THE WHITE HOUSE

                  Office of the Press Secretary
                    (Albuquerque, New Mexico)
______________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release                       October 17, 1994


                     REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
               TO THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF
                         CHIEFS OF POLICE


                  Albuquerque Convention Center
                     Albuquerque, New Mexico



11:38 A.M. MDT


             THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you very much.  Chief
Daughtry, Chief Whetsel, ladies and gentlemen of the IACP, I am
honored to be here.  I love the jacket -- (laughter) -- and I
love what it stands for.  I thank you more than I can say for
your help and support in passing the Brady Bill and the Crime
Bill.

             I'd like to acknowledge in this audience today the
presence of some very important people here in the State of New
Mexico and throughout our nation.  First of all, behind me, the
Governor of the state of New Mexico, Governor Bruce King.
(Applause.)  Bruce and I are the only -- two of the only three
people serving in America who were governors in the '70s, the
'80s and the '90s.  I don't know what that means anymore.
(Laughter.)  I can barely remember them.

             I'm delighted to be here with the two senators from
the state of New Mexico, Senator Domenici and Senator Bingaman
who are out there.  (Applause.)  Congressman Steve Schiff,
congressman from this district, is here.  Thank you, sir.
(Applause.)  My good friend, Congressman Bill Richardson, who was
very active in passing the Crime Bill.  Where's Congressman
Richardson -- he's here somewhere.  Thank you.  (Applause.)  And,
of course, the mayor, Mayor Marty Chavez, who is one of my
jogging partners, is here.  (Laughter and applause.)

             I want to also say that, you know, I think I have
more administration members who have been active in this outfit
than previous presidents.  (Laughter.)  Your ex-president, Lee
Brown, is now our Drug Czar.  Your ex-vice president, Tom
Constantine, is now our DEA Administrator.  (Applause.)  The head
of the U.S. Marshal Service, Eduardo Gonzalez, was Tampa Bay
Chief and once active in this organization.  So I feel at home
here.

             I think our FBI Director is here -- I want to tell a
story on him.  Is Louis Freeh here somewhere?  Tomorrow -- he's
coming tomorrow?  It's the first time I've been ahead of him in a
long time.  (Laughter.)

             I want to tell you a story about the -- since this
is an international organization, one of the things that I have
really tried to do as President is to build international
cooperation in law enforcement.  It's important in dealing with
drugs, it's important in dealing with terrorism, it's important
in dealing with organized crime.

             Lee Brown and Tom Constantine, both of them, as you
know, have major responsibilities that go beyond our nation's
borders, as you would expect, in dealing with the drug problems.
But the FBI Director, Mr. Freeh, also took a very popular trip to
Europe and to Russia not very long ago, and slightly after that
when I was following him, instead of the other way around, I went
to Riga, Latvia to celebrate the withdrawal of Russian forces
from Eastern Europe for the first time since World War II, and
from the Baltic States.  And we had this meeting with the heads
of the government of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia; and, so help
me, the first thing the President of Latvia said is, can we have
an FBI office in Riga?  (Laughter.)

             Now, it's funny and it's flattering, but it's also
serious.  Why?  Because as these countries convert from
totalitarian societies to free societies, as they become much
more open, they become much more vulnerable to organized crime,
because they haven't developed their banking system and their
trading rules and their business rules.  And that relates to
whether they, themselves, then become more vulnerable to drug-
trafficking and to terrorism, and to trafficking in weapons of
mass destruction or stolen nuclear materials, or any of that sort
of thing.

             So I say to you -- I'll make you a prediction:  For
the next 10 years when you meet, more and more and more, your
concentration will have to be on the international aspects of the
crime problem which affects what you do on the streets in your
cities and towns throughout the United States.

             I'd like to talk a little today about the Crime Bill
and what it means against the background of the crime problem in
America.  And the state of play, as you know, is very troubling,
because the good news is that in many of our cities, the crime
rate is actually going down.  The Mayor of Odessa, Texas was in
town the other day when we handed out the first wave of grants,
police grants, under the new Crime Bill only two weeks after the
bill was signed, and she said they'd had a drop in the crime rate
in excess of 15 percent for three years running because of
community policing, because of what law enforcement officers have
done.  The Mayor of Houston was reelected with 91 percent of the
vote after they had over a 20-percent drop in crime in only one
year there.

