>> some news for florida residents hoping to vote in the upcoming election. a federal judge has extended florida's voter registration deadline through tuesday. ontrict judge mark walker wednesday ordered the extension of florida's voter registration by a week because of hurricane matthew. the florida democratic party had

asked for an extension in the wake of hurricane matthew which led to evacuation orders. reporting judge walker had already extended the theline by a day after florida democratic party filed a lawsuit last weekend after the hurricane. pictures from the cato institute in washington. they will be hosting a discussion looking into a range of community policing issues such as the use of body cameras, police militarization. they will also talk about social media surveillance. this is live coverage here on c-span. it should start in just a moment.

looked at economic and income inequality and in the next few weeks we will address free trade and more. today we will explore the state of policing in america. the recent events in oklahoma and oklahoma provide a stark reminder of these issues. carefully and soberly examined and addressed. i have brought together the principal member of the cato institute's project on criminal justice. it is led by the director tim lynch whose research interests include the war on terror, the drug war, militarization of police and gun control. he has published articles in a variety of periodicals and law journals. several amicus

briefs in the supreme court in cases involving constitutional rights. he blogs extensively in the -- misconductust reporting project -- misconduct reporting project. he is also the editor of "in the name of justice." and "after prohibition." he is a member of the wisconsin, district of columbia and wisconsin bars. his research is focused on , overforcement practices criminalization and civil liberties. he has appeared on huff post live and voices of america. he was published in the case western reserve law review. we have copies available on the weside table -- i am told

are all out of them. i'm happy to get one for you if you contact me after. he is a graduate of indiana university. adam bates is a policy analyst interestsject and his include constitutional law, the war on drugs, terror, and police militarization. he has an ma in middle eastern studies. he is a member of the oklahoma bar. matthew feeney is a policy analyst at the cato institute. he has worked at reason magazine and assistant editor of reason.com. he received his ba and ma in philosophy from the university of reading and -- in england. each speaker will have 10 minutes and then we will open it up to audience quest and's. let's welcome tim lynch. [applause]

thank you, peter. good afternoon everybody. right now i think it is safe to say that american policing is being discussed and debated like never before. to take one example the washington post to some months ago earned a pulitzer prize for tracking fatal police shootings across the country. it's really astonishing when you think about it. of all the things the government keeps track of it never kept an accurate tally of fatal officer involved shootings. that's why the poster earned its andd for throwing resources try to come up with an accurate number for everybody so we can put police shootings in some kind of context. is it going up, going down, staying the same? recent surveys show that citizen confidence in the police has dropped to its lowest point in more than 20 years.

we want tooon what do is offer our ideas on how policing can be improved. before we get into a discussion of specific reform ideas we thought it would be useful to start off with an overview of policing in the united states. once we have some perspective on the big picture than we can get to some concrete reform proposals. law enforcement in america is heavily decentralized. we have federal police agencies and we have state and local police departments. about thehere knows major federal law enforcement agencies like the fbi, secret service, dea and border patrol. there are dozens of smaller agencies that have police powers. the bureau of land management. is a federal reserve

police. we discovered another one recently. the u.s. government publishing office police. if you go to their website you will see that their agent are armed with automatic weapons. there's dozens and dozens of federal agencies out there with police powers. even though the number of federal police agents has been 30 yearsver the past most of the policing in the united states is done at the state and local level. about 18,000 police departments spread about 50 state jurisdictions and 800 thousand sworn officers. a sworn officer is someone who is authorized to make arrest and carry firearms. on the federal level there are about 150,000 sworn officers. sometimes people ask me why cato would bring its police reform ideas to capitol hill when most of the action is taking place at the local, county, city level.

it's a fair question. there are several responses. the first one is that policing issues apply to both federal agents and local police agents. most of the controversial shootings that we've seen on the news over the past two or three years. rice, laquan samir mcdonald. these are shootings involving local police officers. courtesterday the supreme announced it is going to be reviewing a case involving a border patrol agent who shot an unarmed 15-year-old. federal agents get into controversial shootings and the supreme court is going to be taking up that case this term. the relationship between the federal government and local policing has become rather complicated over the years. adam bates is going to explain how the department of defense

has been sending military weaponry and equipment to our local civilian police departments. congress also sends millions of dollars in assistance to local police departments with various rules and regulations that come attached to those funds. matthew feeney is going to be discussing body cameras in that context. is a subject hillary clinton been talking about on the campaign trail when criminal justice issues come up. john blanks is going to be touching on how federal and state police work together in the context of civil asset forfeiture in a program called equitable sharing. the department of justice has also been called in to investigate many local police departments to see whether or not there is a so-called pattern and practice of constitutional violations. over the past few years the

department of justice has been called into cities such as new orleans, cleveland, newark, miami, albuquerque, oakland, ferguson, and recently they issued their report on the baltimore city police department. a federal investigation is now underway in the city of chicago where federal investigators are looking into that department for a pattern and practice of constitutional violations. we expect a report to come out in the next four to six months. seeing the federal government and more directly involved in prosecuting local law enforcement agencies. or agents i should say. yesterday the famous sheriff in arizona has been cited for criminal contempt by federal officials. be going on trial in just a few months and there's a possibility that he will actually face gerald time. -- jail time. it's a remote possibility but he's going to be prosecuted in federal court and it is a possibility. a sheriff in los angeles county

is also under federal indictment. there's a lot going on. i should also note at the beginning that we are aware that when a police department is when it iswell, maintaining high standards of professionalism and gets good reviews from the community, that's not considered to be news. it doesn't get as much in the way of media attention. we do recognize that. at the same time we also have to face the reality that many departments are beset with serious problems. do isat we want to identify constructive policy proposals that can help minimize those problems. a quick overview of policing and the united states. my colleagues will now dive into some of the more specific proposals we are offering in the way of reform. thank you for your attention and interest in this subject.

>> good afternoon. today aboutlk something most of us have gone through at one point or another. that is the monday traffic stop. when that comes to mind most , i got busted. i was going 65 and a 55. you wait for the cop to come up and you are thinking, can i get out of it? that's the peak of your concern. that's not how all traffic stops go in this country. particularly for minorities. there's a different kind of traffic stop known as an investigatory stop. this can happen any number of ways. an officer can follow you for a while as you are going through a neighborhood. you are just wondering.

you are like, what's going on. his lights pop on and he pulls you over. he comes up to the car and you are like, officer, what did i do wrong? yourys, the light above license plate is out. or, you swerved close to the yellow line. you're thinking, i have been aware of you for the past three miles. i know i didn't go near the line. but there you are. as you are waiting for your license and registration, you are nervous. when he returns instead of just handing you the ticket, he immediately starts asking questions about why you are there and what you are doing. he realize he doesn't really care about the light above your license plate. running an investigation. and he's going to try very hard for you to give up your right to not be searched. they can use all kind of trickery. he can pressure you. he can say, you're just going to make it easier on yourself if you give me consent.

