congress [indiscernible] >> of course we are. every mayor shares that concern. we have had to manage that the end we have heard that as well. i think part of the reason why we emphasize the flexibility in the new arpa is because at the end of the day, these are our tax dollars coming back to our cities and we want to use them effectively thank you all. have a good one. thank you so much. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2023] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org]

>> more live coverage of the u.s. conference of mayors winter meeting, tomorrow including a conversation about lint and retention. we will hear from fort worth's police and others live at 3:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. >> continuing a look at the elements of the commitment to america unveiled by house republicans and how it would relate to policy. rafael is the head of public safety and destroy -- joins us to talk about crime and crime related -- matters. when it comes to crime and related matters. good morning. guest: g

can you talk about your positioning when it comes to crime related matters? what's we are in not profit -- we are a not-for-profit tank have a bunch of smart people who sit around all day and think and write and research about important topics relating to public policy. my position relates to crime, policing and public safety. i'm a senior last eight years and i also have researched for the public safety initiative that aims to tackle important questions leading to our national book safety debate. things like the role of policing, the role of traditional law enforcement institutions, analyzing crime trends and coming up with the best answers with respect for what to do about those problems which of course have gotten worse in recent years. host: we have seen when it comes to of the commitment of america unveiled by house republicans,

it talks about cmehere are points that aid. one would be to support 200,000 more police of to recruiting and retention bonuses. it would crack on prosecutors who refuse to prosecute crime and criminalize all forms of illicit fentanyl. as far as tentpole ideas, what do you think about that approach? guest: i do think starting with the recognition of the police recruitment and retention crisis and staffing crisis generally is a good thing. there's a big push to defund police in this country and to scale back the role of policing. one of the most consistent and robust findings in the literature is that more policing means less crime, and a time in which we are coming off 2020, the single largest one year increase in the homicide rate in the country followed by another

in 2021, so lots of other crime categories go up in 2022 in lots of cities, it is important for us to get that right. and that means hiring more police officers. given that since at least 2018 police departments across the country have been reporting difficulties with recruitment and retention. the last data i saw out of police executive research shows 94% of the budget and positions in the united states for law enforcement officers are curtly filled. it is one of the lowest points we have been, canada is currently filling 99% of budgeted positions. the research is critical. if you have police on the street you will reduce crime through a couple of methods, people will not make crimes right in front of police officers if they see them there because they don't want to be caught. but the other mechanism is incapacitation. which means every time police officers make an arrest and take some of the office rate, there

are crimes being invaded by virtue of those people being absent. that is important because it ties into one of the other priorities the gop has identified, which is trying to do something about the trend of nonenforcement we have seen pop up in a lot of offices, with criminal justice policy, course there's a limit to what the federal government has dries diction over, but they recognize that whatever the impact of policing is going to be it is going to be more muted than it otherwise would be if the rest of the criminal justice system fails to operate as a backstop. those are the overarching things i took away. it is encouraging to see them highlighted. host: our guest with us until 10:00, and if you have questions, (202) 748-8000 for democrats, (202) 748-8001 four republicans, independence at

(202) 748-8002, text us at (202) 748-8003. are we providing a backstop to what is being offered to officers? guest: that is a good start. it came with the 1994 crime bill which had other controversial elements, one thing he did was added about 70,000 police officers through the street through funding and that allow the department to hire new officers but also allowed the permits to take officers out of clerical positions and put them to a higher use by putting them in crime-fighting positions. that is something that would be an enormous help especially if the funds are prioritized for the departments dealing with the biggest crime problems and the biggest recruitment and retention problems. take the nypd, that department now has 4000 officers just last year alone. a lot of those work backfilled with new hires.

