator, because my thought of it is this:
    We have issues right now in this country that we have some
    relationship issues in this country, as relates to policing.
    And it is all not about white policing on Black subjects. I
    hear it the other way as well, too. I hear Black police
    officers violating people's rights. I hear Hispanic police
    officers violating people's rights, women violating other
    women's rights, police officers.
        So, this is a broad issue. This is not just a racial issue.
    This is a human rights issue, a civil rights issue. But I will
    contend and I will confess to you today as a long-term law
    enforcement official that we need all the help that we can get
    out here, and that help, of course, is contingent upon the fact
    that the facts are reported to you, not the notions of friends
    that we all have who sometimes talk about how bad it is,
    because we are in a place where policing is changing in this
    country, and we have to accept that.
        I am almost 4--40 years at this, and this is a long time, a
    very long time. And I hate that at some time in the near future
    I am going to leave this profession pretty much like I found it
    40 years ago. But, I think the work that the Justice Department
    is doing, I think the work that this administration is doing,
    in all fairness to both, is they are doing their best to change
    policing across this country. And I think we have to continue
    to demand that policing change. And I think that there needs to
    be continued funding for programs such as NOBLE, to your
    question, Senator, as it relates to the law in your community.
    We got funding from the Justice Department--to do what? To go
    out and teach these young men and women across this country
    between the ages of 13 and 14--between the ages of 13 and 18,
    I'm sorry, to tell them what the law is. How do you respect the
    law? How is it important for you that when you are stopped,
    what are you supposed to do? Basic fundamental things that you
    and I may have had the opportunity to learn, but that many of
    these youngsters in these urban communities might not have had
    that opportunity. And it is meaningful for them. It helps them
    better understand how to respect authority, because we are
    expecting sometimes for them to do things in which they have no
    prior training. Not no fault of their own, but we know that to
    exist.
        So, these programs have proved to be quite successful, and
    if I would just close by adding to this as well, too. We talk
    about uptick of homicides across this Nation. For every city
    there is an uptick that we are seeing, we are also seeing
    cities where there are declines in homicides as well, too. We
    do not know what's driving this.
        Now, we can take Ferguson--I am sorry, we can take
    Baltimore. That was an anomaly. That was a clear, noted voiced
    slowdown of work following the death of Freddie Gray. We know
    that. But if I talk to my colleague tomorrow in Chicago, which
    I did on yesterday, McCarthy, superintendent there, his men and
    women are not slowing down. A department of over 10,000 police
    officers, they recovered over 25 percent more guns this year
    than they did last year. But the raise and the rise in
    homicides are not just based on the fact of this administration
    as some--some vendetta on police. The issues are far bigger and
    far greater.
        And I would also say to the rest of my colleagues out there
    in the law enforcement community as well, too, they know--
    because I talk to them every day, as many of you say you do. I
    talk to them every day, in large cities to moderate-size to
    small cities across this country. Nobody is telling me that
    their men and women are slowing down. Are they a little bit
    more cautious? Do they have a little bit more pause as a result
    of the negative comments and the things that might be being
    said to them or about them in communities? Yes. It is a tough
    time to be a police officer. But it is these tough times that
    police officers across this Nation always at the end of the day
    get it done for us. And they are getting it done. They are
    fighting every day. They are getting shot at every day. And I
    can attest to that coming from a community of 750,000 residents
    and 1,000 police officers. I know what they are doing every
    day. And they haven't slowed down one bit. And that's not based
    on something I heard from someone else. That's based on what I
    see every day in metro Atlanta and other cities across this
    country.
        Thank you, sir.
        Senator Coons. Thank you, Chief.
        Ms. Ifill, would you just speak to the Ferguson effect and
    whether there is any support for it and the role of private
    litigants and the Office of Civil Rights in terms of addressing
    challenges and the complex discussion you raised earlier.
        Ms. Ifill. I am in the unusual position, Senator, of
    feeling as though I have to be counsel for the FBI Director,
    which is quite unusual for me. But let me just be sure to
    clarify Mr. Comey's remarks.
