[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 28 (Tuesday, February 23, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H697-H703]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    PATTERN OF BRUTALITY AND KILLINGS IN NEW YORK CITY LINKED WITH 
                               EDUCATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 1999, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Owens) is recognized 
for 60 minutes.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to add my voice of praise and 
congratulations to the retiring chairman of the Committee on 
Appropriations in one respect that I think people keep forgetting, and 
it ought to be an important footnote in the history books. That is that 
the biggest appropriation in the last few decades for education, the 
biggest appropriation, was the appropriation in 1996 that came out of 
the Committee on Appropriations. Education got a $4 billion increase 
under the leadership of Chairman Livingston, $4 billion.
  We had gone for 2 years with proposals coming from the majority party 
that we decrease education and that we cut education. And the miracle 
of that fall and the miracle of the sessions of the Committee on 
Appropriations produced a $4 billion increase in education. And I want 
to congratulate Mr. Livingston, the chairman of the Committee on 
Appropriations, for that; and history should note that.
  I am very concerned about education. And I have been on the Committee 
on Education and the Workforce now, this is my 17th year. I really 
wanted to make my speech tonight a speech about the importance of the 
education agenda, particularly the item of school construction.
  I wanted to confine my remarks originally only to that subject. 
However, I must say that a matter of grave concern to me forces me to 
broaden my discussion, and for days now I have been very disturbed 
about events taking place in my home city of New York.
  I represent the 11th Congressional District of New York State, which 
is part of New York City. The 11th Congressional District is in New 
York City. And although it did not happen in my district, there was an 
incident where the New York City Police Department, a street unit, 
fired 41 shots at a young man; and a large number hit him, of course; 
and he was killed. We do not use the word ``killed.'' He was murdered.
  Because there was no real reason why a man standing in a doorway, 
innocent, no record, no violent crime had been committed in that 
immediate vicinity during that particular period, and suddenly an 
innocent man, who happened to be an immigrant from Guinea, was killed 
in cold blood.
  Of course, if this stood by itself as one lone incident where four 
policemen emptied their guns on an African in New York City it would 
not have caused the furor that it caused. But there were other 
incidents recently.
  Abner Louima, in a precinct adjacent to my district in Brooklyn, was 
sodomized with a broomstick last summer during the mayoral election 
that took place. And Abner Louima, the four policemen on trial for that 
still have not been tried. That was another incident.
  I have lived in New York City now for more than 35 years, and I have 
been an activist for most of that time, so I can recite easily a long 
list of other people who have suffered from police brutality and police 
killings. The killings stand out. And every time one of them took 
place, I always said we cannot get much worse than this.
  When Clifford Glover was gunned down in Queens, a 12-year-old boy who 
was fleeing from the police and was shot in the back, I said, how 
horrible. It cannot get much worse than that. But many others have 
taken place since Clifford Glover was killed.
  Claude Reese, Randolph Evans, who was shot at point-blank by a 
policeman who put a gun to his head in a crowd and shot him; and there 
was no explanation that the policeman could give, so he finally was 
acquitted on the basis of psychomotor epilepsy. They brought a 
psychiatrist to court, an expert who we have never seen or heard from 
since, who described the condition of the policeman as pyschomotor 
epilepsy. So that policeman was acquitted. I said, oh, you cannot get 
much worse than that.
  Then we had Eleanor Bumpers in the Bronx, who was a grandmother in 
her sixties, in her own living room who was shotgunned down by a 
policeman, a police sergeant, who said that he was frightened for his 
life because he came into her living room and, not knowing who he was, 
she lunged at him. She was shot down in cold blood. And not only was 
that sergeant exonerated, he was later promoted. And on and on it goes.
  In my district, several years ago a young man was killed. Twenty-one 
shots were fired from the police at a young man in a car. They noted 
that the car was stolen, and they identified it. And they said he went 
for a gun, but no gun was ever found. But he was shot 21 times. And we 
could not even get the photographs of the policeman who did that 
released.
  So there has been one incident after another and people have been 
crying, as they always have the right to cry, about public officials 
not providing proper leadership. Where should we leave them in this 
situation?
  The demonstrations are taking place in New York. Yesterday, there was 
a demonstration near city hall. It was one of about five demonstrations 
that have taken place since this incident occurred on February 4. Eight 
protesters were arrested near city hall in Manhattan yesterday when 
they chained themselves together to block traffic on lower Broadway. 
And on and on it goes.
  Several churches had special prayer marches last Sunday. On and on it 
goes, and it is appropriate that people should be very upset.

[[Page H698]]

  And it occurred to me that there is a link between the problem we 
have in New York City with education and school construction and the 
problem we see now manifested in the way the police brutalize the 
minorities and the pattern of brutality and pattern of killings.
  One of the facts in the pattern of brutality and the pattern of 
killings is that these accidents that the police claim misjudgment or 
reasonable reactions and responses, these accidents never happen in 
white neighborhoods. There have been no accidental killings, there have 
been no atrocious incidents where guns were emptied on white young men 
or women. There have been no grandmothers in the white community ever 
murdered in their living rooms by police.
  The pattern is clearly the evidence that it only happens in minority 
neighborhoods. Yes, some have been Hispanic, some of the victims. Some 
have been Asian recently. Because we have a new immigrant population, 
powerless Asians. One small kid who had a toy gun was shot down by a 
policeman and killed. On and on it goes.
  The pattern is clear. Something is wrong racially in terms of the 
actions and reactions of the New York City Police Department.
  I have been involved for a long time, and I can give my colleagues 
the long list of demands that we made 20 years ago. Those same demands 
are being made now. And yet nothing changes. They sit as a permanent 
government of New York, the newspapers, the New York Times and the 
media, and they all control public opinion, and they do not want to see 
something happen that does not happen.
  So I assume that reform of the police department, which is basic, the 
establishment of a civilian review board, a number of things that we 
asked for, the appointment of a special prosecutor to deal with police 
brutality and police killings so that the district attorney who has to 
work with police all the time is not in a position to prosecute police. 
There is an intimidation factor which is obvious. The ending of the 48-
hour rule, where policemen cannot even be interviewed about an incident 
like this until 48 hours has elapsed.
  The movement of New York City into the same category as the other 
cities in the State where New York City has the right to hire only 
policemen who live in the city. Other municipalities and counties in 
New York State have the right to have a residency requirement. Only New 
York City, by State legislative law, cannot have a residency 
requirement. So we have most of the people who are policemen coming 
from outside the city. They live in communities outside of the city.
  Of the people who were involved in this latest killing, three of the 
four lived outside of the city.

