in 1994 elections against the better wishes of the mexican a government we really insisted that it be an open transparent election election and we insisted on having international observers there to make sure of that. that was not well received, but it was done and it was done well. after the election, one of the major civil society and gao asked to see me and we visited he said what should we do next? i suggested they are to start a common cause, which is is what john gardner started in the united states where citizens can elect their representatives, and he shrugged his shoulders and said they will never listen to us. to me it was very discouraging.

they are beginning to listen but they are now where they should be, i think the the more you construct civil society to get involved the better future mexico is going to have. in terms of dr. dressler talked about the competitiveness of telecom and broadcasting, that is just beginning and i have great hopes that she expressed that is going to be successful as it rolls out. democracy and changing of lifestyle of years, and years in the country overnight just does not happen. you have to stay after the government, stay after those that are implementing these kind of reforms in order to see them happen as you want. if they are not happening as dr. dressler said as she would like, if there only partially there, then stay after them to go the whole roots. as far as the united states government taken a hands-off,

it's not as public i think it would be a mistake diplomatically to the united states to jump in and start lecturing the mexicans about how this is the way you should do business. i'm not surprised that our government didn't chastise the mexican president anymore than they don't chastise putin. so i think we have to be sensible when we have a diplomatic relationship, the the united states is doing that sensibly, however, behind the scenes and below the spotlight, our governments are working together very well on a number of things. things. how do we improve our borders? how do we integrate our economic resources? those kinds of things are going to adhere to the benefits of the

citizens in both countries, i i don't think we have a hands-off relationship. i think it would be well if our congress or senate would couldn't firm roberto jacobs as our basset or as well as the mexican government appointed an ambassador to the united states. it's an important position in both countries and it needs to be there, they need to be on the ground, hands on. i think roberta would do a terrific job represented the united states and understanding the relationship very well. those would be my comments. >> thank you. >> is peter still there? >> yeah. >> what would be the positive scenario? and how what i envision it? i believe that many of the reforms on paper, are things

that mexico needs. the problem, and i'm not one of those people who believes that opening up the energy sector was a bad idea come that's not it at all, i think many people are supportive of the reforms but are very fearful of the implementation and what comes in the secondary legislation after the constitutional reforms are approved. that's where you see the reforms being undermined at the level of implementation and at the level of the secondary legislation. i could could give you many examples of this. in order to avoid the reformist impulse from dying out, what would the government have to do? make sure that the reforms are not diluted by secondary legislation, and and make sure that the implementation is

pristine, transparent, and accountable. that would require the mexican government to do something it is very bad at, which is regulating. that is the reason mexicans distrust the reforms, they distrust energy reform not necessarily because it's open up the sector to private investors, but because we see what opening up sectors to private investors has done in the past with poor regulations. it has entailed a math massive transfer of wealth to private entities as was the case with the banks. so a positive scenario would entail a mexican government actually regulated and implemented reform very well, why do i give it that such a low percentage in my prospects for

that future? because historically we have not done this well, at all. more conservative analysts has said you don't get good regulation on energy, it's going to be the governments once again. so for energy reform to be succeed and has to be regulated, pristine, transparent and truly competitive. not competitive. not just a way of creating yet another way of rent seeking for the newest company which they have just created which is in the oil and gas. what what i like it to be? i would like it to be like australia, in terms of competition policy across-the-board, dismantle monopolies.

i think if there is a 3% growth in gdp, if i were president that would be my first move. second issue you have to push forward political reform that actually empower citizens and gives them effective mac and ms. am sub representation because the ones they have today is absolutely terrible. i would would like mexico to be like canada in terms of the representational nature of its democracy, or like chile in terms of its oral trial system and its rule of law system. you're not going to get an mexican co- when you have oral trials i am grateful for the administration for transporting to oral trials but if you don't transform the police you're going to have trials with people

have been unfairly arrested and tortured when the case begins. so i would like mexico to be more like the u.s. in terms of the decriminalization of marijuana, because we are fighting a war over substances that are increasingly being legalized in their main market which is here. so a positive scenario would entail movement in those areas and the supervision and implementation of reforms in the spirit in which they were conceived and in its foundational aspect was the right one. which is we need to move this country. question about newspaper shedding and journalism? why are

