tongue-in-cheek. they didn't consider my solutions as much as i enthusiastically promoted them. i liked what my troops used there so i adopted it as my callsign. theor the last 30 years video library is your free resources for politics, congress, and washington public affairs. whether it happened 30 years ago or 30 minutes ago, find it in c-span's video library at c-span.org. c-span, where history unfolds daily. up next a discussion on community policing and the challenges and successes of a police departments in new york city, chicago, and los angeles aired we also hear about data collection, use of that he cameras, and law enforcement policies in the obama and trump administration. told by the heritage foundation it is about 90 minutes.

>> good morning. welcome to the heritage foundation. we welcome those who are joining us on our website as well as those joining us on the c-span network. we would ask everyone in-house to be so kind to check that our mobile the vices have been checked and turned off as a cortices. those watching online you are welcome to ask questions any time by emailing speaker at heritage.org. leading our program today and welcoming and introducing our special guest is ronald reagan emeritus aschairman well as the 75th of attorney general of the united states edwin meese. [applause] mr. meese: thank you, john.

ladies and gentlemen, good morning. i joined john and welcome you. heritage has done a great deal in the policing and public safety areas and we are pleased to have our keynote speaker today. it is a pleasure for me to introduce him since we have known each other a number of years. believe it or not i think we first met when we were first at harvard, for the executive session in policing they had some years ago. united states has had many fine police chiefs, but there are some i would call the very exclusive group of the finest people who have had an impact on the police profession through an entrepreneurial spirit and with

a good deal of imagination and innovation in improving policing in the united states. it goes back almost a century ago. the chief of police in berkeley, california, interesting that that is where improved policing started in view of what is going on today. he was chief of police for a brief time in los angeles. in the middle of the last century, bill parker in los angeles and a chief in cincinnati, and they were followed by wilson in chicago and pat murphy in new york, detroit, and washington, d.c. there is no question that these leaders in police excellence formed a distinguished group in which today's keynote speaker, as an innovator, as an imaginative leader, and as a person has done very much

uniquely, has had a unique place in policing excellence in this country and has in many ways had a unique career that is very difficult for anyone to duplicate what they have done. he has headed six police departments, including two of the largest in the country. he has done an outstanding job in all of the police departments he has headed and has set a standard for police leadership. he has in a sense invented language. no one knew there was such a thing as comstat until he came along and developed it, and out every police department in the country is using comstat. in addition, he has had a role in all the departments he has provided leadership.

three results in each one -- the first has been improved policing, decreased crime, and the third has been better relationships between the community and the police. this is a terrific record, and that is why we are so pleased to have him today. i can tell more about him, but i think you want to listen to him, and i think it will be well worth your attention to hear what he says about policing in the 21st century. ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to introduce my friend and an outstanding member of the law enforcement community, bill bratton. [applause] mr. bratton: good morning. it is a good morning. i want to thank you for that more than gracious introduction. the general and i go back a long way. we first met at the harvard kennedy school executive

sessions on policing, late 1980's, early 1990's. i was the superintendent of the metropolitan police in boston at that time. the executive sessions, more so than any other government activity that i am aware of over the last 50 years, shaped american policing and shaped it for the better. we are still a profession that is developing, evolving continually, but a major revolution was created during those sessions. not widely known was the general's role in that. through chips stewart, it was funded and a republican administration funding one of the most liberal universities in was in effecttes,

community policing, but oftentimes the politicization was widely associated with democratic administrations in the 1990's was effectively created right the active participation of the reagan administration, but in the person of the attorney general who attended -- despite his incredibly busy schedule -- every meeting over many years. he is to be applauded, and i am an extraordinary admirer of him. it is an unheralded compliment on his part, and i remind people how instrumental he was personally in his past as attorney general in helping to point american policing in a very defining way in a difficult time in the history of our country. i thank him for the second time inviting me here to the heritage foundation to give a speech on this issue. first time was 1996, october, 21 years ago. i had shortly before left the nypd, working with mayor

giuliani, and this time had been out of the nypd for the second time. having worked for mayor de blasio. two individuals from completely different perspectives. myself, i think i can work with anybody, so by giving those examples, that is proof positive that i can. i want to knowledge the report distributed today. i was not able to attend the symposium held earlier by the heritage foundation and a number of reports that came from that. i had the opportunity to read all of them. it helped form my prepared remarks as well as some of the extemporaneous ones i will make. i was very taken with the substance of them all and some in particular. my very close colleague of mine, garry mccarthy, wrote an

extraordinary piece on the issue of bias and race on this issue. noble contributor, chips stewart, several papers from him. i thank those people for their contributions to the dialogue. chuck wexler and i have worked 1975.er since like the heritage foundation is keenly interested in this issue, and it is my privileged to be affiliated by invitation with heritage foundation. hopefully today, there will be the opportunity to discuss policing in america, lessons from the past, opportunities for the future. i think i can speak to the past, speak to the current situation, and offer thoughts going forward, where there is so much contention about where we need to go at this particular point in time. the remarks, the comments are mine.

i have been in the business almost 50 years starting with the military police in 1967. i think i have seen the arc of policing over this time, a continued period of evolution with many periods of revolutions. the one the attorney general led was one of those resolutions -- revolutions, comstat was another. with that introduction, i thank you once again, attorney general. my company works almost exclusively with the private sector. ironically, after 50 years i am , limited in my involvement with policing where i have worked most of my life, but the private sector's needs are the same as american policing -- dealing with terrorism, cybercrime issues, social media issues. the combination between private and public is what community policing is all about, the idea

of collaboration, because we have shared interests. with that, let me speak to you about the paper i am presenting. first, let me give you a title. matter,unt, police preventing crime and disorder. they are linked. " i passionately believe preventing crime and disorder is the key to successful policing rather than measurement of our response to it. it has been since it was articulated as nine principles of policing. my original copy of those nine principles of policing are effectively my bible, my foundation. written in 1829, they are more relevant today than they were in 1829. the first principle is the basic mission for which the police exists is to prevent -- i

emphasize prevent -- crime and disorder. the three go together. more portly, when they go together, it is successful. it is for a large part of our history, particularly over the last 50 years, they did not. in the 1970's, 1980's, we lost our way. the 1990's, we got to the basic mission to which the police exist. the ninth principle is the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it, meaning you can reduce the crime and disorder. the need for police to be seen effectively engaging in repressing crime and disorder can be used more effectively collaborating with committees working together. the idea that it is the visibility of enforcement that generates so much of the hostility. in today's 21st century world of videos, there is not a week that

there was not a video where police are using force and video representation of that force, whether it looks awful, it pulls us further apart rather than brings us together. if we can in fact reduce crime and disorder to such an extent we can reduce police use of force, that would bring us a long way to bring us together. i believe the nine principles have been key long before they were first enunciated in 1829, for as long as society and governments have been trusted by the power by their citizens, we are a citizen police in this country, to keep others safe. in our country the first , obligation of government is public safety. it is defined in our constitution, declaration of independence, bill of rights -- public safety. that obligation is fulfilled principally in our criminal justice system, and most visibly, the bold responsibility

of the police. matter" is apolice term i used in the lapd in 2003 as part of the rebuilding of that very damaged organization, which had effectively ceased to police the city of los angeles . crime was rising, spirits were low, and morale was deplorable. and as a way of inspiring that department i came up with that mantra. in simple terms it means that the individual actions of cops count, good and bad, and that the actions of police departments and the police profession, good and bad, matter. cops count. police matter. we can assure those actions are good more often than bad. we are always guided by what i call the three c's and a t. we need to police constitutionally. we need to police compassionately. we are policing fellow

citizens, we are policing people. we need to police consistently, not police differently in minority neighborhoods than we might in white or richer neighborhoods. and at all times and increasingly in the 21st century, with the advent of cameras, we need a police with transparency. there can be no denying for much of our history, particularly in relations with african-americans, our actions and those of our government are shaped by our country's original sin, the scourge of slavery. nearly 300 years of slavery in this continent, nearly 100 years of jim crow laws following. a terrible national legacy we still deal with today. likewise many of our actions , with immigrants, legal and illegal, and with the native wasicans whose land this first and other marginalized shaped bye often societal and prejudice, racism, bigotry, and homophobia. policing in the last quarter of the 20th century and now into the 21st is changing for the better rapidly.