                              {time}  1845

  Of the people involved in the latest killing, the oldest person was 
27. One was as young as 23, the policeman. That pattern goes on and on, 
and the establishment, the power structure, will not cooperate with the 
leadership from the minority communities to give any kind of ground in 
terms of meeting demands that are reasonable: the appointment of a 
special prosecutor, the residency law, the end of the 48-hour rule, the 
establishment of a civilian review complaint process that is not 
tainted by the police commissioner having the last word. All these 
basic, reasonable demands have not been met.
  On the other hand, if we look at education, we have made some basic, 
reasonable demands over the years that also have not been met. Some 
atrocious things are happening in education. There is a pattern of 
tyranny here, a virus into the democracy of New York City and New York 
State. There is a virus of tyranny and a virus of oppression which is 
reflected in some atrocious acts that are being committed across the 
board whether you are talking about welfare policies and recently the 
Federal Government criticizing New York City and putting it under a 
special court order for the way its welfare policies are being handled, 
the way people are being processed or whether you are talking about 
hospitals and health care. The city hospitals, the Hilton hospitals 
corporation that has existed for several decades, the present 
administration of the city is trying to sell the hospitals, privatize 
them. It gets so ridiculous until in my district recently the laundry 
that services the city hospitals in Brooklyn has been ordered closed 
and they are going to contract with a laundry across the river in New 
Jersey because, by the pound, they can provide the service for a few 
pennies cheaper to launder the linen and the sheets and the various 
things that relate to the hospitals. The pattern is to try to sell the 
hospitals, if not sell them, destroy them. And then in education, the 
pattern has been to refuse to deal with obvious problems related to 
education infrastructure. School construction is no longer an education 
issue in New York, and probably in large parts of the country it is the 
same situation. It is a moral issue. It is a moral issue. It is not a 
financial issue in New York. It is a moral issue.
  School construction reflects the same pattern, the same mind-set of 
the administration in respect to tyranny and oppression of a certain 
group of people. The worst schools are in the minority areas. The worst 
schools are in the areas where black and Hispanic and Asian children go 
to school. The worst schools are in neighborhoods that have been 
neglected over the years. So when you have a $2 billion surplus, and 
New York City had a surplus, revenue over expenditures last year of $2 
billion, not a single penny of the $2 billion was devoted to meeting 
school construction emergencies in New York City. At a higher level, in 
New York State, the State had a $2 billion surplus. I am sometimes 
ashamed to come to the floor of Congress and talk about the subject 
that I am going to primarily talk about tonight, the need for Federal 
aid for school construction, because our State and our city, even with 
the resources, is doing so little, is dedicating such a small 
percentage of those resources to deal with school construction. Why? 
They do not care. There is a moral issue. There is a determination made 
to destroy a certain segment of the population. The basic human rights 
of a certain segment of New York City's population are being violated. 
There is a process which is very different from the way the Serbs 
violated the human rights of the Albanians in Kosovo. In Kosovo you 
have violence, you have bullets, you have blood. It is kind of obvious. 
But also in Kosovo they complain about the fact that the school system 
for the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, run by the Serbs, the school 
systems were not teaching the children properly, the basic problem of 
language they would not teach but there are things they complained that 
they had inferior schools. I remember reading at the time when the 
conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan had a lot of visibility in the 
world that one of the big things about an enclave of Armenians that 
were in Azerbaijan was that the school system was deliberately 
neglectful of the needs of the Armenian children.
  So the school system's neglect of a particular population is not by 
accident. The people in power who make the decisions, the people in 
power who have the money, even if they have a $2 billion surplus, if 
they do not care about what happens to a certain segment of the 
children who go to the schools, they will not use those resources. So 
it is more than just money. It is a moral issue. We would like to have 
some aid from the Federal Government and I am going to talk about the 
need and the duty of the Federal Government to provide aid but we 
certainly are not doing enough in New York City or New York State with 
what we have. Why? Because there is a virus of tyranny, a virus of 
oppression that has contaminated our democratic process in New York 
City. There is a small group that has managed to take power and they 
have determined that they are going to drive a certain segment of the 
population out of the city. They are going to neglect them to the point 
where they will be totally powerless forever. And they continue to go 
on and on successfully.
  That is why I feel I have to deviate from just talking only about 
school construction and make the linkage between the pattern of police 
brutality, police killings, the pattern of hospital closings and 
privatization, the pattern of neglect of certain neighborhoods 
deliberately, the pattern is such that we have to link them together 
and understand that we are fighting a much bigger problem than just the 
neglect of school construction in New York City.