they doing that? because they are being pressured by the government to do so. because after the casablanca and the firing, the pressure from latinos increased because there is a lot of cash flowing through the system given our system of public financing for parties and a lot of that cash is being used too by the media. every money month there is money going to the newspapers. what you have seen a mexico sense it was taken off the air as the virtual silence of many issues that are not being covered in the mainstream press and are not covered on the radio. you see people valiant people people who are reinforced to leave because they did the

federal reporting on the police killings, and she was told to take her peace with her and leave. so she managed to put it on the air, not even on the air with the support of univision and with the support of a magazine. so what's happening for two investigative journalism? it's been demoralized, destroyed, dismantled, in a context which the powers that at b want more reporters tracking down whether or not the casablanca of the first lady is going to be sold or not and she promised. recently, u.s. journalist with all the support of one all the major u.s. outlets interviews me for a casablanca and says i sent one of my investigative

people to the public registry to see if indeed the house of the first lady promised to sell had been sold. plus she was standing in line she got a call from the head of the office of communications of the presidency saying she didn't have the credentials to be doing investigative journalism in mexico because her cv had not been formally presented. so in this u.s. journalist call to come play about harassment she is is told all know it was just a coincidence and we called your reporter today. while she happened to be in mind getting getting the simper nation on the casablanca. this news journalist said to me, very uncomfortable coincidence

and she is told by the office of communications of the pres., you can't be out there doing investigative journalism on euro, everything that relates to the constable like that and the president goes through us. you go thrust first. so that's what you're saying and echoes to the third question which is i would urge everyone in this room to read article 19's report 19's report on the state of journalism in mexico. what does that report reveal? the data is all there, all the cases are there every 26 hours a journalist in mexico is threatened or killed. why have you seen a spike? because of the confluence of corruption organized crime drug trafficking and the way in which these three interact. 48% of the aggressions against journalist are created by police. they say they're dying because they're covering organized traffic and crime but this reporter the threats were coming

from the governor, they were coming from organized crime although one could say that yes they were. so it's becoming increasingly difficult to be a journalist in mexico. ambassador jones says there is competitive media, well really? when there's an 85% market share and if you only got your political information from open television in mexico, you would think that you were living in in a parallel country because you would never hear about important things, you would not even know that these things would have occurred. where maybe they know the information through twitter or the rest of social medium or independent journalists were out there risking their lives and

political cartoonists who are looking how they can leave the country. how do we empower communities? i absolutely agree, that's where the energy has to be focused that's where i intend to focus my energies in the next ten years. which is teaching citizenship and ways of participation at the local level. the major transition that needs to occur that would spike back, that would would be a catalyst for political participation at the local level would be of local governments and state governments were forced to collect taxes. which which they do not do now. they have no incentive to be responsive to their citizens when that changes, that's why i'm always asked, and peter went i think mexico will change? it change? it will be because of me or

others that are harsh in their criticism, it will will be when the country runs out of oil. because that's what keeps the whole machinery going. i hope that happens soon, it's a very political lee incorrect to say so but it would be the best thing that could possibly happen to mexico because it would force the government to collect taxes. government that collect taxes and citizens that are forced to pay them, and i pay mind religiously because i always say i'm in buying the right to come play i am buying the right to be harsh and i have that right. is this on c-span?

champus is a disgrace, green party governor but please remember this is a green party that has been expelled on a coalition of green parties because it supports the death penalty, it supports the life of both the bulls and circus animals, it does not support the life of humans. this is a party that accrued 600 million pesos in fines for electoral mix contact. it is a party that three days ago it was revealed that the governor's mother is receiving millions of pesos of payments for being nominally the head of the government children's fund for the state. the government governor is telegenic he married and the actress he is following a marketing strategy and i do believe that electoral fraud was committed and i do believe that the party overspent the legal limits for its electoral

activities and that it will never be sanctioned because what happened is that with the reconcentration and elimination of the state electoral what you have now is a concentrated national electoral authority that doesn't know what's going on at the level of the state in terms of electoral regularities. even even if it wanted to intervene, all of these disputes and up which time and again with the green card he is find would intervene to eliminate the fine. so what did the green party and our greatness election 25% of the green party's green parties vote in this election came from chapels, how you went to mexico in mexico as you break the

electoral law, time and again, it doesn't it doesn't matter you accrue millions of pesos and crying, some of the fines are removed by electoral authorities who are in your favor and the others you pay with with the public financing you get in your first year, or you take out a loan and you pay them. the thing is you win. even if you do so cheating. even if you do have to pay the fine, so the incentive to break the law for every party, now are huge pew and the green party has shown that you can do this and you won't lose your registration. so what what you have seen and chop is going to be the roadmap for the pri and the green party in the 2018 presidential election.