it's not about -- we can bring the canine out here. were going to search you anyway so you might as well make it easy on yourself. here you are. you have done nothing wrong. you have a police officer implicitly threatening you for doing nothing wrong at all. you know the names philando castile and sandra bland. you know this can get really ugly. maybe even fatal. so you consent. you sit on the side of the road sometimes in handcuffs and cars drive by as police officers rummage through all your things. and to all the world, you look like a criminal. and you are being humiliated. the officer may find nothing. he will send you on your way maybe with a warning. no apologies. , this isn't like a speeding ticket where you know you got busted. you know you did wrong. this was illegitimate. and you are just wondering, that's not what to serve and protect is supposed to mean.

the stop was done under pretext. the entire reason for the stop was he thought he looked suspicious. chances are he thought he looked suspicious because you had black or brown skin. all realize that curbing dangerous driving is an important police function. a ticket forget speeding, you don't like it but it's not really a problem. when you have these pretextual stops that cause antagonistic interactions with the police, that has shockwaves that go through community. that are studies that show one in three black men between 18 and 35 have gone through this exact thing. and even more, no people who have gone through it. and it erodes police legitimacy in that community. it makes law enforcement harder. less safehe community because criminals feel emboldened because this contributes to the animosity between the minority communities and the police themselves.

you may be wondering, why am i talking about this on capitol hill? there is more local than being pulled over in your neighborhood. as tim alluded to, the equitable sharing program is part of the incentive program to get police officers to enforce the war on drugs. part of this is known as civil asset forfeiture. it's when a police agency can seize property that is tangentially tied to a crime. you don't have to be charged with a crime. you certainly don't have to be convicted with a crime for them to take it. , youe criminal forfeiture have to go into court and prove that money is legitimate. very expensive and time-consuming and a lot of people don't have it. is if thiss works officer was not a traffic cop at all and part of a federal task there and ordered to look for drug trafficking.

and one of the perverse incentives of this because the police department gets to keep 80% of whatever cash they seize, is that instead of stopping drugs and guns, we have police officers on tape saying, we get them coming out of the major metro areas because they are going to be cash laden. paper overize that time to buy new toys that we will talk about. it becomes this very nasty policing for profit motive. what we have is a perverse incentive on a couple different levels. again, if the police are incentivized to stop the cash but not the drugs and guns, what exactly is the war on drugs for anyway? it's supposed to be a public safety issue, right? if it's just to make police officers more money that's not helpful. not saying every police officer who goes through this is a bad person or that they don't care about what happens in the communities.

incentives are all wrong and congress can make these little changes to diminish this and perhaps improve the relationship between these communities and the police. thank you. >> housing going? -- how's it going? as tim and john both mentioned, i'm going to discuss the militarization of police and show how that dovetails with the federal involvement that john mentioned. to carry on the theme of the federal government providing perverse incentives to state and local law enforcement, i want to talk about the militarization of our police over the past few decades. we all saw the images in ferguson of the police with gas masks and body armor and assault rifles, in some cases sniper

rifles. i think for a lot of people, especially people in communities like ferguson, they are familiar with this image of american law enforcement. for a lot of people, people like me especially, this was a bit of a shock. you start to think, is this what law enforcement looks like in america right now? there's a long-standing myth in america that swat teams and paramilitary tactics are isolated incidents or that they are reserved for the worst of the worst. in fairness, that's how swat teams started. toy were initially designed be used for hostage situations, active shooters, barricaded suspect. eggs of that nature. emergencies where routine law enforcement equipment and tactics were not good enough. drug war,dvent of the that changed rapidly. a few hundred swat raids a year turned into the thousands. the best estimate we have right now is that police across america conduct -- how many raids do you think police

conduct? information we have right now is that roughly 80,000 swat raids occur in america per year. and contrary to conventional wisdom, these are not hostage situations or active shooters. the vast majority of these swat raids are serving search warrants. aclu ofaccording to the these raids are those initial purposes. hostage situation, active shooter. of these arerity search warrant and the vast majority of these search warrants are looking for drugs. seen in you may have the news a swat team in massachusetts reportedly accompanied by a national guard helicopter descended on the home of an 81-year-old woman in order to seize a single pot land that had been -- plant that had been spotted from the air. that woman is fighting with all of her heart.

bless her. [applause] people need to understand these are not peaceful law operations. they become normalized. we are talking about aggressive paramilitary style raids and they are dangerous. they are dangerous for the officers involved and the people who live in these homes. we are talking about showing up your house at three :00 or 4:00 in the morning not even announcing themselves. battering ram on the door. throw everybody on the floor. shoot the dog. just a side note, how many dogs do you think the police kill every year? the doj estimates that police in america killed 10,000 dogs a year during these police procedures. intensityse are high with a high potential for violent escalation and a high potential for violence. what does this have to do with you and the federal government? that is another myth.

doesthe federal government not have much to say about what goes on in local police departments. while criminal justice is historically a state or local ands this, the war on drugs more recently the war on terror have provided the basis for the federal government to become deeply entangled in state and local law enforcement. of that entanglement is a big distortion of police priorities and practices. through huge federal grant programs such as the urban areas security initiatives, weapons transfer programs directly from the pentagon transferring military equipment to local police, through programs such as the 1033 program that many of you are familiar with, and the equitable sharing program. the federal government creating a legal regime to help facilitate state and local police taking property, cash and property from people who are not charged with a crime and not convicted of a crime, they are

merely suspected usually of a drug crime, using -- losing their property to the police. the federal government provides incentives are state and local police to engage in this. end result is that state and local police because of the incentive structure start to forsake local concerns and local priorities in the name of fighting the federal government's war on drugs and terror. some examples of this distortion. police in keene new hampshire applied for and received federal funding almost a half million dollars for a mine resistant arguing that the keene pumpkin festival was a target for terrorists. sure it's a fantastic pumpkin festival. i have not been myself. that the to reason keene pumpkin festival was not actually an al qaeda target. in fact a keene city councilman admitted as much when he said, we are not really concerned about the threat of terrorism.

but that's what you have to put on the application if you want the money. another refreshing bit of candor from the same official said and by the way, what red-blooded american cop doesn't want to drive around in one of those? it's surely true that police and anyone would like to play around with these toys but that is not the purpose of law enforcement. that is certainly not the reason that justifies the existence of these federal programs or federal intervention in state and local police. another councilman called it a tremendous waste of money which was also candid. federal grantare programs it was not the money of the taxpayers of keene new hampshire. this did not go through their legislature or the normal appropriations process. money from the federal government in order to provide this equipment that otherwise they simply wouldn't have because nobody else would be paying for it. example police in tacoma washington decided the threat of iud's. that stands for improvised

explosive device. these are the kind of roadside bombs you may hear about in places like iraq or afghanistan. tacoma washington cited the threat of iud's for another mine resistant vehicle. there is very little evidence that there will be an ied attack in tacoma washington. that's what you have to say if equipment.e retired senator tom coburn put out a report in 2012 to highlight the profligacy of these terrorism grant programs. he specifically targeted the urban area security initiative. 2012.tudy was put out in it had given more than $7 billion to local law enforcement through these terrorism grams and yet according to the report there was very little evidence to suggest that the communities were any safer. ofs massive expenditure federal tax dollars and intervention of the federal government into state and local anythingwas producing