        There is no question that there are many communities in
    which there has been an uptick in violent crime, and he did say
    that. The controversial part of the statement was that he
    opined--he opined that this might be a Ferguson effect. He
    never claimed that he had any data to support that there was a
    correlation between the uptick in violent crime and the
    increased scrutiny of police departments. And, I think, it's
    critically important that we be very careful that we not make
    these leaps, because it can really move into the realm of
    irresponsibility.
        I and many others in this country have a higher ambition
    and believe that it is possible for us to have safer
    communities, sound policing, respect for police officers, and
    policing that is constitutional and that adheres to the rules
    of law and that also upholds the dignity of the people who live
    in those communities.
        It's important for this Committee to recognize that we are
    sitting here at a snapshot moment in which the Nation's
    consciousness has been heightened to an issue that has been
    discussed in African American communities for many decades. We
    did not have this hearing the year before last when Anthony
    Anderson was killed by the Baltimore police. We did not have
    this hearing the year before that when Tyrone West was killed
    by the Baltimore police. Those matters were managed by the
    community in Baltimore and by the police chief who conducted
    his own investigation. These issues have been percolating to
    the surface over time.
        We did not think that there was a war on policing in June
    2014, a month before Eric Garner was killed in New York, and
    several months before Mike Brown was killed in Ferguson, when
    two police officers, Igor Soldo and Alyn Beck, were ambushed
    and executed in Las Vegas by a husband and wife who then threw
    a Nazi flag over them and screamed, ``Don't tread on me,'' as
    they were taken away. But they were killed in June 2014.
        So, depending on how far back we take our lens tells us
    what the story is. And I want to caution this Committee from
    taking this very narrow lens and suggesting that what we see
    today is the product of what has happened over the last year.
    As the letter that you read at the beginning of this hearing
    demonstrates, we are seeing the product of decades of policies
    and practices that have produced the conditions that we see in
    many of our Nation's cities. And now we have an opportunity to
    address a problem.
        I would suggest to this Committee that we cannot look at a
    video of Walter Scott being shot in that park in North
    Charleston and a police officer appear to go back and drop a
    Taser next to him, we cannot watch Samuel DuBose killed as he
    was in Cincinnati, we cannot watch a police officer--police
    officer barrel into a pool party of teens and do what they did,
    and suggest that we do not have a problem. So, we have an
    opportunity.
        We also know what the police report said and what the video
    showed. We know that if we didn't have that video, we would
    have all believed the police report, because we are hard-wired
    to believe the police, because we do understand the difficult
    job that they do and the challenges that they face. But now
    America has been able to see a different reality, and it's a
    reality that has existed in the communities that I represent
    over decades. And it's incumbent upon us in this democracy to
    get our hands around this problem and to recognize that when
    the State--when agents of the State whom we have empowered and
    we have given a gun and a shield and pepper spray and a Taser
    and we have authorized them to take life on our behalf where
    necessary, when they violate the law, it has a particularly
    pernicious effect in the community.
        And the last thing I would say is once again the snapshot
    that we take is very important. There are regular protests
    about violence in the African American community, including in
    May--I have had the advantage of living in Baltimore for 20
    years--including in May and June, when there were continuous
    protests about the uptick in the murder rate. And it has
    continued unabated. There have been protests in Chicago and
    cities all over this country.
        I admit they do not get the media attention of other kinds
    of protests, but I think this kind of anecdotal sense of what
    is happening really has to be challenged because we are at such
    a critical and delicate moment.
        Senator Coons. Thank you very much for your testimony.
    Thank you, Chief.
        Senator Whitehouse. Thank you--Chairman, can I ask
    unanimous consent that I be allowed to put a statement in the
    record? I have been at the hearing, and I have to leave now. My
    time has run out on me, unfortunately. So, if I would be able
    to do that----
        Senator Sessions. I would yield, Senator, if you wanted to
    ask----
        Chairman Cruz. If Senator Sessions would yield his time to
    Senator Whitehouse----
        Senator Whitehouse. That is kind of you, Senator. I
    appreciate it. He is a good friend and a good man, and that is
    just another expression of that.
        I just wanted to say this: The politics is now a big part
    theater, and some of the groups that are represented here are
    part of the theater of politics. So, it's not surprising to me
    how some of the testimony has come out.
        But I do want to say, having been the United States
    attorney in my State and having been the Attorney General of my
    State, which in Rhode Island also means you are the D.A., that
    there is nothing that I see in Rhode Island that communicates
    to me anything like a Federal war on police.
