    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book II)]
    [October 17, 1994]
    [Pages 1784-1789]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the International Association of Chiefs of Police in
    Albuquerque, New Mexico
    October 17, 1994

        Thank you very much. Chief Daughtry, Chief Whetzel, ladies and
    gentlemen of the IACP, I am honored to be here. I love the jacket, and I
    love what it stands for. I thank you more than I can say for your help
    and support in passing the Brady bill and the crime bill.
        I'd like to acknowledge in this audience today the presence of some
    very important people here in the State of New Mexico and throughout our
    Nation. First of all, behind me, the Governor of the State of New
    Mexico, Governor Bruce King. Bruce and I are two of the only three
    people serving in America who were Governors in the seventies, the
    eighties, and the nineties. I don't know what that means anymore.
    [Laughter] I can barely remember them.
        I'm delighted to be here with the two Senators from the State of New
    Mexico, Senator Domenici and Senator Bingaman, who are out here.
    Congressman Steve Schiff, the Congressman from this district, is here.
    Thank you, sir. My good friend Congressman Bill Richardson, who was very
    active in passing the crime bill--where's Congressman Richardson? He's
    here somewhere. Thank you. And of course, the mayor, Mayor Marty Chavez,
    who is one of my jogging partners, is here.
        I want to also say that, you know, I think I have more
    administration members who have been active in this outfit than previous
    Presidents. Your ex-president Lee Brown is now our drug czar. Your ex-
    vice president Tom Constantine is now our DEA Administrator. And I thank
    you for that. The head of the U.S. Marshals Service, Eduardo Gonzalez,
    was Tampa Bay chief and once active in this organization. So I feel at
    home here.
        I think our FBI Director is here. I want to tell a story on him. Is
    Louis Freeh here somewhere? Tomorrow? He's coming tomorrow? It's the
    first time I've been ahead of him in a long time. [Laughter]
        I want to tell you a story about the--since this is an international
    organization, one of the things that I have really tried to do as
    President is to build international cooperation in law enforcement. It's
    important in dealing with drugs. It's important in dealing with
    terrorism. It's important in dealing with organized crime.
        Lee Brown and Tom Constantine, both of them, as you know, have major
    responsibilities that go beyond our Nation's borders, as you would
    expect, in dealing with the drug problems. But the FBI Director, Mr.
    Freeh, also took a very popular trip to Europe and to Russia not very
    long ago, and slightly after that, when I was following him instead of
    the other way around, I went to Riga, Latvia, to celebrate the
    withdrawal of Russian forces from Eastern Europe for the first time
    since World War II and from the Baltic States. And we had this meeting
    with the heads of the government of Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia. And
    so help me, the first thing the President of Latvia said is, ``Can we
    have an FBI office in Riga?'' [Laughter]
        Now, it's funny, and it's flattering, but it's also serious. Why?
    Because as these countries convert from totalitarian societies to free
    societies, as they become much more open, they become much more
    vulnerable to organized crime because they haven't developed their
    banking system and their trading rules and their business rules. And
    that relates to whether they, themselves, then become more vulnerable to
    drug trafficking and to terrorism and to trafficking in weapons of mass
    destruction or stolen nuclear materials or any of that sort of thing. So
    I say to you, I'll make you a prediction: For the next 10 years when you
    meet, more and more and more, your concentration will have to be on the
    international aspects of the crime problem which affects what you do on
    the streets in your cities and towns throughout the United States.

    [[Page 1785]]