except enriching these departments and producing this militarization of fact. president obama commissioned a task force after the events in ferguson to explore the 1033 program and they concluded there was not adequate training. there were not adequate concerns about civil rights. her the recommendation of this task force at 1033 program was actually reformed so that police were no longer given tanks or tracked vehicles. vehicles with wheels they can still get. nothing on tank treads. they can no longer have weaponize aircraft, rifles larger than 50 caliber, grenade launchers, and for the love of god they can no longer have bayonets. [laughter] have noto this day found out why the federal government was giving local police bayonets or if they were ever actually deployed, but no longer. we are skewing the local concerns here because when this

funding comes through the federal grant programs, you're not going through the normal process. you are not going through the representative process at finding out with the community needs and wants. incentivesting your and mandates from the federal government instead. rip on just want to abuses of this program. some police departments to their credit have rejected participation in these programs for exactly that reason. brenda dell pozo is the chief of burlington, vermont. he voluntarily removed his department from the 1033 program and said i do not like the way my officers seeing things three military lens. this does not look like law enforcement to me. this looks like military and that's not what we want police in this community to be about. it is not just us up here saying this. there are people in the police community saying this is not what law enforcement should look

like and we don't want to take part in this anymore. from equitable sharing to terrorism and drug or funding to --right military request equipment transfers to the secret of invasive surveillance equipment such as stingray cell that trackers and drones my colleague matthew has written about. the federal government has forcefully injected elf into everyday policing and the priorities, tactics and legitimacy of law enforcement has suffered greatly in this country as a result. the federal government may not be able to solve all of the problems with policing in america that he can stop exacerbating the ones that we have. some departments will have this equipment regardless. havebigger cities will police departments that have well-equipped swat teams, mine resistant vehicles, things of that nature because they can go through their local appropriations process and convince them they need this equipment. places like keene new hampshire and all of these -- i can say it

because i'm from there -- podunk little towns will not have mine resistant vehicles if they are forced to go through the local process instead of getting local process. enforcementw officer called it getting pennies from heaven to pay for this. the federal government does have a role to play here, despite the history of it being a state and local issue. now i will turn it over to my colleague, matthew. thank you. matthew: good afternoon. very cheery so far. bodyhere to discuss police cameras, the role of the federal government in providing cameras,

and the cost to police. too much that's informative on the screen. it's mostly pictures so that you don't have to stare at me for the talk. i want to talk about ferguson. know, st.of you louis grand jury declined to indict darren wilson for the killing of michael brown. this sparked protests all over the country. at the same time, the obama administration announced a matching funding program for the purchase of 50,000 body cameras. this is not a surprise. body cameras have been a staple in these discussions. there is widespread believe that they prompt an observer effect

and better behavior, whether you citizen or an officer. the widest study on this took place in rialto, california. a new police chief came in and outfitted his officers with body cameras. they recorded the numbers of complaints against police and compared it to the year before. in the year in which cameras were deployed, there was a dramatic reduction in use of force and complaints against police. the most recent study published last month examined 4200 officer sites, about 1.5 million hours worth of body camera footage, and they compared, again, the year before in body cameras. a found a 93% reduction in citizen complaints against police. there are a number of reasons it might've been so dramatic. officers were required to inform

citizens they were on camera. i don't want to paint to rosie of a picture. here are the results from san diego. there were body cameras used and there was actually an increase in the use of four, does use of force -- increase in the use of force. be the benefits may not just police and citizens. they have also been valuable in investigating police misconduct. many of you are aware of the walter scott shooting. will have ainvolved trial at the end of this month. the eric garner killing also had cell phone footage, although the officer in that was not charged. when it comes to body cameras,

i'm sure many of you are aware of the shooting in cincinnati. the officer there is facing involuntary manslaughter charges. his trial of begin at the end of this month. the prosecutor described the footage as "invaluable" in charges. in albuquerque, new mexico, the killing of james boyd, a homeless schizophrenic camping out in the mountains. it was announced yesterday that the second degree murder charges -- the trial here ended in a mistrial. this was announced yesterday. but the district attorney when this began said they had evidence to establish probable have inat they did not other cases. it seems that body cameras have some beneficial effect on other and officers. it is certainly the case that body cameras have been proven

useful in investigations into police misconduct. i think it is also worth thinking about the cost. people have talked to children who have been -- it is also worth considering the police talk to children who have been sexually assaulted, undercover agents, and informants. so we do have to be careful when considering body cameras. manhe bottom left is a undergoing a drug overdose in his car. the top right and bottom right show a raidotage that took place in indiana. shotsighlighting these because -- the swat raid i think is particularly disturbing because you are seeing the interior of a person's home. you can tell a lot about a

person by what they are watching on television, what is on their bookshelves, their political posters, things like that. the man in the car is not a violent criminal. he is undergoing a medical trauma. officer,tabbing the his face has been blurred, but he has a rather distinct tattoo, so it would not be difficult to figure out who he was. light of these, i wrote a paper for cato highlighting what i think the right policy should be so we can get the balance right between accountability and privacy. i think the important thing is that incidents that take place that body homes, camera footage should not be available to members of the public. it should be available to homeowners and next of kin on request. have anou do not expectation of privacy and the officer doesn't, i think members of the public should be able to

see footage that shows searches, shootings, and detentions. now, today we have been discussing law-enforcement as primarily a state and local issue, but i think there is an important role for the federal government. the obama administration shortly after ferguson indicated a strong interest in body cameras. .nd body cameras are not cheap they impose a burden on a department. but what i want to stress today is that the department of justice has issued lottie camera grants to departments that do not have good policies in place -- body camera grants to departments that do not have good policies in place, the do not have good accountability or transparency. the los angeles police department received $1 million despite the fact that the los angeles policy requires police officers under investigation to view body camera footage before they make statements.

the policy also did not specifically have prohibitions on using body camera footage for general surveillance. this year, there was $20 million departments.x many of you will have heard the news out of charlotte and there are laws on the books that prevent members of the public like you and me to access footage without a court order. this is not a policy that promotes accountability or transparency. i think if the federal government is going to be involved in funding body cameras, the least it can do is ensure the money goes to the departments that have demonstrated a commitment to transparency and accountability protecting privacy. are not necessarily

good or bad tools. they are made good or bad. with the right tools in place, they are tools -- with the right policies in place, they are tools of transparency. without the right policies in tools ofey are surveillance. there he viewed departments have policies banning the use of facial recognition -- very few departments have policies banning the use of facial recognition software. it's important to limit the have two bodys camera footage. we don't want police deciding to scroll through body camera footage to see who was where doing what, especially if there is no probable cause. i do worry about the federal government's role, the policies ultimatelyng to, but

, it is up to people who work on capitol hill to ensure that those strict policies are put in place. thank you. [applause] >> all right, so we have 20 minutes or so to entertain questions on the topics we have discussed. we can start with whoever is ready to go. anyone? >> this is open to everybody if you wish to give an answer. i was wondering if you could whether civil asset forfeiture funds are used to the militarization of police we see in some of these cases.