i have been part and privileged to be part of that change. in that regard, we the police need to shape the narrative, opinions, and rhetoric. we have not been doing that very well. we need to write the real police story, blemishes and all. under no circumstance can we allow it to be framed primarily by those who don't like us, respect us, or trust us. nor can we allow it to be framed by those who seek to advance their own societal agendas by denigrating the heartfelt, reasonable, practical, effective efforts of police leadership to change and him prove. i have been associated with police leadership for most of my career with many leaders of the past and of today. they are an extraordinary group, progressive thinkers, who face these issues with open minds and

a determination, a pride in their profession, and a determination to really help address the many issues that police are expected to address, plus the many others that by default have fallen to us. police can and must focus not only prevention of crime, but also disorder. there has been debate about the concept of open windows and quality of life. i say to you it is essential for effective policing that we focus on both crimess, serious, and we also focus on the same time of quality of life. the two go together. in the 1970's and 1980's, we separated them, and saw the disaster of 1990. the worse crime year in the history of the country. police prevent crime and they prevent disorder. and they do so by changing behavior, and that is so incredibly important. they do so with targeted enforcement, but indiscriminate enforcement -- as we discussed

issues of immigration, with immigration sweeps of people who have done nothing but enter here illegally, even though that is a crime. they do so by working with prosecutors to seek full force, but fair sentencing, not a return to harsh guidelines that eliminate judicial discretion and filled prisons with people who wanted to impact players and be dealt with more effectively in other environments. they do so through neighborhood engagements where police work with people to prevent problems and realize their potential in the neighborhoods, too. the genesis and the genius of community policing. it is that simple. it is really that simple. we have made it too complex. i spent nearly 50 years in the profession of policing as a military police in vietnam, walking upbeat in an all-black neighborhood in boston. two years before it was an all-jewish white neighborhood.

through the real estate busting that went on in the city at that time. then spent the next two years working in desegregation, in one of the most segregated cities in america, perhaps more so than -- itself at that time. as the attorney general pleasece, six different departments, i basically managed, directed, or led lisa permits of every size in this country. during that time the profession was like a pendulum, from prevention to response and back to prevention. without false modesty, i believe i've played a large role with my colleagues and will swing back to the focus on prevention and that began in the 1990's. that was reinforced by the efforts of the executive session focusing effort back on prevention and not on response. my concern now is that we may be swinging back. i watch with concern the pendulum that to the days of the 1970's and 1980's. we do not need to go that way.

we have found in the 1990's and the 21st century other ways to do it. american police chiefs in particular understand that because they have been living at that. if we see history as a pendulum, we can see the swing away from prevention in the 1960's, away from the cop on the beat, and took active steps to maintain order. while we idolize the cop on the beat who control behavior and keep the neighborhood safe often , for that matter, my hero was detective joe friday of the los angeles police for the 1950's and 1960's, who focused on responding to crime, but never with compassion. sergeant friday never put his arm around anybody, he solved the crime, but it was response oriented and keep your distance from the public. we must acknowledge that efforts of crime prevention were not

always fair nor just. heroes ofl mine, kelly was a friend and james wilson, i had the privilege to spend a lot of time with him. as they point out in their broken windows article some of , those steps, meaning the actions of the police, would not withstand a legal challenge today. sometimes officers enforce social mores rather than the law, and they can be unfair and discriminatory. this was certainly true during the civil rights era. the social upheaval sent the pendulum from one extreme to the other. it swung from too much discretion in the hands of officers all the way to the response era of the 1970's and 1980's. much-needed rulings like miranda and exclusionary role, they were necessary to correct the abuses

of the past -- the failure to inform people arrested of their rights. they were necessary changes to deal with the issues of the 1960's as we moved into the 1970's and the pendulum swung 1980's. too far. please direction gave way to police oversight. police reform grew out of reports like the -- commission and co-mingled with new ideas about the origins of crime. per the commissioner report, i had to read this book, i had to memorize it, to take my exam for sergeant in 1974 in the boston police department. it was part of the professionalization and liberalization of police agencies at that time. the books i had to study to pass the promotional exam for sergeant. i was the youngest sergeant ever promoted at age 27, a sign of the change in times. we read this book. we read the report on race relations in the united states. we read about management and very. -- and theory.

the idea of one of the recommendations of this book, the professionalization of the police. this report in the preceding crime report of president johnson got us on the path for the next 20 years that brought us to the 1990's. while there were so many good recommendations here, a lot of what we talk about today, legitimacy of efforts, there was one that really tore us a part. the idea that we should focus on response to crime, that they believed that the causes of crime were racism, poverty, bad police practices, unemployment, demographics. they thought those were the causes. they were not, they are not, and never have been. for 20 years -- and i lived it -- american policing was shaped by it. and i will point to one line that that sticks out, the idea that in alleviating manpower to the ghetto, efforts should be

given to crimes that threaten life and property, stress on social gambling and loitering -- when more serious crimes are neglected not only diverts -- in that line they advocated american policing move away from order and control, not understanding that african-americans in their neighborhoods, latinos, all want the same thing. rich and poor, nobody wants the prostitute in the doorway. nobody wants the gang on the corner dealing drugs. nobody wants the graffiti, whether you are white or black, but what they advocated in that report, with so many great suggestions, that and the earlier crime report, the emphasis on responding to crime, and that is what we did in the 1970's and 1980's. -- 911 came into being and we responded. we celebrated that we could get there in eight minutes. we celebrated the idea of

investigations, joe friday, technology, all types of things to solve the crime after the fact. and we celebrated the man on patrol, moving officers around in vehicles to get more rapidly to the 911 calls. to the crimes that had already occurred. we moved from the prevention of crime focus to response. for 20 years it basically ran us down the rabbit hole. in the 1990's, with the help of the executive sessions, american police leadership, community leadership began to get it right. what did we get right? the cause of crime is people, criminals, emotionally disturbed of which those numbers are growing, or others in moments of passion, commit criminal acts. the others are influences, and police do not have control on those influences, but we can have impact on them. so, we have righted the ship. this report, while so valuable,

effectively in many respects moved us in the wrong direction, and fortunately we have moved back. the social of people and unrest of that area said the pendulum hurtling from one machine to the other. talk of too much discretion in the hands of officers -- gave rise to police oversight. police corruption gave rise to police oversight. it became less about what johnny did to joe and increasingly about what made johnny act the way he did. the desire to focus on root causes was well intentioned, but they were not the causes. they were the influences. there was a new way to look at johnny's behavior did not always help joe. he will still remain the victim. the advent of 911 had the unintended effect of relegating police to being response agents rather than prevention agents.