        I'd like to talk a little today about the crime bill and what it
    means against the background of the crime problem in America. And the
    state of play, as you know, is very troubling, because the good news is
    that in many of our cities the crime rate is actually going down. The
    mayor of Odessa, Texas, was in town the other day when we handed out the
    first wave of grants, police grants, under the new crime bill, only 2
    weeks after the bill was signed. And she said they'd had a drop in the
    crime rate in excess of 15 percent for 3 years running because of
    community policing, because of what law enforcement officers have done.
    The mayor of Houston was reelected with 91 percent of the vote after
    they had over a 20 percent drop in crime in only one year there. This is
    happening in many cities and towns throughout the country.
        On the other hand, we know that a lot of small towns and suburban
    areas have rising crime because as cities clamp down on crime, a lot of
    times the criminals just move their base of operation, and they're not
    as well equipped to deal with it. We also know that even as overall
    crime rates drop, the rate of random violence among young people, people
    under the age of 18, is going up dramatically in sickening ways that we
    have all seen again in recent days.
        The point I want to make about all this is that this is a
    manifestation of trends that have been developing in our country for
    quite a long while now. We have had really 30 years, a whole generation
    and more, of these trends that have been developing in a lot of the
    high-crime areas in America: the breakdown of families and community
    organizations and neighborhood organizations, the loss of economic
    opportunity, creating huge social vacuums into which have moved gangs
    and guns and drugs and crime and violence.
        I wanted this crime bill to pass very badly because I believed that
    the National Government had a responsibility to help you deal with it.
    But we have to look at what we can do together within the crime bill and
    then what we have to do beyond the crime bill, because we're going to
    have to change this country from the grassroots up. We're going to have
    to change the culture that a lot of these kids live in. And you can do
    it, I can do it, parents can do it, but we're all going to have to do
    it. And there is clearly something for everybody to do.
        The first job I ever had as an elected official was as attorney
    general of my State, and I began to work with law enforcement on a
    regular basis. Then I was Governor for a dozen years, the years when
    crime was exploding in America. I built prison cells. I devised work
    programs. I put in education programs and drug education programs and
    boot camps for first offenders. I enforced the capital punishment laws
    and tried to find ways to rehabilitate people who were getting out. I
    went to funerals of police officers who were friends and family members
    of friends of mine who died in the line of duty.
        Dealing with all this has made an indelible impression on me. And
    when I became President, I guess I had in that sense more personal
    experience with the human cost and the human side of crime and law
    enforcement than a lot of people who have had this job. I was determined
    to bring an end to 6 years of political debate in Washington and to pass
    the Brady bill, which had been there for 7 years, to pass a crime bill,
    which had been debated for 6 years, because I knew that we had some
    things that we had to do. I am doing my best where I live and where I
    work to get this country together and to move our country forward again.
        I think my mission as President is to keep the American dream alive
    and to help make sure Americans can compete and win as we move into this
    exciting 21st century by making Government work for ordinary people and
    by bringing this economy back, by making us more secure and more
    prosperous in our relations with the rest of the world. After 21 months,
    I can tell you I think that we've made a good start. America's in better
    shape than it was 2 years ago. We've got more jobs, low inflation, a
    much lower deficit. Over 70 percent of the new jobs coming into our
    economy this year, according to a report just published today, are
    higher wage jobs. We're moving away from the time when all of our new
    jobs were low-wage jobs.
        We've got a smaller Federal Government, by more than 70,000 already,
    that's doing more for ordinary citizens. The Congress just passed and I
    signed a procurement bill which changes the way we spend your money when
    we buy things, and it'll put an end to the $500 hammers and the $50
    ashtrays. The Vice President kind of has mixed feelings about that.
    He'll never get to go on David Letterman again now because

    [[Page 1786]]

