    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1997, Book I)]
    [February 19, 1997]
    [Pages 172-174]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks in a Roundtable Discussion on Juvenile Crime in Boston,
    Massachusetts
    February 19, 1997

        The President. Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor, and let me thank all
    the panelists who are here and all of those who are in the audience,
    people who represent law enforcement groups around America, people who
    represent the families who have suffered loss.
        We are here today for a simple reason: Boston proves that we can
    take the streets back of our

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    country from juvenile violence and crime, from murder, from lost lives;
    that we can give our children back their childhood and we can give our
    streets and our neighborhoods back to the families who live on them.
        And what we are trying to do in Washington, what I am determined to
    do in this legislative session, is to take the lessons learned and the
    triumphs achieved here in Boston and the progress made and embody it in
    a legislative proposal that the Attorney General has worked very hard
    with me on to try to give other communities the chance to do what you
    have done here. It's not a very complicated strategy, but it's the most
    sensible one we can follow.
        Between 1990 and 1995, juvenile homicides dropped by 80 percent in
    the city of Boston. Since July of 1995, not a single child under 16 has
    been killed by a gun in this city. Our anti-gang and youth violence
    strategy essentially rests on four elements, all of which can be found
    in what has been done here: first, targeting violent gangs and juveniles
    with more prosecutors and tougher laws; second, working to make our
    children gun-free and drug-free; third, streamlining and reforming our
    juvenile justice system; and fourth, giving our young people something
    to say yes to, not just looking for ways to punish those who have done
    wrong but to give kids a chance to make some positive steps and actually
    have a little constructive fun in their lives. I've seen that here in
    Boston, too.
        I have a lot to be grateful to the mayor for, but one of the things
    that I'm especially grateful for is that he gave me a chance early on in
    his term to sit and meet with his youth council, the young people that
    have advised him and worked with him, along with Sister Jean, who has
    been to Washington to help us out a couple of times.
        And I have seen the remarkable balance of your program; I'm excited
    about it. I also know that for this to succeed nationwide everyone has a
    part to play. We can pass laws in Washington, we can be supportive at
    the Federal level, but we have to have the support of grassroots
    citizens, of business leaders, religious leaders, as well as those in
    law enforcement and parents and obviously the political leaders here.
        So, Mr. Mayor, I'm glad to be here. Governor, Senator, Congressmen,
    thank you all for having us here, and I think I'd like to let you go on
    with the program now and listen.

    [At this point, the discussion began.]

        The President.  If I could just say very briefly, in support of not
    only what the Justice Department has done, but also we have Ray Kelly
    here who's our Under Secretary of the Treasury for Enforcement: We do
    recognize that one of our important roles nationally--and I want to
    thank all the Members of the Senate and the House that are here for
    their support--is to do what we can to at least disarm people who should
    not have guns.
        And I think the Brady bill has helped, the assault weapons bill has
    helped, the work the Treasury has done to try to be more disciplined in
    who can be federally licensed to sell guns has helped. There are fewer
    than half the number of people licensed to sell guns today than there
    were 4 years ago, fewer than half. And I thank you for that, for your
    efforts there.
        And in this bill we have two other things: We extend the provisions
    of the Brady bill to violent juvenile offenders, and we require some
    sort of trigger or gun lock mechanism to be on guns that are in the
    reach of children. I think that's very important. I thank you for what
    you're doing.

    [The discussion continued.]

        The President. Thank you very much, Mayor. I don't think we can
    possibly minimize the role that you have played in all this, the impetus
    you gave to everybody else. You are someone who is as gifted as anyone
    I've ever known at bringing people together and making people feel
    comfortable, when they're from different walks of life, in the same room
    together working on the same thing. I think the enormous trust the
    people of this city have in you is one of the reasons this has happened.
    And I thank you for that.
        Let me also say just briefly, in closing, two points. Number one,
    when I asked Janet Reno to become Attorney General, I knew that I was--
    that we were together taking a chance, because I had been a State
    attorney general and a Governor, dealing with crime problems--Governor
    of a small State dealing with crime problems on a community basis. And
    she had been a prosecuting attorney in a very large and a very
    complicated county, with enormous and very challenging problems. But
    neither one of us had ever dealt with the Federal system except on the
    other end of it.

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        I did it because we believed together that the only way we would
    ever get the crime rate going back down and start saving children's
    lives and giving people the confidence they need to deal with all the
    other challenges--the economic, the educational, the other challenges we
    face--is if the lessons that were being manifested at the community
    level in America could somehow sweep the country and be reflected in
    national policy.
        When I became President and I discovered that Senator Biden, then
    the Chairman of the Senate committee that had control of this
    legislation, believed the same thing, we fated a lot of heat and became
    vulnerable to a lot of very--what was in the short run quite effective
    political rhetoric, you know, we were trying to take everybody's guns
    away and throwing money at these problems and all that. But you see,
    now, 4 years later, we know the truth, that what we have tried to do is
    simply give more people like Mayor Menino and Probation Officer Brooks
    and Commissioner Evans and Captain Dunford and all the others a chance
    to succeed all over America. That's what we've tried to do.
        It is a very simple strategy, but it will work. It will work. And
    today the juvenile program I'm going to announce is basically an attempt
    to take what you have proved works here and give those tools to every
    community in the Nation to follow. Let me just say, no disrespect to
    anybody else, but you know the people I listened most closely to today
    were Terry and Lanita because they're going to be around here long after
    I'm gone.
        And what we have to do, the rest of us, is to construct a system
    that works for them and that works for parents like the Cherys, who lost
    a child because of the failures of America and who have spent their
    lives now trying to make sure it doesn't happen to anybody else. So this
    is a huge deal.
        There was a report--I will just close with this--there was a report
    that was issued a few weeks ago by the Centers for Disease Control in
    Atlanta, saying that 75 percent of all the teenagers who lose their
    lives, who are murdered, in the entire industrial world are murdered in
    America--75 percent. Now, that hasn't happened in Boston in over a year
    and a half. If it doesn't happen in Boston, it doesn't have to happen
    anyplace else. We can turn this around.
        America now knows we can bring the crime rate down. Now America has
    to learn that we can save our children and that we do not have to put up
    with this and that the only way to solve it is the way you have solved
    it, but that we have a job in Washington to create the conditions and
    give you the tools which will make it possible for you to solve it.
    That's what we're trying to do. But let's not forget what the stakes
    are.
        You know, I've spent a lot of time--we had a big telecommunications
    trade agreement that we finished last weekend which will create a
    million new jobs in America over the next 12 years. I want every child
    in Boston to be alive to have a chance to get one of those jobs.
        Let's do first things first. Let's get this done, and let's remember
    that what we're really trying to do is make what you've done here
    possible for children in communities all across America.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 10:19 a.m. in the McCormack Building. In
    his remarks, he referred to Mayor Thomas Menino of Boston; Sister Jean
    Gribaudo, the mayor's youth adviser; Gov. William Weld of
    Massachussetts; Tanya Brooks, Suffolk County Superior Court probation
    officer; Paul Evans, Boston police commissioner; Robert P. Dunford,
    Boston area C-11 police district captain; Terry Thompson and Lanita
    Tolentino, members of the Mayor's Youth Council; and Joseph and Tina
    Chery, whose son was a victim of gang crossfire in 1993. The release
    also included remarks by Attorney General Janet Reno.