because if crime was not about behavior, but about social behaviors and deeply felt inequities, and on some level it is. there was not much a cop could do other than answer calls and pick up pieces, and there were a lot of pieces as our society went crazy. this response model was ascended during the era's of the -- era ofnalization deinstitutionalizations as mental institutions emptied out, with catastrophic consequences -- the so-called homeless, the significant portion of that population, people who really should be in institutions, in some institutions, and other environments where they can get treatment, and not relegated to hanging in parks and streets of our cities where they waste away. one place where the ability to control behavior runs up against a wall is addressing the emotionally disturbed. providing mental health services

should not be on the cops. so many things end of being on the cops. i had the nypd adopt a program in 2015, with generous funding from the mayor's office, and more than 6000 cops received it. all will receive it over the next year. the effectiveness of cit should not mean we stick cops with the failure of the mental health care system throughout the country, and it is another epidemic we are dealing with in the 21st century. response models are still in place during the 1980's, when crack and violence spiraled out of control. america's homicide peak was 1980, but new york city topped out in 1990, with 2245 murders. the year i went to new york as chief of transit lease. cops were not preventing crime. we were responding to it. when i became chief of the

transit police in 1990, i set about undoing this perception. had a major police department i could put into practice, ideas that me and many of my colleagues in policing and leadership shared, and many political leaders. root causes should be considered by police executives, by judges, by anybody making a statement for the world, but for the cop on the street, what they have to act upon is not root causes, it is behavior. i demonstrated that in the transit police. and i demonstrated it in 1994 at the nypd with the invention of comstat working with one of the greatest minds who ever lived and his partner. we gave cops the ability to do what they were meant to do -- prevent crime and disorder. we let them control behavior, always in accordance with the law of course since democracy is

our proxy for what is right. cops cannot control behavior, but we must do it compassionately and with transparency. the pendulum swung back in the 1990's to prevention. we began taking back corners and parks and whole cities. in 2002 i went to los angeles. we brought crime down there as well. overall crime in the united states went down dramatically in the 1990's, and although we have had spikes in the last several years, it is still down overall. i was just talking to the los angeles chief yesterday los , angeles just had its safest summer in terms of homicide, and this year with a lower number of homicides for the year. the numbers are astronomical in terms of decline over the last 27 years. we are getting it right in many cities, and we cannot lose focus on how to get it right because of the aberrations in other cities that for a variety of reasons are not experiencing the same declines.

but as i mentioned, pendulums do not rest. the comstatcity, model became confused with the metrics it used. garry mccarthy and i have had conversations with the deputy commission of the crime control strategies at the time of the fifth shift of comstat in the 21st century. it became synonymous with zero tolerance, which it never was. cops had too much discretion perhaps, having less in the response area, having returned as part of the early comstat role. they have it taken away, with the request for numbers, numbers-driven activity policing. the pendulum, back and forth like a metronome. while crime kept going down, it was flattening out.

more and more enforcement, specifically for new york, more enforcement and smaller returns. i returned to be police commissioner under bill de blasio, three years of extraordinary resources, unlike anything i have ever experienced in the previous years. the achievements would have been impossible without that resourcing and support over those three years. that resourcing and support is missing in so many american cities, and some of those with some of the worst problems that we are experiencing at the moment are reflective of the resource issues and political support as well as other issues, in those communities. i cannot stress that enough. in many ways what is missing in policing is not the ideas of leadership, extraordinary leaders with extraordinary ideas we had. it is resources and political support oftentimes and community support. i want you to look at the graphic that we have handed out

that was distributed prior to this meeting. one-page graphic, and i will speak to that now as we go through it. look at murders and shootings on that graph from 2003 to 2012. this is new york city. compare the inconsistent decreases in those categories, really flat, with the skyrocketing rate of enforcement in the form of arrests, summonses, and the issue of stop and frisk stops. stops, homicides leveling off, police activity increasing dramatically come even as the city was getting safer and safer and safer. then look at 2013, as enforcement plummets, violent crime does not rise, it falls, too. the answer was intelligence-led policing. then predictive policing. now, assisted greatly by

algorithms precision policing. ,effectively it is comstat in , the 1990's on steroids. i helped the department remember something it already knew, blanket indiscriminate enforcement is not the key, prevention is the key supported .y precision enforcement 2017, new york is on track to see fewer than 300 murders, 275 from our projections. it have the lowest number of homicides. 8.5 million now with millions of tourists, it will go to the 275 figure. for the first time in over 50 years fewer than 100,000 reported high index crimes. chicago this year unfortunately

has had more than 500 already, about 30% of new york city's population. if new york had baltimore's current rate, we would have nearly 3500 murders at this time. instead, fewer than 300. think about that in terms of that large american city, l.a., the second largest city with fewer police resources, both continuing the trend that has gone on for 20 some odd years, a steady crime decline. a prediction for you in this room. i am a resident of new york city. crime will not go back up in new york city. it may spike from time to time, but they have found a way to effectively prevent it, control it, and deal with it. look at the pictures of murders and shootings over time and compare with the activities we measure. we have had better outcomes with less enforcement. that is the truth.

like the so-called fake news that has come to dominate public debate in this post-truth era in america, there are three falsehoods that have taken root in discourse, promoted by different parties. in some ways they are mutually exclusive, but they are entrenched. there is a saying a lie can go around the world. while the truth is putting its pants on. that has happened here in those three falsehoods are the result. the first is the falsehood of academics, the police do not control crime. no one can know why crime rises and falls. boston in going to 1995 as police -- of new york to talk about comstat. the complaint was in boston that in new york we did everywhere at the same time. why do we not do it in half the city so they could study and have evidence-based

understanding of what happened. that would've been fine for the hundreds of lives saved in manhattan, but the people in brooklyn right have objected to that, that for experimental purposes we did not save lives. the academics figured it out and i think god figured it out. new york city is the living example. going forward we will have evidenced-based policing in that city, so everybody trying to figure out how does it go down for 27 straight years, you have the answer. i think i know and i was happy to play the part in that reduction and continuing reduction and the prediction that it will not go up in new york city ever to the levels we saw on the past. everyone who has lived in new york has seen the change from the 1990's. why? comstat. seven police commissioners and for mayors over 27 years, crime has gone down every year. mayors of totally different

ideology, very different police chiefs, but they were all working with comstat, with the belief that something could be done about crime. now, you have seen in the handout that the nypd over the past four years, mayor deblasio was elected, there were productions in "the new york s that armageddon was coming to the door. armageddon did not arrive. rather, four more years of street crime decline. the idea being that with progressive, liberal, conservative, if you have the right medicines, you can have the right results. it is a demonstrable decline despite the fact that academics said crime could not go lower and claimed that the degree of increase would be tolerable if it meant less intrusive tactics. imagine that. i think you can have less intrusive tactics and crime reduction.