    of that, but it was the right thing to do. [Laughter]
        Russian missiles are no longer pointed at the United States. We've
    got big increases in trade that are fueling these high-wage jobs. And
    now America is leading the way to peace and security and democracy, as
    you've seen in the last few days in the Middle East and Northern Ireland
    and Eastern Europe and, of course, in Haiti.
        But all of us know, I think, that no matter how much economic
    progress we made, no matter how much progress we make in dealing with
    trouble spots around the world, there will be a gnawing feeling that all
    is not right in America until our children feel safe in their schools
    and on their streets and Americans feel secure in their homes and at
    their work.
        We have to do things that will go beyond talking, that will actually
    reduce the rates of crime and violence in the United States, that will
    actually make sure that more of our children do say no to drugs and
    gangs and guns, and yes to books and to boys and girls clubs and to
    games. That's what the Brady bill was all about; that's what the crime
    bill was all about. It was the National Government's contribution to a
    national effort to really change the way Americans are living, to change
    the way they feel inside. And it is terribly important.
        I was in Detroit the other day doing an editorial board meeting, and
    the Detroit Free Press had done a program with children in the area and
    had taken letters from children. And a little girl named Porsha, 9 years
    old, wrote me a letter and said, ``I just want you to make me feel
    safer. I don't feel safe.'' Many of you saw the reports that I gave when
    we were debating the crime bill about that 9-year-old boy in New Orleans
    who wrote me a letter saying, ``Can't you make me feel safe?'' And he
    was killed on the street in a random shooting just a few days after he
    wrote me. A 10-year-old son of a member of my administration, a young
    man brought up in a well-to-do home, goes to good schools and lives in a
    beautiful neighborhood, wrote me a wonderful letter the day after the
    crime bill passed, a 10-year-old boy saying, ``I know you think that I
    wouldn't be afraid of this, but every time my friends and I go downtown
    to a movie, I am afraid I will be shot before I get home. And I feel so
    much better now that this crime bill has passed.''
        These are the voices of the children of America, across racial and
    income and regional lines, telling us that we have to do better. That is
    what this is about. Well, we are doing better, but there's more to be
    done.
        The Brady bill has made a difference; all of you know it. There are
    thousands of people who have already been denied weapons who were not
    entitled to them, who had a criminal background, who would have gotten
    them if it hadn't been for the Brady bill.
        And the crime bill will make a difference. We have evidence of that.
    Before the crime bill passed last year, I asked Congress to make a
    downpayment on our commitment to put 100,000 more police officers on the
    street, and the Congress funded another 2,000 police officers. Last week
    when we gave out the first police grants under the crime bill, Chief
    David Massey from Ocean City, Maryland, came with the police officers
    he'd hired under the first grant. One of them was an ex-linebacker at
    the University of Maryland, the sort of person that you just see and you
    want to ask permission. [Laughter] This young man was in a community
    policing program riding a bicycle in Ocean City. And very soon after he
    went to work, he caught a serial rapist, he did, as a community police
    officer. Now, all the victims that will never be preyed upon by that
    rapist will never know what they owe to that one young man who is a
    community police officer. And now we're going to be able to multiply
    that by 100,000 in every State in this country.
        Something else I think that really needs to be pounded home over and
    over again is that this crime bill was fashioned largely by law
    enforcement officers. From the punishment programs to the policing
    programs to the prevention programs, it was the law enforcement officers
    who shaped what was in it. You said we ought to have ``three strikes and
    you're out'' because there were some violent criminals who kept getting
    paroled because they were lucky enough not to have severe consequences
    to the victims of their crime. But what they tried to do was terrible.
    That's what the purpose of ``three strikes and you're out'' was.
        You said that too many people were getting out too quick because
    there wasn't enough prison space, so there's provision for 100,000 more
    prison cells in this bill--never been done before--the Federal
    Government had never before helped to build prison space for States. You
    said that we ought to have capital punishment if someone kills a police
    officer, and it's in the

    [[Page 1787]]

