Wednesday, October 8, 2014
Thank you, President [Mayor Kevin] Johnson, for that kind
introduction – I’m very pleased to join you here today in my role as the Acting
Associate Attorney General. We have a
funny way in Washington of giving titles that are puzzling to people, but you
all are quite lucky because everyone knows what a mayor or a police chief
does! For those who don’t know, as the
Acting Associate, I am the third-ranking official at the department and I
oversee the department’s Community Oriented Police Services Office (COPS),
civil litigating divisions and other grant-making components, which
cumulatively address a broad array of issues, including federal and local law
enforcement, and public safety.
I’m relatively new to the position of Associate Attorney
General, but have been with the Department of Justice since 2009. But the key point is that the department is
not new to the issues that you face every day.
I’ve had the pleasure over these years to work not only with Attorney General
Holder, who we are very sad to see go, but also now to work with COPS Director
Ron Davis. I want to personally thank
Attorney General Holder for leading us at the department for the last six years
and for his exemplary leadership. I also
want to acknowledge Director Davis for his excellent and tireless work as
well. Both of them share a passion for
civil rights, as evidenced by their work in Ferguson and other places around
the country to ensure that law enforcement is engaging in constitutional
policing and always working to establish trust among the citizens they serve.
I also want to thank Mayor [Mark] Stodola for hosting us
here in Little Rock and being instrumental in making this celebration possible
today. I use the word “celebration”
because we truly need to celebrate the accomplishments of the COPS Office over
the last 20 years, some of which the Attorney General described earlier. Those accomplishments have had a direct
impact on this state and this community: in those two decades, the state of
Arkansas has received more than $127 million in COPS Office funding, with
nearly $23 million of that awarded since 2009.
I would like to further recognize the strong leadership role
the United States Conference of Mayors has demonstrated in the wake of the
events in Ferguson, Missouri. I think
the hallmark of great leadership was aptly expressed by former first lady
Rosalynn Carter who once said that, “A leader takes people where they want to
go. A great leader takes people where
they don’t necessarily want to go, but ought to be.” The powerful joint statement issued on August
15, 2014, by Mayors Johnson, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, Annise Parker, William
Bell, Michael Nutter and Francis Slay on behalf of this organization
exemplifies a commitment to standing for what is right even when it is not
easy. By pledging to work with member
mayors and police chiefs to “identify[y] policy recommendations to address the
root causes of the problems that contributed to the tragic events in Ferguson
and to identify actions that can be taken in our cities and by our federal
government to avoid catastrophic consequences in the future,” the Conference of
Mayors signaled that it is ready to take up the difficult task of ensuring that
our communities take the opportunity to grow through the response to tragedy,
rather than allowing tragedy to drag them backwards. We at the Department of Justice share that
commitment, and are eager to work with you to identify best practices in
policing and make them a reality.
Our commitment to supporting your efforts in your cities and
towns to improve the relationship between police forces and the communities
they serve is personified by Director Davis and his colleagues at the COPS
Office, who are dedicated to advancing public safety through community
policing. The Crime Bill was passed in
1994. At that time, people most often
thought of community policing as simply bike patrols or police athletic
leagues. In fact, community policing is
so much more than a program or line item in a budget – it’s a philosophy of how
a police department should do business.
Community policing should be woven into the fabric of how a
police department handles everything, from its recruitment to its response to
calls for service. Many agencies
represented here today know what it means to truly embrace community policing
and view it not as something merely measured by the number of officers on the
beat, but rather what officers are doing on that beat to improve the quality of
life of the citizens they serve and investigate the root causes of crime.
That’s why I’m so honored to be here with you today to mark
the 20th anniversary of the Crime Bill and acknowledge the amazing work that
has come from the COPS Office since its inception in 1994.
As Attorney General Holder mentioned earlier this morning,
the COPS Office brings much more to the table than just the hiring of
officers. It has an expansive portfolio
of training and technical assistance initiatives that benefit not just those
agencies that receive grants; the entire law enforcement field can take
advantage of those resources.
And the COPS program has helped to lead real change over the
past 20 years. When the COPS Office was
first established, the number of law enforcement agencies in the country
estimated to be practicing community policing numbered in the hundreds. By 1997, the self-reported number had swelled
to 9,000. And now, the vast majority of
police departments across the country trains their officers in and employs a
wide variety of community policing practices.
You’ve already heard much today about the widespread success of
community policing and the vast progress made by the law enforcement field in
embracing this philosophy.