while precision policing proved them wrong and will continue to, the nexus of falsehood from the left that police bias is pervasive. this is false, totally false. i have been in this profession for 27 years. i look at it as an outsider. bias exists. that is a reality. but it is not a professional issue. it is an issue of individuals, individual police officers. some instances unfortunate, may be some police departments but , to paint with a broad brush -- the fine-tuning of an artist's brush is what is needed. the damage that is being created among the american police forces in terms of morale, the damage of the potential building of relationships among the public and neighborhoods that need us most, that broad brush indication that american policing is fundamentally racially biased is wrong,

false, incorrect. and i do not i believe i make a mistake in making that statement. i fully acknowledge that the profession has miles to go in the pursuit of racial equality, and i reject the idea any further to go in society at large. in fact i think we are farther , along than our society at large. we need to do a better job of seeing each other, not looking past each other. i use that expression based on a comment from sweet alice, a black activist, who came from a sharecropping farm in mississippi or alabama in the 1950's and 1960's. we spent time in los angeles, myself, the wife, lapd, working on developing police-community relationships. yesterday david kennedy and i talked about these successes in the lapd model dealing with issues in watts. and housing developments with the worst crime areas. we spent time on the issue of building race relations. as we were leaving to go back to

new york, "l.a. times" editorialized finally a corner has been turned on race relations in los angeles. sweet alice says and that delightful southern accident "chief, you know why we like you , so much? i said, no, sweetheart, why is ucs. you really cs." those words -- "you see us" -- we all need to see each other, and if we make false claims, if we paint with a broad brush, we will never be able to see each other. and i will say to you that american policing in this -- by sohat is still much tension as a result of our history, policing is going to be in a position to light the way,

because we are on the front lines of the issue every day. and with regard to the racial diversity of the nypd, with regard to rates of representation, i will stack that department and many others american police departments against any government, against any corporate office or ivy league campus, and i like my odds that the nypd is more diverse. we reflect our city. 83% white, 40% latino. 18% black. 20% women. i think we now have three transsexual individuals who went through operations who have faced no discrimination. we have over a thousand muslim officers with that minority majority city of almost 700,000 muslims. 40% of the population in new york is foreign born. 60% of the population was not there in the 1990's in the bad old days. all of this reflects what we are

advocating for, departments that reflect the communities they serve. all of this builds into the success that new york has been experiencing. many of the newspapers could benefit -- if you ask me. as i have emphasized the great shadow of race, an enduring challenge, particularly for the police, but neither can we assume that disparities are proof of bias when they're tied to disparities in crime rates. there is an inconvenient truth that disproportionate impact reflects the reality of the cause. you would not expect a doctor or physician to apply chemo or radiation out of proportion to the cancer he is treating. it would be medical mout malpractice. or deny treatment that is

essential. why is that expected in the 21st century of american police? why is it advocated? what has become the mantra? evidence-based policing is not biased policing. cops go where the calls are. and in america for our minority residents, particularly african-americans and poor, that is where the crime is, that is worthy disorder is, and that is where american police are, not driven by racial bias. the challenge for us is to ensure while we are there we see each other. finally, there's the falsehood of the right which say only heavy-handed tactics control crime. this is false. it may be the most harmful falsehood of all. the new york experience has worked better than zero-tolerance ever did. it is proof that focusing on behavior works and bias has no place in that equation. even though it still occurs, unfortunately. i know the disparities that demonstrate bias are not the whole picture. disparities in enforcement have

also been taken as disparate impact, but were never contemplated as proof of disparate haber. that can be questioned by one thing, gender. no one says there's as many -- as men or the objection the fact that women make only 27% of arrests. in violent crime, 80% of men who are -- 80% of people arrested our men. is it bias against them, or is behavior the issue? men tend to be more violent than women. more than 95% of murders are perpetrated by minorities, more than 95% of the victims are minorities also. that is a fact. that is not fake news. these imbalances remain even downh the nypd drives murders to never before seen lows. disparities are not the policing issues. it is about paper. some say i told you. they are wrong. the reinforcement disparity

israel, the violence disparity disparityt so is the between the part in the whole. in new york we are taking 800 shooters out of a nearly 4 1/2 million population of color, a significant part of the shooting violence remains in new york. we had an expression in l.a. when i was there, 10% of the victims account for 50% of the victimization. 10% of locations account for 50% of the calls of service. and 10% of the victims account for 50% of the criminal behavior. that is effectively what is at work. all populations could be dealt with precision so we don't end up acting on areas with excessive policing. behavior and bias are both real. good news is we can control both.

they partnership with the community, now being led by police commissioner, we could have cops do what they do best, keep people safe here we could have a profession that recognizes that inequality and terrible history makes whites in this country 68 times wealthier than blacks. we can use precision policing to focus on the impact players and push violence into neighborhoods while using neighborhood policing to address the vast majority of the other people who are law abiding. we can and we are and we are -- it is working. i use new york as the example. los angeles to a similar extent. you have the crime numbers. we have other numbers, too, and numbers show that overall nypd rating and trust rating is at a 66% approval level. the president would like to have those levels. i think he is at 32% currently.

so would congress. their latest is 19%. the media, 9%. i will take the cop numbers. i like them better. recent new york p.d. polling may now have developed the most developed polling that can be done at any time. polling shows that 65% of blacks and 71% of hispanics agreed that based on their personal experience, most officers in their neighborhoods treat them and those they know with respect." falling crime. in 2017 we had an emerging template, just as we did in 1994 with comstat as the attorney general referenced, there is much more to do. we cannot rest on our laurels. we can never forget that the consent of the government is earned, but there is a template. that template does not emphasize indiscriminate enforcement. it does hinge on target

enforcement of criminal behavior no matter who commits it. even libertarian think tanks report that immigrants do not commit more crime, but they are less likely to be incarcerated. in fact they are far more likely , to be victims than perpetrators, and pushing them into the shadows makes it worse. we need to know where the crime is. we need to know who the victims are. if we have policies and procedures that discovers them working with us then we are truly not seeing each other. if you frighten people into choosing not to report crime, it doesn't mean that crime is not happening. -- is andof crime and always has been people. the template does not have to emphasize harsh sentencing. it is discriminating the not discriminatory. it is precise, not prejudiced.

the opportunity, the obligation to address these issues in this way has been knocking on the door for three years in new york and the nation since the protests of the winter of 2014. protests across the country, ferguson, the first in effect, and in my city, the murder of two police officers sitting in their car still remains the subject of incredible controversy. a combination of tools that policing havesion been building longer, it is not the combination of nearly half a century in the business for me, but the continuing evolution of the police profession, with occasional revolutions thankfully, such as community policing in the when opportunity 1990's. knocks, should we not answer the door? opportunity is banging on the door with a battering ram. let's open it. policing is not a government program, it is a moral covenant. it is keeping people safe. it is the underpinning an essential element of our

democracy. our profession has a once-in-a-lifetime chance to change its legacy. to shape its future. it has a chance to confound expectations to move past demagoguery and save lives. which is always our mission. it is the chance to make our country safe to make our country , safe and fair everywhere for everyone. it is after all what we do in policing, to try to make it safe and fair for everyone. thank you for your attention. thank you for this opportunity. [applause] mr. meese: thank you very much. as we leave the stage, we will have a panel coming up that will discuss these comments and add to them. so if you will just remain in your seats, the panel will come up and we will take our leave. we can sit right down here.