        I just had a meeting this past week with the head of the
    Rhode Island State Police, Colonel O'Donnell, and with the head
    of the Provident Police Department, Colonel Clements. They have
    both been friends for decades. They get along very well. The
    United States Attorney Peter Neronha was there as well. It was
    a meeting that was with the community. We had local NAACP
    leaders present. It was at a community group called ``Open
    Doors,'' and it was to help advise me on what we can do to keep
    the criminal sentencing bill that we have worked on in this
    Committee moving forward. And nobody was concerned, not for a
    second, that there was anything like a war on the police
    happening.
        The U.S. attorney has led joint investigations in which our
    local police departments have participated. One of them was
    against Google and led to a massive settlement that rewarded
    those police departments and their municipalities enormously.
    So, if anything, if there is a war on police in Rhode Island,
    it is a very lucrative one for the local communities, and it is
    one that the local police don't seem to notice.
        Community Relations Service has come to Rhode Island on
    several occasion. They've been helpful. I have not seen them do
    any harm. And not too long ago, I left an awards ceremony in
    which the State police, the Providence police, and a number of
    community organizations all share awards for having gotten
    together and formed a commission, a police community
    commission, to look at the question of profiling. And that
    community and police together effort was so effective that they
    actually have come up with a bill that has passed in the Rhode
    Island General Assembly as a result of their work.
        So, the notion that one witness suggested, which is that
    for the Department of Justice to force a police department to
    enter into some kind of a community commission relationship, in
    Rhode Island nobody had to force us. We did that on our own,
    and everybody thought it was great, and the outcome was very
    positive for the police departments. They were there receiving
    their awards with great pride and great satisfaction in the
    work that had been accomplished.
        So, I think Chief Alexander hit the nail on the head. This
    is more complicated than it seems. I don't think it is
    appropriate for theater. And throughout local law enforcement,
    there are innumerable efforts to make policing better. And in
    those efforts, we find, at least in Rhode Island, that the
    support of our Federal law enforcement community has been very
    beneficial to those efforts.
        So, that has just been our experience, and I just wanted to
    share it for the record, and I thank the Chairman for indulging
    me, and I thank my good friend Senator Sessions for letting me
    take that time. Thank you, sir.
        Chairman Cruz. Thank you, Senator Whitehouse, and I thank
    Senator Sessions as well for graciously yielding his time. I
    recognize Senator Sessions.
        Senator Sessions. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I thank all
    of you. It is a very, very important panel today. And, Ms.
    Ifill, you did a good job kind of by yourself there. You made
    some very valid points.
        And I would just say this: All of us in--I say ``in law
    enforcement.'' I used to be that for a long time. We know how
    sensitive these issues are, how careful we need to be, how
    people can misinterpret things. But I do think it is a real
    problem when we have Black Lives Matter making statements that
    are really radical, that are absolutely false, and then being
    invited to the White House to meet with Valerie Jarrett, and
    never, to my knowledge, have the head of the Civil Rights
    Division criticize some of the statements like ``Pigs in a
    blanket, Fry 'em like bacon,'' talking about the police.
        So, I just think we do have to--have to be careful how we
    handle these issues, but I would expect that the leadership in
    this country would be effective in defending the legitimate
    day-to-day work of police.
        Mr. McCarthy, you have prosecuted a long time. You have
    thought about these issues. What about the acting head of the
    Civil Rights Division in 2005, not too long ago, wrote a
    Fordham Law Review article, which ought to be carefully
    considered, saying, quote, ``We do have a criminal justice
    system whose subjugation of people of color is contingent upon
    individualizing all cases. It is how we have managed to
    rationalize racism in the criminal justice system,'' close
    quote. In other words, it is wrong to treat cases individually,
    that we should see them in some sort of pattern, I suppose.
    Does that trouble you that we have the head of the Civil Rights
    Division taking that view? And do you think it is an extreme
    view?
        Mr. McCarthy. Senator, it really--it certainly troubles me
    that she took that view at a time that she was thinking deeply
    about this. I would note that in every single joint trial in
    America, Federal judges and State judges tell the juries that
    they are supposed to consider each defendant individually and
    not allow the evidence that only is pertinent to one defendant
    to taint the other. And that's because our tradition--and I
    think it's a worthy one--is that guilt is, in fact, individual.
