[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 31, Number 39 (Monday, October 2, 1995)]
[Pages 1669-1671]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
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 & 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 & 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

[[Page 1670]]

mayor and the Boys & 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 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

[[Page 1671]]

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.
    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 & 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. This item was not 
received in time for publication in the appropriate issue.