Gun Violence in America

Floor Speech

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Ms. MAXINE WATERS of California. Mr. Speaker, I take the floor this afternoon to continue to talk about gun violence and to talk about the problems that we are encountering in this country at this time with the issues of citizens being killed, police officers being killed, domestic violence, to talk about people who may be mentally ill who are committing gun violence.

This is a very difficult subject. You have heard from my colleagues for some days now about our determination to deal with this issue of gun violence. You have heard about the bills that we have tried to get taken up on the floor to deal with gun violence. Very simple bills. One bill that is a bill that has been characterized as no fly, no buy, simply meaning that if you are too dangerous to be on an airplane, you are too dangerous to be able to buy a gun. And, of course, universal background checks to make sure we know who is seeking to purchase weapons and what their backgrounds are and whether or not they should be allowed to purchase a gun.

In the middle of all of this work that we are doing, we are painfully reminded that there is another issue and another problem that we have been confronted with year in and year out that really has not been dealt with, and this problem is one that has reared its head one more time.

Just a few days ago we witnessed the killings of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge and Philando Castile in Minnesota. And, of course, because of the graphic pictures that were shown on television, because of the cell phones that recorded what was going on, it has really created the kind of discussion and organizing and rallying and protesting that forces us to have to deal with this issue even when it is too painful for many to deal with.

I would like to say that I have been dealing with this issue for many, many years. It started when I was in the California State legislature back in 1994. There was a woman named Eula Love, who was shot down on her porch in front of her daughters. Because she had not been able to pay her utility bill, her gas bill, her heating bill, and because she would not allow the gas company to turn off her heat, they called the police, and the police came out. A confrontation ensued. I think she had a butter knife that she waved at them, and they shot Eula Love down on her porch.

I became very active back then in dealing with police shootings because, as you know, in the Los Angeles area there had been incidents prior to this, dating back before this that had created the kind of protests and rallies that really caused people to fear what was happening in our communities. So I organized. I visited the police commission. I organized others to visit the police commission. We tried to set up meetings with the police chief at the time, who was Daryl Gates.

Daryl Gates was a tough chief of police, and he had no intentions of sitting down with the community to talk about police shootings. He felt that every police shooting was justified and that the community had no right to question what happened when there was a confrontation between police and the community.

We organized. We continued to put pressure on Daryl Gates. More incidents occurred. As a matter of fact, when you heard about the death of Eric Gardner up in New York, who died from something called the choke hold, it really was a practice that was used in the Los Angeles area by police officers. At that time, Daryl Gates, the police chief, said that the Black people who were killed as a result of the choke hold died because something was wrong with their carotid muscle; that it was something abnormal about Black people that caused them to die when they were placed in this kind of choke hold.

And so having worked in the greater Los Angeles area and witnessed Police Chief Daryl Gates learning and understanding the choke hold, and even there was something called the battering ram and on and on and on, I have known for many years that this was an issue that had to be dealt with, and from time to time others have tried.

There have been meetings in various cities and towns in this country at police commissions. Many people have tried to create civilian police review boards. It has been resisted in many cities and towns. Very few have been able to create citizen police review boards.

So these killings continue. And they are disproportionately killings of Black men and boys. So when people raise the question about why so many Black folks are involved in this issue, it is because of the disproportionate number of African Americans who find themselves killed, and their families find their relatives killed at the hands of police.

Now, of course, not all police are out looking to kill someone. Not all police are prejudiced. Not all police are bad officers. But, of course, we know there are problems. We have pointed to the training, and we have asked for better training. We have always felt that the buck stops at the top and that if police chiefs have the kind of training that we believe officers should have, we could reduce the numbers of confrontations and killings of young Black men in particular.

I don't know what has become of this training idea. I think most police chiefs will tell you: Oh, we do the proper training. We have the best training of any police department in the country.

But somehow people who are the victims of police officers who are responsible for these killings really don't believe that the training is what it should be.

These killings are creating the kind of protests and rallies that are making a lot of people extremely uncomfortable. We are all very saddened by the fact that we lost five police officers in Dallas and that the killer of the police officers said he killed them because he was seeking revenge. We do not want the revenge mentality to take hold in this country. That is very dangerous.

What do we do about it?

What we do about it is keep working at how we can reduce these killings, how we can eliminate these killings.

What can we do?

I have some ideas about this that I am working with some people on. As a matter of fact, I will be speaking to the National Black Lawyers Association on Monday in St. Louis, Missouri, and I am going to talk with them about several ideas.

One of the ideas I want to talk with them about is encouraging more communities to meet on an ongoing and regular basis with police chiefs. Get to know them, talk with them, explain what has been said about them and the feelings of African Americans in these communities. Get to know each other.