    bill. You said it ought to be against the law for a minor to carry a
    handgun except when supervised by an adult; it's in the bill. You said
    we should do more for victims of crime. You said we should make a
    serious assault on the problems faced by women and children, the
    problems of domestic violence and neighborhood violence. You said we
    should do more to make schools safer. You said we should do more to give
    our kids some prevention programs, some things they could say yes to,
    places to go, things to do, good things to do, maybe most important,
    good people to look up to when they can't find that at home.
        When the NRA tried to take the assault weapons ban out of the crime
    bill, you stood firmly in favor of leaving it in, not because you were
    against the rights of hunters and sportsmen but because you knew that
    there were 650 weapons in the bill specifically protected from any
    Government interference. And to those of you who come from smalltown and
    rural areas, you can go home and tell your sportsmen that we are not
    going to allow the Federal Government to interfere with the legitimate
    interests of hunters and sportsmen, but we do not support leaving
    weapons in the hands of kids thats only purpose is to kill as many
    people as quickly as they can.
        And you said that we ought to have 100,000 more police. Indeed, we
    probably ought to have more, but that's all we could figure out how to
    pay for. For the American people now, that's a number that doesn't mean
    a lot. That's why last week was so important, when we had 400
    communities coming up and little towns getting one police officer and
    bigger places getting 25 or 30, because people began to visualize what
    that means. There are 550,000 police officers in this country. If you
    add 100,000 and they all go into beat work, if they actually go into
    working to prevent crime and to catch criminals, it'll be about a 20
    percent increase in the presence of police on the street. It will work.
    It will work. We've had only a 10 percent increase in police officers in
    the last 30 years, while we've had a 300 percent increase in violent
    crime. This was a critical component of the crime bill.
        And today I want to announce two important steps to get those
    officers on the streets as quickly as possible. And you will have the
    release from the Justice Department here today supporting that.
        First of all, we're going to make it possible for cities with at
    least 50,000 people to begin hiring officers immediately, by setting
    aside some money even before the grants are awarded so that you can know
    what you're going to get and you can start hiring and training now. And
    the grants will be there when you put the people on the payroll full-
    time.
        Secondly, for cities and towns of fewer than 50,000 people who don't
    have a lot of people in clerical departments to help you deal with the
    Federal Government, we're going to do for you what we did for small
    business people applying for SBA loans. We're going to give you a one-
    page application with about eight questions on it, and you can start
    filling them out right now, so that nothing will come between America
    and the new police officers.
        I'd like to end today by asking you to reflect on three things. One
    is a tribute to how the Congress funded this bill. This is a big bill.
    It was funded not by raising taxes, not by increasing the deficit but by
    reducing the size of the Federal Government by 270,000 over 6 years and
    giving all the money back to local communities to fight crime. That's
    how it was funded. I consider that to be a solemn trust with America
    that we must not breach. And you will have to work every year for the
    next 6 years to make sure that we keep that trust.
        The second point I want to make is that for most of its life this
    crime bill enjoyed broad bipartisan support, which dissipated at the end
    of the debate, as all of you know. It became a political football,
    first, because there were some who were honestly willing to sacrifice
    everything in the crime bill to beat the assault weapons ban--to give up
    the police, to give up the prison cells, to give up the capital
    punishment provisions, to give up the prevention programs, to give up
    the violence against women section, to give up the victims against crime
    section, to give it all up. Second, there were some who just thought it
    was important to kill the bill for political reasons.
        That's all in the past now. It passed. What I want to say to you is,
    we have got to make this crime bill work, every provision of it work. We
    have got to demonstrate to our people that the money is being well-
    spent. And we have to find a way to reach out at the grassroots level
    across political lines. We have to stop this. We can't tell the American
    people they've got to change their behavior to change this country

    [[Page 1788]]