>> i want to thank all of you for calming, amb. jones and dr. dressler, i think this is been a terrific session. we covered a lot of ground, a lot of issues, we'll be following what happens and the different scenarios and will hope for the optimistic one.but soon.

"washington journal" continues. host: welcome to the table tom main engineer. he's the president of the major cities chiefs nger. he's the president of the major cities chiefs association. want to talk about a spike of crimes around the country in big cities. a lot of variables involved such as? >> when we started talking amongst ourselves that the chiefs of the large cities around the country, we all were noticing this spike in homicides and shootings so we decided to get together. we got together just a few days ago on monday. and what we found was that not only were we all seeing the spike in violent crime but

commonalities among that and the impact of synthetic drugs and shooting scenes just tremendously larger number of shell casings, wasn't just 1 or 2 shots being fired and now it's dozens of shots fired in some of these thing. we saw the perpetrators of these homicides all had -- all seemed have to lengthy criminal records. were you asking yourself why was this person out in the first place. why weren't they still in jail? we were seeing commonalities among the suspects in these cases, so many of them didn't finish high school. so many of them had no job skills. so many of them again were violent offenders that had served jail time but now back out on the street. so the good news i guess for us or something we could use with

this meeting was when you look at all these commonalities it gave us some direction about how we can start trying to address some of these issues. >> montgomery county just outside of washington, d.c. there with you a real up tick in crimes in the greater baltimore areas as well and they attribute that directly to the use of they drugs that were stolen from the drug stores. >> you're exactly right. i have spoken a number of times with the commissioner kevin davis, baltimore commissioner, and he said that you've got all these drug stores that were looted and there are 10s of thousands of doses of narcotics that are on the street. it's almost like there is a drug war going on in the city where rival gangs, rival drug distributeers illegal drug

distributors are fighting each other to get their share of the market and this resulted in the city in that up tick of homicides since the unrest over freddie gray. host: what about synthetic drugs? first of all, what are they and what are they a problem? >> i think that -- i'm not the expert on synthetic drugs, but what we know these are drugs that are manufactured that are having a real dangerous impact on people who take them. what we're finding, the old days when folks would take pcp and you'd confront somebody who was on pcp they had this super human strength, we're seeing the same kind of things with people who are taking these drugs. they are have psychotic reactions and violent. we had a few cases of people dying in police custody as a

direct result of their use of these drugs. one of the issues that we're dealing with is that the legislatures are playing catch up to tray to make sure that all these ingredients that are being used for the synthetic drugs are actually illegal. because these synthetic marijuana that people are manufacturing, once they make a certain recipe illegal, then they'll change one ingredient so that all of a sudden we have a more difficult time in law enforcement charging someone because they've changed an ingredient that hasn't been made illegal. labelling later around the country are trying to play catch-up. host: if you are a police officer or part of the police brass, you can give us a call

2027482003. i want to talk ou about race relations which is an element in this. ferguson, cleveland, baltimore. how are police race chiefs dealing with this. >> it had a tremendous impact and the anniversary of michael brown's shooting is a day or two away. so we've been dealing with this really the impact the ferguson impact for a year now. it started a number of national conversations. it started conversations about police use of force and deadly force and conversations about the militarization of police and does the diversity of the police department reflect the diversity of the community we're serving and what's the relationship

between the police department and the community. one of the things that many chiefs realized was that we had seen dramatic reductions in crime over the last ten years or so. and everybody's happy about the fact that there's less crime today than there was 10, 20, 30 years ago. but what were the police strategies and tactics that were used to achieve some of the reductions in crime. and what impact did it have on the community. i think -- chief are looking at this now and saying, wend that we were successful. believe this and saying ok, we understand that we were successful. it was not just police, law enforcement and police have some role. you do not take credit for all crime reduction because then you have to take all the blame when crime comes back up. you need to look at what tac

tics has a negative impact on our relationship with the community. especially when you look at the areas -- this is the same for every police chief across the country. we can tell you where crime occurs in our jurisdiction. invariably, it is places where there are higher levels of poverty. you look at the graduation rates and where that is lowest, that is where you see more crime. where you see more young kids who do not have good, healthy parental adult influence in their life. if you track those kinds of things educational poverty levels, job skills, you can predict where crimes are going to occur in a jurisdiction. host: i want to bring in our viewers and listeners. when you speak to officers on

