, helped in some cases by protesters, they the police helped shetania

tailor as she was shot trying to protect her four sons. she said to the dallas p.d., thank you for being heros. and today, her 12-year-old son wants to be a cop when he grows up. that's the america i know! (applause) in the aftermath of the shooting, we've seen mayor

rawlings and chief brown, a white man and a black man with different backgrounds working not just to restore order and support a shaken city, a shaken department, but working together to unify a city with strength and grace and wisdom. and in the process we have been reminded the dallas police department has been at the forefront in improving relations between police and the community. the murder rate has fallen. complaints of excessive force have been cut by 64%. but the dallas police department has been doing right way! (applause) and, so mayor rawlings and chief brown, on behalf of the american

people, thank you for your steady leadership, thank you for your powerful example. we cannot be prouder of you. (applause) these men, this department, this is the america i know, and today in this audience, i have seen people who have protested on behalf of criminal justice reform grieving alongside police officers. i've seen people who mourn for the five officers we've lost but also meet for the families of alton sterling and philando castile. in this audience , i see what's possible when we recognize that

we are one american family, all deserving of equal treatment, all deserving equal respect. all children of god. that's the america i know. now, i'm not naive. i have spoken at too many memorials during the course of this presidency. i've hugged too many families who have lost a loved one to senseless violence. and i've seen how a spirit of unity born of tragedy can gradually dissipate, overtaken by the return to business as usual, by inertia and old habits and expediency.

i see how easily we slip back into our old notions because they're comfortable, we're used to them. i've seen how inadequate words can be in bringing about lasting change. i've seen how inadequate my own words have been. so i'm reminded of a passage in john's gospel, let us love not with words or speech, but with actions and in truth. if we're to sustain the unit we need to get through these difficult times, if we are to

honor these five outstanding officers who we lost, then we will need to act on the truths that we know, and that's not easy. it makes us uncomfortable. but we're going to have to be honest with each other and ourselves. we know that the overwhelming majority of police officers do an incredibly hard and dangerous job fairly and professionally, they are deserving of our respect and not our scorn. (applause) and when anyone, no matter how good their intentions may be, paints all police as biased or

bigoted, we undermine those officers we depend on for our safety. and as for those who use rhetoric suggesting harm the police, even if they don't act on it themselves, they not only make the jobs of police officers even more dangerous, but they do a disservice to the very cause of justice that they claim to promote. (applause) we also know that centuries of racial discrimination, of slavery and subjugation and jim crow, they didn't simply vanish with the end of lawful segregation. they didn't just stop when

dr. king made a speech or the voting rights act and the civil rights act were signed. race relations have improved dramatically in my lifetime. those who deny it are dishonoring the struggles that helped us achieve that progress. (applause) but, america, we know bias remains. we know it. whether you are black, white, hispanic, asian, native american, or of middle eastern dissent, we have all seen this bigotry in our lives at some point, we've heard it at times in our own homes.

if we're honest, perhaps we've heard prejudice in our own heads and felt it in our own hearts. we know that. and while some suffer far more under racism's berth, some feel to a far greater extent discrimination's sting. although most of us do our best to guard against it and teach our children better, none of us is entirely innocent. no institution is entirely immune. that includes our police departments. we know this. and, so, when african-americans from all walks of life, from different communities across the country voice a growing despair

over what they perceive to be unequal treatment, when study after study shows that whites and people of color experience the criminal justice system differently so that if you're black, you are more likely to be pulled over, searched, arrested, more likely to get longer sentences, more likely to get the death penalty for the same crime, when mothers and fathers raise their kids right and have the talk about how to respond to stopped by a police officer -- yes, sir and no, sir -- but still fear something terrible may happen when their child walks out the door, still fear that kids being stupid and not quite doing things right might end in tragedy, when all this takes place more than 50 years after the passage of the civil

rights act, we cannot simply turn away and dismiss those in paceful protest as troublemakers or paranoid. (applause) we can't simply dismiss it as a symptom of political correctness or reverse racism. to have your experience denied like that, dismissed by those in authority. dismissed perhaps even by your white friends and co-workers and fellow church members again and again and again, it hurts. surely, we can see that. all of us. we also know what chief brown has said is true, that so much

of the tensions between police departments and minority communities that they serve is because we ask the police to do too much and we ask too little of ourselves. (applause) as society, we choose to underinvest in decent schools. we allow poverty to fester so that entire neighborhoods offer no prospect for gainful employment. we refuse to fund drug treatment and mental health programs.

we flood communities with so many guns that it is easier for a teenager to buy a glock than get his hands on a computer or even a book. (applause) then we tell the police, you're a social worker, you're the parent, you're the teacher, you're the drug counselor. we tell them to keep those neighborhoods in check at all costs, and do so without causing any political blowback or inconvenience. don't make a mistake that might disturb our own peace of mind, and then feign surprise when periodically the tensions boil over.

we know those things to be true. they have been true for a long time. we know it. police, you know it. protesters, you know it. you know how dangerous some of the communities where these police officers serve are, and you pretend as if there is no context these things we know to be true, and if we cannot even talk about these things, if we cannot talk honestly and openly, not just in the comfort of our own circles, but with those who look different than us or bring a different perspective, then we will never break this dangerous cycle. in the end, it's not about finding policies that work.

