    [Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 30, Number 16 (Monday, April 25, 1994)]
    [Pages 822-824]
    [Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

    <R04>
    The President's Radio Address

    April 16, 1994

        Good morning. This week we joined in sorrow for those who lost their
    lives in the downing of two of our helicopters over Iraq. I want to
    begin by expressing, again, my condolences to the loved ones of those
    who died. They gave their lives in a high cause, providing comfort to
    Kurdish victims of Saddam Hussein's brutal regime, and we honor the
    sacrifice of those brave individuals.
        Today I want to talk about one of the greatest threats we face right
    here at home: the threat of crime in our communities. In 1991, I visited
    the Rockwell Gardens in the ABLA housing projects in Chicago where I saw
    firsthand what happens to our children who live too long in the shadow
    of fear. Dozens of children rushed out to greet me, eager to have
    someone to tell their stories to. They talked of gunshots and drug
    dealers, of late-night knocks at their doors and hallways where they
    dared not stray. Many of their stories had a common theme: their
    childhoods were being stolen from them.
        Vince Lane, the head of the Chicago Housing Authority, is a genuine
    hero to these

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    children. He's trying to show the children that someone cares. To help,
    he put into effect a search-and-sweep policy to clean out Chicago's
    public housing communities, to find weapons, to get people out of those
    housing projects who didn't belong, to find drugs. But just over a week
    ago a Federal district judge declared Vince Lane's search-and-sweep
    policy unconstitutional.
        Every law-abiding American, rich or poor, has the right to raise
    children without the fear of criminals terrorizing where they live.
    That's why, as soon as I heard about the court's decision, I instructed
    Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Henry Cisneros and Attorney
    General Janet Reno to devise a constitutional, effective way to protect
    the residents of America's public housing communities. Secretary
    Cisneros and Attorney General Reno moved quickly. Today I am announcing
    a new policy to help public housing residents take back their homes.
        First, at my direction, Secretary Cisneros is in Chicago to provide
    emergency funds for enforcement and prevention in gang-infested public
    housing. We'll put more police in public housing, crack down on illegal
    gun trafficking, and fill vacant apartments where criminals hide out.
    And we'll provide more programs like midnight basketball leagues to help
    our young people say no to gangs and guns and drugs. Second, we will
    empower residents to build safe neighborhoods, and we'll help to
    organize tenant patrols to ride the elevators and look after the public
    spaces in these high-rise public housing units. Finally, we're going to
    work with residents in high-crime areas to permit the full range of
    searches that the Constitution does allow in common areas, in vacant
    apartments, and in circumstances where residents are in immediate
    danger. We'll encourage more weapons frisks of suspicious persons, and
    we'll ask tenant associations to put clauses in their leases allowing
    searches when crime conditions make it necessary.
        This new policy honors the principles of personal and community
    responsibility at the very heart of this administration's efforts. It
    also shows all Americans that their Government can move swiftly and
    effectively on their behalf.
        Now we must move swiftly on the crime bill before Congress. The bill
    provides the right balance of protection, punishment, and prevention. It
    will put 100,000 more police officers on the streets for community
    policing efforts that work. It will make ``Three strikes and you're
    out'' the law of the land and provide money for new prisons. And it will
    pay for a wide variety of prevention programs to give our young people a
    future they can say yes to.
        This is a crucial moment in the crime bill debate. It's time to tell
    Congress you've waited long enough for comprehensive national crime
    legislation, that you don't want political posturing or frivolous
    amendments, and instead, you need help to take back your communities.
        This crime bill is for all our people, but nobody needs it more than
    the people like the mother of three who lives right here in Washington.
    A week ago, this 33-year-old mother came home after celebrating her 10-
    year-old daughter's birthday to find a gang of gunmen ransacking her
    apartment. The mother had one plea for the intruders: ``If you believe
    in God, please don't shoot my children. Shoot me.'' The reply was cold
    and terrifying. ``I don't believe in God,'' said one of the gunmen. Then
    he shot her daughter dead. Before the gunfire ceased, another child and
    the mother were both shot, and her 3-year-old son witnessed the whole
    thing. The sad fact is, the police now believe the shootings were
    carried out by youths who hang out in the very apartment complex where
    that mother was trying to raise her children.
        There are many rights that our laws and our Constitution guarantee
    to every citizen, but that mother and her children have certain rights
    we are letting slip away. They include the right to go out to the
    playground and the right to sit by an open window, the right to walk to
    the corner without fear of gunfire, the right to go to school safely in
    the morning, and the right to celebrate your tenth birthday without
    coming home to bloodshed and terror. The crime bill will help us take
    back those rights for all of our people, so will our new policy to
    protect public housing residents.

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        We must decide we will not tolerate more tragedies like that
    mother's. When we do that, together, we can replace our children's fear
    with hope.
        Thanks for listening.

    Note: The address was recorded at 5:20 p.m. on April 15 in the Cabinet
    Room at the White House for broadcast at 10:06 a.m. on April 16.