the field with common sense gun safety reforms we need to start by supporting you. the men and women that walk that thin line. my administration has invested more than $2 billion to retain or hire 10,000 police officers when state and city budgets were paralyzed during the economic crisis we stepped in to save the jobs of thousands of cops. right now we are helping to make sure that you have the equipment you need, and the training to use that equipment. we have opened up data to police departments can use new technology, so stop crimes and we are setting aside radio spectrum for first responders so for the

first time in history, the police departments will share a single network. [applause] we are creation a nationwide blue alert system, and launching anti-ambush training programs to help keep officers safe. vice police department joe biden, a life long friend of law enforcement, has expression he likes to offer, he has an expression for everything, show me your budget and i will tell you what you value. woman, i tell you what, in my budget proposal i have asked congress to increase funding for the cops program so we can hire more police officers and make sure you have the training and equipment you need that's what i value. it is in my budget. and i will be honest with you, in the past some remembers in congress have

tries to cut funding for the cops program to zero. and i have argued that's wrong, it won't make us safer. it is time more folks in washington starting values our cops. not just given lip service to it. [applause] now the good news is, the cops program and other programs that your departments rely on to do your jobs may get some relief from the harmful spending cuts that congress imposed a couple of years ago, because last night, democrats and republicans in congress came together around a long term budget agreement. i am pretty happy about that because it reflects our values. growing the economy and the middle class, education, and job training and it keeps us safe. it is paid for responsibly. in part, with the measure to make sure that hedge funds pay what they owe in taxes just like everybody else.

it is the right thing to do. it hasn't been happening a lot in washington, that finally free us from the cycle of shut down threats last minute patch work fixes. allows us to plan for the future, and will allow your departments to plan for the future. so that's good news for everybody, it is a step forward. and they don't get sidetracked by provisions that have no place in america's budget process. now, i believe that values law enforcement starts with making sure that it provides you the resources you need. but i also think it means more than just funding our priorities.

money helps. more police officers help. but we have to do more. so the second thing i want to focus on is fundamentally retomorrowing our criminal justice system to make it stronger and farier, and easier for your officers to do their jobs safely and effectively. now this is not an easy conversation to have. a lot of folks say what's the problem. but, for generations, we have had african american and latino community whose have pointed to racial disparities in the application of criminal justice, from arrest rates to sentencing, to incarceration rates, and all too often those concerns no matter how well documented have been brushed aside.

and we can't have a situation in which a big chunk of the population feels like maybe the system isn't working as well for them. at the same time, too often, law enforcement gets scapegoated for the broader failures of our society and our criminal justice system. i know you do your jobs no matter the challenges you face, that's part of wearing a badge. but we can't independent you to contain and control problems that the rest of us aren't willing to fay or do anything about. problems ranging from substandard education, to a shore taj of jobbens and opportunity. an absent of drug treatment programs and laws that result in it being easier in too many neighborhoods for a young person to purchase a gun than a book.

so if we are serious about protecting our communities and supporting our police department. >> let's try to stop more crime than it starts. every dollar that we invest in early childhood education, we save twice that down the road in reduced crime. getting a teenage arrest job for the summer may costs some money, but it costs a fraction of what it will cost to lock him up for 15 years. [applause] it's not enough to tell our young people that crime doesn't pay if they have no prospects at all. we've got to make sure that they grow up knowing that hard work

and responsibility pay off. and that they've got other paths available to them. for those who do break the law, we do have to take a hard look at whether in all circumstances punishment fits the crime. i wanted to be clear about this. right now america is home to less than 5% of the population but 25% of its prisoners. now, plenty belong there. i don't have sympathy for dangerous, violent offenders. i don't have sympathy for crime on children. i have two daughters. i want to make sure that these streets are safe. [applause] so this is not some bleeding heart attitude here.

violence is real. in this city and around the country. and i've seen firsthand the devastation the drug trade has brought on individual lives and entire communities. i believe those who pedestria peddle drugs need to be punished. down in west virginia you hear stories of families where these are good folks whose children were getting caught up in drugs, and young people suddenly overdosing three, four times. getting caught up in the criminal justice system themselves because they were hooked. but it's also important to acknowledge that our prisons are crowded with not only hard-core violent offenders, but also some non-violent offenders serving very long sentences.

it's important to acknowledge to have millions of black and latino men in the criminal justice system without any ability for most of them to find a job after release, and most of them will eventually be released, that's not a sustainable situation. it is possible for us to come up with strategies that effectively reduce the damage of the drug trade without relying solely on incarceration. the reason i say that is because we've seen states and local police departments and law enforcement do it. states from texas to south carolina to california and connecticut have already reduced their prison populations over the past five years, and seen their crime rates fall. so let's take some of the $80 billion that we take each

year to keep people locked up--not all of it. as i said, some of those folks we want behind bars. but let's look at the system and see areas where we can use some of that money to help law enforcement go after drug kingpins and violent gangs and terrorists, and if we can get some with drug addiction or mental health issue into treatment, that may save us some money that allow us to put a murderer in that jail cell instead. when we do that we are not making it more likely that a non-violent offender can be integrated in society, we're making the entire community safer. if rehabilitation programs help a prisoner to become a skilled worker than a hardened criminal, you're less likely to have to arrest that person again and again and again and again. i can't thank the chiefs enough here because a lot of you are up front on this issue. you've talked about it.

