Suburban areas where they sell crystal meth, steel medicine from their families and sell it in the schools. There is more than one side to the story but you are only talking about the black side, as usual. Yes, these officers were wrong. This young man died in their care. You cannot take that away. Republicans, find your heart. We are supposed to be one people. But there is such a division in this country now. I dont know when it is going to be repaired. You have been stepping on the next of black people since they were forced to be in this country. We are here, we are not going anywhere. And not all of us have been in trouble. I have a son who has this massive degree in divinity. He has been named man of the year in new haven. I have two grandsons who are successful. Four granddaughters, one graduating in may from teske key. One going to hampton college. They have all been honor roll student. Do not fold everybody into the same envelope. Thank you for the opportunity. Host we will get a chance to hear thoughts on the situation in baltimore and how the charges against the Six Police Officers may affect policing across the country. On the line for independence in florida. Caller i am in agreement. I am an immigrant. From what i understand in the severance of new york city, the Police Department are engaged and support against immigrant youths. I dont know what role they play on the interest on the inner cities. If they are not support the idea of them establishing meet in the youths, playing football soccer , baseball and basketball, that way they will get to know the youths on a oneonone basis. They would be fathers and mothers to them and would be put to recognize and would be able to recognize their problems. Host carl in madison mississippi. What do you think . Caller i served in the military and i traveled around the world and i was in the gulf war and i think about the young man in baltimore who was killed. I was just coming back from desert storm. We can do better in america. Im not going to single point against note race work against no race or group. I think the Police Officers could do better. Like the gentleman say we need to learn from the past. Dont stand the past, you need to move forward. I got to listening to the show on cspan. Im writing a book now. The thing is we can do better. We need to have more people involved. I would like to get i would like them to get involved in our communities. I travel all four corners of the world. Asia, Central America and europe. Desert storm was my last one. I am working on the corps of engineers, but i would be out there in maryland, new york, wherever it takes. But im only one person. I appreciate the program, keep the good work up. Host a number of you have been joining the conversation on facebook and twitter. A couple of comments on this issue. Time to take a few more calls and what you think will happen now that six officers and baltimore have been charged in the death of freddie gray wall in police custody. Next call is brian in the bronx. Caller i have spent years in new york city as a cop. I did narcotics and anticrime. I found it very disturbing the cops are the ones getting attacked here. People are jumping to conclusions. It is disheartening for police. What is going to happen yet co the cops are going to slow it down, they are not going to respond as quick. They are going to be more cautious, therefore they are not going to protect as well as they can. Why should they extend themselves . We took a nose and do the best we can. Instead of arresting kids ive got them to their homes and gotten cursed out by the family. What you are going to have is you are going have a cop say, ok we are going to take our time getting to that robbery. We are going to slow it down a little bit. We are not going to be as proactive and we will see what happens. I agree with the gentleman from florida. The police are barely involved with the pal, Police Athletic leave Police Athletic league. There are you there are new york city cops engaged in cricket teams with the kids. I like the womans comments from detroit, more money has to be ported to the schools have to be poured into the schools. I think lack of education is a need. People need to take responsibility for themselves. This is what is going to happen. Host the Baltimore City fraternal order of police on record since the last since the announcement of the charges against the Six Police Officers. Calling for a special prosecutor. Also attempting to raise money through a website for the Legal Defense of the six officers that have been indicted. That website took down that attempt to fund their Legal Defense. Baltimore city flp tweeting this they sent a followup tweet with their mailing address. The sop the fop of baltimore. From virginia on the line, go ahead. Caller i agree with the gentleman from new york. Im worried about how the police are going to be able to do their job. I feel like there has been a lot of waste of money. Every time you turn on the television there is always 90 of them are black people killing innocent people. If they have the reputation there are all sorts of programs for black people everywhere you look. There are many programs for black people to help them. It doesnt seem to be doing any good. They are always crying when they are caught. I think the police need to be supported more. If they have to go out there and take out the bad guy we have to be behind him 100 . Host politico reporting that story. The former mayor of baltimore and former governor of maryland, a potential rival for Hillary Clinton for the democratic nomination for president. In fact we are going to show you an event with president ial candidate Hillary Clinton this week where she called for every Police Department in the country to have mandatory body cameras in an effort to improve transparency and accountability. She made the comments while unveiling her plans to overhaul the current criminal Justice System at Columbia University in new york city. We show that to you now it is about half an hour. [applause] hillary thank you, thanks so much. I am absolutely delighted to be back here at columbia. I want to thank president bollinger and dean jano and everyone at the school of international and public affairs. It is a special treat to be here with and on behalf of a great leader of this city and our country, david dinkins. He has made such an indelible impact on new