[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.