i know because i've met with you on it. now in a hopeful sign good people in both political parties are actually ready to do something about this. just last week the senate, which basically gets very little done, as you may have noticed, the senate voted to move forward on a justice reform bill. that would give prisoners time off their sentence if they complete programs that make them less likely to commit a repeat offense. it would invest some of those savings in law enforcements so you have more resources that you need, and there is a similar bill in the house of representatives. this is not something that i get to say very often. i'm encouraged by what congress is doing. i hope they get a bill to my

desk so i can sign it, and we can work to keep reducing america's crime rate and incarceration rate at the same time. [applause] now, even if we pass bipartisan reform we are still going to have communities who have a disproportionate amount of crime. every big city in america and some small ones, folks know in the neighborhoods where crime is taking place, disproportionately. in some of those communities we still got work to do to restore trust between law enforcement and the citizens they protect and serve. this is also a hard conversation, but i hope you don't mind that we're going to

have it. one of the benefits of not having to run for office again. [applause] i'm sure if you polled this room people would have different takes on what happened in places like ferguson and new york. let's face it. the media tends to focus on the sensational and the controversial, and folks on both sides who say stuff that's not designed to bring people together but oftentimes makes the situation more polarized. as a society we tend to lurch from shock to complacency on these issues. i'm suggesting that we have to resist that impulse. with today's technology if just one of your officers does

something irresponsible, the whole world knows about it moments later. and the countless i wants of effective police work rarely make it on the evening news. [applause] so it's important for us not to pounce and jump on anything that happens and immediately just draw conclusions. we've got to resist the false track that says either there should be no accountability for police, or that every police officer is suspect no matter what they do. neither of those things can be right. it's on all much us to let investigations uncover facts, to make sure that stories of

misconduct aren't spread before we know the facts, and that they're not the only stories that we share. because as we said before every day that your officers aren't just stopping crimes, they're responding to emergencies, helping victims of domestic violence, coaching and refereeing little league pick up games. those stories need to go viral as well. you know as well as i do that the tensions in some communities, the feeling that law enforcement isn't always applied fairly, those sentiments don't just come out of nowhere. there is a long history here in this country. it's not something that any individual person here is responsible for, but we all have a responsibility to do something about it. because it's part of our legacy. and last week in l.a.'s police

chief charlie beck, we were asked about this issue of tensions and the feeling and minority communities that sometimes law enforcement isn't applied fairly. i repeated what i said before, which is that there were times when i was younger, and maybe even as i got a little older but before i had a motorcade where i got pulled over, and i confessed. i told chief beck most of the time i got a ticket i deserved it. i knew why i was pulled over. but there are times when i didn't. as a report that came out this week reminds us there are a lot of african-americans, not just me, who have that same kind of story of being pulled over or

frisked or something. the data shows that this is not a an aberration. it doesn't mean each case is a problem. it means that when you aggregate all the cases, you look at it, you've got to say that there is some racial bias in the system. now problems of racial justice or injustice have been running themes throughout this country's history in every institution. in every institution. and by the way, bias and stereotypes oftentimes go both ways. so eliminating bias is not something that falls on the police alone. the good news is our divides are not as deep as some would like to suggest. i will tell you, i don't know anybody in the minority

community that does not want strong effective law enforcement. i don't know anybody who doesn't want their kids to be safe when they're walking to school or playing at the playground. everybody should understand that police officers do a dangerous job. nobody wants to see police officers hurt. the question then is how do we bridge these issues? the concern about fairness and the concern about effectiveness to make sure that police officers get the support they need. that's why i set up a task force on 21st century policing lan yeast that came up with detailed recommendations that departments and officers can implement to keep building trust. and i appreciate all the members, the iecp who joined fellow officers, community activists and young people as part of that task force. i would urge all the chiefs here and all of you who are interested in this to look at

the task force recommendations because it was really interesting. you have people who are protesters at ferguson sitting with police officers and police chiefs and they came up with some shared recommendations. to talk about having open data, and independent investigations to make sure that the systems are fair. they talked about helping law enforcement work with schools and businesses and youth groups so kids who want to make a difference in their communities can say when i grow up i want to be a cop. right here in chicago emanuel and the chicago pd spent the past few years working to build on this philosophy, building more partnerships with ministers, putting more officers on bike and on foot so they can talk with residents. earlier this year i went to new jersey, where they used to have complete mistrust between the department and local residents, and where the crime rate was sky high.