[[Page H699]]

 And probably the application to other parts of the country, certain 
big cities, is the same. People in power who make decisions about the 
money have over the years neglected these schools and now we have a 
crisis and they have determined to do nothing about the crisis.
  We have a situation where the General Accounting Office in 1995 said 
that we needed $112 billion to revamp the infrastructure of schools all 
across America. They cited, and it is not just the problem of big city 
schools. There are problems in rural schools which are very serious, 
there are problems in suburban schools, but mainly the biggest problem, 
of course, is in the big city schools, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit. 
It is all over where you have deteriorating schools, in some cases 
endangering the health and safety of children.
  The trailer problem. Somebody said a few days ago, they called the 
trailers learning cottages, not trailers. Let us call them trailers. 
When the greatest Nation in the world with the highest per capita 
income and Wall Street setting records every day, when they have to 
have their children go to school in trailers, then something is 
radically wrong. The Vice President has recently discovered some 
schools somewhere in America where children are forced to eat lunch at 
9:30 because of the overcrowding. It is such a crowded school until 
they have to eat in shifts and there are so many shifts that you have 
to begin serving children at 9:30 and you do not end until 1:30 or 
2 o'clock serving the children in shifts. That is commonplace in my 
district in New York. It is commonplace across New York that children 
are being forced to eat lunch at 9:45 or 10 o'clock in the morning. 
That is child abuse. But decent people, teachers with education and a 
mission to help children, principals, administrators, the city council 
members, everybody is acquiescing to a situation where children are 
abused systematically by being forced to eat lunch when they have just 
finished breakfast.

  That is the way you solve the problem, take the pattern of least 
resistance. Treat the children of the schools as if they were not quite 
human. Maybe their parents will get the message and move out of the 
city or somehow take the burden away from the city administration, or 
whatever. But it is related.
  The fact that you cannot have law and order in New York City, some 
people believe you cannot have law and order without having a violation 
of civil rights and without having justice is not accurate. There is no 
reason why we cannot have law and order with civil rights being 
respected and justice for all.
  New York City recently announced and they initiated last night, I 
think, the policy where anybody who is caught driving drunk will have 
their car taken away from them. Well, the first reaction of the 
minority neighborhood is that, there goes our cars, because certainly 
anybody with alcohol on their breath in the minority neighborhood is 
going to be stopped. The profiling that is so outrageous all over the 
country where they have profiles of criminals and color is a basic part 
of the profile. You stop the cars where the young people are black. You 
stop the cars where the young people are Hispanic.
  I want to congratulate the Justice Department for its announcement, 
the United States Justice Department for its announcement that it is 
going to conduct an investigation of profiling in New Jersey, the State 
right across the river from New York, because New Yorkers and other 
minorities, certain Hispanic and African-American young people have 
been complaining for years about the fact they always get stopped, 
their cars get stopped.
  The law of averages say if you stop every car with a young person who 
also happens to be black or Hispanic, you are going to find a large 
percentage who might have something wrong in the car. They might have 
an open beer bottle or they might have even some drugs. If your 
profiling is done that way, you are going to have a pattern where most 
of the people who get arrested are going to be black or Hispanic. If 
you are going to profile drunk driving and stop more people in the 
minority community, more minority drivers, you are going to have more 
minority people losing their cars because they happen to be caught up 
in that network.
  We do not think it is a good approach to punish people before they 
have their day in court. But that is just part of a pattern of moving 
to maximize law and order at the expense of civil rights and justice. 
It does not have to be.
  The unique thing about our democracy, what makes America so great, is 
that these excesses we do not tolerate in order to get the productive 
results. Law and order they had in Mussolini's Italy. Law and order 
they had in Hitler's Germany. Law and order can be achieved if that is 
all you want. But why make law and order a goal which prevails over 
everything else? Law and order over civil rights, law and order over 
justice. What you end up doing is end up getting lawlessness. You get 
violence perpetrated by the people who are hired or commissioned to 
carry out the law and order, the SS, the Gestapo, the police 
departments filled up with people who are not given proper training, 
too many people who do not have proper training.
  I do not think that the whole New York City police department should 
be indicted. I think the administration of the police department, I 
think the administration in city hall must be indicted because they 
have created an atmosphere, a mind-set, they have made law and order a 
political objective that must be achieved over everything else, and 
they have created a situation where people who are unstable, people who 
are not properly trained, people who have problems. One of the 
policemen who shot Amadou Diallo, and I might have gotten ahead of 
myself and not been specific about what I am talking about in terms of 
the latest outrage.
  Amadou Diallo on February 4, an unarmed street peddler from Guinea, 
was killed in a barrage of 41 bullets in the Bronx. The people who shot 
him, one of those people had also been responsible for the murder of a 
young man in Brooklyn not too long ago where the young man was shot and 
the wounds that he sustained were not life-threatening but he was 
allowed to bleed to death. They did not give him any medical attention 
for 45 minutes and he bled to death. The doctors at the hospital said 
if he had only been brought to the hospital within a reasonable length 
of time, his life would have been saved. There were no obvious life-
threatening wounds at the beginning.
  So Amadou Diallo becomes a symbol, because he is part of a long line. 
Before him Abner Louima, before him the long succession of Eleanor 
Bumpers, Claude Reese, Clifford Glover, Randolph Evans and numerous 
others who were killed by police under circumstances that could not be 
justified. Anthony Biaz is unique because he is one of the few persons 
killed by police where the police were punished.