        And I would say that, having--having been a prosecutor for
    a very long time and having worked with law enforcement even
    before that, there's nothing that makes prosecutors' jobs more
    difficult than corrupt prosecutors. And there's nothing that
    makes good cops' jobs more difficult than corrupt cops. And
    when we find them, there's probably nothing more important to
    the administration of justice than that we come at them with
    the full force of the law, which means prosecuting them with
    vigor.
        But the point is that you can have a credible justice
    system, you can have the rule of law the way we have always had
    it, which is that guilt is individual and that people who have
    public positions, positions of public trust, know that if they
    walk outside the lines, the system has a powerful incentive to
    go after them double what they--what the incentive is with
    respect to other actors.
        Senator Sessions. I think you are right about that. I don't
    think there is any other system that can claim justice to its
    name that doesn't individually determine whether the individual
    did wrong or not. Goodness gracious.
        I just--this doesn't answer the question we have talked
    about, but I see an article here back from a few weeks ago,
    Rahm Emanuel, mayor of Chicago, President Obama's Chief of
    Staff for a number of years, says, ``Intense media and public
    criticism is making police officers too passive--`going fetal,'
    '' close quote.
        ``All of us want officers to be proactive [but] to be able
    to do community policing in a proactive way, we have to
    encourage them so it's not their job on the line or that
    judgment call all the time that, if they stop, this could be a
    career-ender.''
        ``If that happens, it's going to have an impact, and we are
    seeing it. That's why every other police chief and mayor and
    U.S. attorney applauded what I said [that],'' close quote. So,
    my best judgment, having been at this business for a long time,
    starting in the mid-1970s as a prosecutor, it is having an
    impact. Maybe I am wrong, but my judgment is it is.
        Now, Mr. Walters, I have a sense, having been appointed by
    Reagan in 1981, when drug use among high school students was at
    50 percent by their own admission, the authoritative University
    of Michigan Study--under a series of Presidents and over a
    period of time, isn't it correct that drug use dropped to under
    25 percent among high school students?
        Mr. Walters. It dropped 25 percent in the last
    administration, during those 7 years. It dropped more than 25
    percent between the peak at roughly 1978 through to 1992. It
    went up from 1992 to 19--2000. Then it went down again. It has
    now----
        Senator Sessions. But at one point----
        Mr. Walters. It has now rebounded.
        Senator Sessions. But what--you get the numbers correct.
    The Michigan study showed 50 percent use around 1980.
        Mr. Walters. Right.
        Senator Sessions. And it dropped steadily until it got
    below--to 25 percent, I believe it was.
        Mr. Walters. Yeah. I do not think it ever got as low as 25
    percent. The 25 percent is the reduction from 2000 to 2008.
    That's the reduction in the numbers. I just want to make----
        Senator Sessions. All right.
        Mr. Walters. I know too much----
        Senator Sessions. I have been corrected by the drug czar
    here, so why should I----
        Mr. Walters. I know.
        Senator Sessions. But great progress was made.
        Mr. Walters. Yes.
        Senator Sessions. Substantial progress. Do you see that the
    difficulties we are having in the streets, the increase in the
    murder rate, the increase in drug use, the President's own
    statement--goodness gracious, I have to ask you about that
    because I know how hard you have worked on trying to reduce
    crime and drug use. Well, I have lost it, but the President
    himself said it's not much different than alcohol or smoking.
    And so, we are now seeing--one study I saw recently--that drug
    use among high school seniors admittedly by them was 49
    percent. So, that has gone back up.
        Will, in your opinion, all of this result in more crimes of
    all kinds? Will it result in more drug use? Will it result in
    more addiction? And is this a very bad trend that we are on?
    Could we be starting on a very bad trend?
        Mr. Walters. Yes, I don't think there is any question those
    of us that have worked on this problem, those in law
    enforcement, know the--the catalytic effect substance abuse has
    on crime, on child endangerment, on addiction, and on the
    survivability of young people that are in at-risk situations
    over time.