it's about forging consensus and fighting cynicism. it's about finding the will to make change. can we do this? can we find the character as americans to open our hearts to each other? can we see in each other a common humanity and a shared dignity and recognize how our different experiences have shaped us? it doesn't make anybody perfectly good or perfectly bad, it just makes us human. i don't know. i confess at th that, sometimes,

too, experience doubt. i have been to too many of these things. i've seen too many families go through this. but then i am reminded of what the lord tells ezekiel. i will give you a new heart, the lord says, and put a new spirit in you. i will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. that's what we must pray for, each of us, a new heart. not a heart of stone, but a heart open to the fears and hopes and challenges of our

fellow citizens. that's what we've seen in dallas these past few days, and that's what we must sustain, because with an open heart we can learned to stand in each other's shoes and look at the world through each other's eyes, so that maybe the police officer sees his own son in that teenager with a hoodie who's kind of goofing off but not dangerous, and maybe the teenager will see in the police officer the same words and values and authority of his parents. (applause) with an open heart we can abandoned the rhetoric and oversimplification that reduces to categories not only our fellow americans but opponents and to enemies. with an open heart those

protesting change will guard against reckless language going forward. look at the model set by the five officers we mourn today, acknowledge the process brought about by the sincere efforts of police departments like this one in dallas, and embark on the hard but necessary work of negotiation, the pursuit of reconciliation. with an open heart, police departments will acknowledge that, just like the rest of us, they're not perfect, that insisting we do better to root out racial bias is not an attack on cops but an effort to live up to our highest ideals. i understand these protests, i see them, they can be messy. sometimes they can be hijacked by an irresponsible few. police can get hurt.

protesters can get hurt. they can be frustrated. but even those who dislike the phrase "black lives matter," surely we should be able to hear the pain of alton sterling's family. (applause) when we hear a friend describe him by saying whatever he cooked, he cooked enough for everybody, that should sound familiar to us, that maybe he wasn't so different than us, so that we can, yes, insist that his life matters, just as we should hear the students and co-workers describe their affection for philando castile, as a gentle soul. mr. rogers with dreadlocks, they called him.

and know that his life mattered to all people of all races and ages and we have to do what we can. we're not putting officers' lives at risk, but do better to prevent another life like his from being lost. with an open heart, we can worry less about which side has been wronged and worry more about joining sides to do right. (applause) doethe vicious killer of these police officers, they won't be the last person to make us turn on one another. the killer in orlando wasn't, nor was the killer in charleston. we know there is evil in this

world. that's why we need police departments. (applause) but as americans, we can decide people like this kill already ultimately fail. they will not drive us apart. we can decide to come together and make our country reflect the good inside us, the hopes and simple dreams we share. we also glory in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance character, and character hope.

for all of us, life presents challenges and suffering, accidents, illnesses, the loss of loved ones. there are times when we are overwhelmed by sund clam -- sudden calamity, natural or manmade. all of us make mistakes and, at times, we are lost. as we get older, we learn we don't always have control of things. not even the president does. but we do have control over how we respond to the world. we do have control over how we treat one another. >> america does not ask us to be perfect. precise because of our

individual imperfections, our founders gave us institutions to guard against tyranny and ensure no one is above the law, a democracy that gives us the space to work through our differences and debate them peacefully, to make things better, even if it doesn't always happen as fast as we would like. america gives us the capacity to change, but as the men we mourn today, these five heroes knew better than most we cannot take the blessings of this nation for granted. only by working together can we preserve those institutions of family and community, rights and responsibilities, law and

self-governance that is the hallmark of the this nation, for it turns out we do not persevere alone, our character is not found in isolation, hope does not arise by putting our fellow man down. it is found by lifting others up. that's what i take away from the lives of these outstanding men. the pain we feel may not soon pass, but my faith tells me that they did not die in vain. i believe our sorrow can make us a better country. i believe our righteous anger can be transformed into more justice and more peace.

weeping may endure for a night but i am convinced joy comes in the morning. we cannot match the sacrifices made by officers zamarripa, ahrens, krol, smith and thompson, but we can strive to match their devotion. may god bless their memory. may god bless this country that we love. >> pelley: president obama at the memorial service for the five slain dallas police officers at the morton h. meyerson symphony center there in dallas. the president taking this opportunity to walk the middle ground, praising the five officers, but also honoring the

two men who were slain by police recently, the police shootings that resulted in the dallas protest to begin with. the president addressed both sides of this divide, criticizing them equally for ignoring the truths that can be found in the middle, in the common ground. we must reject despair, the president said, we are not as divided as we seem. there will be much more on your local news on this cbs station on our 24-hour screaming news service cbsn and, of course, right here, we'll have full coverage on the "cbs evenin news." until then, i'm scott pelley, cbs news in new good afternoon, i'm kenny choi. president obama with some words to the american people in dallas remembering the five

officers that were killed last week. this is a live look once again at the memorial service that's taking place. it started at 11 a.m. pacific standard time. 1 p.m. dallas time. the chief of police david brown also spoke prior to president obama taking the stage. president george w. bush also speaking to the crowd at the memorial service this afternoon. coming up at 1:00, elizabeth cook will be hosting the talk live and we'll also have much more tonight as 5:00. have a great afternoon. captions by: caption colorado comments@captioncolorado.com

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