mr. malcolm: thank you, ed. malcolm. i have the privilege of being the director of the edwin meese center for legal and judicial hotties. these are buried difficult times for police officers. there have been spikes of crime in a number of cities over the last couple of years, attacks -- police fatalities are up, and ambushes on police officers are up. there's a tremendous amount of social unrest. we have now terms we did not have before such as the ferguson effect. there is unrest in chicago, baltimore, dallas, and in st. louis, and there is an increasing number of consent decrees to which police officers are subjected. although, as commissioner

bratton noted, it is not all gloom and doom. there are major areas in this country where crime is down. there have been a lot of innovations that have increased or improved policing techniques, and in many communities, the relationship between those communities and police officers is good and improving. when there was a change in administration and a new tone coming out of the sessions justice department, that existed under the holder and lynch justice department, general meese and i decided that the time to bring together some major thought leaders in the police force is to talk about the challenges they are facing, what is working, what is not working, and how there might be changes with this administration that might affect the course of policing. so we had an off-the-record, frank day, quite convocation of leaders, three of whom are on the stage with me today. i will introduce them. they happen to be seated in the

order in which they will speak. they will give brief or marks and if time permitting, and i will ask bill if you can come up on the stage and we will open it up for questions. our first speaker is going to be perry tarrant, from seattle. he is the official chief in operationshe special bureau in seattle. he is an officer with 34 years of work, most of the time in tucson. in 2014, he was appointed to an intervention program in yakima. as city's emergency preparedness director. he has a master's degree from northern arizona university and a bachelor's degree from the university of arizona. he also is the current president of noble, the national organization of black law enforcement executives. next we will hear from garry

mccarthy is the president and m strategies. he was the former superintendent of the police department in chicago, the second largest in the nation. under his leadership, chicago saw four straight years of reduction in overall crime rates, the fewest violent crime incidents since the 1960's, and a reduction in complaints against the police. prior to that he served as the police director for newark, new jersey, from 2006 to 2011, where we also saw crime reductions and reductions in complaints against police in that city. before that he started in the , new york city police department where he rose steadily through the ranks, serving as deputy commissioner of operations where he was involved in planning, coordinating, and directing the response to the world trade

center attacks and its aftermath. garry attended the police management institute at columbia university. as well as the graduate program in marist college in new york and he has a bachelor's degree from suny in albany. finally, we will hear from james stewart, also known as chips. he is the director of public safety and senior director of law enforcement at cna corporation. he is a senior advisor to the department of justice's smart policing initiative, which provides technical assistance and training to 35 law enforcement agencies, all the way from baltimore to los angeles. prior to joining cna, chips served in the oakland police division, and is also a white house fellow.

and a special assistant to the attorney general. from 1982 to 1990, he was the longest-serving director in history of the national institute of justice. chips holds a master's in public administration from california from university, a ba university of oregon. he also earned a graduate certificate in police organizational management at the fbi's academy in quantico. with that, perry, let me turn it over to you. mr. tarrant: good morning. i am now the past president of noble. my term expired last month. but let me just tell you a little bit about noble. noble is the national organization of black law enforcement executives, founded to look at crime in urban communities, particularly how crime was not only taking place, but also looking at how

enforcement was taking place within those communities. generalo thank attorney meese for the opportunity to be part of this discussion. it was an honor to be invited. to say the least a frank conversation. made othersure i folks uncomfortable during that conversation. the product that came out of that is certainly reflective of -- overwhelming sentiment let me begin by saying history is important. i would like to use a sports analogy here, because we are currently in football season. i will to you that -- that -- sports

teams and individual athletes normally review prior aim fills -- prior game films the m.v.p.'s not only look at collective performance, but are critical of their own individual performance toward self-improvement and raising the bar for the team.

the history of the m.v.p. -- who his parents were, where he came from, are not important to the spectator, but what is important about his performance and his history is the predictor of his performance going forward. you heard from chief bratton of the nine principles of policing. i grew up quite a bit outside of the u.s., and law enforcement was not called law enforcement. it was called police service. coming into the u.s. and learning the transition to law enforcement, it was a bit of a dichotomy. you heard chief bratton talk about the pendulum swing. there was a focus on service. the pendulum swung in the other direction when the system was largely on enforcement. but i will continue with analogies and talk about high-performance teams. when you start looking at organizations like the air force thunderbirds or the navy's blue angels, you have individual pilots that are flying at superquick speeds, doing some amazing things with aircraft, and every one of those pilots has a unique responsibility to perform at his best. having had the opportunity to watch a debrief of a performance, every one of those

pilots didn't talk about what the other person did wrong. they talked about the shortcomings of their performance and they all promise d to do better the next time they went out and flew. policing is no different. poor performance by one officer is reflective and reflects poorly on every officer performing in this industry. i would suggest to you that it goes far beyond that. when we start talking about and we talk about the history of our country, we have to talk about not just specifically policing, but talk specifically about laws formulated within this country. we have asked the police to do some pretty amazing things over the years, starting with the enforcement of segregation. the enforcement of anti-semitic

immigration, to round folks up for japanese internment camps, and also to enforce housing laws. that was the advent of the paddy wagon. as chief bratton mentioned earlier, contact with the police is the first contact most people have with government. to quote a previous mayor that i worked for, the call to 911 no -- occurs when every other system has failed. within that capacity, in order to move forward and have a conversation about moving forward, we have to acknowledge that history exists and that we're going to do better. wesley, massachusetts, chief terry cunningham retired now -- acknowledged that law

enforcement played a role in systems that disproportionately impacted particular populations. let's not overlook the locations of misconduct of law enforcement and the impact it has had on the legitimacy of policing. speaking at georgetown university former fbi director comey acknowledged the disparity and treatment, specifically identified the lack of evidence -- lack of substance in the search warrant affidavit to tap the phones of dr. martin luther king. the summit that was held earlier this year at the heritage foundation focused on advancing policing. as you can imagine, just bringing that many different perspectives into a fairly large

room, there was a considerable amount of, i would say, back and forth, but i appreciate the frankness of the conversation. the bottom line is -- i would defer to the statements made by chief bratton -- community relationships are paramount in determining police legitimacy. relationships and legitimacy are necessary for effective policing. in fact, it was the first topical area listed in president obama's point first century policing task force's final report. the group that was assembled here at heritage did a phenomenal job. more importantly, we acknowledged the phenomenal job that is done by law enforcement each and every day, but we do a very poor job of telling the

stories of the accomplishments on a daily basis of those cops as they go out and do their jobs. i liked the comment made by chief bratton in terms of the bad news and the false reports speed -- i'mreat sorry -- travel around the world while good deeds and the truth are still putting their pants on. part of our discussion was about data collection. data unless it is placed into context.

law-enforcement has been collecting data on traffic arrests and things of that nature. it is one-dimensional. more agencies are taking on the expense of doing quality control surveys to find out how their relationship is going with their communities. working comingre in at about 71%. about data collection relates to reducing crime and crime reduction. collecting data is absolutely important when comes to precision importance. we know the threw things must intersect for a crime to occur. you have to have an available and a motivated

suspect. -- which then allows us to place our resources in a focused manner on impacting and reducing crime. the fourth factor is the community in the community must be engaged in that effort. i've used data collection to or view theirs likelihood of becoming victims. we have used data to redesign and determine where we need to put resources. who are highknow impact offenders are and can collecting -- collecting data on then on how they execute crimes

makes us more effective at doing that. a precinct commander in an area that had a high commander in the area that had a high homicide rate, we took a very analytical and methodical approach on how to reduce crime. the first thing we looked at were the folks -- we looked at a lot of our historical data -- postings i talked about, the citations we were collecting -- we looked at who was being arrested in those areas. we took that data, went to the neighborhood, went to the businesses, and said we were taking on this initiative to reduce crime in that area. we learned something from them -- some things from them from just having that conversation. we then turned around and went to the community almost door to , door, and had similar conversations, and shared the data that we collect it. and what we learned was not just -- that we selected. -- that we collected. and what we learned was not just the concern for the violent crime, but more important to them than the violent crime were

the issues around quality of life. quality of life, overwhelmingly, was the conversation. we involved them in the strategy that we built out as it related to our response, and then we responded.