are those related or not? >> they are absolutely related. it's important to understand when we talk about asset forfeiture, all 50 states have their own laws about asset forfeiture, so where the money ends up going can differ by a jurisdiction, but by and large, civil asset forfeiture money goes straight back into the budget of the police department. again, this is not going through the appropriations process or back into the general fund. it is going to the police department and they can use it for anything related to law enforcement. new includes paying for equipment and things of that nature. there absolutely is a connection assetn the use of civil forfeiture and militarization. it's not just the financial

connection. it's also the separation of powers issue. now, we are not going to the legislature to say hey, we need a swat team. we need 50 caliber rifles. through theoing normal process he would go through where people would have the ability to comment on the acquisition of this equipment. where you would have public comments toices, or say hey, maybe we don't need this stuff. we are skipping through all of the legislative appropriation process and going straight to buying the equipment. important to know that there have been some significant victories in the area of civil for chair -- civil forfeiture reform. whence it came up for a vote, the vote was forimous -- once it came up a vote, the vote was unanimous to abolish this practice.

in california, they also significantly scaled back on in thatset forfeiture state. there is clearly more that needs to be done. >> there are a lot of other developed countries [indiscernible] >> the drug war has come up a few times. we have done some international comparisons looking at countries that take a different approach than the united states historic hard-line approach to waging the drug war. for example, a lot of people don't realize that portugal decriminalized all drugs in the year 2000. there were a lot of predictions that they were making a big mistake when they went to deescalate the war in that country. we did a study by glenn

greenwald who went over to study the results to see whether these dire predictions would come true. he found that they are doing very well there. there is no movement underway to say they made a mistake, we need to reverse this policy and go back to the american approach of ramping up the drug war. more and more officials from around the world are going to portugal to see what they have done, to study the results, and to deescalate the drug war in places like brazil and other countries around latin america. of course, we have upcoming elections here where marijuana legalization is on the ballot in many states. these are steps in the right direction, moving away from the , moving towardch decriminalization and legalization. it's a tremendous waste of be doingsources to

these swat raids with helicopters over the property of elderly women with a pot plant in the backyard. tremendous waste of resources. these resources should be redirected toward the fight against violent crime. >> a big aspect of this is that if interaction between the police and citizenry doesn't happen, obviously, it can't escalate into violence. when we talk about marijuana legalization, we are not just talking about limiting drug taste interactions with police. we are also talking about something jonathan mentioned with pretextual stops. if a smell of marijuana can no serve as probable cause for searching a car, a lot of the escalations we see that end up with people dying can no longer happen. policing is a dangerous job.

if an officer is worried about his safety, if we can limit the interactions between police and community by decriminalizing behaviors that should not be criminal in the first place, have interactions do not to blossom into violence. >> i have an uncle who served as a policeman in england. it is true that the united states stands out among developed countries to blossom o violence. as far as the number of citizens killed by law enforcement. it is worthadd that examining treatment or response to calls that have to do with people's mental illness and those kinds of things. footage very disturbing that came out of dallas of a mentally ill man with a screwdriver who was shot and quickly -- very quickly.

i think that's an area where training could also help. >> i would like to hear more about the militarization and that perspective. in hisim mentioned remarks, many federal agencies, agencies most people don't even know exist, for some reason have been part of this militarization ramp-up in the federal government. and it's not just military equipment. it's also surveillance equipment. i mentioned stingray cell phone devices that are used to track people's cell phones and their locations. stingray devices. why? why does the epa have a swat team? aside from the general we want this stuff and it is available, i don't have a lot of great ideas about why this is happening except that that is the natural growth of government

g checked inot bein any way. ownsecret service has their police. the fbi has their own police. the treasury, the mint. why? , thean jen show tangentially collectedn from federal agencies can trickle down to law-enforcement. they will pass it to local law enforcement and say ok, this is a guy who is doing this. we can't give you this information or tell you how to get this information, but you can set up with parallel construction and come up with a plausible way to get this

information and perceived that way. a lot of times when someone goes to trial, they don't find out how they got the information, and when the government is called on it they say we drop the charges. a pointuld go back to that was raised earlier about the shooting of dogs. this is something that doesn't get enough attention in our views. about growing resentment and communities. when you shoot the family dog, these things rebel out. everybody agrees that officers have to be able to protect themselves, but when more and more of these incidents are caught on tape and you can come to your own conclusion about whether the officer was threatening or whether the officer was overreacting and shot the dog, these boilerplate

statements that go into police reports, the dog was threatening him, thato shoot doesn't cut it anymore. there was an incident in new york city where these civilian review board concluded that an officer overreacted by shooting a dog. another one of these things was caught on tape. this is an example where we can learn what the united states has been doing well. receive regular training on how to deal with dogs. they deal with dogs in the community as well. there may be a few bites a year, but no serious incidents because postal workers have been given training on how to handle a dog that is threatening versus a dog that is not threatening. we have so many local police officers who don't receive this training. matthew was talking about how

there is a lot to be done. sometimes, it's stealing with a with a it's dealing person in mental distress. there is training to avoid violent incidents in the community. >> it's my understanding that in england the police do not carry guns. i wonder if you can comment on the success or failure of that policy. british police, but anywhere. to them ift access they need to. but britain is not unique but not necessarily the norm and other developed countries.

there are other countries where police regularly carry guns. french police, finnish police. it's not just american police that are armed. the discussion has to be when they use the weapons and under what circumstances. disarming the police might sound like a good idea, but of course, there are plenty of citizens in the united states who also have guns, and that something police in most of these other countries don't regularly have to worry about. i don't think disarming the american police is necessarily the right way to go, but certainly training in under what circumstances they use those weapons is something that should be looked at. >> i would like to follow-up on that. some agencies have tried to use more toward tasers and other quote on quote nonlethal uses of force, although we also hear stories about people dying after

being tasered. what we have found is that the use of tasers goes up if they are used in place of guns. i can only reiterate the training is just as important if when to important than fire firearm. >> one thing we can do is try different policies and learn from one another. a jurisdiction that wants to try the english approach of going unarmed. we learn from those experiences the same way we are learning from colorado. marijuanaeople said legalization would be a disaster. a lot of people are following closely what has happened in colorado. dire predictions have not come true. when a state experiments with a policy, we can learn from it and then other policymakers and

other jurisdictions and make their own judgments based on what we learned from the experience. >> we talked about federalism when we started. there any merit to federalizing police misconduct in terms of crimes or penalties? given the decentralized nature of law enforcement and that we have 18,000 law-enforcement agencies, i don't want to say that the federal government has no oversight role, especially when areomes to things that constitutional violations. i think those are necessary to rights.constitutional but the idea of federalizing

law-enforcement or the entirety of the oversight of law-enforcement, i think that's probably a bad idea because the federal government itself -- it's not very easy to hold those people accountable. it's not as easy to hold the federal government accountable as it can be at the state and local level. i would be very concerned about the federal government being the sole and only word on police misconduct. >> how about the war on cops? does it exist? >> there is much discussion on about a war on cops, but the evidence for that is rather thin. the violence on police officers, despite the awful tragedy and ambush in dallas this year,

overall, the statistics on violence against police has been going steadily down. we are at very low levels. the term or expression i think is being used more in the debate over policing -- we are having a debate over how to handle police misconduct. we are having a debate over what police tactics are appropriate and should be implemented. we have people on different sides of these questions, and some of the people who don't likethe policies demilitarization, abolishing civil asset forfeiture, these they are upset, about the way the debate is going and they mischaracterize that as being some kind of war on police. i think it's an unfortunate characterization. we all know other governmental institutions like our schools -- we have to address them.