        Look, the real shame here is--and I say this without any
    kind of partisanism or theater--President Obama had--has a
    unique connection to young people, a younger President, the
    example he sets is very powerful. All Presidents have an
    important example that they are to young people and to the
    American people. But he had a particularly strong one. He could
    have talked about substance abuse in his generation, his own
    experience. He could have been the most--more powerful than
    Nancy Reagan in terms of being a leader in prevention and
    changing attitudes of young people.
        Instead what we have is a downplaying of the seriousness of
    substance abuse in the comments you have quoted, a suppression
    of Federal law to allow the legalization of marijuana in
    States, which has been horrific and created forms and
    concentrates of marijuana we have never seen before, bringing
    suits in the Supreme Court from surrounding States who are
    affected by Colorado. The growth of heroin in this country that
    has been devastating is not--it is partly a result of what we
    have talked about in terms of opioid pharmaceuticals and
    transmission. What it's really about--and I have done some
    analysis of this--it's really about the explosion of supply out
    of Mexico. And we have not worked effectively with our
    international partners on these. And, by the way, the biggest
    single source of heroin is, of course, Afghanistan. That heroin
    is already in Canada. We can have--this could be the prelude to
    the worst explosion of substance abuse we've ever seen. The
    growth of marijuana, the potential for spreading marijuana into
    communities, first under the guise of medicine, which is false,
    and, second, under just free flow sale and then the kinds and
    concentrates of this will be devastating. And it will not just
    be one generation. We now know not only does the marijuana use
    heavily as young people cause permanent IQ loss that we did not
    know years ago, but it also changes the chemistry of the brain
    to make people more susceptible to substance abuse for the rest
    of their lives. Baby Boomers have higher rates--you may have
    seen the recent study of death from substance abuse and
    overdose and suicide by Baby Boomers as they reach older age.
        So, there is--there is such a catalytic effect of
    destruction in this phenomenon that for us to turn our backs,
    for us to say that we shouldn't enforce the law, for us to lie
    about who is in jail--the criminal justice system has sorted
    people into treatment through drug courts who need treatment,
    you in the Senate have passed--bypassed this to make sure low-
    level offenders do not go into Federal prison. To change--to
    suggest these laws are unjust, to break the tools that have
    been a key for State, Federal, and local governments, to break
    criminal organizations, to bring people to justice, to protect
    communities, to cause declines in substance abuse and
    addiction, to turn all that around when we know what works, we
    have made these achievements, and to throw them away--I mean,
    look, I don't have to do this. I could go back to my private
    life. I was pleased to serve. I'm here--and I recognize this is
    controversial. I've been called as some others of you have been
    called all kinds of names for what I do, the drug czar is not a
    hip guy in parties or on campus. But the reason I've gone and
    continued to say these things is I've also sat with the parents
    who say, ``You have got to do something. You have to be my
    voice.''
        And I went and spoke at the funeral--the funeral of Angela
    Dawson in Baltimore in 2002. Angela Dawson, as you may recall,
    stood up to drug dealers in her community of Baltimore. She
    said, ``You are not going to take my kids. You are not going to
    take my community.'' They tried to kill her with a firebomb.
    They offered to move her out and put her into witness
    protection, and she said, ``No. I will not give up.''
        They came back, an individual who was supposedly under
    supervision and wasn't, and firebombed her house, killed her,
    her husband, and her five children. I spoke at that funeral. I
    looked at those small coffins. She is an example of the kind of
    victims whose voices don't get heard until it's too late.
        I know what is going to happen if we do not stand up and
    speak. And maybe I am too passionate. Maybe it seems like
    theater to some of the Members of the Committee. But the fact
    of the matter is this is going to be worse than we have seen
    before if we do not turn around. And we need the support of
    national leaders. We need the large and vocal support. And
    that's why I congratulate you on having this hearing. And I
    think, you know, to argue about whether or not we have data
    about the effects of criticism and attacks on police, I think
    that's a diversion. I think we really all know--I mean,
    Director Comey is an expert witness if there ever was one on
    this. And, second, I think we all see what the numbers are
    happening in terms of crime. And, third, while it can be
    anecdotal, I would say randomly just start asking police
    officers you see whether they feel they are under attack, and I
    would say you will--you will not find it a close call.
        Senator Sessions. Well, thank you. You know, we are having
    120 deaths a day from drug overdose in America. That is just a
    stunning figure. It has monumental impacts throughout our
    entire culture.