                              {time}  1900

  So it happened the policeman who strangled him to death or killed him 
with a choke hold happened to have had a long record of brutality, and 
the city and the union ran away from defending him, and he was 
convicted. Livoti is his name. Livoti was convicted of killing Anthony 
Baez in a civil suit at least. And the important thing is that some 
punishment was meted out, whereas in the case of Eleanor Bumpers, the 
grandmother who was murdered in her living room, the policeman was not 
only not convicted, he was given a promotion later.
  So, the task I made for myself tonight is to make synergy here. There 
is a clear relationship between the way and, as I speak, it applies to 
many other places in the country so I do not feel guilty about taking 
the time here on the floor of the House of Representatives to talk 
about this because in other places in the country we have the same kind 
of problems. The task is to let it be known that the education problem 
is partially, certainly, the obvious part of the education deficit.
  The lack of resources is due to the fact that there is no moral 
commitment to educate the poorest children in America, no moral 
commitment, and the poor happen to be mostly African American, 
Hispanic. There is no moral commitment to really educate them, and that 
is why we cannot get around to doing what is obvious. There is no 
commitment there. There is no commitment to provide law and order with 
justice if you can just forget about justice and be careless about the 
way you

[[Page H700]]

provide law and order. Then Amadou Diallo and Abner Louima and Eleanor 
Bumpers, they are all sacrificial lambs.
  I am going to go on to talk more specifically about school 
construction and education, but first I want to enter into the Record a 
letter that was written by my colleague from Chicago, Danny Davis, and 
signed by many other members of the Congressional Black Caucus.
  I wrote my own letter to Janet Reno, and I am going to enter that in 
the Record, too. It was like a ceremony every time one of these 
outrageous cases occurs and someone is unjustifiably murdered by the 
New York City police. I wrote a letter to Janet Reno asking for an 
investigation. I asked not only that the particular specific individual 
incident be investigated but I asked that they investigate the systemic 
problem, why it keeps happening over and over again, why do only these 
accidents only take place in minority neighborhoods, why only people 
who are considered powerless, why only people who are African American 
or Hispanic or Asian, why are they the only victims of police mistakes? 
It is really a question worthy of the attention of the United States 
Justice Department.
  But I ceremoniously write these letters. I get an answer back from 
Janet Reno and, before that, previous Attorney Generals saying, we will 
proceed to investigate, but I never get a later letter which says 
exactly what they are doing or what the outcome was. They promised to 
investigate systemic police abuse in New York at the time of the 
outrageous sodomization of Abner Louima. Abner Louima was sodomized 
with a broomstick and left to die. He just was very tough, and although 
they left him around for several hours, when they finally got him to 
the hospital, he fought, and he lived and was able to tell his own 
story.
  But the letter from Janet Reno said, we will proceed, I have ordered 
an investigation. I even got a letter from the local U.S. Attorney 
saying, we are proceeding to investigate the New York City Police 
Department, the systemic problem, but you never get any final 
conclusion or any progress report.
  So Danny Davis, my colleague from Chicago, is asking the same things 
I have asked repeatedly in my letters. Danny Davis' letter reads as 
follows:

       Dear President Clinton, we are writing to urge you to form 
     a Federal task force comprised of community leaders and 
     Department of Justice officials to investigate incidents of 
     police brutality and misconduct. As you may know, on February 
     4, 1999, Amadou Diallo was shot 19 times in New York City 
     when police mistook him for a rape suspect. In all, four 
     white officers shot 41 times in Mr. Diallo's apartment.

  That is not exactly correct. There was a doorway leading into his 
apartment house.
  Continuing to quote the letter from Congressman Danny K. Davis:

       There have been numerous incidents of this kind of 
     unchecked police abuse throughout the Nation especially in 
     African American communities. In 1997, police sodomized and 
     beat Abner Louima, a Haitian immigrant, while he was in 
     police custody in New York City. In Los Angeles, there was 
     the police beating of Rodney King. In Chicago, Jeremiah 
     Mearday was beaten by police who were later fired. In 
     addition, two young boys ages 7 and 8 were arrested and 
     charged with raping and killing 11 year old Ryan Harris when 
     it was later revealed that these young boys could not have 
     committed the crimes with which they were accused. We have 
     numerous examples all throughout the country where this type 
     of police abuse is or has taken place.
       There is a real perception in the African American and 
     minority communities that if your skin is dark then you are 
     in trouble. In addition, police brutality has undermined the 
     respect of people in minority communities for the rule of 
     law, because there seems to be two sets of rules. We remain 
     concerned that the police cannot fairly investigate 
     themselves. Moreover, we believe that the formation of a 
     national citizenry board in conjunction with the Department 
     of Justice provides legitimacy to a fair process.
       If we are to have true racial reconciliation in this 
     country, then we must deal with the issue of police 
     brutality. Finally, if America is to be what she ought to be, 
     then there must be one set of rules by which every citizen is 
     governed. We thank you in advance for your assistance in this 
     matter, and we look forward to your reply. Danny K. Davis.

  And this was signed also by other members of the Congressional Black 
Caucus.
  Mr. Speaker, I enter the letter of Danny K. Davis into the Record:
                                    Congress of the United States,


                                     House of Representatives,

                                Washington, DC, February 22, 1999.
     Hon. William Jefferson Clinton,
     The White House,
       Dear President Clinton: We are writing to urge you to form 
     a federal task force comprised of community leaders and 
     Department of Justice officials to investigate incidents of 
     police brutality and misconduct. As you may know, on February 
     4, 1999, Amadou Diallo was shot 19 times in New York City 
     when police mistook him for a rape suspect. In all four White 
     police officers shot 41 times in Mr. Diallo's apartment.
       There have been numerous incidents of this kind of 
     unchecked police abuse throughout the nation especially in 
     African American communities. In 1997, police sodomized and 
     beat Abner Louima a Haitian immigrant while he was in police 
     custody in New York. In Los Angeles, there was the police 
     beating of Rodney King. In Chicago, Jeremiah Mearday was 
     beaten by police who were later fired. In addition, two young 
     boys ages seven and eight were arrested and charging with 
     raping and killing 11 year-old Ryan Harris--when it was later 
     revealed that these young boys could not have committed the 
     crimes for which they were accused. We have numerous examples 
     all throughout the country where this type of police abuse is 
     or has taken place.
       There is a real perception in the African American and 
     minority communities that if your skin is dark then you are 
     in trouble. In addition, police brutality has undermined the 
     respect of people in minority communities for the rule of 
     law, because there seems to be two sets of rules. We remain 
     concerned that the police cannot fairly investigate 
     themselves. Moreover, we believe that the formation of a 
     national citizenry board in conjunction with the Department 
     of Justice provides legitimacy to a fair process.
       If we are to have true racial reconciliation in this 
     country then we must deal with this issue of police 
     brutality. Finally, if America is to be what she ought to be 
     then there must be one set of rules by which every citizen is 
     governed. We thank you in advance for your assistance in this 
     matter, and look forward to your reply.
           Sincerely,
                                                   Danny K. Davis.

