    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book II)]
    [September 22, 1995]
    [Pages 1450-1452]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 1450]]

    Remarks to the Community in Santa Ana, California
    September 22, 1995

        Thank you very much, Jason, for the introduction. I am delighted to
    be here with all the officers and members of the Boys and Girls Clubs;
    Mayor Pulido; to the president of the Police Officers Association, Don
    Blankenship. Ken Stevens, thank you for this wonderful gift on behalf of
    Taco Bell for the future of the United States of America. Aren't we
    proud of Taco Bell for doing this? Isn't it a great thing? I was glad to
    be standing there with--is it on now? Can you hear me? I was glad to be
    standing there receiving that check with Jason Reese and Karina Martinez
    and Shaquille O'Neal. And I thought, the young people make me feel so
    big, and he makes me feel so small. I can see the headlines tomorrow:
    ``Shaq Visits Santa Ana; President Clinton Also Shows Up.'' [Laughter] I
    want to thank the police officers who are here, Chief Walters and
    Sergeant Follo, for what you said and all the students from the Santa
    Ana Unified School District high schools and the Pio Pico Elementary
    School and the Lowell Elementary School.
        I am honored to be here, first and most importantly, to support this
    teen supreme alliance between the Boys and Girls Clubs and Taco Bell to
    fight youth violence and to give our young people a better start in
    life. And I really want to thank Shaquille O'Neal for getting on an
    airplane and coming all the way out here to be with us today and most
    importantly for wearing his magnificent talent and his great success in
    a humble and straightforward way that's a good role model for all the
    young people of this country and for the message he gave you today.
        You know, when I was the Governor of Arkansas and Shaquille O'Neal
    was in college playing at LSU, our schools used to play all the time.
    And I woke up this morning thinking about a particular basketball game,
    and I thought, he's going to make me relive that game all over again.
    And right before we came out, I was in such a good humor. And he put his
    hand on my shoulder, and I looked at him; he said, ``You remember the
    time we beat Arkansas' brains out and I scored 58 points?'' [Laughter]
    And it was worth losing that game to see him giving the message to you
    today. You listen to what Shaquille O'Neal said and you won't go wrong
    with your lives, and you'll have a good life. And that's really what
    we're all here about.
        I want to say to all you young people, every day when I go to work
    as President I try to spend my time and make decisions thinking about
    your future. I try to think about what America will be like when you are
    out of high school, when you are grown, when you have children of your
    own here at the school where you are today. And I know that we need to
    do a lot of things in our country to give you a strong economy and the
    opportunity to make a good living. We desperately, all of us, owe you
    the opportunity to get a good education. And every young person in this
    country should be able to go to a good school and then should be able to
    go on to college, and money should not be an object. And I am working
    hard for that.
        But one of the things that has burdened me the most--is it on again?
    There it is. One of the things that has burdened me the most is the
    knowledge that unless we can give our young people a safe and secure
    childhood free of crime and violence, a lot of people will never have
    the life they ought to have. And when I went to Washington 2\1/2\ years
    ago, I made a promise to myself that I would do everything I can to put
    more police on our streets, to get more guns and drugs off our streets,
    to give young people a chance to be in positive situations and out of
    gangs.
        And what we are really here celebrating today is the kind of
    partnership that makes that possible, because the initiatives of the
    mayor and the Boys and Girls Clubs here, the initiatives of Taco Bell,
    the work of citizen leaders like Shaq, and the work of the police
    officers here all mean that you can have a safer and more secure future.
        I did work hard to make sure these police officers behind me would
    be in this community and communities like it throughout the country. In
    the last year, under our crime bill, we have put out 25,000 more police
    officers in the United States of America to be on the streets protecting
    our children, preventing crime as well

    [[Page 1451]]