    if crime is a partisan political issue. The victims of crime are
    Republicans, Democrats, and independents. The people who put on uniforms
    every day are Democrats, Republicans, and independents. This is about
    America and our future. We must never again permit crime to be divisive
    in a partisan political way. And you can stop it, and I want you to do
    it.
        And I have to tell you, the only thing that I really worry about now
    in that regard is that in this election season, there are many who are
    campaigning on a Contract With America which costs a trillion dollars,
    to balance the budget, to increase defense, to revitalize Star Wars, to
    give huge tax cuts. And there is no clear notion of how this is going to
    be paid for. But the only option to pay for it is the way it was paid
    for before, higher deficits and cuts in everything else from Medicare to
    veterans benefits to this crime bill.
        So I ask you: Start today. Say, ``We've fought too hard for this
    bill. We won it fair and square. Let's not take it away indirectly by
    adopting a commitment to a budgetary process that will make it utterly
    impossible to fund the crime bill.'' The lives and the future of the
    American people, and especially our children, are too important. This
    must not become a political football. The bill is long. The trust is
    there. We must fund this crime bill. We cannot back away, and you must
    see that it is done.
        The third thing I want to say, and probably way the most important
    thing, is that we have now done a major thing with this crime bill, and
    you will do major things with it. But the people of this country have a
    job to do here, too. We're not here giving things out to the American
    people. We're here challenging the American people to take their streets
    and their schools and their neighborhoods and, indeed, their homes back.
    And if all of us go out here and say the right things and do the right
    things and we get no help from the rest of America, we'll be back here
    next year and the year after and the year after that, bemoaning the same
    problems. And you know that as well as I do.
        You now have the tools to deal with this problem. But you've got a
    whole country out there full of people who have to help. Parents have to
    recognize that the real war on crime begins at home. If the first
    responsibility of Government is to provide law and order, the first
    responsibility of parents is to teach right from wrong. We've got to
    have more folks turning off the TV and knowing where their kids are and
    spending time reading and doing homework and accepting personal
    responsibility. And we've got to have more folks helping them, like
    those wonderful police officers in the D.A.R.E. programs all across
    America. Kids are going to look up to somebody, and it's up to the
    adults in this country to decide who they're going to look up to.
        What do you think about those two kids, 10 and 11 years old, in
    Chicago that threw that 5-year-old boy out the window? A 5-year-old kid,
    who knew right from wrong, lost his life at the age of 5 because he
    wouldn't steal candy, because he knew right from wrong. And his brother,
    only 3 years older, knew right from wrong and he wouldn't steal candy
    either, trying desperately to save his little brother's life. Who did
    the other two kids look up to? Who did they come in contact with who
    could have taught them right from wrong and didn't? Who did they come in
    contact with who taught them wrong? What about that little kid that was
    set on fire, burned over 85 percent of his body, 3 years old, not even
    big enough to do anything wrong? Who taught those children right from
    wrong?
        You know, we see all these stories of these kids doing these things,
    and then we see that they apparently feel no remorse. At that age in
    their development, it is a question of where they got the message. Where
    did it occur to them to hang somebody out of a window in a highrise? How
    do they learn to pick up a gun? Where do they know that a fast buck
    today is better than 10 years or 12 years or 16 years of hard work and
    school to make something of yourself?
        These kids are looking up to somebody. Who are they going to look up
    to? How are they going to learn this? We can hire 5 million police
    officers, and if we keep losing the battle for what these kids think is
    right and wrong, we're going to be in a lot of trouble.
        I know we grownups sometimes--we're too negative sometimes; we're
    too cynical sometimes. A good Catholic friend of mine and I the other
    day were having a theological discussion, and he said, ``You can never
    get discouraged, Bill, because the only truly unforgivable sin is
    despair.'' That's why I preach hope all the time. I am telling you, this
    country is coming back economically. This country has resources and
    character and richness and diversity that

    [[Page 1789]]

    will open unparalleled opportunities to us in the 21st century. This is
    a good country.
        When the delegation came back from Haiti yesterday, they said that
    all the Haitian people had these little signs in Creole, painted, and
    the most popular one said simply, ``Thank you, America.'' They looked at
    those young men and women we sent down there in uniform, and just by
    walking around, these young people, our kids, they make a statement
    about what's right and what's wrong, what's good and what's bad, what
    kind of a person it's worth being, just by being there and being who
    they are. And it is thrilling to other people to see the best of this
    country.
        And we need not be worried about that if we just roll up our sleeves
    and face our challenges and go on. But what we must be worried about is
    wave upon wave upon wave of these little children who don't have
    somebody both good and strong to look up to, who are so vulnerable that
    their hearts can be turned to stone by the time they're 10 or 11 years
    old. And when there is a good one, a 5-year-old kid in difficult
    circumstances, blooming like a flower in the desert, knowing that it's
    wrong to steal candy, he actually has his life at risk.
        That's why all of you wanted these prevention programs. But I am
    telling you, you've got to go home, and you've got to say, ``Okay, I'll
    wear my D.A.R.E. uniform, I'll do my part, but every last citizen in
    this country has got to do more than look at you and demand that you do
    something about crime. We have got to teach our children and lift them
    up.''
        Thank you, and God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:38 a.m. at the Albuquerque Convention
    Center. In his remarks, he referred to Sylvester Daughtry and John T.
    Whetzel, past president and incoming president of the association.