        I gave up many times, I often regret, being with my family,
    meeting with drug--anti-drug groups in the `80s when I was
    United States Attorney, and it worked. Drug use went down
    substantially, and fewer people became addicted, and the crime
    rate began to go down after a time. And we--to me, I can just
    see us letting it slip away. The gains, the lessons we learned,
    as you said, Mr. Walters, we are ignoring, and the culture and
    the Nation will pay a price for it. Thank you.
        Chairman Cruz. Thank you, Senator Sessions, and thank you,
    Mr. Walters, for that powerful testimony a moment ago.
        You know, I will say something Mr. Walters said a minute
    ago I think is powerfully correct. As I travel both the State
    of Texas and the country, I am stopped by police officers
    almost on a daily basis who express to me one after the other
    that they feel they are under assault. I cannot tell you the
    frequency with which individual officers in cities all over the
    country say, ``Thank you for standing up for me.'' That
    sentiment is being felt, and it is being felt powerfully.
        You know, there's been some suggestion that there has not
    been a vilification of law enforcement, and I think that
    suggestion is counter to the facts and counter to the evidence.
    Indeed, if you go back to 2009, President Obama was newly
    elected, and you had an incident with a Harvard professor. And
    President Obama, who, I might note, was not there in Cambridge,
    Massachusetts, did not know what the facts were. But even not
    knowing what the facts were, the President saw fit to say,
    quote, ``The Cambridge police acted stupidly.'' Now, I for one
    don't think the President of the United States ought to be
    insulting police officers for, quote, ``acting stupidly,'' when
    the President by his own admission doesn't know the facts of
    what occurred.
        That started to set the stage for beginning with the
    assumption police officers are guilty until proven innocent.
    President Obama in 2014 at the United Nations stood in front of
    the world and held up law enforcement in a negative way. He
    said, ``I realize that Americans' critics will be quick to
    point out that at times we, too, have failed to live up to our
    ideals, that America has plenty of problems within its own
    borders.'' This President has made a pattern of describing what
    he thinks are America's problems and doing it in front of
    foreign nations.
        He continued: ``This is true. In a summer marked by
    instability in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, I know that
    the world also took notice of the small American city of
    Ferguson, Missouri, where a young man was killed and a
    community was divided.'' President Obama, in front of the
    United Nations, comparing the police officers to terrorists in
    the Middle East.
        And let's be clear. He is giving his opinion on that. A
    young man was killed. ``We have failed to live up to our
    ideals.'' Those are President Obama's words. ``This is true. We
    have failed to live up to our ideals. This is true.'' He is
    rendering judgment and verdict. I would note the grand jury in
    Ferguson disagreed with President Obama, the actual people our
    Justice Department charges with reviewing the evidence,
    something that doesn't seem to trouble President Obama when he
    is opining law enforcement must be in the wrong. The grand jury
    that reviewed the evidence concluded to the contrary, but
    President Obama goes in front of the United Nations and
    lambastes police officers. You do not think that message is
    heard by police officers throughout the country?
        In 2015, President Obama said, ``There are some police who
    aren't doing the right thing. Rather than close ranks,'' he
    said, ``some police chiefs recognize they have got to get their
    arms around the problem.'' But President Obama continued: ``We
    can't just leave this to the police.''
        It is important to understand he does not think the police
    can govern themselves. Instead, President Obama is saying, ``I
    think there are police departments that have to do some soul
    searching. I think there are some communities that have to do
    some soul searching. But I think as a country, we have to do
    some soul searching. This is not new. It has been going on for
    decades.'' The President is standing as judge and jury,
    convicting police officers.
        In response to his own FBI Director, Mr. Comey, President
    Obama, speaking right after Mr. Comey, stands up and says, ``We
    do have to stick with the facts. What we can't do is cherry--
    cherry-pick or use anecdotal evidence to drive policy or feed
    political agendas.''
        How about what we can't do is have the President of the
    United States impugning the integrity--is he suggesting the
    Director of the FBI is cherry-picking data? It is not an
    implicit suggestion. It is an explicit suggestion.
        In the summer of 2014, the Department of Justice, targeting
    the Seattle Police Department, said in writing that the
    officers were engaged in, quote, ``discriminatory practices
    subconsciously.'' I'm very pleased to know that the U.S.