But at this anniversary, in the face of such success, some
have posed the question – if community policing is no longer a new or groundbreaking
idea for law enforcement, and if it’s a well-established part of the daily
operations of most policing agencies, then what can communities around the
country gain from continuing to work with the COPS Office in this decade and
beyond?
And the answer is that, as far as the field has advanced in
this area, there’s still much work to be done in institutionalizing community
policing so that partnerships and collaboration and analytical problem-solving
aren’t just a set of specific programs within a law enforcement agency, but
rather guiding principles that define and run through everything the agency
does. Community policing represents a
proven and effective public service model well-suited for both the demands of
21st century public safety and the challenges facing American law enforcement.
And this is why the resources the COPS Office provides –
resources above and beyond just the grant dollars – are so vitally
important. Innovators are at work in law
enforcement agencies all across the country – ranging from using new
technologies to allow officers to be more effective at solving problems, to
increasing accountability and responsiveness to the community, to looking at
the power of non-traditional partnerships.
Over the course of these two days, you will hear about many
opportunities for partnerships and innovation and collaboration to flourish
within the area of community policing.
I’d like to take a few moments to focus on just one aspect: building
trust between law enforcement and the public and enhancing police-community
relations. The COPS Office has long been
at the forefront of such efforts, and as just one recent illustration of this
important work, this past April the COPS Office hosted a forum on
“Strengthening the Relationship between Law Enforcement and Communities of
Color” in New York City. The forum gave
local, state, and federal law enforcement, as well as community leaders and
other criminal justice stakeholders, the opportunity to identify ways law
enforcement can build trust in all of our communities. The event brought together police chiefs,
community activists, civil rights organizations, and civic leaders from across
the country to discuss effective strategies and what challenges these leaders
have faced, such as, the NYPD’s thoughtful response in re-evaluating its crime
prevention strategies in the face of concerns raised regarding its “stop and
frisk policies.” . The New York City Forum will be followed by a
publication highlighting the ways that law enforcement and community leaders
found to come together to strengthen the communities they serve.
And at that forum, my predecessor announced a major new
Department of Justice initiative aimed at enhancing public safety by
strengthening relationships between law enforcement and communities – $4.75
million committed to establish the National Initiative for Building Community
Trust and Justice. This initiative –
which will be jointly supported by the COPS Office and the Office of Justice
Programs, Civil Rights Division, Office on Violence Against Women and Community
Relations Service – will expand our base of knowledge about what works to
improve procedural fairness, reduce bias, and promote racial reconciliation in
the field of law enforcement. It will
help communities address the challenges arising from suspicion, distrust, and
lack of confidence in our law enforcement agencies.
This effort will encompass a broad range of areas in which
fairness and trust are implicated – from stops and searches to wrongful
convictions. A team of
cross-disciplinary experts will fuel the initiative by conducting research,
piloting and testing innovative ideas, developing models for rigorous
evaluation, and disseminating the latest research and best practices to the
field. And our U.S. Attorneys will lead
coordination efforts with five pilot sites that will implement and test
strategies focused on procedural justice, implicit bias, and racial
reconciliation. The solutions we find
together will be backed by sound evidence-based practices but they will also
look at the lessons learned by one agency to provide information and insight on
effective and innovative practices for each and every law enforcement agency in
the country.
The initiative will engage an array of criminal and juvenile
justice agencies, including law enforcement, probation, parole, and the courts,
as well as community stakeholders, like faith-based groups and victim service
organizations. Our goal is to build on
the pioneering work already underway in some of America’s most challenged areas
and to open doors of cooperation that will ultimately lead to safer and
healthier communities – the concept that’s at the very core of the philosophy
of community policing. And this is why
the COPS Office continues to be relevant and vital to the field today, 20 years
after inception – because as far as we’ve come, there’s still so much we can
accomplish working together to improve public safety.
Before I close, I again want to say thank you to Director
Davis for his work leading the COPS Office.
And to the mayors and police chiefs who have gathered here
to recognize how far we’ve come in the last 20 years and discuss where
community policing is going for the next 20 years and beyond, thank you for
your leadership. As I said earlier, everyone
knows what a mayor and police chief does, and your work on behalf of your
cities is truly remarkable. You
recognized the importance of a federal investment in public safety when you
came together to advocate on behalf of the Crime Bill 20 years ago, and I can’t
think of a better group of people to gather and discuss the next evolution of
community policing. You can be confident
that the Department of Justice will stand with you as you work to keep your
communities safe. Thank you for what you
do, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to be here with you today. I look forward to working with you in the
weeks and months to come.
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