[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 20 (Monday, May 22, 2000)]
[Pages 1108-1111]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a Peace Officers Memorial Ceremony

May 15, 2000

    Thank you very much. Thank you, Gil Gallegos, for your kind remarks 
and your leadership and all these years we have spent working together. 
I want to say to you and all the other leaders of this organization and 
the auxiliary--Lmae Tull, Steve Young, Jim Pasco, and others--how much I 
appreciate what you have done in working with me and Attorney General 
Reno, Secretary Summers, and the other members of our administration.
    I also want to thank the Members of Congress who support us every 
year. I see Congressman Gilman and Senator Kennedy over there. There may 
be others from Congress here, but I thank them for coming.
    I thank the law enforcement executives, chiefs, and the rank and 
file members across America who are here today. And most of all, I thank 
the many family members of our fallen officers who have come here to 
observe this event in the midst of all their pain and loss. I appreciate 
the support of our fellow Americans for your endeavors.
    Today they were embodied by the wonderful song my long-time friend 
Tony Bennett sang--I thought he was terrific. And they are embodied by 
the prayers and actions of so

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many of your fellow citizens. I would like to mention just one today, on 
a personal note.
    Law enforcement doesn't have a better friend in the Congress than 
the former State policeman from Michigan named Bart 
Stupak. Bart and his wife, Laurie, lost their son over the weekend, and 
I hope you will remember them in your prayers, because he has been as 
good a friend as the people in blue have ever had in the United States 
Congress.
    The event we commemorate today has a long history, not just 19 
years. In 1789, 211 years ago, just a year after our Constitution was 
ratified, a United States marshal named Robert Forsyth was shot and 
killed in the line of duty. Since then, over 14,000 law enforcement 
officers have given their lives to protect the liberties upon which 
America was founded.
    We owe these brave men and women a debt of gratitude that is 
immeasurable and unending. Every year we come here to honor them, carve 
their names in stone so that future generations will know who they are 
and know that they died as they lived, as heroes.
    I could talk about all of them represented here today and their 
families--time doesn't permit. So let me just tell you two stories that 
I found to be representative.
    Corporal Steven Levy of the Washington Township, New Jersey Police 
Department, always believed in being out front on public safety, whether 
saving a drowning man from icy waters or teaching self-defense classes 
to women and children during off-duty hours. Last October he was out 
front again when he led his SWAT team into a house where a domestic 
dispute had escalated into gunfire. When there, he was shot through a 
closed bedroom door, leaving behind a wife and two young children and a 
legacy of service never to be forgotten.
    Officer James Henry Camp was a community police officer walking the 
beat in some of Chicago's toughest public housing developments--a big 
ex-marine. He won the respect of young men whom he counseled away from 
gangs and drugs and the love of little children for whom he always had a 
piece of candy. One day last March he and his partner stopped two men 
driving a stolen car. While making the arrest, Officer Camp was shot and 
killed. He was a newlywed.
    Today we recall the service and all the stories of the courageous 
law enforcement officers, 139 of them, whose names will be added to the 
Roll of Honor this year. Their purpose and passion was the safety of the 
people. We can never repay them or their families, but we can honor 
them, and not just with words but with action.
    You heard Gil Gallegos talk about the role of law enforcement in the 
declining crime rate. I always try to make sure the American people know 
how it happened. Men and women in uniform did not give up when, year-in 
and year-out, the crime rate went up. We decided 7 years ago to try to 
give you some support, because it was obvious already that there were 
strategies in many of our communities that would work to bring down the 
crime rate: more police, more prevention, tougher penalties.
    You told us that assault weapons and illegal guns were undermining 
your ability to fight crime and drugs. So we passed the assault weapons 
ban, the Brady law, which has stopped over a half million felons, 
fugitives, and stalkers from buying handguns, banned the cop-killer 
bullet, provided 100,000 more police for our neighborhoods--ahead of 
schedule and under budget.
    Last week we learned that, thanks to you, crime is now down for 8 
years in a row. Every officer here and every family here who has lost a 
loved one should be very proud of the lives you have saved in the United 
States of America in bringing that crime rate down.
    Yet no one here believes we are safe enough, and the very fact that 
we now know what works imposes on all of us an even higher 
responsibility to do more of what works: to put more police on the 
street in the toughest neighborhoods; to hire more prosecutors and ATF 
agents and inspectors; to go after gun crimes; to invest in gun-tracing 
systems until we can trace every bullet in every gun used in a crime 
anywhere in America.
    I also believe we must pass more commonsense gun safety legislation: 
the child trigger locks, banning the importation of large ammunition 
clips, closing the gun show loophole. We passed it last year in the 
Senate, when the Vice President cast the tie-breaking

