Hillary Clinton: America must confront 'hard truths about race and justice'
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Version 0 of 1. Hillary Clinton called for a radical overhaul of the US criminal justice system in a speech on Wednesday morning, declaring a culture of racial injustice and admitting: “We have to come to terms with some hard truths about race and justice in America.” In a stirring speech at a policy forum in New York, Clinton called on police to ensure that “every department … has body cameras to record interactions between police officers and suspects”. She added a call for the demilitarization of police forces, and the elimination of “weapons of war on our streets”. “From Ferguson to Staten Island to Baltimore, the patterns have become unmistakable and undeniable,” Clinton said. “Walter Scott shot in the back in Charleston, South Carolina … Tamir Rice, shot in a park in Cleveland, Ohio … Eric Garner, choked to death after being stopped for selling cigarettes.” In what represented the first major policy address of her 2016 presidential campaign, Clinton said the death of Freddie Gray earlier this month after he suffered a nearly severed spine in police custody, and the ensuing street clashes in Baltimore, “does tear at our soul”. Clinton was appearing at a policy event named for New York City’s first African American mayor. David Dinkins received a standing ovation upon entering the hall, minutes before Clinton was to begin. “My heart breaks for these young men and their families,” Clinton said of the victims of police brutality. “We have to come to terms with some hard truths about race and justice in America. There is something profoundly wrong when African American men are far more likely” to be stopped, searched and to receive long prison sentences, she said. “We have allowed our criminal justice system to get out of balance and these recent tragedies should galvanize us as a nation to find our balance again.” She also urged people in Baltimore to protest peacefully. “The violence has to stop,” Clinton said, “but let’s remember that everyone in the community benefits where everyone has respect for the law – and everyone is respected by the law.” Clinton’s speech echoed a Rose Garden statement by Barack Obama on Tuesday, in which the president declared a national crisis of neglect of impoverished communities and a failure to address generational incarceration and drug addiction. Related: Baltimore riots: schools to reopen and Orioles to play to empty stadium - live “We can’t just leave this to the police,” Obama said. “There are police departments that have to do some soul-searching. I think there are some communities that have to do some soul-searching. But I think we as a country have to do some soul-searching. This is not new. It’s been going on for decades.” The number of people incarcerated in the United States jumped nearly fivefold from 1980 to 2008, from 500,000 to 2.3 million people, according to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. African Americans are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of white people, accounting for approximately 1 million prisoners. In her address Wednesday, Clinton said “we need to chart a course” on imprisonment, noting that the United States has 5% of the total global population yet 25% of its prison population. “It’s time to change our approach,” Clinton said. “It’s time to change the era of mass incarceration. .. We don’t want to create another incarceration generation.” Clinton said low-level offenders imprisoned for parole violations or drug possession should not be held. “Of the more than two million Americans incarcerated today, a significant percentage are low-level offenders … Keeping them behind bars does little to reduce crime, but it does a lot to tear apart families and communities,” Clinton said. “When we talk about one and a half million African American men, we’re talking about missing husbands, missing fathers, missing brothers – they’re not there to bring home a paycheck, and the consequences are profound.” A presidential taskforce assembled after unrest last summer in Ferguson, Missouri, to draft a blueprint for policing reform recommended body cameras for police officers and other measures meant to promote so-called “community policing”. The justice department has created a grant program for local jurisdictions to buy body cameras, Obama said. In New York, Clinton called for the implementation of the taskforce recommendations, including body cameras on police officers, and said in some cases “we should go even further”. But legislation to pay for body cameras and other equipment appears to be stalled in both chambers of Congress, where staffers say committees have scheduled no hearings on the topic. Clinton included a reference to Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old killed by a vigilante in Florida in February 2012 after he had gone to the store to buy candy. Clinton diagnosed one symptom of societal breakdown as “mother and fathers who fear for their children’s safety when they go off to school, or just when they go off to buy a pack of Skittles”. Clinton concluded her speech with a call to pray “for the family of Freddie Gray and all the men whose names we know and those we don’t, who have lost their lives unnecessarily and tragically. And include in that prayer the people of Baltimore and our beloved country.” Clinton, the former secretary of state and New York senator, was first lady when the last major criminal justice legislation, the violent crime control and law enforcement act of 1994, was signed into law by Bill Clinton, setting aside nearly $8bn for prisons. The law has been criticized for boosting incarceration rates, especially among minorities. It was authored by Vice-President Joe Biden when he was a Delaware senator. The proposal for criminal justice reform was the latest issue the Clinton campaign has named a central concern in 2016. On Tuesday, as the supreme court held oral arguments on state same-sex marriage laws, the campaign made over its logo into a pride flag. The Clinton camp earlier promised to address income inequality and climate change and to get dark money out of politics. On Monday evening, as violence racked the streets of Baltimore, Clinton tweeted that she was praying for the family of Gray, 25. At a campaign event on Tuesday, Clinton called the situation in Baltimore “heartbreaking”. Tonight I am praying for peace & safety for all in Baltimore, & for Freddie Gray's family - his death is a tragedy that demands answers. -H Clinton’s speech on Wednesday fell between two days full of fundraisers. In three appearances in New York City on Tuesday, she was estimated to have netted as much as $1m for her campaign. |