Obama Delivers Sympathetic Speech To Nation's Police Chiefs

Transcript

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

President Obama assured some of this country's top cops yesterday that law enforcement is still appreciated in the United States. It's a moment in history where it's worth saying that out loud. The president was meeting the International Association of Chiefs of Police. They were having a meeting in Chicago. NPR's Martin Kaste was there.

MARTIN KASTE, BYLINE: This was a sympathetic speech. The president probably won some friends in the room when he told the chiefs that he lamented how quickly a video of a cop doing something wrong will go viral.

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PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: And the countless incidents of effective police work rarely make it on the evening news. So...

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KASTE: The chiefs liked hearing that.

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OBAMA: So it's important for us not to just pounce and jump on anything that happens and immediately just draw conclusions.

KASTE: These comments come just as law enforcement is having a debate over whether the fear of viral videos has made police more reluctant to do their jobs. FBI director James Comey made waves in the last few days when he said that that fear might be creating an opening for violent crime. On Monday, the White House disagreed with Comey. And in his speech yesterday, the president said this.

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OBAMA: We do need to get some facts established. So far, the data shows that overall, violent crime rates across the nation appear to be nearly as low as they were last year.

KASTE: Obama acknowledged that there have been local crimes spikes in cities such as Chicago, but he warned against cherry-picking data and using anecdotal evidence to drive policy. This is a really sensitive issue because when people such as Comey talk about the effect these videos have on officers' morale, activist groups suspect that it's really an effort to shut down criticism of racial bias. And Obama made clear yesterday that he thinks police bias is a problem. He recalled his own experiences being pulled over for no apparent reason.

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OBAMA: There are a lot of African Americans, not just me, who have that same kind of story of being pulled over or frisked or something. And the data shows that this is not an aberration.

KASTE: Still, Obama was looking for allies among the chiefs. He got their applause when he called for criminal background checks on all gun sales and when he said police are often the scapegoats for broader failures of the criminal justice system. But the chiefs' reaction was more mixed when he celebrated recent bipartisan movement toward incarceration reform, that is, locking up fewer people for nonviolent crimes such as drug use.

Laura Farinella is chief of police in Laguna Beach in California, one of the states that's already reducing the number of people it puts in prison.

LAURA FARINELLA: The president did say that there was - because of these new initiatives, crime was not going up. It is. In California, we are seeing it go up - property crime, for sure.

KASTE: Her colleague, Robert Handy, is the chief of police in Huntington Beach. And he echoed her skepticism.

ROBERT HANDY: We're seeing, over and over again, the bookings of the same people who are getting out. And no longer is a person who's smoking or shooting up heroin in a park where kids are walking to school can you - we give that person a ticket today. They don't go to jail anymore.

KASTE: It just runs against the grain for police chiefs to give up the option of jail when dealing with someone like that. And some chiefs say privately that if these localized spikes in crime start to spread across the country, they expect a new, get-tough attitude could displace the current interest in viral videos. Martin Kaste, NPR News, Chicago. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.