[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.