[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 23 (Monday, February 6, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H1268-H1269]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                COMMUNITY POLICING WORKS TO LOWER CRIME

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Texas [Mr. Chapman] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. CHAPMAN. Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate the gentleman 
from Michigan [Mr. Stupak] for arranging for those of us whose 
experience has been in the field of law enforcement prior to our duties 
in the Congress to come and express this evening, and for some time in 
the evenings in the future, our concerns about what we see as perhaps 
the direction in the new crime bill, as part of the Contract for 
America, that may do some serious damage to some of the good things 
this Congress did last year.
  Mr. Chairman, tonight a couple of my colleagues have already 
addressed the issue of community policing. I want to join them this 
evening. Before I came to the House of Representatives, I served for 8 
years as an elected district attorney in a rural district in northeast 
Texas.
  In that job, I found two things to be true: one, that the best 
deterrent to criminal conduct was effective prosecution, the certainty 
of punishment;
and even more importantly, the presence of law enforcement on our 
  streets, in our communities, all over the country.Mr. Speaker, last 
year's crime bill provides for 100,000 new cops on the beat in a 
community policing effort. I don't know any law enforcement official 
that would not tell the Members that one of the most effective things 
we can do or they can do or anyone can do to fight crime in America is 
to increase the presence of police on our streets.
  You don't have high crime where you have a high number of police 
officers. You don't have folks breaking into homes if they know the 
policeman may walk by in the next few minutes. You 
 [[Page H1269]] have a lower incidence of crime where you have a higher 
presence of police.
  Mr. Speaker, in our State just about 4 years ago, in the city of 
Houston, a mayoral candidate ran on the platform that he would 
dramatically increase the size of the Houston Police Department if he 
was elected, and he did so. In that city, the violent crime rate 
decreased in 1 year by 27 percent. Crime went down all over the city of 
Houston, and the mayor was recently reelected with one of the largest 
percentages of any big city mayor in the country.
  Mr. Speaker, I can tell the Members that the new cops program is 
going to work because I have been there and I know, and so will every 
law enforcement association in America who have endorsed this program 
and who share our concerns with the direction of turning everything in 
the arena of law enforcement into some kind of block grant, where we 
send a check from Washington and just trust the folks at home to know 
what to do with it.
  Our cities, our communities, our neighbors, our homes, our schools 
deserve to have the very best that we can offer. One of the good things 
Congress did last year in passing the crime bill was to put the cops on 
the beat, 100,000. We say without understanding, sometimes, ``What does 
100,000 new policemen mean?''

                              {time}  2000

  When you think in the context that in our country we only have about 
600,000 police officers, what it means is a 17 percent increase in the 
number of policemen in our communities, on the streets, in the patrol 
cars, working with our kids, working in the schools, working to make 
sure that our neighborhoods are safe.
  Mr. Speaker, I hope we do not undo the good we did. Clearly there are 
some things in the crime bill that we can improve on. I hope we do that 
in this debate and the votes that we will face in the days and weeks 
ahead. But one of the things that Congress did right, joining together 
in a bipartisan way, was to put the cops program in place.
  Given a chance to work, that program will reduce crime, increase the 
confidence of American citizens in their police, will increase the 
assurance that those who violate the law will pay the price. It is a 
good policy, it is a good program, it is one that is working and it is 
one we ought to keep.
  Mr. Speaker, I hope we do not undo the good things we have done.
  

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