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vote, but it's been stalled here for 10 months. And yesterday on this 
Mall, there were somewhere between a half a million and 750,000 mothers 
gathered, and over a million in 70 sites across America, to say that we 
shouldn't wait any longer for this kind of legislation. I hope we will 
listen to what they had to say. It will also save a lot of police 
officers' lives.
    Last Friday the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Henry 
Hyde, and his Democratic counterpart, John Conyers, made some real 
progress to resolve the impasse we're having over this legislation and 
the gun show loophole. I thank them for their efforts. This should not 
be a political issue. It should not be, and it is not, about taking guns 
away from law-abiding citizens. It's about keeping guns out of the hands 
of criminals and keeping more of our citizens, especially our children 
and our police officers, alive. I hope the conferees will meet and pass 
legislation so that I can sign it.
    I also think we have to do more to protect law enforcement officers, 
men and women who risk their lives every day. Sixteen years ago now, 
when I was Governor of my home State of Arkansas, a friend of mine, a 
State trooper by the name of Louis Bryant, made what he thought was a 
routine traffic stop. He stopped a man in an RV, who was a political 
radical with an arsenal in the vehicle, and he was shot to death. Then I 
was told that if only he had a bulletproof vest on, he probably would 
have survived.
    I remember that day as if it were yesterday. I knew his wife; his 
brother-in-law was one of my State troopers on my security detail. I 
lived through their agony. And so I began to try to make sure every 
police officer in our State could have a vest. Every police officer in 
America should have one.
    Two years ago I was proud to sign the Bulletproof Vest Partnership 
Grant Act. Now, the Federal Government pays up to 50 percent of the cost 
of vests that State and local officers buy--or agencies buy for their 
officers. To date, we've purchased over 92,000 of these vests. There's 
enough money in this year's budget to increase that number to 180,000. 
But I asked Gil today and the Attorney General how many law enforcement 
officers needed them, how many are in the line of fire. We figure there 
are at least twice that many, twice that 180,000. But the program is set 
to expire next year.
    So today I intend to ask Congress to support new legislation offered 
by the original sponsors of the bill--Senator Leahy, Senator Campbell, 
Congressman Visclosky--to extend the program for 3 more years and double 
the funding. If we do it, we'll be able to protect every single police 
officer in the United States with a bulletproof vest.
    I also want to thank Gil Gallegos and your organization for the work 
you are doing to see that a medal of valor is awarded to honor the 
courage of officers who move above and beyond the call of duty. There is 
legislation to do this in Congress, but it is now stalled. Today I have 
directed the Attorney General to develop a plan to create an award 
through executive action of the President to recognize public safety 
officers who have exhibited extraordinary valor.
    You should not have to wait any longer, and there are many reasons 
bills get caught up in Congress, not all of them the fault of the 
Members who are supporting them or those who have the committee. But we 
should not wait. This country, every year, should issue a medal to honor 
extraordinary acts of valor by police officers.
    Shortly before he, himself, was killed in 1968, Robert Kennedy said 
that the fight against crime is a fight to preserve that quality of 
community which is at the root of our greatness.
    The fallen officers we honor today put themselves at the forefront 
of that fight. And they do exemplify America's greatness. Nothing we say 
or do will bring them back. Perhaps nothing we can say or do can ease 
the pain of their families or the sorrow in your hearts. Only God and 
time and family and friends can do that.
    But we do want you to know, every one of you, we honor them, and we 
honor you. The best way for us to continue to do that is to press on 
with the struggle for a safer America, a struggle they thought was worth 
their lives. And it's certainly worth everything we can possibly do.
    Thank you, and God bless you all.

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 Note:  The President spoke at 1:25 p.m. on the West Grounds at the 
Capitol. In his remarks, he referred to Gilbert G. Gallegos, president, 
Steve Young, vice president, and James O. Pasco, Jr., executive 
director, Fraternal Order of Police; Lmae Tull, president, Grand Lodge 
Fraternal Order of Police Auxiliary; and singer Tony Bennett.