the beat on this issue, what do you tell them? guest: i tell them it is our responsibility to ensure we have a good relationship with the public. we have to earn their trust and keep interest. we are only as good as our last contact with the public. you can go months without having any controversial incidents. then you have one that incident -- one bad incident that goes viral and is being shown on the news and all of a sudden the police department is on the defensive. the problem is that folks seem to paint the police with a broad brush. there have been some absolutely criminal acts by police officers that have occurred in the past year that have been on video and shown over and over. every single police officer

every single police department has been impacted by that particular incident. it represents such a small percentage, such a minute percentage of contacts the police have with the public everyday. in montgomery county we have one million people. we can document through traffic stops, 911 calls and a host of other things, we can document .5 million contacts between the police and the public every year. 99.9% of them go exactly as you would want them to go. even the minute percentage can overshadow all the good work that is being done. i tell my cops you've got to work at this every day. host: tom manger began his career in fairfax county virginia. moved up to chief of police in fairfax county. now has the title in montgomery county.

he's the head of the major cities association. he's heading to chicago for another conference. jeff in hawaii, good morning. caller: i want to thank both of you. is there something else parents can do to help the police in their efforts to save the young minds and the future of this country? perhaps respecting the feelings with the children. before creating trouble teens which experiment with drugs? guest: there is nothing more influential in a young person's life than parents. as a father of two oftentimes i think my kids are not listening to a word i say. they are. young adults will tell you the biggest influence in their life was their parents. having to work at teaching the kid good values, teaching the value of education.

all those things are important in a young person's life. one of the best things we have done is put officers in high schools. we have a school resource officer in every high school in montgomery county. it is not because the schools are dangerous, we want to make sure we have a safe learning environment. the relationships the sros are building with young people is tremendous. the police department has a responsibility to reach out to young people. i think kids, the biggest influence and her life is their parents. parents have to take that seriously. talk about drugs. the biggest risk and any kid's life is when they get behind the wheel of a car. having the conversations about not driving with your friends. making the tough decisions that your kid has to abide by, that is what is going to keep your kids safe.

they are going to realize and -- they will realize that was for their own good. host: what is the size of your department and your budget? guest: our budget is around $280 million a year, between 1800 employees and 1900 employees. host: from indiana, a police officer. tell us about yourself and continued with your question for tom manger. caller: i spent 35 years on the four spirit i was born and raised on the southside of chicago. over the last 35 years, there's been a profound disrespect in the black community for authority, for women and for life itself. i've done all the community activist stuff. i've been a coach, i've worked in the schools. i've done all those things, i said the homeless. it is just not working.

these kids are being taught to disrespect police. they disrespect authority altogether. i retired last year. what made me retire i was cutting my grass on the southside of chicago. everybody on my block knows i'm a policeman. a kid came up while i'm cutting my grass, put a gun to my head, and stole my lawnmower. can you believe this? they know i'm a policeman. i am so disgusted. i give up. i've moved out of chicago. i'm done with it, the disrespect is profound. that's all i have to say. guest: i certainly understand your frustration with what occurred. i've got to tell you, i've been a cop for 38 years. things are different today than they were when i started in the

mid-1970's. but i will tell you that we cannot give up. the police has a tremendously important role in the community. you can talk about community policing all day long, it means 100 different things to 100 different people. it is about the community understanding the role the police have. the community does need to understand what we do and why we do these things. the police also have to understand that when you are policing a community that has a very high crime rate there are still good people that live in that community. it is important for us to do our job, do our job lawfully do our job effectively but understand that there are good people. in fact, one of the biggest things i think some big cities are grappling with is the lack of cooperation that we get from some neighborhoods where they

really need us the most. where you have the highest number of homicides. you've got investigators who go there and people who have information will not come forward because they do not trust the police or do not like the police. all that does is result in a low clearance rate for those homicides and more violenc good cooperation. the caller talked about the fact that he gave up, it is probably good that he retired if he has given up.i've got almost 1300 cops that have not given up. they understand that they have to continue to do their job. there are hundreds of thousands of cops like that all over the country. host: have you seen the netflix series "orange is the new black"? guest: i have not. i don't get a chance to watch much tv. host: paper requiremen -- piper