we took that particular area to zero homicides for the entire summer based on the data-driven efforts that were initiated. i will close out here shortly by saying it was an honor to produce a patent in that conversation here at heritage. there were a lot of folks that walked away from that conversation initially scratching their head, but i will have to comment mr. malcolm for continuing that conversation, and that back-and-forth, and more importantly, for generating the document that you now have in front of you. thank you. [applause] mr. mccarthy: good afternoon. willmr. mccarthy: good afternoon. i am garry mccarthy. i have to tell you, i am always fascinating listening to bill bratton speak. i have known since 1994. worked for him at the nypd. today i learned something -- i finally beat you at something, bill -- i made sergeant at 26. [applause] mr. mccarthy: that is the one thing i got. that is all i got, guys. general meese, i want to thank you. i put a paper talking about "systemic racism." i have been -- i had a problem in what has happened especially the less administration with the department of justice. i dealt with it in newark, new

jersey. i did not deal with it in chicago because i was never invited to the conversation when they put together the report. i think if you're going to investigate the policies and practices of the police department, you should probably start with the individual who implemented the policies and practices of that police department. i found it incredibly troubling when loretta lynch was in chicago releasing that report and got up in front of a national and international news audience and said -- somebody asked her how come you didn't interview garry mccarthy, and she said they attempted to get in touch with me but were unable to do that. i responded with all the resources of the federal investigative services you could not find me in river north chicago?

i had a big problem with the way things played out and i think politics played way too much of a role in what was happening. that is, kind of, the summation of my paper. both bill and perry framed some of the issues that i am going to mention. they came up in our conversations in march, and they will continue to come up. simply stated, in my mind, the single most challenging issue to policing is what happened in the all policing is what happened in the last administration in that data-driven policing, as bill talked about, is now considered systemic racism. we have to put that genie back in the bottle eventually, because we really can't do our jobs without doing it, without having systemic -- without having data-driven policing. we put resources into where and when crime happens in looking into who is going to commit crime to prevent the next crime.

that is developed into data-driven policing, which is now precise policing, which is getting better and better. it is no secret that those neighborhoods where the disenfranchised communities exist across this country in our urban senators -- centers is generally minority. depending on what part of the country, in many cases, mostly african-american, and those communities suffer through a number of issues. whether it is poverty, breakup of the family unit, lack of education, poor resources, no optimism, poor health care, led in the water -- this all sounds familiar, right, folks? granted narcotics, rapid crime, rented alcohol abuse -- this create something -- granted narcotics, rented crime, rampant alcohol abuse -- the law and agents of its enforcement are in which the law and the agents

of its enforcement are viewed as illegitimate and ill-equipped to ensure public safety. think about that, the law is illegitimate. and it is not talking about the police. it is an indictment of the entire system of government that is not providing what those communities need. look at flint, michigan. look at what happened there. so, in my mind, what we're looking at now is legal cynicism on steroids, and as perry and bill rightly point out, the most that they'llnt of do system are the police. we are in people's living rooms. we are on the street with them. we are the point of the sphere for the government. you don't see the state attorneys on the street. you don't see u.s. attorneys on the street. you don't see elected officials

on the street, unless they are campaigning, of course, unless there is an anti-police march these days. but the problem is the political reaction to questionable incidents. and by the way, questionable incidents do occur, whether it is baltimore, maryland, whether it is ferguson -- questionable incidents do occur. the problem is, the political reaction to those events is making things worse. we had misdiagnosed the problem. the problem in the country is not the police. the problem in the country is a social and economic divide that puts people in those communities in the positions they are in. so, in essence, we are taking the wrong medicine for what ails us. that is what i believe. the simplest way to describe it. and the result is what we are doing -- and chicago is the worst example of it -- we are

criminals while hamstringing police at the same time. now, chicago, talk about a misdiagnosed problem. during -- well, not during my tenure, but chicago, in 2015, less than half of 1% of the shootings in the city of chicago were police-related shootings. less than half of 1%. so what does that mean? , that means if there wasn't one of those 19 police-related shootings that existed in 2015, there still would have been 4300 shot in chicago in 2015. the police are not the problem. the political reaction to laquan mcdonald has resulted in a huge increase in the primary because of the landscape created in places like chicago.

there is a lot of accountability in this. that is alwaysd used when it comes to police. the accountability goes to elected officials. it goes to community leaders. but, in my mind, the worst offender over the last eight years was the department of justice. the department of justice, by saying that -- saying that we are engaging in systemic racism and pointing to investigations, which by the way i believe they did 25 investigations during the timeframe of the obama administration. each one of them came to the same conclusion -- they are methodologically flawed as far as investigative. i think the conclusions were predetermined, and if you watch the methods they use, they go to a city, take testimonials, and then they say "aha." the problem is they draw the

same conclusion almost exclusively that the departments they investigate are engaging in systemic racism. we all know about terry stops, the "stop and frisk" issue we faced in new york and across the country. the department of justice has changed the supreme court decision with their findings. terry stops comes from the case of terry versus ohio. and it says you can stop someone based on reasonable, particularly suspicion. in their findings now, the department of justice consulate comes up with the phrase that we are disproportionately stopping someone. in investigation of the puerto rican police, they said puerto rican police were using excessive force against dominican individuals.

primarily you hear it all the time that we are disproportionately stopping african-americans. the reason they come up with this is because they compare population demographics to the stop data. in the city of chicago, if we went before the supreme court and we said we were using population demographics as a basis to stop people, i believe that the supreme court would say it is unconstitutional based upon reasonable, articulable suspicion. we did a two-year analysis of crime in chicago, who, when, and where crime was occurring -- there are a couple of charts attached to my paper in your books -- but 32% of the population of chicago is african-american, yet citywide, 70% of our stops for a two-year period were african-american. 2013 and 2014. problem is, 72% of the offenders

were described as male blacks. in a city that has an out-of-control crime rate in the neighborhood of englewood, which is 97% african-american, we are expected to stop 32% caucasian individuals. first of all, it is impossible because they are not there, but second of all what impact would that have on the crime in englewood? don't the individuals who live there deserve to live in safety? the bottom line is stop data in chicago closely mimics crime data. the charts in your books show that. the only demographic that was stopped at a higher rate than the crime data for a two-year period in chicago were caucasians. everybody else matches up almost precisely across all of the boards you look at. for 2013 and 2014, what were the results that we had?

during the analysis that i gave you, we had 1965 murder rates in the city of chicago. we had a 40% reduction in overall crime. we made 20,000 less arrests. as bill pointed out, you don't arrest your way out of the problem. everybody loves to say it. i hate the phrase, but it is factual -- you don't arrest everybody. you arrest the right people. with 20,000 less arrests, we made 23% more gun arrest or -- chicago takes more guns off the street than any city in the country. three to one in los angeles, seven to one in new york city. at the same time, we had a 80% -- 50% reduction in complaints against our officers. so, it is not all bad, but shootings and murders have gone up 85% from those numbers we got them down to in 2013 and 2014,

and the almost 800 murders in chicago last year represent more than the 2245 when you look at per capita that bill mentioned in new york city, in 1990, the worst year we ever had. what are the fixes? the fixes are simple. there is no political solutions for practical problems. it starts with truth telling. perry mentioned how some of us felt uncomfortable in the room because everyone is uncomfortable talking about race. putting body cameras on is not going to reverse 300 years of racist laws enforced by the white police officer. and every one of our interactions is viewed through the prism of history. we have to have some truth-telling. we have to talk about our history as a nation. it is going to make a very uncomfortable, that the first step towards redemption is recognition. with the recognized the