  Mr. Speaker, I also enter a similar letter that I wrote to Attorney 
General Janet Reno into the Record:
                                    Congress of the United States,


                                     House of Representatives,

                                 Washington, DC, February 6, 1999.
     Attorney General Janet Reno,
     U.S. Department of Justice,
     Washington, DC.
       Dear Attorney General Reno: Over the course of the last few 
     years I have appealed to you and President Clinton to launch 
     a comprehensive investigation into the pattern of misconduct 
     by the New York City Police Department. The most recent 
     incident involving the shooting death of Amadou Diallo on 
     February 4, 1999, underscores my concern about a police 
     department that appears to be out of control. By all 
     accounts, it is obvious that officers have engaged in a 
     pattern of reckless guerrilla warfare tactics against 
     innocent victims.
       Our community has grown weary of repeatedly being 
     victimized by the institutional racism that exists within the 
     New York City Police Department. Somewhere in the midst of 
     all of this confusion lies the fear of every minority citizen 
     that they could be next. It should be noted that these 
     incidents never occur in predominately white neighborhoods.
       We are deeply disturbed by the actions of the police; 
     shocked and amazed that it took four officers and 41 bullets 
     to bring one man down. This individual was a human being, not 
     an animal. At some point, the leadership of the city has to 
     acknowledge that it is incapable of controlling the growing 
     number of misfits within its ranks and yield to a more 
     objective body that is not driven by politics. We have a 
     number of excellent police officers in New York City whose 
     reputations are being strongly impacted by those who do not 
     have the best interest of our citizenry at heart. One 
     indication of the systemic nature of the problem is the fact 
     that a Street Crimes Unit with life and death power over 
     citizens was comprised of four inexperienced officers under 
     27 years of age.
       Madam Attorney General, this is a very serious matter and 
     requires a very thorough and comprehensive investigation. 
     These last few years have been emotionally draining for the 
     people of New York and I call on you to respond as soon as 
     possible to the urgency of this matter.
           Sincerely yours,
                                                   Major R. Owens,
                                               Member of Congress.

  Again, I do not need to read a list of the demands that have been 
made over the years. I have been involved for many years, and the 
patterns are the same on police brutality and the ending of police 
killings. We have made certain demands, and those demands still are 
legitimate.
  We demand, and the way to solve the problem, probably not only New 
York City but across the country, is to have special prosecutors 
appointed for police brutality and police killing cases. The way to 
solve it is to have a situation where any locality anywhere in the 
country can hire policemen from among its own citizens. People who live 
and work in the same community are less likely to participate in 
abusive behavior.

[[Page H701]]

  In New York, the demand also should include the end of a 48-hour rule 
where you cannot even interrogate a policeman about an incident of 
brutality or killing for 48 hours. Union contract specifics that, and 
there are numerous other demands which have been applied. The question 
over the years, made over the years, that is still applicable.
  So I think what we need in New York is a basic campaign, for a 
campaign or a crusade for basic human rights. We need to call upon the 
whole world to take a look at what is happening in New York and compare 
it to Kosovo. In one sense, they are very different; in another sense, 
the oppression and the tyranny that has taken place in New York is a 
preview of coming attractions. It is a very sophisticated kind of 
oppression.
  The virus of totalitarianism, the virus of tyranny, have been 
introduced into the democratic culture of New York City and New York 
State. The virus manifests itself in both ways, through the fact that 
education is neglected, abandoned. Even when there are clear resources 
available, they refuse to apply them to education. The Governor of New 
York produced a budget which had additional money for the creation and 
construction of prisons while at the same time he made cuts in 
education at the elementary and secondary level and also at the higher 
education level.
  This is a pattern now of both the Governor and the Mayor. Both happen 
to be Republicans, both are running for or are interested in national 
office, both are trying to make a statement for the rest of the 
country. Therefore, I think it is quite fitting and proper that I 
should stand here on the House of Representatives' floor talking to 
people all over the country about this virus that has been introduced 
into democracy in New York State and New York City. It is something 
that we have to contend with and respond to.
  And I do believe there is in America a caring majority, that most 
people care about democracy. Really, they just do not want democracy 
for themselves, they do not want the benefits of our great country only 
to be applied to just themselves. The majority, there is a majority, a 
caring majority that keeps rising up again and again when extremism 
raises its head. You see that manifested in many ways.
  I will not go into what happened recently with respect to the 
ridiculous indictment through impeachment of the President and the 
trial that took place and the final outcome of that, how the majority 
of the people of America made themselves known, and they will prevail.
  I think in the case of the kind of tyranny that has raised its ugly 
head in New York, which is a preview of coming attractions of how 
sophisticated vehicles and methods can be used to oppress people by 
neglecting their education, by degrading them, by crushing their will, 
by forcing their children to eat lunch at 10 o'clock in the morning 
when they are still filled up with breakfast, by having coal-burning 
schools. Out of the 1,100 schools in New York, 275 this time last year 
were coal-burning schools. Now about 250 have coal-burning furnaces 
polluting the air, immediately polluting the atmosphere in the school 
and polluting the general air.
  So we have an unprecedented asthma problem in New York City, and so 
the Mayor has an anti-asthma campaign which is phony because of the 
fact that during his anti-asthma campaign and his appropriation of 
money to fight asthma and the problem of asthma nothing is said about 
ending the coal-burning furnaces, removing the coal-burning furnaces. 
No emergency has been declared to get rid of coal-burning furnaces. You 
know, we are making some progress, but the City of New York has not 
given this any special attention.
  There is an $11 billion construction plan proposed by the Board of 
Education of the City of New York, $11 billion over a 5-year period to 
construct new schools and renovate old schools. Periodically, every 5 
years, they come up with these plans, and the fact that the plan is 
proposed should not mislead anybody. The last plan was not fulfilled at 
all. The plan that got a great deal of publicity was a plan that School 
Chancellor Cortinez produced less than 5 years ago which called for $7 
billion for school construction and renovation, et cetera, and he was 
ridiculed and driven out of town by the Mayor because he put on the 
table what the real construction needs were. So to have an $11 billion 
plan proposed does not mean that we are ever going to spend that much 
unless unusual things happened.
  I am here tonight to try to make some unusual things happen. I want 
to make some unusual things happen not only in New York City and New 
York State but all across the country. I would like to see some unusual 
things happen in the construction and renovation and repair and 
modernization of schools.
  I am afraid that we may reach a consensus on education matters here. 
Both parties are now trumpeting bipartisan cooperation, and we know 
that that is not going to take place in certain areas, but it might 
take place in the case of education, and my fear is that a bipartisan 
deal might be at the expense of the schoolchildren in America. My fear 
is that a bipartisan deal on education might leave school construction 
in limbo or only make a token, take token steps to improve the school 
construction issue.
  I am all in favor of everything that the President has proposed in 
respect to education. I endorse what he has proposed. My concern is 
that he does not go far enough. Certainly in the area of school 
construction it does not go far enough in his proposals.
  I endorse the $25 billion he proposes to finance. The simple plan is 
not that complicated. They will, Federal Government under the 
President's plan, will provide between 3 and $4 billion to pay the 
interest on $25 billion worth of bonds over a 5-year period. That is if 
the localities and the States will borrow the money, float the bonds 
and borrow the money, the Federal Government will pay the interest, 
which after a 5-year period, if all of this works, if every State and 
locality gets its share, then the Federal Government will be out of no 
more than about $4 billion for interest, no more.
  That is a lot of money. I am going to say that is a small token. The 
President's plan is the only plan on the table for school construction 
that is significant.