             This is happening in many cities and towns
throughout the country.  On the other hand, we know that a lot of
small towns and suburban areas having rising crime because as
cities clamp down on crime, a lot of times the criminals just
move their base of operation, and they're not as well equipped to
deal with it.

             We also know that even as overall crime rates drop,
the rate of random violence among young people, people under the
age of 18, is going up dramatically in sickening ways that we
have all seen again in recent days.

             The point I want to make about all this is that this is
a manifestation of trends that have been developing in our country
for quite a long while now.  We have had, really, 30 years -- a
whole generation and more -- of these trends that have been
developing in a lot of the high-crime areas in America -- the
breakdown of families and community organizations and neighborhood
organizations; the loss of economic opportunity, creating huge
social vacuums into which have moved gangs and guns and drugs and
crime and violence.

             I wanted this Crime Bill to pass very badly because
I believed that the national government had a responsibility to
help you deal with it.  But we have to look at what we can do
together within the Crime Bill and then what we have to do beyond
the Crime Bill, because we're going to have to change this
country from the grass roots up.  We're going to have to change
the culture that a lot of these kids live in.  And you can do it;
I can do it; parents can do it; but we're all going to have to do
it.  And there is clearly something for everybody to do.

             The first job I ever had as an elected official was
as Attorney General of my state.  And I began to work with law
enforcement on a regular basis.  Then I was governor for a dozen
years -- the years when crime was exploding in America.  I built
prison cells.  I devised work programs.  I put in education
programs and drug education programs and boot camps for first
offenders.  I enforced the capital punishment laws and tried to
find ways to rehabilitate people who were getting out.  I went to
funerals of police officers who were friends and family members
of friends of mine who died in the line of duty.

             Dealing with all this has made an indelible
impression on me.  And when I became President, I guess I had in
that sense more personal experience with the human cost and the
human side of crime and law enforcement than a lot of people who
have had this job.  I was determined to bring an end to six years
of political debate in Washington and to pass the Brady Bill,
which had been there for seven years, to pass a crime bill, which
had been debated for six years -- because I knew that we had some
things that we had to do.  I am doing my best where I live and
where I work to get this country together and to move our country
forward again.

             I think my mission as President is to keep the
American Dream alive and to help make sure Americans can compete
and win as we move into this exciting 21st century by making
government work for ordinary people and by bringing this economy
back, by making us more secure and more prosperous in our
relations with the rest of the world.

             After 21 months, I can tell you I think that we've
made a good start.  America's in better shape than it was two
years ago.  We've got more jobs, low inflation, a much lower
deficit.  Over 70 percent of the new jobs coming into our economy
this year, according to a report just published today, are higher
wage jobs; we're moving away from the time when all of our new
jobs were low-wage jobs.

             We've got a smaller federal government by more than
70,000 already that's doing more for ordinary citizens.  The
Congress just passed, and I signed a procurement bill which
changes the way we spend your money when we buy things, and it'll
put an end to the $500 hammers and the $50 ash trays.  The Vice
President kind of has mixed feelings about that; he'll never get
to go on David Letterman again now because of that, but it was
the right thing to do.  (Laughter.)

             Russian missiles are no longer pointed at the United
States.  We've got big increases in trade that are fueling these
high-wage jobs, and now America is leading the way to peace and
security and democracy, as you've seen in the last few days in
the Middle East and Northern Ireland and Eastern Europe and, of
course, in Haiti.

             But all of us know, I think, that no matter how much
economic progress we made, no matter how much progress we make in
dealing with trouble spots around the world, there will be a
gnawing feeling that all is not right in America until our
children feel safe in their schools and on their streets, and
Americans feel secure in their homes and at their work.