korman who spent time in jail, she testified on capitol hill. [video clip] >> when i reflect on the punishment for my crime, i cannot protest when i think about the harshness with which poor people and disproportionately poor people of covered art -- for people of color are treated in this country. it's hard to believe there was social benefit drawn from my incarceration. it prevented no new crimes. when we consider the punishments for drug offenses, we have to reflect on the mandatory minimum laws from the mid-1980's. at that time, those laws were intended to curb substance abuse and addiction. and some crimes that grow out of substance abuse and addiction. today, many decades after we

passed those laws, we have put millions of americans in prison and saddled them with felony convictions. illegal narcotics are cheaper, more potent and more easily available then when we put mandatory minimum laws on the book and incarcerated those people. we can only draw the conclusion that in terms of curbing substance abuse and addiction that those laws are a failure. locking people up for drug offenses, particularly low-level nonviolent offenses, is a waste of time and money. host: piper kerman author of the book "orange is the new black," which became a netflix series. you heard what she had to say before a senate panel. let me focus on present reform. what needs to be done? the president has talked about this. democrats and republicans say no more three strikes and you're out. guest: when we talk about smart policing, we need smart sentencing reforms as well.

i do not think you will find a police chief in this country that would say that locking up a person for possession of marijuana or some low level drug offense needs to have any incarceration, perhaps any at all. diverting folks to substance abuse programs, we've been doing that for years. the notion that there are millions of people in jail for low-level offenses is not accurate. yes, in the 1980's, the sentencing guidelines were changed because of the crack wars. i disagree with one thing, she said it was done to curb substance abuse and addiction. it was done to curb the violence associated with drugs being sold and gangs because of how much money they could make in the drug business. it was to curb the violence.

i think what we have all learned now is that, that someone who has a substance abuse needs treatment, not jail. just because someone was convicted of a drug offense making them a nonviolent offender. we had a homicide a couple days ago in montgomery county by an individual convicted of two major narcotics distribution offenses in 2012. he was sentenced to eight years. less than three years later, he's out. he's been arrested twice in the last several months. once with a gun, with drugs and the gun. and he killed his wife the other day and then shot himself. the parole commission said how

could we have predicted this? he was a nonviolent offender. he's had nonviolent -- he has had violent offense convictions since 1992. when we talk about sentencing reform, you will not get any argument. we understand there are sometimes better ways to handle folks that break the law whether it is substance abuse, mental illness. sending folks to jail is not the answer -- treatment is the answer for those folks. there are individuals that do community is safer when they are behind bars. the individual who committed the homicide in montgomery county the other day should have been behind bars. host: tom manger is the chief of police in montgomery county maryland. he's the president of major cities chiefs association. from maryland, good morning. caller: good morning. he knows that i am a member of his county.

i want to disagree on something really quick and then go on to another quick point. when he says that the drugs sentencing laws were for violence, we already had books that -- we already had laws on the books that address the violence. i disagree. these were political decisions and we know that. when it comes to montgomery county and police action here, i see more policemen riding around in cars wasting taxpayer gas money. when they do stops, it is like four or five police cars like they want to put on a display. you do not see policemen walking in the street. montgomery county is an affluent neighborhood. there should be no fear of policemen getting out of their cars and walking and talking.

i see an abundance of areas being targeted that are being minority areas with aggressive policing. i see other neighborhoods such as potomac bethesda where you do not see that type of action. these people commit crimes just as much as anybody else. if you go through the books and look at police stops if you have a way of tracking race, i guarantee in montgomery county you will see more black citizens stopped than whites. caller: -- host: we will give the chief at chance to respond. thank you for the call. guest: i'm in the community all the time, i know there are folks that would agree with the caller on a lot of points. we do not have a one size fits all in terms of police service. we have very urban areas, we do have folks i have cops on foot

on bikes. we also do understand that you've got to put police officers where the crime is occurring. if there's an area with high calls for service, has a higher crime rate, we have more police officers there. it is just simple. putting cops on the dots where they need to be. host: do your officers used body cameras? guest: we just began a pilot program. i've been wearing one for the last six weeks or so. i have to tell you that i think they are great value. they are not the panacea everybody thinks they are going to be. they have limitations as well. in the state of maryland, it requires that i notify somebody they are being video and audio recorded when i have my camera running. it is a real conversation stopper sometimes. tough to have a normal