york and i had the great privilege of working with him as first lady and then, of course, as a new senator. When i was just starting out as a senator, davids door was always open. He and his wonderful wife, joyce, were great friends and supporters and good sounding boards about ideas that we wanted to consider to enhance the quality of life and opportunities for the people of this city. I was pleased to address the dinkins leadership and Public Policy forum in my first year as a senator and i so appreciated then, as i have in all of the years since, davids generosity with his time and most of all, his wisdom. So 14 years later, i am honored to have this chance, once again, to help celebrate the legacy of one of new yorks greatest public servants. Im pleased, too, that you will have the opportunity after my remarks to hear from such a distinguished panel, to go into more detail about some of the issue that we face. I also know that manhattan borough president gail brewer is here along with other local and community leaders. Because surely this is a time when our collective efforts to devise approaches to the problems that still afflict us is more important than ever. Indeed it is a time for wisdom. For, yet again, the family of a young black man is grieving a life cut short. Yet again, the streets of an American City are marred by violence, by shattered glass and shouts of anger and shows of force. Yet again, a community is reeling, its fault lines laid bare and its bonds of trust and respect frayed. Yet again, brave Police Officers have been attacked in the line of duty. What we have seen in baltimore should, indeed, i think does tear at our soul. From ferguson to Staten Island to baltimore, the patterns have become unmistakable and undeniable. Walter scott, shot in the back in charleston, south carolina. Unarmed, in debt, terrified of spending more time in jail for Child Support payments he couldnt afford. Tamir rice shot in a park in cleveland, ohio, unarmed, and just 12 years old. Eric garner choked to death after being stopped for selling cigarettes on the streets of our city. And now freddie gray. His spine nearly severed while in police custody. Not only as a mother and a grandmother but as a citizen, a human being, my heartbreaks for these young men and their families. We have to come to terms with some hard truths about race and justice in america. [applause] there is something profoundly wrong when africanamerican men are still far more likely to be stopped and searched by Police Charged with crimes and sentenced to longer prison terms than their white counterparts. There is something wrong when a third of all black men face the prospect of prison during their lifetimes. And an estimated 1. 5 million black men are quote missing from their families and communities because of incarceration and premature death. There is something wrong when more than one out of every three young black men in baltimore cannot find a job. There is something wrong when trust between Law Enforcement and the communities they serve breaks down as far as it has in many of our communities. We have allowed our criminal Justice System to get out of balance. And these recent tragedies should galvanize to us come together as a nation to find our balance again. We should begin by hed heeding the pleas of Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin in the past years. Those who are instigating further violence in baltimore are disrespecting the gray family and the entire community. They are compounding the tragedy of freddie grays death and setting back the cause of justice. So the violence has to stop. But more broadly lets remember that every one in every Community Benefits when there is respect for the law and when everyone in every community is respected by the law. [applause] that is what we have to work towards in baltimore and across our country. We must urgently rebuild the bonds of trust and respect among americans. Between police and citizens, yes, but also across society. Restoring trust in our politics, our press, our markets. Between and among neighbors and even people with whom we disagree politically. This is so fundamental to who we are as a nation and everything we want to achieve together. It truly is about how we treat each other and what we value. Making it possible for every american to reach his or her god given potential regardless of who you are, where you were born or who you love. The inequities that persist in our Justice System undermine this shared vision of what america can be and should be. I learned this firsthand as a young attorney just out of law school at one of those law schools that will remain nameless here at columbia. [laughter] one of my earliest jobs for the Childrens Defense Fund which david had mentioned i was so fortunate to work as a young lawyer and serving on the board. Was studying the problem then of youth, teenagers, sometimes preteens incarcerated in adult jails. Then as director of the university of Arkansas School of laws legal aid clinic, i advocated on behalf of Prison Inmates and poor families. I saw repeatedly how our legal system can be and all too often is stacked against those who have the least power, who are the most vulnerable. I saw how families could be and were torn apart by excessive incarceration. I saw the toll on children growing up up in homes shattered by poverty and prison. So unfortunately i know these are not new challenges by any means in fact, they have become even more complex and urgent over time. And today they demand fresh thinking and bold action from all of us. Today there seems to be a growing bipartisan movement for common sense reforms in our criminal Justice System. Senators as different on the political spectrum as cory booker and rand paul and mike lee are reaching across the aisle to find ways to Work Together. It is rare to see democrats and republicans agree on anything today. But were beginning to agree on this. We need to restore balance to our criminal Justice System. [applause] now of course, it is not enough just to agree and give speeches about it. We actually have to Work Together to get the job done. We need to deliver real reforms that can be felt on our streets, in our courthouses and our jails and prisons in communities too long neglected. Let me touch on two areas in particular where i believe we need to push for more progress. First, we need Smart Strategies