-- we have to recognize the problems, what we did to ourselves, how we got ourselves in this position. you can't reestablish something that hasn't existed. i would love to hear when we are going to reestablish trust in the african-american community. but we have to recognize the social and economic troubles and actually address them, not put band-aids on a gunshot wound. the last thing we need to do is establish the constitutionality of data-driven policing in a public forum because we cannot do our job without the understanding and clarification that we do not engage in systemic racism by addressing crime patterns. it is called intelligent policing. this misapplied characterization represents the greatest danger to modern policing. we cannot establish the trust that we never had. present-day chicago is the most glaring example of that today. thank you. [applause]

>> thanks, perry, and garry as well. and thank you bill bratton for your continuing service. thank you to the heritage foundation for sponsoring this form and bringing this attention to the most serious of all kinds of problems we're facing in our communities. both bill and general meese talked about the executive sessions, and to some extent, heritage is continuing that kind of dialogue with having as multipleheard today voices coming together to discuss what they consider to be the most urgent problems. i think that is commendable in i am glad to see my friend kevin davis here from baltimore. duane crawford is here from noble.

chuck wexler from perf. vince is here from the iscp and we are grateful to have tom from the montgomery police department, and also the major city chiefs. we are really fortunate to have that kind of attention in this community support coming together to hear from the heritage foundation who was sponsoring this event. i think it is very important. let me say there are a couple of papers in here that i have had the chance to share some views and one thing i want to talk about is the idea of crime without consequences. that turns out to be a tale of two cities, and i'm not talking angeles, york and los i'm talking about within the same cities. protect life,to property, maintain peace and

that becomes elusive, because of violent crime rates have risen in many major cities. in the end of 2016 13 cities including houston, philadelphia, san antonio, and a lot of others have experienced increases in violent crime. chicago, as garry talked about just reported it is 500 already this year. 800 was not spoken about is carjackings so far this year. it is not happening in the entire city, it is happening in certain neighborhoods. even in charlotte, north ofolina, we have had a spike 13% involving drug homicides. more troubling than that, and this is something that hasn't been talked about, is that police are solving far fewer homicides that we have in the past. "philadelphia inquirer" concluded in 2017 "people are getting away with murder."

the homicide clearance average rate in large cities has been in steep decline for the last 60 years, from around 90% when ed meese was assistant attorney in oakland, and i was a police , 90% down to less than 60% in the 1960's that are currently happening now. the impact of falling climates can be seen by a quick calculation. if you do the back of the envelope kind of calculation there have been 211,000 , homicides that have not been solved in that period of time -- those are people that a, have not been held accountable, and b, may have gone out to kill again. the clearance rate for homicides are in the single digits and suspects might never be arrested. a murder for violent crime

generates growing attention across the country. shortfalls in criminal justice ' ability to hold offenders responsible demand a greater priority and attention, but there is a situation that is occurring that also, it is not just on the police. the police in many large cities are struggling not only with a higher volumes of serious and violent crime, but also with communities that have increasing lower levels of trust and cooperativeness with the police. former dallas police chief david brown says community anger at the police have left criminals emboldened to commit violent crime and resist or attack the police. the police and their communities are at risk and need help in reversing these disturbing trends. with low clearance rates in the select neighborhoods, individuals who commit murder and other violent crimes have an overwhelming probability of

never being held accountable. in some communities, witnesses are afraid to help the police because they believe a, nothing will happen to the perpetrator, and b, they will be targeted for reprisals as snitches. and even with sophisticated new forensic dnalike developed here at the federal government, facial recognition cameras, gunshot detection, integrated data systems and in-car computers, often missing are the updated investigatory techniques, effective street intelligence and cooperative community providing information, including services, witnesses, and participating in criminal trials. the police in real assistance to address these challenges with practices that are evidence-based and practical for the officer in the field. body-worn cameras are one example of a practical technology that is being adopted

by the police department that is being lauded and praised by stakeholders in the community, advocates for better policing and training, and embraced by police unions as a way to quickly exonerate police officers where their behavior has been correct, and according to policy, holding officers, in the rare cases, where they show they violated the training they have received, available for some kind of sanctions and improvement in their behavior. that has been a game changer, because no longer do you spend six months trying to figure out who was responsible and end up saying we can't tell because "he said, she said." wornis way, with body cameras, within a few hours, you get a result and a result that ends up with a definitive answer in terms of whether police conduct was correct or in

violation of policy. let me just say that the interesting thing about police cameras is that many people speculated that people wearing bey worn cameras would de-policing. they found out there was about a 15% increase in self-initiated activities in pedestrian and vehicle stops by police officers wearing body-worn cameras. this is a random assignment with more than 400 officers involved, and the evidence is pretty phenomenal in terms of being remarkable. well, what are these kinds of circumstances that we are facing? both the issuance of racial hostility that we are hearing, the distrust of police, and the low clearance rates. i proposed a series of things

for the trump administration. one has to do with reducing violent crimes and other serious crimes. the first thing i would like to say is they ought to expand existing programs that provide analytical and technical support to local police agencies to combat crime and murder. and what i'm suggesting by that is they need to increase the kind of work that is going on right now and the public safety partnerships in 15 different locations, and the smart policing that was developed and is now working in over 45 jurisdictions and has demonstrated crime reductions and important lessons learned through innovative approaches and quasiexperimental designs. for example, the smart policing pairs an analyst with a police department and a research partner to work together as partners in not only identifying

the problem, but solving it. so, you don't get a researcher that then says i got you, issues a report, and walks away, but someone that works in partnership with the police that are actually responsible for helping solve that problem. l.a. police, in the department -- bill's former department and he was there -- they piloted new strategies, and your favorite district -- they reorganize that by using an analyst and two detectives, they zeroed in on hotspots and were able to reduce commercial burglaries by 20%. and the project proved so beckssful that charles is now beginning to migrate that through every district in the lapd. in the boston police department they leveraged the grants to reduce homicides and they now have a reduction of 15% in the number of homicides, and an increase in the clearance rates by 35%.