                              {time}  1915

  I have not heard a plan come from the majority, the Republicans, for 
school construction. They are talking about a number of other issues in 
education but not school construction. So I support the President's 
plan. It is the only plan on the table, but it does not go far enough. 
It does not go far enough and I want to come back to that.
  I support the President's plan on no social promotion. No social 
promotion is a nice slogan, and it is a good idea. It is a sound 
concept. There are good reasons offered for it. If we are going to 
provide resources to help youngsters who are in trouble, we are going 
to give them tutors and mentors after school, we are going to provide 
them with some extra help during the summer, if all of those things are 
in place, then great. Who needs to advocate holding a youngster in the 
same grade if we are going to give him all that kind of help to keep 
him moving?
  The problem with the slogan that keeps being repeated about no social 
promotion is that I have heard it before, and I have endorsed it 
before, that we should not promote children who have not reached 
certain levels of competence and their performance does not justify 
their being passed on to another grade. I have heard it many times 
before. I have endorsed it many times before. One of the reasons it 
broke down in New York City before was that there was no place to put 
the children that you held back.
  The enrollment is increasing steadily and we are already overcrowded. 
The schools are overcrowded. I just said some schools, a large number 
of schools, force their children to eat lunch at 10:00 in the morning 
because the cafeteria, the lunchroom, cannot hold but a certain number. 
The school was built for 500 and it has a thousand youngsters so they 
have to feed the youngsters in cycles, and the cycle has to begin at 
10:00 and end at 1:30 in order for them all to get fed. So instead of 
looking for some other way to solve the problem, and there must be some 
other way other than forcing children

[[Page H702]]

