[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 33, Number 8 (Monday, February 24, 1997)]
[Pages 210-213]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
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 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 lead

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ers, 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, Mayor Thomas Menino of Boston introduced Paul Evans, 
Boston police commissioner, who discussed Boston's law enforcement 
strategy based on a neighborhood policing program. William Stewart, 
Suffolk County Superior Court probation officer, then discussed the 
Operation Night Light partnership between police officers and probation 
officers, including night home visits with juvenile offenders and their 
parents. Terry Thompson, member of the mayor's youth council, said 
Operation Night Light had gotten him off the street and turned his 
probation officer into a friend.]

    The President. How old are you now?
    Mr. Thompson. Nineteen.
    The President. You're 19, and you're working two jobs?

[Mr. Thompson affirmed that, saying that he was the first of his 
probation officer's clients to get a GED and that he still visited his 
probation officer and others in the department because he liked them.]

    The President. Good for you.

[Rev. Jeffrey Brown of the Ten-Point Coalition described the activities 
of the ecumenical group of clergy and laity to combat inner-city 
violence and despair and provide hope and spiritual discipline to 
youth.]

    The President. I was just thinking, if I might, that you had a 
remarkable phrase in your remarks that maybe those of us who live and 
work in Washington, along with the kids that you work with on the 
streets, need to develop. You said you're trying to help people develop 
a spiritual discipline against the resentments they feel. I think that's 
pretty good. We all need that. [Laughter] Good for you.

[Ralph Martin, Suffolk County district attorney, discussed the changing 
role of prosecutors as community leaders who could bring together a 
variety of community resources to restore order in neighborhoods. Capt. 
Robert P. Dunford of Boston's Area C-11 Police District discussed 
accountability and communication at the grassroots level, the safe 
neighborhood initiative, and home visits to habitual truants. Lanita 
Tolentino, member of the mayor's youth council, described its activities 
as a liaison between the mayor and the youth of Boston.]

    The President. How often do you meet with the mayor--does the 
council meet with the mayor?
    Ms. Tolentino. I would say, every 2 months, about that. But I see 
him more than that.

[Mayor Menino noted that he saw everyone more often than that. Tanya 
Brooks, Suffolk County Superior Court probation officer, then described 
her rules for probationers, saying she was considered unreasonable by 
some but appreciated by others. Attorney General Janet Reno praised 
Boston's cooperative efforts to make a difference in the lives of its 
young people. Mayor Menino then reiterated the importance of 
partnership, and Sister Jean Girbaudo, the mayor's youth adviser, 
praised his commitment, saying that the young people of Boston had a 
direct influence on public policy. U.S. Attorney Donald Stern described 
targeted efforts against gun traffickers, repeat violent offenders, and 
violent criminal organizations as an extension of community policing and 
expressed support for legislation to provide additional tools at the 
Federal level.]

    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

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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.

[Mayor Menino introduced Senator John F. Kerry, who said that anticrime 
legislation was a godsend in providing Federal funding to community 
programs. Gov. William Weld of Massachusetts stressed the importance of 
education and job programs to prevent crime and praised the 
administration's support for prevention efforts. Massachusetts Attorney 
General L. Scott Harshbarger reiterated that the best anticrime program 
was prevention and thanked the President for spotlighting that. 
Representative Joseph P. Kennedy II noted the role of neighborhood 
residents in reclaiming their neighborhood from crime and the 
demonstrated success of prevention programs. Representative John Joseph 
Moakley thanked the President for supporting anticrime legislation. 
Senator Joseph R. Biden, Jr., noted the success of community policing 
and said that Boston provided an example to the rest of the Nation that 
prevention programs worked as well. Mayor Menino concluded that the keys 
to success were collaboration and communication, along with the tools 
provided by anticrime legislation.]

    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.
    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 Chery's, 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.

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    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.