there are things that can be done, but police do need some help. it is not that you just say let's get a new chief. there has to be a comprehensive way to make a difference. in richmond, california, with technical assistance, they move from 38% solution of homicide to 66%, and in oakland, a low of 57% to 74% after this kind of federal assistance that works together. i also think providing best practices for real-time crime centers -- that is something that has been done by bill bratton and many others to be able to be sure that they are identifying areas where crime needs to be prevented and move in much more effective ways. i would just like to say another idea is to work more closely with these task forces, and i would suggest that you look at

the new jersey/new york one that executiven with the district attorney. they are doing a great job with the police and helping them. but there is much more that can be done in committee partnerships and i would suggest they look at things like weed and seed, project safe neighborhood, things that were engaged by the clinton administration, the bush administration, and abandoned by the obama administration that needs to be recast for modern days. you know, today. this is an opportunity for the trump administration to begin to make a difference and use the research money and technical assistance money to actually address things that are relevant to the local police, because that is where the measure has to come from. it should not come from washington, and the police have to conform, but it should respond and work with as

partners with the local police. with that, i would like to close, turn it over to john malcolm, and seed my time to the audience for questions. how is that? mr. malcolm: i should have known -- [applause] mr. malcolm: thank you. that we were probably going to run a little long. bill, that clock is five minutes fast. if i could ask to join us -- i know you have a hard stop -- you have to go? ok. come up for one question. we will let you speak first. i just want people to have an opportunity to ask you something. i will not take moderator's prerogative. i will just turn this right over to questions. bill will stay for one question, speak first and duck out. and then we will talk for max 10 minutes, and leave it at that. do you have a microphone? >> i would like a comment from

bill bratton on the militarization of police departments and the equipment coming from military, and the impact of that on community perceptions. mr. bratton: i will be brief. the militarization as it is called may be somewhat of an overdramatic term. the reality of policing was the violence police were dealing with required that please leaders and others to deal with experiencinge starting in the 1970's with bulletproof the s -- bulletproof vests, improved training in new york city during my time, every one of those police cars in new york city are equipped with ballistic doors, windows. in the trunk of every police car, ballistic helmets and heavy-duty vests. as officers respond to concerns

of either terrorism, active shooters -- this week alone we have seen three incidents of schools, active shooters. we have a response to give appropriate equipment, training, and supervision. i think one of the ferguson the inappropriate appearance and potential use of some equivalent that had been -- of some of equipment that had been given to police personnel, but some of the reality of what we might potentially face -- we have an obligation to our officers, and the application is to ensure that what we acquire or might be given by the military is, in fact, probably used inappropriate circumstances. that is part of the challenge. the reality is there was a direct reference to the ambushing of police, the increasing murders of police over the past year or so. that is the reality that we face and we have an obligation if we are going to ask to go in harm's way. active shooters, we used to tell them wait outside -- columbine.

now they go right through the door and we have that obligation to save their lives as they try to go through the door to save other lives. >> i am going to apologize. i went over on my prepared remarks. i do have to apologize. i have a plane i have to catch. thank you so much for your attention today, and thank you to the heritage foundation and certainly general, to you, for the opportunity to -- although i am no longer in the business, i still live in this country, i still live in the city, and i'm still concerned. thank you so much. [applause] mr. malcolm: let me ask you guys if there was anything you wanted to say with the ending of the -- and now itthe is coming back. anything you want to say about the so-called militarization of the police? mr. mccarthy: i think it is another example of throwing out the baby with the bathwater and it is a political overreaction. i can tell you at the time i was

the vice president of the major city chiefs association when ferguson went on, and we were all aghast in policing. at least i'm speaking for myself, my polling, if you will call it that at the way those protests were handled. the police can turn a protest into a riot. you don't have bearcats on the front line of a protest. you don't have people with rifles pointing into a crowd saying they are using the telescope as binoculars. idea get a set of , binoculars, right? you throw out the baby with the bathwater. in chicago, we had an incident when i was there where there was an active gun battle that went on for about 45 minutes, and we used our bearcats to extricate 30 civilians and 10 light-

vested officers. that is how you use it. picture of one individual police officer spurred this whole thing. and as bill rightly points out we have an obligation to not butly protect our officers, protect the public. we're not talking about 22 revolvers on the street. we're talking but ak-47s, and high velocity bullets. mr. malcolm: we have time for one more question. to weighrt: i wanted in just a little bit. we did a lot of work at the national institute of justice. one of the things i try to do is give police alternatives to the kind of ways to help arrest, suppress, or de-escalate incidents by working on chemical spray, working on what eventually became the taser, as giving some alternatives to police. i think the federal government can do a lot more than just to give us surplus military equipment. i think the federal government

needs to design equipment that is for the police task, and that is one of the things that has made an error. i think the police need to advocate more for their own darpa, their own research area. police, in a small budget develop the bullet-resistant vest that has saved thousands of lives that the military now uses. they developed things like the taser and other types of things that are very important, but police-specific. we haven't gotten enough of that type of support. there needs to be more of that, and that somehow is being frowned upon by lots of people, but the police really need it. they cannot rely on getting surplus tanks from somebody or flamethrowers, because that is not what we're going to use. on the other hand, garry is right that we will be confronted with active shooters.

we just had something happen in the navy yard, there was this baseball thing that happened in alexandria, virginia. the alexandria people here. they did a fine job with that. the question is the police are getting better with what they do thanks to getting more scrutiny and more resources. let me just say the police cannot figure this out on their own, they have to have some help. thank you. go ahead. mr. malcolm: i did point out -- down to scott erickson. i'm not going to take it back. a quick question and a quick answer. scott: thank you, john, and general meese for doing this. i spent 19 years in law enforcement. the ferguson effect is one of the most lamentable things i saw take place over the last few years of my career, and while i think we can all come up with ideas on how local officials could motivate officers to go back out and be proactive, i'm wondering what your thoughts are on with the federal government can do to help motivate state in -- state and local law

enforcement officers at the line level to actually get out there and be more proactive. we talked about the depolymerization of the doj. the obama administration was not good for law enforcement in my opinion. but i'm wondering what your thoughts are. mccarthy: i agree with the last statement you made. seriously. i had the opportunity to meet with the president on many occasions. i found him engaging and he listened to us. we sat with him on a number of occasions. he heard us, but the application of whatever happened after that i cannot explain. i think the federal government -- police officers need to know that they have support, and the political landscape in this country has changed dramatically over the last few years in places like baltimore, chicago -- various places across the country. and in everything we do -- the recommendation that i have, as far as acknowledging our

history, looking at the social economic issue, not necessarily blaming the police for everything, is something that is -- that needs to happen at all levels of government. unfortunately, we see a lot of government inaction, especially here in washington these days, and i don't know if it is ever going to happen, but on the lower levels, i think it is easier to probably push that through. mr. stewart: i think one of the things with the ferguson effect that you are talking about is the ubiquity of cell phones. the fact is there are snippets of cell phone footage that shows something that looks awful that might be lawful, and it gets repeated. and it seems like it is happening next door. it might be happening three time zones away, but the problem is locally you get that. the other thing that has slowed down -- the police themselves have been slow to get a narrative out about what happened. because well -- garry and i will

disagree about that, but i tell you the district attorney will call him. mr. mccarthy: have you ever met the chicago press? mr. stewart: actually, i did. i spent some time with their editorial boards. but the police, when they hold off on getting information out on a shooting or a controversy -- a controversial incident and they wait for six months or nine months, another narrative is picked up and is based on what perry talked about -- this generational history of abuse by police enforcing laws that have been jim crow and other situations that have occurred -- housing discrimination laws, and by waiting for the courts or somebody else to tell the narrative, it is told over dinner tables, over bars, and in barbecues every day, how the police have abused it, and how they are cooking up another story. so that in order to help with that there is something we can

do collectively to get that information out. and quite frankly, body worn cameras have stimulated that. mr. tarrant: the bottom line is all policing is local. whatever the dictate is, the responsibility to address crime occurs locally. the motivation of the personnel at the local level belongs to that chief or that sheriff. mr. malcolm: thank you all for being here at heritage today, and please join me in thanking our speakers. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2017] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org]

>> here's a look at our prime time schedule. starting at 8:00 p.m. used during, a look at two senate health care proposals, one sponsored by loan