to eat lunch at 10:00 in the morning, as late as 1:30, they have not 
chosen to find another way.
  The overcrowding situation is dealt with by forcing them to eat lunch 
at those ungodly hours. I think it is child abuse. I think the 
nutritionists and the health department ought to be brought in to 
condemn it. I think it should be forbidden, it should be outlawed. But 
that is happening. Why is it happening? Because the schools are 
overcrowded. Therefore, if there are not social promotions, the number 
of children will pile up in the schools even more. They will be even 
more overcrowded.
  In order for a policy of no social promotion to be real and to take 
effect and not be a fraud, the policy must be accompanied by the 
building of more schools. You need more school construction. You have 
got to act on the basics first.
  No social promotion, I support that. I support the effort to increase 
the number of after-school centers, because the after-school programs 
will be part of the way to give a youngster some help so he does not, 
he or she does not, have to stay in the same grade; they can keep 
moving.
  The after-school programs, the after-school programs that we have, as 
successful as they may be, let us look at their significance in terms 
of numbers. We have just increased the amount of money, or in the 
President's proposed budget he is increasing the amount of money, from 
$200 million for the after-school programs to $600 million. We are 
going to increase the number of youngsters to the point where there may 
be one million youngsters or 1.2 million youngsters, I do not have the 
exact figures on that, who will be part of the after-school programs.
  However, there are 53 million youngsters in public schools in the 
United States; 53 million. We are going to take care of, at most, 1.2 
million when there are 53 million. So whereas I endorse the after-
school program, I want to see it increased.
  Let us not fool ourselves. That small amount of money will not affect 
most of the children in the public schools of the Nation. It will not 
have a significant impact on education in America. It is too small and 
there are too many children in need out there. Not all 53 million, and 
the actual number is 52,700,000, not all of them need after-school 
centers but even if half need it that is a long ways from 1.2 million.
  So the amount is too small. If after-school centers are important, 
and I think they are, we ought to really appropriate money which would 
reach the children who should be reached by those centers. We need to 
greatly increase that amount of money.
  So I worry about the rhetoric, the rhetoric which says we are in 
favor of improving our schools, but not being accompanied with 
resources. Rhetoric without resources probably equals fraud. There is a 
fraudulent overcast in these small education programs that are 
ballyhooed a great deal.
  Now I do not want to discourage making small efforts. If the darkness 
is out there, then light a small candle. A small candle in the dark 
gives some light, some hope, but let us not fool ourselves. We are not 
really doing anything significant to take American schools into the 
21st century when you provide after-school programs for only a tiny 
portion of the 53 million youngsters in public schools.
  We talk about technology and going into the 21st century with our 
schools wired, at least five classrooms and the library wired, and yet 
many of the schools cannot get the wiring because of the fact that they 
are so old until they cannot make the proper connections. They have to 
do extensive renovation to change the wiring or to deal with asbestos 
problems and they also have problems with lead in the paint or lead in 
the pipes.
  There is a school, PS-92, in my district where they cannot drink the 
water from the school fountains. There is lead in the pipes that made 
it impossible for them to continue drinking the water. That same school 
has a coal-burning furnace. While I am at it, PS-92 is an outrageous 
example of how when there is no moral will to accomplish the process of 
creating safe schools, healthy schools, schools with physical 
facilities to do some learning, how it gets bogged down. It is easy for 
anything to happen.
  The PS-92 saga begins with the fact that they had money appropriated 
to convert this coal-burning furnace at PS-92 but the $500,000 that was 
first appropriated has all been spent on planning and making blueprints 
for the new furnace and the new heating system. They tell the parents 
that we are out of money, we cannot install the furnace because we have 
to go back and get another appropriation. Well, that kind of corruption 
and incompetence can go on if the people at the top do not really care.
  The situation at PS-92 is so bad until the angry parents and their 
expression of their concern about the fact that $500,000 was spent and 
still there is no furnace, it is so great until the last shipment of 
coal that was brought in to feed the coal-burning furnaces had police 
escorts.
  I think it is symbolic that parents, upset and angry about the fact 
that a coal-burning furnace is still in place after $500,000 has been 
spent, they are still told we do not have the money to change the coal-
burning furnace, they are angry, the response of the city 
administration is to send police in with the next shipment of coal.

  There is a virus, a totalitarian virus, in New York City democracy. 
The mindset of City Hall under Mayor Rudy Giuliani, the mindset is such 
that they think every problem can be solved with police; you can take 
the hard approach.
  Why not take the moral approach and use some of the city's surplus to 
replace the coal-burning furnaces?
  Now I was talking about the pieces in the President's program that I 
approve of, but right now we cannot have technology in the schools that 
need it most and that need to be helped by new technology because the 
wiring and the asbestos, all of that, has to be dealt with. It is 
better in many cases to build new schools rather than to try to 
renovate and converting some of the crumbling buildings that our 
schools are housed in.
  We also have direct problems of leaks, water actually coming into the 
buildings, into the roof, or water running down the sides, the walls. 
There are problems that are real emergencies that are being treated in 
an offhand way. The caring majority is certainly not very active here 
in New York City. I think there is a caring majority in New York City. 
I insist that if they give us some kind of blueprint as to how to get 
out of this mess, how we must unite in a crusade for our basic human 
rights and go where we have to go, if we are concerned about human 
rights in Kosovo then we ought to be concerned about human rights in 
New York City. It is subtle, more subtle, more difficult to understand 
in the case of New York, but if you destroy your children, generations 
of children, then it is a serious problem, maybe not as serious as 
shooting them down in cold blood, as it is in Kosovo, and New York does 
not face the kind of problem that Sarajevo faces where a beautiful 
cosmopolitan city was being destroyed by violence. I am proud of the 
fact that our President took the initiative, and although he only had 
one-third approval of the Congress and one-third public opinion 
approval he took the initiative and joined the effort in Yugoslavia to 
bring peace there. I am proud of what we are doing in Bosnia and 
Sarajevo and Serbia and now Kosovo.
  I think we stayed too long in Bosnia and the rest of Yugoslavia. We 
have spent about $8 billion, and I think that is a bit too much. I 
think that we should go anywhere in the world and help out in 
peacekeeping operations, help to save children, help to save people 
from genocide but when they run a game on us and begin to hustle, keep 
some trouble going, foment trouble to keep us there and use our 
military as part of their economy, I think we ought to get wise to 
that, but that is a subject for another discussion.
  If we are concerned about human rights in Kosovo, then let us take a 
look at the human rights that are being violated in New York City when 
they do not give decent buildings, safe buildings, for children to 
study in.
  Now you may talk about testing, national testing we need. I reversed 
my position on testing. I will support the White House and the 
administration position on testing. The problem with supporting a 
national testing program is that why are you going to test children in 
schools with coal-burning furnaces? In several schools that I visited, 
along with some colleagues of mine from central Brooklyn, the Martin 
Luther King Commission, we have a