I am going to ask them to work with the members of the city councils who have the budgets of the police departments and with the county supervisors who have the budgets of the sheriff's departments. Talk with them and leverage your influence because you have the budget in your control to let them know how serious you are about reducing these killings and these confrontations.

The other issue that I am going to talk with the lawyers about is putting together a program to take to our police chiefs about reducing the confrontations by eliminating stopping these automobiles and these drivers on minor incidents, minor problems.

Of course, there are going to be some taillights that need to be fixed, but do you need to stop that motorist? Do you need to ask them to get out of the car? Do you need to ask them to get out of the car with their hands up? Do you ask them to get out of the car and lean over the back of the car, legs spread, arms spread? Do you need to ask them to get out of the car and tell them to lay on the ground while you search them? Do you need to search the car illegally? What are you looking for?

If, in fact, it is just a tail light, can't you just give a warning? Can't you just give a ticket and go on about your business? Why is it that these police stops about tail lights and other infractions are causing so much confrontation?

Of course, as most drivers try to do the best they can in driving and taking care of their cars, I am sure there are those who would like to get some things fixed, whether it is a windshield wiper or a tail light or something else that may be wrong with the car, but I am sure some may have to wait until the next payday. They may not have enough money to do that. They are not crooks and they are not criminals, and they should be warned.

There is something in the Black community that Blacks have believed for a long time. When kids are coming up, they tend to get in trouble. Sometimes they vandalize; sometimes they perhaps ring somebody's doorbell and run, as someone was explaining the other night that was happening with their child; or sometimes they will pull a prank and run away, and then they get caught.

In the African American community, we believe that oftentimes when children commit these kinds of minor offenses and the police stop them, they take them home to momma or they tell them to get out of there and go home, but when Black kids are stopped, the Black community believes our kids are taken to jail.

We have got to straighten out some of the misunderstandings about what happens when Black boys, in particular, and Black men are stopped on these infractions. We believe that a lot of confrontations do not have to take place if, in fact, these minor offenses are not treated like crimes.

We believe that we can reduce the occurrence of these confrontations by convincing the police departments that they should not be asking folks to get out of their cars and creating a confrontation.

People should not be calling each other names. We want to eliminate from the mouths of any police officers the N-word or the kind of language that is oftentimes used when they decide that they are going to stop someone and that they are going to raise questions or they are going to search them, et cetera. We believe that that is a legitimate thing to do.

So I am going to be recommending to the National Black Lawyers Association that we put together a program that we present to these police chiefs and these police departments about reducing confrontation and discontinuing the stops on minor offenses that end up in confrontations and killings.

The other thing that I am going to be recommending not only to the National Black Lawyers Association but to the news media and to these channels who cover all of this, why can't we have some public service announcements that go on every day and maybe at the end of every day where people are reminded about safe driving and taking care of their cars, getting those windshield wipers fixed, getting those tail lights fixed, making sure that the windows are working.

Why can't we have public service announcements that just keep reminding people to have your insurance documentation in the car with you--all of those things that could reduce the kind of stops that we are witnessing time and time again that are ending in confrontation. I believe that there are many other things that we can do if we think about it.

I know there is a lot going on about having discussions. People say that we should talk to each other more. Well, that is fine and that is good, and for all of those people who would like to be involved in discussions with each other in their communities or with the police department, you should do that.

But talk is cheap, and it really is going to take some concerted actions to be able to deal with this problem.

There are some police officers who should just be weeded out. They have no business being police officers. They are either trigger-happy or they are prejudiced. And when they see a young Black man, six-foot- two, six-foot-three, weighing 200 pounds, they are automatically afraid of them, and they think that they have to protect themselves against them simply because of the size of the individual.

When we take a look at Eric Gardner up in New York, who was of such size, where he was wrestled to the ground simply because he was selling loose cigarettes, that was all about, we believe, some officer proving that they were not afraid of him and they could take him to the ground and they could deal with him. Of course, it is what triggered his death. There was no need to tackle him.

I just saw on television the other day a famous, I believe, tennis player who was standing in New York and was rushed by police because they said he fit the description of someone who had been reported who had committed a crime.

Now, when you say that you stopped a young Black man because they fit the description, nobody believes that. We have heard that over and over and over again. And Blacks believe that that is an excuse to stop somebody, and it is a convenient excuse to say, ``Well, we stopped him because he fit the description.''

They don't have any other reason to stop. They have not violated anything, they don't have traffic warrants, et cetera, et cetera. But this excuse has been used over and over again: He fit the description, and that is why we stopped.

When people are the victims of those who say they fit the description, of course they are angry. Of course they are going to tell the police officer that they didn't fit the description and they don't like this happening. And that causes another kind of confrontation.

So we need to be able to talk with the police chiefs and tell them these kinds of things.

And we need to get rid of that culture of silence in the police department. One officer can witness another officer actually committing a crime, he could see that police officer targeting and treating somebody bad, but they will never, ever admit it. They will never, ever report it. That culture of silence and protection is something that we all know about, and it happens every day.