    Department of Justice have now become psychiatrists, have now
    become mystics, delving into the subconscious. How about the
    Department of Justice enforce the laws instead of worrying
    about the deep subconscious of police officers, which the
    President has already told us apparently they are acting
    stupidly, anyway.
        We have talked about the President nominating for a senior
    Department of Justice position a lawyer who not only
    voluntarily and for free represented an admitted cop killer but
    lionized him, held him out as a cause celebre. But, you know,
    that is not the only cop killer that the administration has
    turned a blind eye to.
        We should all remember Joanne Chesimard. Now, who is Joanne
    Chesimard? Joanne Chesimard is on the FBI's Most Wanted List.
    She is wanted for escaping from prison in Clinton, New Jersey,
    while serving a life sentence for murder. On May 2, 1973,
    Chesimard, who was part of the revolutionary extremist
    organization known as the ``Black Liberation Army,'' and two
    accomplices were stopped for a motor vehicle violation on the
    New Jersey Turnpike by two troopers with the New Jersey State
    Police. At the time, Ms. Chesimard was wanted for her
    involvement in several felonies, including bank robbery.
    Chesimard and her accomplices opened fire on the troopers. One
    trooper was wounded and another was shot and killed execution
    style at point-blank range.
        Chesimard fled the scene but was subsequently apprehended.
    One of her accomplices was killed in the shootout, and the
    other was also apprehended and remains in jail. In 1977,
    Chesimard was found guilty of first-degree murder, assault and
    battery of a police officer, assault with a dangerous weapon,
    assault with intent to kill, illegal possession of a weapon,
    and armed robbery. She was sentenced to life in prison.
        On November 2, 1979, Chesimard escaped from prison and
    lived underguard--underground before being located in Cuba in
    1984. She is still living in Cuba. We were all given the
    pleasing situation of seeing President Obama and John Kerry and
    the Obama administration embracing apparently our new-found
    friends Raul Castro and Fidel Castro, cruel communist
    dictators. You know, in the whole course of opening this
    rapprochement with Cuba, and the whole course of opening an
    American embassy in Cuba, in the whole course of opening a
    Cuban embassy in Washington, DC, in the whole course of the
    State Department silencing Cuban dissidents in Washington, DC.
    Did the Obama administration ever once say of their new
    communist buddies, ``How about you hand over the cop killer
    living in Cuba?''
        If you are going to be part of this community of Nations,
    if we're going to embrace Cuba in a way that will make every
    leftist faculty lounge in America cheer, how about as the tiny
    price of that you hand over a cop killer instead of shielding
    someone who murdered a New Jersey State trooper in cold blood
    execution style?
        Does anyone in their right mind think that the Obama
    administration ever even once mentioned that? You want to know
    why the cops feel thrown overboard? Because nobody would
    suggest they would even think to say, ``Hand over the cop
    killer.''
        You know, it's not an accident that at Deputy Goforth's
    funeral President Obama was nowhere to be found. It is not an
    accident that at funeral after funeral of police officers who
    have been murdered, targeted, singled out for defending their
    communities, that President Obama is nowhere to be found?
        There is a consequence when you vilify, when you demonize,
    when you hold out for contempt the good men and women who
    protect our communities.
        Of course, there can be individuals who violate the law,
    and we have a justice system--if there is an individual in law
    enforcement who violates the law, we have a justice system to
    handle that. But this President, this Department of Justice,
    has not approached it saying, ``Let us enforce the law.'' They
    have started with the assumption that law enforcement is, as
    they said to the Seattle Police Department, subconsciously
    discriminating they're guilty. And we've seen the consequences.
    We've seen crime rising. We have seen homicides rising. We've
    seen Black lives being lost over and over and over again being
    murdered. It is wrong. And I believe it should end.
        Senator Coons.
        Senator Coons. Mr. Chairman, as we come to the close of
    what has been a very long afternoon, I simply want to thank the
    two police chiefs who have actually testified today, both Chief
    Davis and Chief Alexander, and the many other witnesses who
    have testified from a wide range of backgrounds and
    perspectives, but have helped us focus on the fact that
    increases in crime are the result of very complex issues and
    require us to pay attention to knowing the facts.