[[Page H703]]

project of going to look at the health conditions of schools and 
several schools that I visited one-fifth of the children had serious 
asthma conditions. Many of the teachers were beginning to have 
respiratory illnesses.
  We are going to test people in those kinds of hardship situations. 
They do not have technology. They do not have enough books and 
supplies. What I call opportunities to learn are ignored and we are 
going to test them, but I will support theoretically the need for 
national testing but that controversy is going to rage for awhile. I do 
not think it is going to really be settled for a long time.
  What I want to do is support something that I think we have agreement 
on. I think Republicans and Democrats both agree that in order for 
children to learn they need a physical facility that is safe, a 
physical facility that is healthy and a physical facility that is 
conducive to learning.
  We need lights. In some of the school rooms we have, the lights are 
shot out and the kids are in a dark situation in parts of the 
classrooms. The library, they are crowded one on top of another. On and 
on it goes. They need a situation that is conducive to learning.
  There is basic agreement that those are terrible conditions. There is 
basic agreement that in America all across the country, not just New 
York City, not just the big cities but in many rural areas, it is 
atrocious the conditions of the schools. We need some help.
  The General Accounting Office, as I said before, estimated in 1995, 
that between $110 billion and $112 billion is needed in order to revamp 
the schools, in order to just get them in working conditions, not to 
take care of new enrollment.
  Now we are in 1999, going into the year 2000, with large increases in 
enrollment. They project enrollment in the year 2008 will be up at 54 
million children from the 53 million; there will be 54 million. So they 
are not going down. Whatever the demographics are, I know people are 
getting older, the senior citizen population is getting larger, but the 
children, the children who go to school, that population certainly is 
getting larger.

                              {time}  1930

  We have all of this happening and the response is to deal with 
rhetoric instead of substance.
  Now, back to the President's proposal for $25 billion in bonding 
authority that the Federal Government will pay the interest on. What is 
wrong with that proposal? Nothing, except that it does not go nearly 
far enough. I endorse that proposal. It is the only one on the table. 
Congratulations, Mr. President. He has been at it for years trying to 
get some movement.
  Part of the reason the President fashioned this particular approach 
is it does not require direct appropriations, because he wanted 
something that he thinks will pass. So we have a bill in the Committee 
on Ways and Means, the committee that is least concerned about 
children. They have never been that involved in education, they have 
the authority and they have the jurisdiction. They must deal with this 
construction bill.
  Suppose it passed. And as I said before, suppose we passed it. New 
York City and New York State would not be able to make immediate use of 
it. They would have to have a referendum. We would have to have the 
State's citizens, all the citizens of the State would have to vote. The 
State would have to vote to allow the bonding to go forward. We cannot 
have bonding, we cannot make the loan that we are going to pay the 
interest on unless all the voters approved.
  The last time we had such an issue before the voters, they did not 
approve it. It was voted down by the upstate voters who lived in 
relative luxury, schoolwise. They thought it was only for the poor 
children of New York City and they voted it down.
  We may succeed after two or three tries, but how long will that take 
and how many generations will be forced to eat lunch at 10 a.m. in the 
morning? How many generations will be forced to deal with asbestos and 
lead paint, the fumes from coal-burning furnaces going into their 
lungs? How long do we wait while we fight these bond issues in New York 
State? And many other States and localities also require that the 
voters approve the bond before we can take advantage of that offer.
  So even if we succeed and the Committee on Ways and Means should 
change its ways and really get serious about doing something for the 
children of America, even if we succeed, there is no immediate relief 
for the people who need it most.
  But I am all for it. Let us give it a try. However, I would propose, 
and I hope that my colleagues will join me in proposing, that we 
directly fund school construction. We appropriate the money for school 
construction. We need, in order to have a rational respectable 
beginning, we need $100 billion over a 5-year period. $100 billion over 
a 5-year period is what is needed.
  Mr. Speaker, I would say to the President, to the Republican 
majority, the Democratic minority, let us have a bipartisan approach to 
school construction. We all agree that whether we are for testing or 
not, or for after-school centers, or the whole word method or the 
phonics method, there are a lot of debates going on in education about 
various issues and methods and approaches. But here we are talking 
about physical facilities. If we agree that physical facilities are 
important, then let us unite and appropriate what is needed.
  Mr. Speaker, $100 billion over a 5-year period is a good beginning. 
Where are we going to get the $100 billion from? From the surplus, Mr. 
President, from the surplus, majority Republicans. Let us dedicate $20 
billion, or one-fifth of the surplus, for each year over the next 5 
years, dedicate that to school construction. $20 billion or one-fifth 
of the surplus, whichever is larger, to school construction.
  Does that sound unreasonable? Are Democrats going to be labeled as 
``big spenders'' by Republicans because they propose $100 billion for 
school construction over a 5-year period? I do not think they should 
be, because last year we appropriated $218 billion for highways over a 
6-year period. And the overwhelming majority, more than 90 percent of 
the Congress, Democrats and Republicans, voted for the highway bill, 
for $218 billion.
  So let us not continue the fraud and say we are interested in 
education, when the basic problem, the problem of construction, which 
if we do not deal with the problem of school construction, if we do not 
have more classroom space, the money appropriated recently of $1.2 
billion that we all agreed to lower the size in classrooms, we cannot 
use it in New York City effectively because we do not have the 
classroom space. There are many other cities that cannot use it.
  At the bottom, if we do not do anything about construction in an 
appropriate way, everything else is a fraud. All of the other concerns 
about education moves in the direction of being fraudulent. Deal with 
construction first. Deal with the issue that we could get agreement on. 
The money can come out of the surplus.
  After all, we are proposing $110 billion for defense expenditures for 
weapons systems that are not needed. Why do we not sell bonds to deal 
with those weapons systems that are not needed and give the money 
directly and appropriate the money directly to go to localities for 
school construction?
  The challenge is to be real and do not join those people who want to 
destroy the poorest children in America. They just do not care. The 
country as a whole will suffer. Social Security will suffer because the 
workforce is not there to produce the income for Social Security. Our 
national security militarywise will suffer because we cannot staff our 
aircraft carriers. Recently we had an aircraft carrier that did not 
have enough staff because the people are not there in order to operate 
the ship.
  The rest of the country needs an education system. Education is our 
first line of defense and first line of security and prosperity and we 
should act accordingly by dealing with school construction first.

                          ____________________