it's not a war on teachers because we want to reform our schools. it's the same with our police institutions. in chicago, new orleans, some of these places, how many of these agencies have been dysfunctional for some time? moving into address them and fix them should not be mischaracterized as a war on cops. >> [indiscernible] >> running the police misconduct --site, i find all different how different departments handle it. violationa small like an inflammatory facebook post will get someone fired.

other times, like the officer that killed the dog in new york, he got off with -- the civilian review board said he violated the rules but he got off with a light reprimand. it depends on union protection. it depends on the transparency in any given department with body camera policies and how this goes through. but ultimately it comes down to people paying attention to their own communities and bringing political pressure on the becauseor and the mayor they are insulated. most people don't elect to the police chief. you're not thinking, what did the sheriff do today? time for one more. if not, we are not done with this topic by a longshot. last year, we did a full-day conference. december 7, we are going to do another conference at the cato institute. if you're interested in that,

please go to cato.org. the next in the series will be on free trade. that's october 27. check your e-mail for that. i thank everyone for attending, and i think we should thank our speakers today. [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2016]

>> from this event, we will go live now to remarks from navy secretary ray made this, who is bis, who ismad set to discuss the future of the marine corps at the national press club. the national press club. my name is thomas burr. i am the 109th president of the national press club. our guest today is the 75th secretary of the united states navy. i would like to welcome our public radio and c-span audiences, and i would like to remind you that you can follow npclive.itter using # tterer,ur right, max le

publishers of stars and stripes. the editor at aerospace report. a naval air fare reporter at defense news. michael phelps, former naval officer and publisher of the washington examiner. ted ogle, chief of staff and secretary of -- to the secretary of the navy. the washington correspondent for the chicago tribune. skipping our speaker, the honorable john warner, former secretary of the navy and united states senator from virginia. press club speakers member who organize today's event. michael smith, corresponding with the new york times. eric felter, senior news production specialist at the associated press. and the president of gelato group, llc. thank you all. [applause]

host: also, a quick thank you to in thecial guests audience, the former secretary of the navy and the former acting secretary of the navy. thank you, gentlemen. th --est today is a may is the 75th united states secretary of the navy and the longest to serve since world war i. with all of 900,000 people under the secretary, has focused on improving the quality of life of sailors and decreasing the department's dependence on fossil fuels. he has strengthened partnerships with industry, assured international counterparts, works to determine adversaries and decreased the size of the navy fleet. 100 50visited over countries and territories in all 50 states, meeting with sailors and marines deployed are stationed around the world and

maintaining a developing international relationships. under his tenure, the navy has its personnel policy, making it more merit based. today, the navy and marines are open to women. he directed the navy and marine corps to change the way they used energy, setting a goal to use 50% renewable energy by 2010. a native of ackerman, served asi, mabus that state's governor from 1980 8-19 92. president bill clinton named him u.s. ambassador to saudi arabia in 1994. aday, he will provide us with state of the navy and marine corps. please give a national press club welcome to secretary mabus.

[applause] : thank you sos much. thank you to the national press club. thank you all for being here today. i want to single out a few people you have already introduced. three of my friends [inaudible] who was acting secretary when i came in. these are three of the finest public servants you will ever meet. i am talking about john warner the person now, not john warner the ship.

i don't know if anyone in this club has noticed, but there is an election going on. [laughter] that election, it will bring in a new administration. think now is a very appropriate to take the measure of what we have done in this administration, what we have accomplished in the navy and marine corps, institutions founded on tradition, legacy, continuity, change, and adaptability. to quote one of our former chiefs of naval operation, our navy has both a tradition and a , and we look with pride and confidence in both directions. so, that is what i am going to do today. as tom said, give you the state .f the navy

to demonstrate how the actions we have taken over the last seven and a half years will ensure that the future of our navy and marine corps will be as bright as its storied past. in his poem, the laws of the navy, british admirable role in wrote,d wrote -- roland on the strength of one link in the cable depended that might of the chain. who know when they might be tested? or perish by strain. came into office, we had a weak fleet and a bad economy. we had our hands tied by sequestration, and it continues to hang around to make our planning very difficult.

all the volatility threatened operations, training, and was costing lives. bad laws and antiquated personnel limited our ability to attract and retain america's most talented young people. all of this happened during , a far morets complicated world, and an ever decreasing demand for naval forces. and yet, i am confident that when history looks back on this , we will find that we not only bore the strain, but that we fixed the cable. we set the course for many --itional strong lengths links in the chain for years ahead. now every place has one of these.

a little trifold with a small weection of the achievements have made across a wide range of priorities. there is going to be a test later, so i urge you to look at it. they are all important. i think they are all meaningful, but today i am going to concentrate on shipbuilding and energy. and people. there is a saying that 80% of success is just showing up. up longer have shown than any secretary since world war i, i guess i can claim some success based on that. be thet should not standard. it's not the standard. it's not for me, and

particularly for the navy and marine corps. the standard isn't has to be way higher. we have never just shown up. when john paul jones defeated the british in their own backyard in 1779 two when marines planted the flag in 1940 --2 when president kennedy 9045, two when president kennedy averted nuclear war, to when onsident obama relied carrier-based aviation as his only strike option against isis in 2015, the u.s. navy, the u.s. marines, uniquely have providedpse presence around the globe and around the globe and around-the-clock. and to take this one step further, we don't just show up. we're already there.

on, above, beneath, and from the stability, assure allies, deter enemies, and give our nation's options in times of crisis. and marine corps the away team because sailors and marines equally in times of peace and war are not just in the right place at the right time, they are in the right place all the time. we are the away team because we never get a home game. we don't want a home game. there, and there is to beingest thing there. in every case, from combat to view manager terry and assistance and disaster relief, naval assets get there faster, stay longer, bring everything we , and because we are

operating from sovereign u.s. territory, we don't have to ask any other country's permission to get the job done. that presence, we have to have holes on the horizon. quantity is a quality all its own. to say the navy is too focused is to admit anps ignorance of its purpose. we are the navy. we did ships -- we need ships. we need enough ships to do every job we are given. i have made shipbuilding one of and we haveities, dramatically reverse the decline in the size of the fleet. in 2000 one, the u.s. navy had 316 ships. seven years later, 2008, we were down to 278 ships. during that seven years, the navy put 41 ships under

contract, not enough to keep our fleet from continuing to shrink, and not enough to keep our shipyards going. i have been there a little over seven years now, so it is an absolute comparison. in the seven years i have been there, we put 86 ships under contract. we have done so at the same time that we have increased aircraft purchases by 35%. and we have done it all with a smaller topline. our efforts have been supported by congress. they guarantee the chest with the ships under contract, just with the ships out there -- they guarantee that just with the ships under contract and with the ships out there today, we will get to our current assessed need by 2021. it takes a long time to build a

fleet. it takes a long time to reverse the consequences of a shrinking fleet. implementing basic practices, multi-year contracts, stable requirements, we have increase the numbers while driving on the costs on virtually every ship. , on combat ships, the cost has decreased by nearly half. ullsontrast to the ho contracted prior to 2009. while the cost have gone down, the capabilities have gone up. increasingificantly survivability. because of the enhanced counter summering capabilities and contributing to our striker operations, we are designating