interaction with someone after you tell them they are being recorded. i understand the value of it. part of when we talk about some of the impacts of ferguson -- people want police officers to be accountable. they want transparency. they want to know cops are doing what they are supposed to do. 99.9% of the time, my cops are doing exactly what they are supposed to do. the cameras are going to confirm that for the public and anybody else who is interested. host: do they go on automatically? how do they work? guest: you have to turn them on. we are in a pilot program now. we've just gone. i've got about 80 to 100 officers wearing the cameras right now. the officers are allowed to turn them off under certain circumstances. if they are going in to the locker room, going to the bathroom. if you and i are police officers and we are in the back of the station just talking about our kids and baseball and all that,

you do not have to have your camera on. but if you have any interaction with the public or are doing law enforcement activity, the camera should be on. host: david joining us, los angeles. good morning. caller: good morning. when i listen to the police chief, it reminds me of every hammer needs a nail. despite the fact that what we have is complete system failure in the judicial system, from the police to the mass incarceration. it's amazing to me that when you engage in this degree of denial of a failed system that constantly justifies itself by

perpetuating fear. as opposed to saying when you asked him the question about his budget you have all of these male-dominated professions like police and military. they garnish most of our economics here as far as tax dollars are concerned. there's no funding, minimum our little funding for schools and social programs. educational programs. all the boys get their toys. host: your response? guest: listen, in most jurisdictions and certainly in mind, education is our number one priority in terms of funding. i have a budget of about $280 million. the largest agency within the county government. the school system's budget is in the billions. believe me, the emphasis is on

education, as it should be. the notion that the entire criminal justice system is failing, i don't agree with that. what i do agree with is the entire criminal justice system needs a real study to see where it can be improved. the last time we had a commission that looked into criminal justice system, a national commission, was 1965. it is long overdue to have another crime commission to look at the criminal justice system to look at the issues this caller talks about it let's see where the system is failing. let's see where the system needs to be improved. since ferguson and with the other incidents around the country, everybody is focused on the police. everybody is criticizing the police. every time something happens oh, my god, the police are out of control.

police need to be looked at, there needs to be accountability. we need to look at who is investigating police involved shootings. are police being held accountable? those are important issues. good things are happening on those fronts. i do agree that the entire criminal justice system needs to be studied in a comprehensive manner to see where we can improve things. host: why did you become a cop? guest: i grew up in baltimore city. i saw a lot of what i believed were injustices in the world. i actually started off wanting to be a journalist. i quickly found out that was not for me. i decided i wanted to be a social worker. then i started taking some criminology classes and realized that i thought being a police officer would be where i could help the community the best. the one thing i can say is i

picked the right profession. i love what i do. it is challenging but after 38 years i still enjoy coming to work. and am invigorated by the challenges that face police today. host: tom manger is the president of a major cities chiefs association. chief of police for montgomery county maryland. we go to west virginia. michael is next. good thursday morning. caller: good morning. i would like to ask the question why. why are the majority of the major cities, there is a disparity in crime rates. they are all democratically held by democrats. how, like gun laws are affecting crime in those cities and states that are all held by democrats. they are taking guns out of

law-abiding citizens and criminals have all the guns. guest: well, i'm not sure that every major city is run by democrats. frankly -- the one thing i do think that oftentimes transcends some of the partisan politics is the safety of our communities. i do not know of one elected official that would not tell you the safety of communities is our priority. i've worked for a fair number of executives and chief elected officials. to a person, they have made public safety a priority. and not tried to interfere politically with how law-enforcement is done. not every police chief can say that but i have had that good fortune. so the notion that guns are

being taken out of law-abiding citizens' hands, i'm not sure where that is happening. frankly, common sense gun laws, there are some commonsense initiatives that could be taken that would make our communities safer that cannot make it through congress or make it through any -- you look at and i talked about earlier the shooting scenes where we are finding dozens of shell cases. there was a case in washington d.c. where you had a drum of a new mission -- a drum of ammunition, dozens of rounds fired out of a semi-automatic handgun. what mitt makes sense to enhance a penalty or make a specific law to give an enhanced penalty for someone who uses a high capacity magazine in the commission of crime? this has no impact on