             We have to do things that will go beyond talking,
that will actually reduce the rates of crime and violence in the
United States, that will actually make sure that more of our
children do say "no" to drugs and gangs and guns, and "yes" to
books and to Boys and Girls Clubs and to games.  That's what the
Brady Bill was all about; that's what the Crime Bill was all
about.  It was the national government's contribution to a
national effort to really change the way Americans are living, to
change the way they feel inside.  And it is terribly important.

             I was in Detroit the other day doing an editorial
board meeting, and The Detroit Free Press had done a program with
children in the area and had taken letters from children.  And a
little girl named Porsha, nine years old, wrote me a letter and
said, I just want you to make me feel safer.  I don't feel safe.

             Many of you saw the reports that I gave when we were
debating the crime bill about that nine-year-old boy in New
Orleans who wrote me a letter saying, can't you make me feel
safe?  And he was killed on the street in a random shooting just
a few days after he wrote me.  A 10-year-old son of a member of
my administration, a young man brought up in a well-to-do home,
goes to good schools, and lives in a beautiful neighborhood,
wrote me a wonderful letter the day after the Crime Bill
passed -- a 10-year-old boy saying, I know you think that I
wouldn't be afraid of this, but every time my friends and I go
downtown to a movie, I am afraid I will be shot before I get
home.  And I feel so much better now that this Crime Bill has
passed.

             These are the voices of the children of America
across racial and income and regional lines, telling us that we
have to do better.  That is what this is about.  Well, we are
doing better, but there's more to be done.  The Brady Bill has
made a difference -- all of you know it.  There are thousands of
people who have already been denied weapons who were not entitled
to them, who had a criminal background, who would have gotten
them if it hadn't been for the Brady Bill.  (Applause.)

             And the Crime Bill will make a difference.  We have
evidence of that.  Before the Crime Bill passed last year, I
asked Congress to make a down payment on our commitment to put
100,000 more police officers on the street.  And the Congress
funded another 2,000 police officers.  Last week when we gave out
the first police grants under the Crime Bill, Chief David Massey
from Ocean City, Maryland came with the police officers he'd
hired under the first grant.  One of them was an ex-linebacker at
the University of Maryland -- the sort of person that you just
see and you want to ask permission.  (Laughter.)

             This young man was in a community policing program
riding a bicycle in Ocean City.  And very soon after he went to
work, he caught a serial rapist -- he did, as a community police
officer.  Now, all the victims that will never be preyed upon by
that rapist will never know what they owe to that one young man
who is a community police officer.  And now we're going to be
able to multiply that by 100,000 in every state in this country.
(Applause.)

             Something else I think that really needs to be pounded
home over and over again is that this Crime Bill was fashioned
largely by law enforcement officers -- from the punishment programs,
to the policing programs, to the prevention programs, it was the law
enforcement officers who shaped what was in it.  You said we ought
to have three strikes and you're out because there were some violent
criminals who kept getting paroled because they were lucky enough
not to have severe consequences to the victims of their crimes.  But
what they tried to do was terrible.  That's what the purpose of
three strikes and you're out was.

             You said that too many people were getting out too
quick because there wasn't enough prison space, so there's
provision for 100,000 more prison cells in this bill.  Never been
done before.  The federal government had never before helped to
build prison space for states.  You said that we ought to have
capital punishment if someone kills a police officer and it's in
the bill.  (Applause.)

             You said it ought to be against the law for a minor
to carry a handgun except when supervised by an adult.  It's in
the bill.  You said we should do more for victims of crime.  You
said we should make a serious assault on the problems faced by
women and children -- the problems of domestic violence and
neighborhood violence.  You said we should do more to make
schools safer.  You said we should do more to give our kids some
prevention programs, some things they could say "yes" to -- places
to go, things to do, good things to do.  Maybe most important,
good people to look up to when they can't find that at home.

             When the NRA tried to take the assault weapons ban
out of the Crime Bill, you stood firmly in favor of leaving it in
-- not because you were against the rights of hunters and
sportsmen, but because you knew that there were 650 weapons in
the bill specifically protected from any government interference.
And to those of you who come from small town and rural areas, you
can go home and tell your sportsmen that we are not going to
allow the federal government to interfere with the legitimate
interest of hunters and sportsmen, but we do not support leaving
weapons in the hands of kids, its only purpose is to kill as many
people as quickly as they can.  (Applause.)