but one thing people need to grasp onto it with respect to that trend is even if you were to fill 100% of their positions that become vacant as a result of retirements or resignations, are filling those positions with officers who have less experience. and given the tenor of our police reform debate in this country, if you're someone who is worried about the quality of policing, worried about bad outcomes when it comes to police misconduct, one thing to mitigate the problem is to increase the collective experience of the police force. what we are going to see is that collective experience increase or more mistakes in the field and ultimately more problems. host: when it comes to cracking down on prosecutors and district attorneys, at least from a body of congress, how could that be done? guest: congress needs to be careful not to get out of the routine. there's a limit to the jurisdiction of the federal

government. there's a limit as to what it can do to address local prosecutors. one of the things that i suspect we will see come out of this line of proposals our efforts to increase transparency. we have seen a massive boom in the expansion of the progressive movement in this country. 10 people -- 10 years ago, people never would've heard that term and now 40 and 50 million americans are living interest actions with progressive prosecutors. basically, a local prosecutor, an elected official who is chosen to use his office to pursue reform primarily through policies of nonprosecution, nonenforcement, de-course efforts for example in los angeles, they have prohibited prosecutors from pursuing certain sentencing and asking for cases.

the gop wants to help the american public better understand these issues and when they can -- one way they can do that is to use the power of the purse to induce local prosecutors offices to be more transparent with data so we can assess what the impact of these policies is on crime. there's been some research looking at progressive prosecutors and showing relatively muted affects, but it is looking mostly at relatively low level reforms, things that are aimed at mostly diverting first-time offenders for example. it does not tell us what the impact is with a 30% increase of the diversion rate for people who have firearms and what that means or crime. one thing the gop should do is induce offices to more systematically report various measures so the data can be analyzed by policy professionals and we can get a clear answer as to whether or not these policies

are misguided as i suspect most the gop believes they are. host: our first call from arkansas, democrat line, you are on with rafael mangual of the manhattan institute, also an author of a piece about who policing gets wrong and who it hurts. caller: [indiscernible] the more weapons in the street, the more crime we are going to have. i was born in the 40's. i could remember when you can leave your house and your back door open and nobody would come in your house and try to take nothing away from you. since 1940, we have come to the point where we want to live and think we can solve problems with lows we had in the 17 and six and hundreds. but that is the problem we've got. host: the topic of weapons.

c-span.org -- like -- guest: this is a common point. one thing that is important to remember is we have an important history when it comes to crime-fighting this country. and one that is a history. between 1990 and the united states, the united states saw a nasa decline in homicides and we saw gun rights expanded, the number of guns in circulation increased expert initially. what that tells us is that whatever the effects these weapons may be having on crime, ever opportunities for serious crime they may be created, we do know that we can still solve the crime problem without necessarily decreasing the weapons in private circulation. and we know that because we have done it before. host: mike in virginia, independent line. good morning.

caller: good morning. i'm calling in reference to -- in the 60's and 70's, i grew up with a lot of families of kids whose parents were in various forms of law enforcement. they tended to do their job as well as they could come about from a monetary standpoint, they did break the law. and the reason they did do that, from overhearing conversations, was that they were on the front lines in the needed to be compensated for retirement from the way the job that they did. my question is, they would keep these funds until retirement and use it then. and if anyone has ever investigated this after law enforcement people had retired and the monetary that -- that they received during their lifetime equates with the lifestyle they are living at the time. thank you. guest: yeah. i think what we are hearing is a point about corruption and that

is a legitimate worry. i don't know how widespread that experience was among police officers in the 1970's and 80's, the one thing i know that the institution of law enforcement benefited from was the professionalization of that institution. it went from being a blue-collar city job to a profession that people from different parts the country would travel to the cities they wanted to work in because it would be law enforcement. when it becomes that kind of highly coveted, well-respected, noble profession, we have seen a decline in things like corruption because we see an increase in the quality of the typical police recruit. that is one of the things i think makes this gop effort so important at this time. it is recognizing that there is a need to recruit and retain high-quality, psychologically stable, highly intelligent, highly motivated individuals to do a job that many of them don't