law-abiding citizens. shouldn't they face a stiffer penalty? i think it is common sense. we cannot seem to get any of that kind of legislation through. universal background checks. people can circumvent a background check so easily in this country. that is how guns get into the hands of people that should not have guns. whether they have mental illness or criminal records. some of these commonsense things we cannot seem to get any of those past congress or at the local level. host: joining us from montgomery, alabama. democrats line. caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call. i would like to say to the sheriff, the chief -- 202-748-8001 -- [inaudible] caller: i want to ask how many

black officers does he have on his force? guest: i don't know the exact number. we're about -- is certainly over 100. maybe 150 or so on my department. could be that. i've been police chief there for 11 years. we have a large latino population. when i got there, we only had about 3% of officers that were looking a. i have -- of officers that were latino. i've doubled the number that are latino. we're 15% aisan -- we are 15% asian. i am lucky if i have 2%. host: why is it difficult to

recruit? guest: there are some cultural issues. certainly with the asian communities, law enforcement a career that parents do not encourage their kids to go into. we have strict requirements. two years of college and a rigorous background check. we work very hard. in the time i've been chief, we've been increasing the diversity of our department. host: time for two more calls. judy in bowie maryland. caller: communities where all through the night, they hear gunfire. how can that be dealt with? these people have to sleep on the floor. is there anything that can be done to address that? guest: great question. this goes back to neighborhoods where you have got this kind of violence that is going on almost on a daily basis.

you have certain strategies and the police in -- the police employ, whether it is plain clothes officers, a high presence. officers have gone to a shot spotter technology, you do not have to wait for a 911 call. a shot goes off and they can detect gunshots with listening devices. it comes down to is the police department working with those neighborhoods effectively? are people coming forward and saying we do not want to live in an unsafe neighborhood. are they working hand-in-hand with the police? oftentimes, the answer is no, for a host of reasons.

that is where the police have a responsibility to develop the trust. make folks understand that they are there to keep them safe. they are not there as an occupying force. they are there to keep every resident safe. the community has to realize that they have a responsibility for the safety of their neighborhoods as well. if you think police can handle it by themselves, they cannot. not any jurisdiction. whether it is a high crime area or a quiet area, you have to have cooperation. host: when the citizens pull out their smartphones and record incidents that happened whether it is in baltimore or elsewhere, what impact does that have? guest: it has been having a dramatic impact. i can tell you that i have talked to lots of cops about the best example, the shooting in north charleston. people were rebels to buy that -- people were revulsed by that.

people shook their heads and said we're going to get tarnished by the actions of that officer. some people have the perception that all cops are like that. cops have not been held accountable and we will lie for each other. that is not true. has it happened in the past? yes. police understand that we have to be transparent, we have to be held accountable. i think that even young cops -- listen, when i started .1 years old -- when i started 21 years o ld on the street, i wanted to save the world. i did not think about all the things i think about as a police chief. my cops understand it makes their life harder.

i have cops that are targeted by groups of individuals. they will say hands up, don't shoot. the officer is just walking by and has not done anything. that is why you got to remind them every day that they are there to build the trust. as i said a couple times, i'm proud of the men and women in my department. as tough a job as they have, they are doing it everyday. host: data from georgia. a quick question, please. caller: first, a question and a comment. thank you for c-span. montgomery county, where is that? guest: adjacent to washington, d.c. caller: closer to the baltimore area ok. i have been listening and trying to figure out if your hands are tied by what you can say and what you cannot say or if you

have the same liberal-type mind prevalent in your area. i commend you for what you are doing. i'm a public servant and a legislator in my community. i commend what you do. seems to me that in areas especially with the political mindset in your area, the best thing to do is just back off. what has happened, parents are not raising the children right. you cannot force that. what you have to do, the police force has to back off and let happen what happens. the community gets together and says this has got to stop. host: thank you for the call. your thoughts? guest: i do not think it is a good idea for any police department to back off.

let the community see how bad things can be. the fact is, you've got to work together. if you get to a point where -- he says are my hands tied, i've never felt my hands were tied. not one elected official i have worked for knows my politics. what they know is my priority is public safety. and i've had in-depth discussions with very liberal politicians and conservative politicians. my point of view is the same. what i am focused on his public safety, what makes sense to best serve the public. frankly, i think that some of the more political discussions -- another time we can talk about immigration and gun violence and all those things. the fact that there are things

that make our community safer and that is what i'm focused on. host: chief tom manger from montgomery county, maryland and president of the major cities chiefs assoc