So we need to be honest about what the feelings are, and the police need to be honest with us about what they think about what they are doing in these kinds of situations.

Even in all that I have heard on television in the last few days, where they supposedly are having townhall meetings, supposedly talking about these issues, I have not heard the real truth come out about how members of the African American community who have witnessed too much of this really feel about the police, and I have not heard the police talk about how they really feel about those that they think are committing crimes or should be stopped or what they understand about them and what is going on in the community.

So I am hopeful that we can have a real conversation. Because I want to tell you, as we take a look at what has happened just in the last year or so, what we find is 1,205 people have been shot and killed by on-duty police officers since January 1, 2015. In the first 6 months of 2016, 465 people were shot and killed. In 2016, 491 were shot and killed. In 2016, there was a 6-percent increase in the number of such deaths during the first 6 months of the year.

Fatal encounters are strikingly similar to last year's shootings, where Blacks continue to be shot at 2.5 times the rate of Whites. Police have shot and killed a young Black man ages 18-29, such as Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, 175 times since January 2015, and 24 of them were known to be unarmed.

So whether we are talking about Michael Brown, Eric Gardner, Ezell Ford, Tamir Rice, John Crawford, Kimani Gray, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, Sandra Bland, Rekia Boyd, Laquan McDonald, or the last two that we have seen on television almost every night for the last week or so, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, and names that we don't know-- those names are not mentioned here because they have not been reported and we don't have the kind of database for these killings that we should have.

That is another recommendation that I am making, that we must have a database that is kept so that we can know for sure exactly who is being killed and why, supposedly, they are being killed.

This is tough business that we have to deal with. This is painful business that we have to deal with. But when you see those mothers on television, as I saw last evening, saying: I have a 14-year-old, and I am afraid for his life every minute he is not with me. And folks tell us that you should talk to them more and you should tell them how they should act when they are stopped by the police.

I want to tell you, every African American mother and father that I know talk to their children about the police. They are afraid that they are going to be killed. They are afraid that they are not going to come home once they leave the house. They talk to them about how to conduct themselves if they are stopped by the police. While they shouldn't have to act any differently than anybody else, mothers and fathers of Black children talk to their children about that all the time.

They say to them: If they stop you, make sure you keep your hands visible. Put them up on the dashboard so they won't think you are reaching for something. If they ask you to get your driver's license out, you tell them to take it out of your pocket because you are afraid that if you go in your pocket to get your driver's license there will be an excuse to shoot you down. Too many of them have said and will say, ``We thought they were reaching for a weapon.''

Black people, for the most part, tell their young boys and their young men not only to keep their hands visible, but don't talk back to the police, make sure you don't look as if you are reaching for something, and be very, very careful that you don't do anything that will cause them to shoot you.

Now, this is real. This goes on all the time. I don't know if people know or understand this.

None of us are saying that we want our children to be in confrontation, that we want our men to be in confrontation, that we want our girls to be in confrontation with the police. We always teach everything that we can about staying out of a situation where there will be an excuse to kill or shoot you.

Body cameras. We have advocated for body cameras. And now we find that, in this last incident, I believe, in Minnesota, the body camera somehow was on the ground and it wasn't working; or the body camera was not turned on, in some instances that we hear about; or even when the body camera records, in many instances, and maybe under practices and law in some cities, that information cannot be revealed for some long period of time until after certain things have taken place within the police department.

So we have talked about that and we have advocated for body cameras. We were hoping that they would help us to understand what was going on. But we find that just plain old citizens with a cell phone are doing more to document what is happening than the body cameras that we advocated for. As a matter of fact, but for cell phones, we would not have known what happened in Baton Rouge and we would not have known what happened in Minnesota.

The sight of a man being pinned down on the ground, unable to move, a gun being put at very close range to his body and being killed is more than most folks can bear.

Most folks looking at what happened in Baton Rouge and what happened in Minnesota know that something is wrong with that; that that is not right. It is not just Black folks. There are many White folks who understand and believe it is something wrong with this picture.

So while we are talking about gun violence, and we would love to be able to focus on laws that we could create to keep the guns out of the hands of people who shouldn't have them, we have got to deal with also what is happening in our country with the confrontations between African American men and boys in particular, and girls, and police officers.

So I share this information with you, as difficult as it is to talk about it, because until we get to the point of honesty about what we feel and what we understand and what we believe is going on, we are never going to be able to deal with this problem. I am going to continue to work on this.

Like I said, I started in 1994. And while my attention and my career has been diverted to deal with financial services and other kinds of issues on Wall Street, I have got to get back to Main Street, and I have got to get back to the idea that we can do better than this, and that our country cannot continue to not know how to deal with it, but, rather, come up with creative ideas and thoughts and ways by which we can discontinue these killings.

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