[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 29 (Tuesday, February 14, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H1700]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           COMMUNITY POLICING

  (Ms. SLAUGHTER asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute and to revise and extend her remarks and include 
extraneous material.)
  Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I am sure everybody is confused. They 
have to be. Who is the best crime fighter in America today? None of us 
know. But there are a couple things that I know from experience that I 
had in chairing a public safety committee in the county legislature.
  One of the things that happened when the pressure really got on the 
local budgets, they cut back on the police force and decided to patrol 
neighborhoods in police cars with windows up driving down the streets. 
We know that that has not worked. And one of the things that the crime 
bill that we passed here last year is trying to do is to readdress 
that.
  There is one way to fight crime. It requires the people who live in 
the neighborhood to be involved. It requires that there be police in 
the neighborhood, on the street, in their shops, a policeman that they 
know, a person they go to, someone who pays attention, looks after heir 
children, the kind of community policing we used to do in this country.
  If we revert all the money and put it into prisons, it is not going 
to make us one wit safer on the street. We have been in an absolute 
orgy of jail and prison building which has not helped. Someone has got 
to be on the street to police it, to prevent the crime and to catch the 
perpetrators. I hope that we will maintain the 100,000 policemen on the 
street.


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