        There has been a great deal of opining today on a wide
    range of issues. I will simply close by suggesting two things
    that I think are worth reflecting on.
        One, as I said at the outset, is a very pointed comment by
    the national president of the Fraternal Order of Police who
    takes some umbrage at those, including witnesses today, who
    suggest that it is the fault of police officers who are
    refusing to actively police that there is an increase in crime.
    He said, ``To blame the rise in crime on officers' behavior is
    just not grounded in fact and is wrong.'' And as we search the
    many complex possible sources for why there might be an
    increase in crime, I'll suggest one thing that was not
    addressed in any meaningful way in today's hearing, which is
    the hundreds of millions of dollars of additional support for
    local law enforcement requested and denied in this year's
    appropriations process. There are 18,000 law enforcement
    agencies across this country, hundreds and hundreds of them
    applying to the COPS Office for increased resources, training,
    equipment, and support, which they will not receive this year
    because of appropriations priorities and decisions of a
    Republican-controlled Congress, and it is to my regret that we
    have not yet achieved a bipartisan consensus on how to
    responsibly work together to support local law enforcement.
        It is my hope, Mr. Chairman, that we can find a path toward
    doing more of cooperating to support law enforcement and less
    of vilifying the very officers who we rely on to secure order
    and enforce our Constitution. Thank you.
        Chairman Cruz. Thank you, Senator Coons.
        I will briefly make an observation that I would note that
    it's not just FBI Director Comey who has observed about the
    Ferguson effect, but also the DEA Administrator Chuck
    Rosenberg, who said Comey was, quote, ``spot on,'' regarding
    his comments on the Ferguson effect. And he said, quote, ``I
    have heard the same things from police. I think it is worth
    talking about.''
        I want to thank each of the witnesses for coming today. I
    want to thank you for your learned testimony. I think this has
    been a valuable conversation and one that I hope will continue
    well beyond this hearing.
        We will be keeping the hearing record open for an
    additional five business days, which means the record will
    close on the end of the business day on Tuesday, November 24,
    2015.
        Ms. Mac Donald in her opening statement asked for a number
    of things to be submitted to the record. They will be, without
    objection.
        [The information was submitted as a submission for the
    record.]
        I will also note that the Dr. Alexander mentioned in his
    testimony that for every large city and jurisdiction where
    crime rates and murder rates have gone down that there are an
    equal number that have gone up--that there are an equal number
    that have gone down. This Committee would certainly welcome any
    data to that effect, and I would encourage you to submit that
    data so that we might have a full and complete record. That is
    at a minimum not what the reporting of the New York Times and
    other news establishments have indicated, and so we certainly
    want to invite any and all data that the witnesses have access
    to.
        And, with that, I want to thank each of you for being here
    and wish you a good evening. The hearing is adjourned.
        [Whereupon, at 5:18 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
        [Additional material submitted for the record follows.]
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                                A P P E N D I X

                                       to

                           THE WAR ON POLICE: HOW THE

                         FEDERAL GOVERNMENT UNDERMINES

                        STATE AND LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT

    The following submissions are available at:

      https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-114shrg52542/pdf/CHRG-
        114shrg
        52542-add1.pdf

    Miscellanous submissions:

     Baltimore City For Immediate Release.............................     2
     BAM Additive Report - Title VI...................................     3
     Byrne JAG Appropriations FY16....................................    12
     Civil Rights Investigations of Local Police......................    17
     Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA).........................    77
     FBI Director Comey...............................................    79
     Is the Criminal Justice System Racist............................    81
     Justice and Mental Health Collaboration..........................    92
     Justice, John R., Funding Letter.................................    96
     Justice, Police Unions Finding Common Ground.....................   100
     Law Enforcement Officers Feloniously Killed Race, chart..........   102
     Major Cities Chief Association, letter...........................   103
     Regional Information Sharing System (RISS).......................   104
     Second Chance Act, letter........................................   109
     Smith, Debbie, support letter....................................   114
     Victims of Child Abuse Act, letter...............................   118
     Victims of Crime Act, letter.....................................   121
     Violence Against Women Act, letter...............................   124
     Viz, Mikulski....................................................   129
     Walsh, Adam, letter..............................................   137