             And you said that we ought to have 100,000 more
police.  Indeed, we probably ought to have more, but that's all
we could figure out how to pay for.

             For the American now, that's a number that doesn't
mean a lot.  That's why last week was so important when we had
400 communities coming up and little towns getting one police
officer and bigger places getting 25 or 30, because people began
to visualize what that means.  There are 550,000 police officers
in this country.  If you add 100,000 and they all go into beat
work, if they actually go into working to prevent crime and to
catch criminals, it'll be about a 20-percent increase in the
presence of police on the street.  It will work.  It will work.
We've had only a 10 percent increase in police officers in the
last 30 years, while we've had a 300 percent increase in violent
crime.  This was a critical component of the Crime Bill.

             And today I want to announce two important steps to
get those officers on the streets as quickly as possible.  And
you will have the release from the Justice Department here today
supporting that.

             First of all, we're going to make it possible for
cities with at least 50,000 people to begin hiring officers
immediately, by setting aside some money even before the grants
are awarded so that you can know what you're going to get and you
can start hiring and training now.  And the grants will be there
when you put the people on the payroll full-time.  (Applause.)

             Secondly, for cities and towns of fewer than 50,000
people who don't have a lot of people in clerical departments to
help you deal with the federal government, we're going to do for
you what we did for small businesspeople applying for SBA loans.
We're going to give you a one-page application with about eight
questions on it, and you can start filling out them out right
now, so that nothing will come between America and the new police
officers.  (Applause.)

             I'd like to end today by asking you to reflect on
three things.  One is a tribute to how the Congress funded this
bill.  This is a big bill.  It was funded not by raising taxes,
not by increasing the deficit, but by reducing the size of the
federal government by 270,000 over six years, and giving all the
money back to local communities to fight crime.  That's how it
was funded.  (Applause.)

             I consider that to be a solemn trust with America
that we must not breach.  And you will have to work every year
for the next six years to make sure that we keep that trust.

             The second point I want to make is that for most of its
life, this Crime Bill enjoyed broad bipartisan support which
dissipated at the end of the debate, as all of you know.  It became
a political football -- first, because there were some who were
honestly willing to sacrifice everything in the Crime Bill to beat
the assault weapons ban:  to give up the police, to give up the
prison cells, to give up the capital punishment provisions, to give
up the prevention programs, to give up the violence against women
section, to give up the victims against crime section -- to give it
all up.

             Second, there were some who just thought it was
important to kill the bill for political reasons.  That's all in
the past now; it passed.  What I want to say to you is, we have
got to make this Crime Bill work -- every provision of it -- work.
We have got to demonstrate to our people that the money is being
well-spent.  And we have to find a way to reach out at the grass-
roots level across political lines.  We have to stop this.

             We can't tell the American people they've got to
change their behavior to change this country if crime is a
partisan political issue.  The victims of crime are Republicans,
Democrats and Independents.  The people who put on uniforms every
day are Democrats, Republicans and Independents.  This is about
America and our future.  We must never again permit crime to be
divisive in a partisan political way, and you can stop it and I
want you to do it.  (Applause.)

             And I have to tell you -- the only thing that I
really worry about now in that regard is that in this election
season, there are many who are campaigning on a contract with
America which cost $1 trillion -- to balance the budget, to
increase defense, to revitalize Star Wars, to give huge tax cuts.
And there is no clear notion of how this is going to be paid for.
But the only option to pay for it is the way it was paid for
before:  higher deficits and cuts in everything else -- from
Medicare to veterans' benefits, to this Crime Bill.

             So I ask you:  Start today.  Say we've fought too
hard for this bill, we won it fair and square, let's not take it
away indirectly by adopting a commitment to a budgetary process
that will make it utterly impossible to fund the Crime Bill.  The
lives and the future of the American people, and especially our
children, are too important.  This must not become a political
football.  The bill is long, the trust is there, we must fund
this Crime Bill.  We cannot back away, and you must see that it
is done.  (Applause.)