those future ships as frigates. destroyers is another example of a successful shipbuilding program. 62 of these ships are currently operating in the fleet. we are in the fourth year of a multiyear procurement. thanks to competition, and angst of the hard work and talent of our shipyards, this multiyear -- thanks to the hard work and talent of our shipyards, this multiyear contract is saving more than $2 billion over its predecessors. same as submarines. in april of 2013, we awarded the the navy hasact ever awarded, 18 billion dollars for 10 virginia class attack submarines. the summary and's cost $2 billion apiece. public,doing math in

but we paid for nine, we got 10. that's like having one of those punch cards. by nine summer rains, get your tent one free. nine subs, get the tent one free. 10th one free. we have done it. everyone of you needs one of these punch cards. we have expanded unmanned systems in all domains, and we have increased the focus on this by establishing a deputy ,ssistant secretary of the navy unmanned, and an office of the designed specifically to coordinate all unmanned programs. as these manned and unmanned fleet, we arethe

equipping them with the latest technologies, things like laser weapons, rail guns. we have protected research and development and science and technology dollars so we will continue to have the .echnological edge i don't ever, ever want to send marines and sailors into a fair fight. our efforts have benefited more than just the navy and marine corps. from wisconsin to alabama to california, american workers and repair our, platforms. tens of thousands of skilled employees are employed by our public shipyards. tied00 u.s. jobs are die directly or indirectly to the 40 onee industry, and million jobs are tied to international seaborne trade.

for every job created in three other, almost jobs are created in other parts 2009, economy, and since we have created 8000 new jobs in our shipyards. these are american manufacturing jobs with an average salary of more than 75,000 dollars. the overall impact of shipbuilding and maritime trade is so great that the shipbuilding industry produced more than 25 billion dollars in labor income and more than $37 in 2015.n gdp when these platforms get to the fleet, they protect the sea lanes. and through these sea lanes, 90%

of the world's trade goes every year. .9 trillion every year these are facts. theasey single used to say, fact is that the focus on shipbuilding has produced undeniable, tangible, substantial benefits for our navy and burning core, for american industry and american workers, and for america. it has advanced both our own ,conomy and the global economy and contributed to international security and contributed to international security in a way that benefits every american. fleet size is only part of the equation. --have to have the right them in the right place all the

time to provide presence. withay we do that is ships, aircraft, sailors, marines, is with the aircraft we use. , oil hadme in in 2009 reached $140 a barrel, and we were having to make choices between operations overseas and training here at home. , we were losing a marine, killed or wounded, for every 50 convoys of fuel we brought into afghanistan. which is way high, too high a price to pay. now, the price of oil has eased if you look time, at it, it's going one direction only, and that is up. fewecently as the last days, opec has announced new negotiations on supply restrictions to get prices back

up. and while the final outcome of those negotiations in the short term remains unknown, for the first time, russia has shown a willingness to cooperate. , you onlyf russia have to look at what happened in crimea or what russia did in ukraine to see how energy can be used as a weapon. i took action to reestablish the department of the navy as a world leader in energy and energy innovation. the reason was to make us better war fighters. navy and marine corps have always been on the cutting edge of energy innovation. we live in the transition from sale to coal, from coal to oil, for the use of nuclear, for transportation. was clearadition, it

that we had to lead in the s insition to alternative's order to maintain the edge we have to have. first of foremost, we have done this to be better war fighters, but we can't ignore the effects of climate change. as new routes open in the art -- -- as, sc levels rise, as sea levels rise, as storms increase in intensity, navy and marine are the first responders. we have to lead in response to climate change. so, in 2009, i set a number of very specific, pretty ambitious energy goals, the most significant of which is that no later than 2020, at least half of all naval energy would come from nonfossil fuel sources.

president obama reiterated the shore part of that in his 2012 state of the union, saying the navy would get 50%, or one fromatt of our energy nonfossil fuel sources by 2020. so, how are we doing? onshore last year, five years early. , on our shore installations, we get more than 1.2 gigawatts of energy out of our total today brought -- total requirement for alternative sources. we are on pace to meet our goals at sea and in the air. in just seven years, the great ,reen fleet was envisioned

created, and deployed. all of the ships are sailing on either nuclear or blended biofuels. our biofuels are drop-in fuels. we are not changing our engines. we are not changing anything. and they are cost competitive with traditional fuels. and other countries are following suit, and other industries are following suit. and rim of the pacific this past august, nine different countries frombiofuels for refueling one of our ships. next to an italian ordertaking italian biofuel onto the u.s. destroyer while on the other side was an italian frigate taking blended biofuels

at the same time. the geostrategic example that i use is in singapore. there's an oil refinery owned by the majority chinese right down the road -- chinese. write down the road -- right down the road is a biofuel finns.y owned by the i do not want to be dependent on china for my fuel in the western pacific. i want to have the option in the -- and the choice of doing something else. the civilian side is following along. jetblue just announced a 10 year contract for biofuels. united airlines. alaska air. air.n ups.

fedex. all flying at least part of the time on biofuels. those who were criticized the price we paid for a small amount of test biofuels we bought in 2012, our first demonstration. same folks are really strangely silent after we bought operational quantities this year as part of a regular fuel for less than two dollars 15 cents a gallon, a price competitive with conventional fuel. when you first think of marines, you don't think of ardent environmentalists, probably. the marines have led the way in alternative energy, like using marinesces to -- as

walk or march, as they have a , the movement of their legs transfers into energy to power things like their radios and gps units. and parallel to alternatives, we cease,ne after efficient changing the whole culture of energy consumption in the navy and marine corps. we are retrofitting all our ships with led lights as they come through the shipyard. just changing the lightbulbs saves 20,000 gallons of fuel per per destroyer. we have also invested in technologies like hybrid electric drives that enables

time to not only increase on station during a first appointment by more than a third, it was at sea 44 days longer than any other ship with it, and to bring home almost half of our fuel budget when she came back. efforts inned alternatives and efficiencies have produced what i think a lot of people would have thought were unimaginable results when we started. i switching, we have saved $90 million. savedswitching, we have $90 million. we have gotten $60 million in energy upgrades and 22 million tons of carbon dioxide have been abated. our work at sea, our initiatives as a whole have contributed to a reduction in , 15% by the navy and 60%

by the marines. that drop, part of for the marines was largely out of to land wars, -- two land wars, but that is clearly that t the only reason oil consumption is that far down. but as impressive as these statistics are -- and i think they're pretty impressive -- they are not what matters. how thesers is statistics influence our ability to provide the presence i talked .bout these efforts are making our -- far moreor more stealthy, to the point that they are getting close to the zero in terms of both energy and water. there are using alternative energy in the field to purify water so they can stay out far longer. it's making our marines more

agile. just by giving roll up solar panels, we are saving 700 panels of batteries per company that they don't have to hump and be resupplied. and our bases are more resilient if we ever have an attack on our .rid these are the real impacts of our efforts to give the united states a strategic advantage and operational flexibility. the right number and the right type of ships, and the means to get them where they , if you don't have -- won't work if you don't have the sailors and marines who can give the perspective needed to solve today's problems. from one perspective, it is critically important -- we are