want to do anymore. it is incumbent upon us to sort of dig deep and take a look at why so many more people don't want to do this job. why so many people are leaving the job, particularly in american cities where the crime problems are biggest. this is the real upside here to this effort, it will help close the gap that could lead to even deeper problems down the road if what we see is the decline in the quality of the median officer. host: one of the elements was to oppose efforts to defund the , we heard it as a slogan a couple of years back. how does tt ay out specifically when it comes to police departments and funding question mark -- fundin? -- funding? guest: there were a lot of efforts, and they did not play out the way the d hoped. but take los angeles, apartments

where significant funding efforts on the way into law. not all of the proposals came into fruition but what you saw was delaying and hiring, cancellation of academy classes which had a prolonged impact. even if you had an impact the following year, there is going to be a gap. in addition to the impact of what these puzzles did and the bottom line of the department, it also had an impact on the morale of the profession and on the fence that officers had. whether or not they had the public support they need to go out and be proactive and do the things we know will reduce crime in the long run. host: mickey in missouri, independent line. caller: good morning, i am an independent but i leave in common sense gun laws. i have guns in my home but i

think that common sense laws make sense for everybody. you talk about the police and law enforcement not prosecuting people. one of the concerns i have is the illinois -- one of the towns across the river from st. louis, as you know probably, illinois just passed a new gun law. one thing i came across on facebook was a post from a sheriff in monroe county who wrote on the post that myself nor my office will be checking to ensure that lawful gun owners register their weapons with the state cannot nor will we be arresting or helping law-abiding individuals who will be arrested solely for noncompliance with this act. it concerns me that we have law enforcement agents saying out loud on facebook that they are not going to follow the law. their reasoning is that it is unconstitutional. but it has not been litigated,

it is a law, it has not been deemed unconstitutional at this point. what is your thinking on these kinds of announcements, public announcements of them saying they are not planning on following the law when we do have laws? host: ok. that is nikki in saint louis. guest: i don't find those announcements helpful, i prefer they be litigated in the courts especially if you think the laws are unconstitutional. that said, the officers take in 02 protect the constitution. -- and 02 protect the constitution. -- an oath to protect the constitution. the critics of that move say where is the outcry about progressive prosecutors who are choosing explicitly not to enforce not just new laws that they see as unconstitutional, but laws that are perfectly

constitutional that they just don't like because of the impact that they have? it becomes really muddy when you talk about the waters of the public debate when you have this kind of critique at a time when prosecutors across the country are choosing to differ even serious -- defer even serious felons. people who are arrested for aggravated assault, who weapons violation history and are not being held pretrial, who are being sentenced to probation, having their sentences diverted or they are not serving very much time, being released on parole sometimes in less than a year. that i think is the crux of the problem and we have to prioritize the issues that we want to tackle. the thing that looms larger in terms of the impact of everyday crime, you mentioned illinois, the biggest city, chicago, if you look at the data, you will find that the typical person

charged with a shooting or homicide has 12 prior arrests. one and five are going to have more than 20. that tells you that law enforcement is doing a pretty good job of identifying serious gun offenders and arresting them. but it will also tell you the criminal justice system more broadly is not playing its role in a backstop to those efforts and that is where're tensions need to be focused. host: ryan in north dakota, democrat line. caller: good morning, i have been listening to the conversation. my concerns would be the over policing of black neighborhoods. there is a serious problem with that. if they are hiring 200 more officers, it seems like more black people getting arrested. my second problem would be it takes six months to become an officer, where it takes a four-year degree to become a coke. -- cook.