they're now using community policing and data to drive down crime. they've got a war room with cameras trained on hot spots around the city. and they've got software that let's community residents direct those cameras on where drug dealers or gangs are congregating. that way local residents feel they're not just being spied on, they're partners with the police. the police cleave there trained their officers from the very first day, the officers would just be dropped off in the neighborhoods they would be serving and said you're spending all day here without a car, figure it out. which meant that if even just want to go to the restroom they would have to get to know the local business, and they started meeting parents and communities. that way they were--because they knew the communities they were serving, they were able to distinguish between the drug dealer and the good kid even if both of them were wearing a

hoodie. the police even bought two ice cream trucks with drug forfeiture money, and in the summer drove them into some neighborhoods where gangs had taken over. and drug dealers were peddling on the streets, otherwise the streets were empty. they drove those ice cream trucks, planted them there and had police officers giving out free ice cream. suddenly the community started coming out, and the drug dealers started fading away. all of a sudden the street corners where criminals were dealing drugs had police officers dishing out free chocolate chip. but in all of these efforts the goal was to get the community involved before a crime takes place. to build trust before a crisis arose. and officers then feel more welcomed to their communities, citizens are more likely to

cooperate with the police, and that makes us all safer. now, look, i'm not naive, i'm not suggesting that any of this is easy. a lot of times it means more resources for police departments because it's more labor intensive. if you want that kind of community policing, then you've got to have enough police to do that because it takes time to more than just respond to a call. i don't want to suggest that we're ever going to eliminate all misunderstanding and stereotypes between police officers and minority communities, and it's certainly not going to happen overnight. and it's especially tough because there is more crime in these communities, which means the police are interacting with them more than they are in some fancy neighborhoods. good community policing has to be a two-way street. the communities that desperately

need effective policing have to give police officers the benefit of the doubt. [applause] and have to work with the police department to make sure that you've got the resources and support to effectively implement strategies that we know work. and the flip side of it is when an individual officer does display bias and excessive force, which is going to happen. just like there are going to be application politicians who do stupid things or business leaders--there is no profession who doesn't have somebody who sometimes screws up, then we have to have department honestly and fairly dress it, and not just simply close ranks or stand down. [applause] so none of this is easy. but it can be done. and it has to be done.

because i refuse to believe that the only choice we have is to either ignore circumstances of racial bias or make it impossible for police officers to do their job. that can't be the choice that we've got. we've got to reject that false choice. [applause] third point. to make our communities safer, and to make our officers safer, we've got to make it harder for criminals to cause chaos by getting their hands on deadly firearms. [applause] police officers see the toll that gun violence takes on our communities. not just when there is a mass shooting, but every single day.

if you go to the south side of chicago or the west side of chicago, and you walk around neighborhoods that now have big problems with violent crime and homicide, and you talk to the folks who have lived there for a long time, and you ask what has changed? some of them will talk about in terms of well, there used to be more jobs. enemy could go over to the factory even if they didn't have a great education to make a decent living. households were more intact. but a lot of what they'll say is you know it used to be if a kid or a group of kids was misbehaving, adults could say something to them. now folks don't because you don't know if they're armed. [applause] you don't know if they're armed. so police officers don't have the luxury of seeing this issue in black and white terms.

you know exactly why someone all too often should want to own a gun. it's a powerful instrument. it helps you do a dangerous job. it's something that has to be used with care. many of you, like millions of law abiding americans are sports men or hunters, or you've got a firearm in your home for protection, but you also know the fact is that it's too easy for criminals to buy guns and that makes your already dangerous job far more dangerous than it should be. [applause] and it makes the communities so

fearful that it's harder for them to be a good partner with you. because the streets become abandoned, and parents start not being as involved in monitoring what is taking place. you have a risk of being shot. it's risky enough responding to a domestic violence call or a burglary in progress without having to wonder if the suspect is armed to the teeth, maybe has better weapons than you do. and the fact is that in states with high gun ownership police officers are three times more likely to be murdered than in states with low gun ownership. that is a fact. so you know that more guns on the streets do not make you or your community safer. [applause]

now one of the benefits of being president is you travel all around the country. i do know that there is a difference in what firearms mean and how they are handled in rural communities and in urban settings. we've got to take into account some of the regional differences that are involved. but i do want to emphasize this is not just an issue for cities. there are those who criticize any gun safety reforms by pointing to my hometown as an example. they say, well look, chicago had a spike in homicide this year. they've got gun safety laws. so this must be proof that tougher gun safety laws don't help, maybe make things worse. the problem with that argument, as the chicago police department will tell you, is that 60% of guns recovered in crimes come from out of state. you just got to hop across the border.

as i said before, it is easier for a lot of young people in this city, and in some of your communities, to buy a gun than to buy a book. if is easier in some communities to finds a gun than it is to find fresh vegetables. and a supermarket. [applause] that's just a fact. that's why the iacp and the overwhelming majority of american people, democrat and republican, believe we should require national criminal background checks for anyone who wants to purchase a gun. [applause] that's why the iacp believes we should not sell military-style assault weapons to civilians. they don't need them. they don't need them to hunt a

deer. [applause] it's just a simple proposition. cops should not be out-armed by the criminals that they're pursuing. [applause] as i said earlier this afternoon i met with families and police officers who gave their lives in the line of duty. i met with families of children who were taken from us by gun violence. i do this too often. meeting with grieving families. i'm proud to be able to express to them that the entire country cares about them. [applause] that they're in our thoughts and prayers.