talking about before -- during , about one of the important tocritically honor the people and traditions that have sustained the marine corps for 241 years. that is why i have named chip after nine megawatt hours of ,im, to navy cross recipients individuals who have thought and in many cases died sacrificing for american values. from another perspective, it's equally important to honor those american values themselves. fathers set out to form a more perfect union. acknowledging the american

experiment that challenges us to live up to those principles every day, established in the declaration of independence and the constitution. that's why in accordance with long-standing naval tradition of establishing new naming conventions for new classes of ships and for naming naval support ships for nonmilitary have also named eight ships in honor of civil rights and human rights euros. people like medgar evers, caesar shadows, john lewis, harvey milk, or a warrant, lucy stone, sojourner truth. fought and who also died, often, pursuing our most sacred values. justice, freedom, equality. one of the ships that i named last month was the u.s. robert f

kennedy at the kennedy library in boston. when i named that ship i was reminded of a george bernard shaw quote that robert kennedy used a lot. there are those who look at things the way they are and ask why. i dream of things that never were and ask -- why not. when i became secretary of the navy in 2009, there were a lot of things that i encountered that egg to the question -- why not? at that time openly gay americans were not allowed to serve in the military. why not? in the navy, women were not permitted to serve aboard submarines or in the seals. why not? women were not accepted into the ground combat roles. why not?

campuses of harvard, columbia, yale, princeton, the rotc had been gone for decades. why? why not? why not bring it back? , as is always the case, or nearly always the case with these kinds of questions, there wasn't a good answer. reported --ly supported the repeal of don't ask a hotel and lead the implementation in the navy in the marine corps. in 2010i opened service on squadrons and river to women, calling for an increase in female midshipmen at academy-- at the naval across the navy and marine corps , which happened this past january. working with the presidents of harvard, yale, princeton,

columbia, we brought naval rotc back to those campuses. establishedtime, we rotc units at rutgers and arizona state, two of the most diverse campuses in our country. we are doing this not for diversity's sake, but a diverse force is a stronger force. it's a dangerous thing for the military to think too much the same way. it's a dangerous thing for a military force to become too predictable. force is aictable more diffusible force. and every time we have opened our services up, every time, from the time that they were 1940'sgated in the late up through opening ground combat this year, every time we have become stronger.

it's also dangerous when there is too big a gap in a democracy between those doing the protecting and those being protected. our pursuit of diversity in thinking, diversity and experience, diversity and , gives us strength and guarantees our navy and marine corps are both reflective of an representative of the nation that they defend. , as we've opened up opportunities for everyone to serve, in no case are we lowering standards. lowering standards is acceptable. unacceptable under the law. unacceptable to me. unacceptable to every leader in the military. not only would it endanger sailors and marines, but it would endanger the security of our nation.

mother is no good argument to lower standards, there's also no good argument to bar anyone who has met the standards from serving alongside sailors and marines in every climb and place. if a person qualifies in every way for service, how can we possibly say that they cannot share in the honor of defending this country because of the shape of their skin, the color of their skin, or because of who they love? we can't, we shouldn't, and now we don't. the story the brought this home -- i'ver the experience been to afghanistan 12 times. on one of those trips i went through kurdistan, where we had a big base. everyone coming into or out usually goes through there.

800 sailors and marines. half coming in, half coming home. , aer the all hands call first-class petty officer came up, sort of hung around -- i just and he said want to thank you and everyone who was involved for repealing don't ask don't tell. he said -- i've been in the navy for 12 years. he had just finished his third combat tour. in afghanistan and the rack. to her's and his biggest fear, his biggest fear was that he was going to be found out as gay and made to leave the service that he loved. how wrong is that? how wrong is that?

now, recruiting a more diverse force has to be followed by retaining, developing, and advancing that force. so, we've implemented the most sweeping reforms and personnel o in the since my cnl late 60's, early 70's. ago we were losing too many people. especially women. because we were not doing all that we could to put out a healthy working environment. too often sailors and marines had to choose between service and family. too rigid of a career class. time was the primary determination of an vet -- of advancement and the operations tempo was very high and very unpredictable. so, we have taken deliberate steps, under an initiative

called 21st sailor marine, to foster a supportive and inclusive workplace. and we are absolutely committed, from the deck plates to senior meet -- senior leadership, to combating the crime of sexual assault. which is why i have created the only secretary level sexual assault prevention response officer, who reports directly to me. we have increased protections for sailors and marines suffering from traumatic brain injury or ptsd. too many times there were tested were administrative -- administratively discharged for some bad act that took precedence over whether they had ptsd or tpi. and they were given bad paper when they left, so they couldn't get any help once they got out.

reverse that. before you can be discharged administratively, we are going to test you. .ee if you've got tpi ptsd. now, you may still be administratively discharged, but when you leave you will leave with paper that allows you to get help through the v.a., through the systems we got out there in place. help,ing a bigger view of we have revamped the physical fitness test, making them more realistically aligned with the jobs we do. trying to promote healthier lifestyles through a culture of fitness and better nutrition. part of taking care of sailors and marines is making it easier for them to take care of themselves and their families. have made career class are a lot more flexible. one example that we just

dramatically expanded is the career mission program. you can take up to three years off. you os 241 back but you can -- forowe us to for one -- two one back, but get a degree that you want that meet -- we may not be willing to pay for. when they return, they are not penalized. rather, they compete with those who are similarly situated. with extended childcare hours by two hours on each end and paid maternity leave from six weeks to 18 weeks. one of the things we are trying , a nation that draws too broad of the distinction between scholars and warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and

it's fighting done by fools. educationalxpanding and training opportunities to go into industry. to tap into that innovative culture we have also established task force innovation. we are getting ideas from the deck plates that are coming up and being voted on through a cap -- crowdsourcing platform. up to senior leadership, we are funding them. to meritorious lee promote 5% of the sailors that serve under them. if they don't use it, it goes back into a pool. so, my time in this job is coming to an end. , ier i leave here today

start a series of visits to our fleet concentration in our shipyards. roads, hamilton washington state, great lakes, maple. to see the people who have done the work, made the changes, built the ships, and in navy talk, give them a bravo zulu, well done. depart in ad i will few months knowing that this administration has taken the necessary steps to ensure that our navy has never been stronger. we are getting the right number of platforms to meet our mission. we are using energy in a deliberate way that have made us better war fighters. we represent the greatest people that america has to offer. the absolute best in the world. finish with a quote

from an asian chief of navy who said "the difference between soldiers and sailors is that soldiers look down. they see lines on a map. they see obstacles. sailors look out, they look to the horizon. they don't see lines or obstacles. they see the horizon and they want to know what's over it. looking to that horizon, looking , i'm confident that the policies we've enacted and decisions we've made, the priorities that we set guarantee that our navy and our marine corps will remain the greatest expeditionary fighting force the world has ever known for as far into the future as the eye can see. courageous. semper fi. always faithful. thank you all. [applause]