how is it that only takes six months to carry a gun and putting wives in people's hands? -- putting lives in people's hands? the older the police officer is, they are set in a bunch of ways that were quite racist from the beginning. and they pass that down. so we need new officers but we also need more training. more training on how to defuse the situation other than pulling their got out right away, especially when it comes to a person of color because we always seem to be more dangerous or threatening versus counterparts. so more training to get officers off the streets that are trying to police or protector whatever they're trying to do, it ends up being black people being shot. host: ok. guest: there is a lot to unpack and that question. the first thing i would say is it seems to imply that the

deadly use to -- deadly use of force are common outcomes in police interactions. the data shows they are not. an analysis based on 2018 data in the book, it mentioned police shootings that year and i estimate somewhere between 3000 and 3100 police shootings, about 1000 people were killed. we made 10,000 arrests, almost 70,000 working at that time. all of these context, you are still talking about zero point 03% of arrests using the use of deadly force. smaller percentage of those obviously involving unjustifiable uses of deadly force, there -- with the disparity, i would point your listeners to the systematic analyses to whether or not there

are racial disparities with respect to police shootings and finds that an incredibly large inset that there is not evidence of that. he does find racial disparities with respect to lower levels of force, use of handcuffs, going hands-on, something we should be concerned about. but it is important to correct the narrative. where it gets things wrong. i guess my basic response would be probably should not take four years to be a chef and i also think six-month is probably low and a lot of departments are somewhere around the nine month range. but a lot of americans would support efforts to increase -- increase and improve training, but that is counter to the narrative of defunding the police and the point about disparate policing, it is important to understand where crime happens. it is hyper concentrated both geographically and demographically. back to chicago as he said come

out the 10 most dangerous neighborhoods in the city of chicago, they are about 95% black and latino. they had a collective homicide rate -- to pick out the most dangerous neighborhood in the city, the homicide rate in 2019 was 131 per 100,000, which makes it more dangerous than most battlefields in iraq and afghanistan at the height of the war. it is important to recognize that that geographic disparity is hyper pronounced. you look at the 10 safest neighborhoods, homicide rate of around two per 100,000 for 2019. on the demographic point, black men in this country are victimized via homicide at a rate that is 10 times that for white males. that kind of racial disparity is going to inform the diploma of police resources in my home city of new york for example. last year, some 96% of shooting

victims black or hispanic, almost all of them male. i can tell you black and latino males do not constitute anywhere near 100% of the population. you have to understand there's another side to the ledger and more importantly, you have to understand that while these minority communities will bear the brunt of the cost associated with enforcement, they will also enjoy the brunt of the benefit associated with enforcement. i'm thinking of a recent paper done by people from the university of pennsylvania, morgan williams at columbia, that look at the impact of policing on crime. for everyone officer hired, you will invade 0.1 homicides a year. one homicide a year for every 10 officers hired and the effects are twice as large in the black community as in the white community when they are talking about the benefit of crime reduction. we have a massive reduction of

homicide in this country and police say incarceration -- policing and incarceration had in massive impact. this only added less to the average life expectancy of white mid-america. this is a balance and complex conversation, you can't just look at one side of the ledger. if you have a >> c-span's washington journal. every day we take your calls on the air on the news of the day i discussed policy issues that impact you. thursday morning, the education proposals and health related policy goals outlined in the commitment to america plan, first with frederick hess, senior pella -- senior fellow, and then with the health pan executive director.

on the washington auto show. the executive director talks about the biden administration efforts on building out public electrical vehicle charging stations in the u.s.. then the head of global public policy at general -- general motors talks about regulation from washington and how it impacts electric vehicle strategies. watch on c-span or c-span now. join with your calls, comments, texts, and tweets. >> c-span is your unfiltered view of government. we are funded by these television companies and more, including buckeye broadband. ♪

buckeye broadband supports c-span as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. >> up next, ukrainian president vladimir zelenskyy addresses the world economic forum. then secretary blinken and dr. vivek murthy speak with the u.s., -- speak to the u.s. conference of mayors. later, a justice department press conference on the arrest of a russian cryptocurrency founder. the president of ukraine addressed the world economic forum via video feed and urged allied nations to speed up the pace of support amid the ongoing russian invasion and called for a moment of silence to honor the