to fight crime that help restore trust between Law Enforcement and our communities, especially communities of color. There is a lot of good work to build on. Across the country there are so many Police Officers out there every day inspiring trust and confidence, honorably doing their duty, putting themselves on the line to save lives. There are Police Departments deploying creative and effective strategies, demonstrating how we can protect the public without resorting to unnecessary force. We need to learn from those examples, build on what works. We can start by making sure that federal funds for state and local Law Enforcement are used to bolster best practices rather than buy weapons of war that have no place on our streets. [applause] president obamas task force on policing gives us a good place to start. Its recommendations offer a roadmap for reform from training to technology guided by more and better data. We should make sure every Police Department in the country has body cameras to record interaction between officers on patrol and suspects. That will improve transparency and accountability, it will help protect good people on both sides of the lens. For every tragedy caught on tape, there surely have been many more that remained invisible. Not every problem can be or will be prevented by cameras but this is a common sense step we should take. The president has provided the idea of matching funds to state and local governments investing in body cameras. We should go farther and make this the norm everywhere. And we should listen to Law Enforcement leaders who are calling for a renewed focus working with communities to prevent crime rather than measuring the success just by the number of assists or convictions. I supported a greater emphasis on Community Policing along with putting more officers on the street to get to know these communities. David was an early pioneer of this policy. His leadership help lay the foundation for dramatic drops in crime in the years that followed. 2 and today Smart Policing in communities that builds relationships, partners and trust makes more sense than ever. It shouldnt be limited just to officers on the beat. Its an ethic that should extend to prosecutors and parole officers, to judges and law makers. We all share a responsibility to help restitch the fabric of our neighborhoods and communities. We also have to be honest about the gaps that exist across our country, the inequality that stalks our streets because you cannot talk about Smart Policing and reforming the criminal Justice System if you also dont talk about whats needed to provide Economic Opportunity better educational chances for young people, more support to families so they can do the best job they are capable of doing to help support their own children. Today i saw an article on the front page of u. S. A. Today that really struck me, written by a journalist who lives in baltimore, and heres what i read three times to make sure i was reading correctly. At a conference in 2013 at Johns Hopkins university, vice provost, Jonathan Bagger pointed out that only six miles separate the baltimore neighborhoods of rowland park and hollins market, but there is a 20year conference in the difference the average Life Expectancy. We have learned, in the last few years, that Life Expectancy, which is a measure of the quality of life in communities and countries, manifests the same inequality that we see in so many other parts of our society. Women, white women without high school education, are losing Life Expectancy. Black men and black women are seeing their Life Expectancy go down in so many parts of our country. This may not grab headlines , although i was glad to see it on the front page of u. S. A. Today, but it tells us more than i think we can bear about what we are up against. We need to start understanding how important it is to care for every single child as though that child were our own. [applause] david and i started our conversation this morning talking about our grandchildren. Now, his are considerably older than mine. But it was not just two longtime friends catching up with each other. It was so clearly sharing what is most important to us, as it is to families everywhere in our country. So i dont want the discussion about criminal justice, Smart Policing, to be siloed and to permit discussions and arguments and debates about it to only talk about that. The conversation needs to be much broader, because that is a symptom, not a cause, of what ails us today. The second area where we need to chart a new course is how we approach punishment and prison. Its a stark fact that the United States has less than 5 of the worlds population, yet we have almost 25 of the worlds total prison population. The numbers today are much higher than they were 30, 40 years ago, despite the fact that crime is at historic lows. Of the more than two million americans incarcerated today, a significant percentage are lowlevel offenders, people held for violating parole or minor drug crimes or who are simply awaiting trial in backlogged courts, keeping them behind bars does little to reduce crime but it does a lot to tear apart families and communities. One in every 28 children in our country now has a parent in prison. Think about what that means for those children. When we talk about 1. 5 million missing African American men were talking about missing husbands, missing fathers, missing brothers. Theyre not there to look after their children or to bring home a paycheck, and the consequences are profound. Without the mass incarceration that we currently practice millions fewer people would be living in poverty and its not just families trying to stay afloat with one parent behind bars. Of the 600,000 prisoners who Reenter Society each year roughly 60 face longterm unemployment. And for all this, taxpayers are paying about 80 billion a year to keep so many people in prison. The price of incarcerating a single inmate is often more than 30,000 per year and up to 60,000 in some states. Thats the salary of a teacher or a police officer. One year in a new jersey state prison costs 44,000 more than the annual tuition at princeton. If the United States brought our correctional expenditures back in line with where they were several decades ago, wed save an estimated 28 billion a year and i believe we would not be less safe. You can pay a lot of Police Officers and nurses and others