             The third thing I want to say -- and probably one of
the most important things -- is that we have now done a major
thing with this Crime Bill, and you will do major things with it.
But the people of this country have a job to do here, too.  We're
not here giving things out to the American people, we're here
challenging the American people to take their streets and their
schools and their neighborhoods and, indeed, their homes back.

             And if all of us go out here and say the right
things and do the right things, and we get no help from the rest
of America, we'll be back here next year and the year after, and
the year after that, bemoaning the same problems.  And you know
that as well as I do.

             You now have the tools to deal with this problem.
But you've got a whole country out there full of people who have
to help.  Parents have to recognize that the real war on crime
begins at home.  If the first responsibility of government is to
provide law and order, the first responsibility of parents is to
teach right from wrong.  (Applause.)

             We've got to have more folks turning off the TV and
knowing where their kids are, and spending time reading and doing
homework, and accepting personal responsibility.  And we've got
to have more folks helping them, like those wonderful police
officers in the D.A.R.E. programs all across America.
(Applause.)

             Kids are going to look up to somebody, and it's up
to the adults in this country to decide who they're going to look
up to.  What do you think about those two kids, 10 and 11 in
Chicago that threw that five-year-old boy out the window?  A
five-year-old kid, who knew right from wrong, lost his life at
the age of five because he wouldn't steal candy, because he knew
right from wrong -- and his brother, only three years older, knew
right from wrong and he wouldn't steal candy, either -- trying
desperately to save his little brother's life.

             Who did the other two kids look up to?  Who did they
come in contact with who could have taught them right from wrong
and didn't?  Who did they come in contact with who taught them
wrong?  What about that little kid that was set on fire?  Burned
over 85 percent of his body; 3 years old, not even big enough to
do anything wrong.  Who taught those children right from wrong?

             You know, we see all these stories about these kids
doing these things, and then we see that they apparently feel no
remorse.  At that age in their development, it is a question of
where they got the message.  Where did it occur to them to hang
somebody out of a window in a high rise?  How do they learn to
pick up a gun?  Where do they know that a fast buck today is
better than 10 years or 12 years or 16 years of hard work and
school to make something of yourself?  These kids are looking up
to somebody.  Who are they going to look up to?  How are they
going to learn this?  We can hire 5 million police officers, and
if we keep losing the battle for what these kids think is right
and wrong, we're going to be in a lot of trouble.  (Applause.)

             I know we grown-ups sometimes -- we're too negative
sometimes -- we're too cynical sometimes.  A good Catholic friend
of mine and I the other day were having a theological discussion
and he said, you can never get discouraged, Bill, because the
only truly unforgivable sin is despair.  That's why I preach hope
all the time.

             I am telling you:  this country is coming back
economically.  This country has resources and character and
richness and diversity that will open unparalleled opportunities
to us in the 21st century.  This is a good country.  (Applause.)

             When the delegation came back from Haiti yesterday,
they said that all the Haitian people had these little signs in
Creole, painted, and the most popular one said simply, "Thank
you, America."  They looked at those young men and women we sent
down there in uniform and, just by walking around, these young
people -- our kids -- they make a statement about what's right
and what's wrong; what's good and what's bad; what kind of a
person it's worth being -- just by being there and being who they
are.  And it is thrilling to other people to see the best of this
country.

             And we need not be worried about that if we just
roll up our sleeves and face our challenges and go on.  But what
we must be worried about is wave upon wave upon wave of these
little children, who don't have somebody both good and strong to
look up to.  Who are so vulnerable that their hearts can be
turned to stone by the time they're 10 or 11 years old.  And when
there is a good one -- a 5-year-old kid in difficult
circumstances, blooming like a flower in the desert, knowing that
it's wrong to steal candy.  He actually has his life at risk.

             That's why all of you wanted these prevention
programs.  But I am telling you, you've got to go home and you've
got to say, okay, I'll wear my DARE uniform, I'll do my part, but
every last citizen in this country has got to do more than look
at you and demand that you do something about crime.  We have got
to teach our children and lift them up.  (Applause.)

             Thank you, and God bless you all.


                       END12:10 P.M. MDT