Excerpts from President Barack Obama’s Oct. 27 remarks to the International Association of Chiefs of Police:
This country is safer because of your efforts. Look at the statistics. Over the last 20 years, police have helped cut the violent crime rate and the homicide rate in America by almost half. It’s an astonishing statistic. Today, Americans are nearly half as likely to be the victim of an aggravated assault, and less than half as likely to be the victim of a robbery. And even lesser known are the countless acts of kindness and support, helpfulness that your officers perform in your respective communities each and every day.
So I want to be as clear as I can be. I reject any narrative that seeks to divide police and communities that they serve. I reject a storyline that says when it comes to public safety there’s an “us” and a “them” –- a narrative that too often gets served up to us by news stations seeking ratings, or tweets seeking retweets, or political candidates seeking some attention. Because your work and your service really has helped make America safer than it’s been in decades, and that’s something for which every American should be proud.
Now, that doesn’t mean that things are perfect. It doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t have a serious and robust debate over fairness in law enforcement, over our broader criminal justice system when it comes particularly to communities of color. And I know that there was an outstanding discussion with the NAACP. I’ve talked to enough chiefs and beat cops around the country to know you care about these issues; you want to do the right thing. And I know there are a few people — there are few people that are more invested in declining crime rates than minority communities that so often have historically been under-policed. They want more police presence in many of these communities, not less.
And that’s why I’m confident that in this debate people of good will can and should find common ground. And many of you have shown that there are actions — specific actions — we can take that will make a difference in moving us in that direction.
Now, first, we do need to get some facts established. So far, the data shows that overall violent crime rates across the nation appear to be nearly as low as they were last year and significantly lower than they were in previous decades.
It is true that in some cities, including here in my hometown of Chicago, gun violence and homicides have spiked -– and in some cases they’ve spiked significantly. But the fact is, is that so far at least across the nation, the data shows that we are still enjoying historically low rates of violent crime.
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