>> thank you, mr. secretary. we've got a few questions for minutes and about 15 left, so we will try to run through as many as we can. first off, developing news, a u.s. ship was fired on outside of yemen. can you shed any light on what measures are being taken? you mabus: the mason, as pointed out, was fired upon. the ship took -- let's put it this way -- the appropriate defensive measures. exactly whog into

is responsible, although it came from the who the control region. i will just quote what the pentagon spokesman said -- the people who attempt to attack a u.s. navy ship do so at their peril. who asked that question? i have a tradition of first question gets a coin. >> i believe that came from cnn. sec. mabus: all right, what your ego. -- well, here we go. >> who represents the largest bigat and do we have a enough navy to confront these challenges at the same time? sec. mabus: well, i'm not going to get in the business of rating . all of these are potential threats. very seriouspose

and very current challenges and we have to pay attention to all of them. we can't pick one and say -- we are going to take care of you and ignore the rest. in answer to the second part of your question, we do not have a big enough fleet. we've had to make choices. we don't have a big enough fleet to meet our current assessed needs and do all the missions that the united states gives us. and even though we are rebalancing the pacific to put 6% of the fleet there, we are , we are not nato ignoring centcom, the middle east, we are not ignoring any of these potential, potential threats. the navycently changed ratings to make them general -- gender-neutral.

except for seamen. the audience member wants to know -- why did you make this a priority? well, a couple of things. one, i changed it for the marines, too. it's to quit segregating women. women wear uniforms, different uniforms. can you imagine if we asked another group to wear a different type of uniform? rating -- ranking names change all the time. all the time. in, 45 years ago, the people in my division were radioman and signal men. we don't have any of those anymore. those have changed. korman, paramedics, that came in after world war ii. were first called loblolly boy's. .- boys

not sure where that came from, but we change these things all the time and i thought it was important to be gender-neutral. we have gone one step further in the navy. my first direction was to make them gender-neutral. the recommendation that came back to me from the master chief , wey officer of the navy -- weanging the way we are changing our ratings structure so that instead of being a human third class, you will be a petty officer third class. we are doing this for basically three reasons. i will give you one example. we have got several different specialties for working on aircraft. we have got structural mechanics. we have got people working on avionics and on the engines.

they can only promote through their narrow communities. we are losing people because they can't promote. going to try to put a lot of these specialties that are close to each other together. while you are a specialist in one thing you can train and become a specialist in three or four other areas so that you can remote one if you can't love the other. that your next duty assignment will just be one place that you can go, you know? you will have a choice. we will have a choice. ourwe are going to train aircraft folks to faa standards. we are going to train our core men and standards to emt standards -- medics to emt standards. right now when you leave the

navy or the marine corps, a lot of times even though you have the skill level, you don't have the certification. you can't get a job working at united airlines across the street. you got to go back and start over. you cannot go get a job as an emt. those are the reasons. the army has graduated three female rangers. when might we see a woman become a navy seal? sec. mabus: i don't know and i don't think that's the important thing. the important thing is that the standards are the same. haveside note, the seals been pretty neutral about this. they have had the same standards for years. 80% of men don't make it. it's not an easy thing to do. we will gow when through. i don't know when we will make it, but the important thing is

that if they got the qualifications and can make it through that training, they conserve. cyberyou think that a pearl harbor is imminent? are we too dependent on information technology? could that be in achilles' heel for the united states? -- and achilles' heel for the achilles'tes -- an heel for the united states? sec. mabus: we are vulnerable they are. we are taking steps to protect that. everything from taking better care to protect our most critical assets to having a lot and, evennt systems going back, we are teaching flags and lights at the academy and in the rotc, teaching line of sight communication so that it can't be intercepted and

can't be taken down. vulnerabilitythe that is pose. over a wide span of issues i think we're dealing with it. >> another subject, the chinese are building islands in the south china sea and threatening its neighbors. can you assure the people of the ready andt we will be capable to defend their interests there? we will be there as we have been there for 70 years. showing enough presence and people, enough aircraft and systems to do whatever the job is that we need to do. we are going to continue to do as we have for 70 years, keeping those sea lanes open, insisting on freedom of navigation on the sea and in the air. that's our job. note, some of the

great beneficiaries of the u.s. navy doing this and u.s. marines doing this have been the countries of asia, including countries like china. >> related topic, in the philippines military dictatorship, how does that affect your posture in southeast asia? well, i don't answer speculative questions, so i will just say that regardless of what happens in any one country, we have friends, partners, allies all over that part of the world and all over the world that we work closely with and we have, going back to the first question, another lap forms, the right kind of platforms in the right place to do whatever job, whatever task, the united states gives us and the world gives us.

>> lb gt rights have expanded greatly since president bill clinton's don't ask don't tell policy. in your speeches you have mentioned anecdotes and stories you have heard. have there been any problems with morale since the policy? sec. mabus: it's been the biggest nothing of ever seen. -- i've ever seen. i mean, nothing. i've done hundreds of these visits. maybe thousands by this point. shy sailorse many and marines. they'll ask you questions, they don't give your comment. leading up to the repeal, i got practically no questions. i have gotten zero since then. fleet,look around the it's just nothing.

it's the same thing that happened when we ended segregation. there were terrible predictions of what was going to happen. when we started recruiting large numbers of women in the 80's. terrible protections on what would happen and it has just never come to pass and it certainly didn't in this case. >> thank you. haiti is recovering from a devastating hurricane. how can the u.s. navy help people? well, we are already there. we sorted ships prior to the hurricane. ships arephibious being relieved by the you were jim a. the last number that i saw was close to 114 tons of supplies. we don't have to wait for airports to get fixed. we don't have to wait for harbors to get fixed.

are amphibious. we can find a beach and go ashore. we've got the comfort, our hospital ship, ready to respond if asked. thoseswered everyone of responses for help so far that we have gotten. question on global warming and climate change. will climate change in some way force the closure of any bases? and are you planning for this square with -- planning for this? where would more folk -- more move?- norfolk sec. mabus: i'm going to this week. it's not going anywhere. [laughter] -- i'm going there this week. it's not going anywhere. [laughter] some of the forecasts are that in this folk will become

a risk. i've been secretary of the navy for a long time, but i don't think i will be there in 2050. it is at risk because of rising sea levels, but it's not the only one. you may notice that our bases are mainly on the ocean. [laughter] sec. mabus: and as sea levels rise, we begin to experience problems. that's one of the reasons we are trying to attack climate change. one of the reasons we are trying to lead the way in trying to reverse some of these effects, so we won't have to face the danger.a base being in >> thank you, sir. quick reminder, the national press club is a world leading professional organization for journalists and a free press worldwide. for more information about the club, please visit our website press.org.g -- upcoming programs, kareem

abdul-jabbar will speak. the secretary of education, john b king will be joining us. i would like to present our guests with the traditional mug. sec. mabus: which comes in under the $10 i can receive. [laughter] >> i do think i have a stack of these. the navy midshipmen have enjoyed 14-0 overning streak, their football rivals, the black knights. [applause] i knowi'm going to guess the answer to this, but what is your production for the army navy game this year? sec. mabus: i will say three things about this. , did you all see the game last week against houston? ranked number six in the country, by the way. and my all the modern, thank you for moving them up. number two, we will be humble

about this, taking it one decade at a time. [laughter] number three, go navy, beat army. [applause] >> thank you, mr. secretary. we are adjourned. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2016]