    as catching criminals. These people are now working your neighborhoods,
    patrolling by foot or bicycle, and some are even on electric carts. In
    some of the small towns in the more rural Western parts of our country,
    they ride horses. But--is it on again? Is it on now? Now? Well, some of
    you can hear, and the others should pretend to hear. [Laughter] Now is
    it on? Half of you are saying yes; half are saying no. Now? [Applause]
        These police officers are trying to do something that's very
    important. They're trying not only to catch criminals, they're trying to
    prevent crime by being with people in the neighborhoods, in the schools,
    on the streets, where they live. After all, our objective ultimately is
    to prevent crime, to keep bad things from happening to our children and
    their parents. And that's what they represent.
        I also think it's important that we try to do some other things to
    make people safer. That's why last year we banned 19 deadly assault
    weapons from our streets. We don't need Uzis in our schools and on our
    streets, threatening our children. That's why we passed the ``three
    strikes and you're out'' law, because after people commit three serious
    violent crimes, they shouldn't be back on the streets to terrorize our
    children and their future. That's why we passed the Brady law which
    requires people to be checked for their criminal backgrounds before they
    get a handgun. And last year, last year alone, over 40,000 people who
    had committed serious crimes were prevented from purchasing handguns.
    And a lot of little children are alive as a result of that.
        What I want to say to all of you today real simply is that we can't
    do this alone. And we can't do it solely with law enforcement. We have
    to have people who are working with our kids, making the speech that
    Shaq made to you today, telling young people they can have a good life,
    telling them they have to do right and avoid doing the wrong thing,
    telling them they ought to be in good organizations and out of gangs
    that want to hurt people, where people define how important they are by
    how many people they can hurt and how tough they can be.
        You know, one of the most troubling things to me today--and I want
    to say this especially to the high school students who are here--the
    mayor said something that was absolutely true, that the crime rate is
    going down here. Four or 5 years ago, most Americans didn't believe we
    could drive the crime rate down. The crime rate is down in every State.
    The crime rate is down in almost every city. But arbitrary crime by
    teenagers is still going up. And I think it's because there are too many
    young people who haven't been given the opportunity to be part of a
    positive environment, where they can have something to say yes to as
    well as something to say no to, where they know they're going to have a
    good future, where they're told that they matter, where they're
    important to everybody and they know that they matter and they can have
    a good life and they can live out their dreams. Nothing, nothing that we
    do can take the place of what you can do here in this community to reach
    out and touch these young people one by one by one, to tell them that
    they matter, to tell them that they are a gift of God and they can
    become anything they are willing to work hard enough to be. That is your
    job, and I'm proud that you're doing it.
        Now meanwhile, those of us in Washington have a job, and that is to
    keep doing what we know works. One of the most troubling things to me
    about the debate in Washington today is that Congress is actually
    considering abolishing the program that put these police officers behind
    me, cutting back on the funding and sending a check to the cities and
    basically saying, ``You do what you want with this money.'' The last
    time this was tried, some local governments used the money to buy
    airplanes, accountants, and tanks. What we want to do is to keep putting
    people like these fine men and women in uniform, who are behind me. We
    need to have more of these police officers. We don't want more young
    people being shot. We want more people being saved.
        So I say to you, I say to you, today the American people are more
    threatened by what can happen on their own streets than by some country
    going to war with us. If the United States Congress were going to reduce
    the national defense of this country to the point where you felt
    insecure and dangerous, people would be outraged. Well, let me tell you,
    the gangs of this country, the armed criminals of this country, the
    people who are willing to shoot people on the street for no other reason
    than they happen to be there, they represent a threat to the security of
    America. And it is wrong, wrong, wrong to turn away from our obligation
    to protect our children with these police officers.

    [[Page 1452]]

        If all of you here will keep doing your job, if you will keep the
    light in the eyes of these children, if you will convince teenagers in
    their most difficult years that there is a country that cares about them
    and there is a good future for them out there, and if we do our job in
    Washington to keep giving communities the tools they need to bring the
    crime rate down, we can make the American dream live for all these young
    people into the next century. And 20 or 30 years from now, they can be
    here making their speeches, looking at another generation of young
    people, proud and secure in the fact that they had the chance to live
    out their dreams.
        We have to do something about gangs and violence. We have to do
    something about our children being given up too young, too easily. And
    we know what to do. We have to do what the Girls and Boys Clubs do. We
    have to do what this city is doing. We have to do what Taco Bell is
    doing. And we've got to keep the United States Government on the side of
    our children, their future, and safety in the streets with this police
    program. Help us do that, and we'll try to help you.
        God bless you all, and thank you for having me here.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:18 a.m. at the Boys & Girls Club of
    Santa Ana. In his remarks, he referred to Jason Reese, Boys & Girls
    Clubs of America 1995 national youth of the year; Mayor Miguel Pulido of
    Santa Ana; Kenneth T. Stevens, vice chairman, Taco Bell Foundation and
    member, national board of governors, Boys & Girls Clubs of America;
    Karina Martinez, Boys & Girls Club of Santa Ana 1995 local youth of the
    year; Paul Walters, chief, and John Follo, sergeant, Santa Ana Police
    Department; and basketball player Shaquille O'Neal.