Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, a few years ago, a police officer in Pueblo, CO, was kind enough to let me join him in a squad car for a few hours to get a sense of what his daily beat was like. It was in the middle of the night. It didn't take very long to appreciate that our country asks law enforcement to do a lot more than simply enforce the law.

Washington has underinvested in the American people year after year after year in areas like housing, education, and mental health. It has left law enforcement to pick up the pieces. It has put them in a position wherein they are not only having to serve as law enforcement officers but also as social workers, as mental health professionals, and as responders for issues like homelessness or drug addiction, even though nobody has trained them for it necessarily.

That result has been really tough for officers on the ground in Colorado and across the country. It strains their resources, adds to the workload, and accelerates burnout. It has also been hard for communities. It diverts law enforcement from violent crime, and it means we are forcing officers to address mental health issues and problems instead of dealing with the underlying issues that produce many 9-1-1 calls in the first place.

I am sad to say that all of these underlying issues that everybody is familiar with have gotten worse during the pandemic. It is one reason there has been a spike in crime that started in 2020, before the current administration, and it has continued ever since. In 2020, murders rose nearly 30 percent. Aggravated assault was up 12 percent. Motor vehicle theft was up 12 percent. Again, this was in 2020, before the current administration, but, sadly, many of these trends have continued. In a survey of small businesses, 54 percent of American small businesses reported an increase in shoplifting last year.

To deal with this rise in crime, we need to increase funding for the COPS Program, which I strongly support, so we can hire more officers and strengthen community police. I think we should pass a bill that I am introducing today, called the SMART Community Policing Act. The bill is based on 28 highly successful programs across Colorado, in places like Denver and Grand Junction.

As I mentioned, you know, a lot of 9-1-1 calls involve lower risk situations that don't always require a police officer, but some combination of an EMT, a mental health specialist, or a social worker can get the job done, allowing law enforcement to focus on violent crime, but in most of the country, law enforcement has to answer every one of those 9-1-1 calls.

The SMART Community Policing Act creates resources for law enforcement to partner with local organizations and service providers so they send the right responder depending on what the problem actually is. That lets law enforcement focus on violent crime and lets other responders with the right training deal with lower risk situations, like when someone is experiencing a mental health crisis or a severe drug withdrawal. These trained professionals can deescalate the situation. They can connect people with the right resources and do the comprehensive followup to keep them from requiring emergency services again and again and again.

Grand Junction's Co-Responder Unit has answered over 3,200 calls since the program began in 2018. Denver's STAR Program has responded to almost 4,600 calls since 2020.

I had a chance to hear about the STAR Program from Denver's police chief, Paul Pazen, 2 years ago. He told me about a mom who had called 9-1-1 because she was having a lot of trouble with her child. You don't need a police officer for that, so they sent responders from STAR, who deescalated the situation and saved law enforcement precious time.

If you add it all up, those are thousands of hours that officers in Denver and Grand Junction and across Colorado could spend focusing on violent crime instead of on issues that other people might have greater expertise to deal with, people with the right training in nonviolent situations. It allows us to reduce the strain on the system.

None of this is speculation. When Stanford University studied Denver's program, they found that in neighborhoods patrolled by STAR, reports of less serious crimes dropped by more than a third and that the program saved a lot of money, a ton of money. It cost about $150 when STAR responded to an offense compared to nearly $650 when the Denver PD responded on their own.

I can appreciate what these savings would mean for a local police department. My colleagues may remember that before I was in the Senate, one of my jobs was serving as chief of staff to John Hickenlooper, who was then the mayor of Denver. I don't know what became of him, but he was a very good mayor for the city and county of Denver. In that job, I heard all the time from community leaders as to how they wished there were resources beyond law enforcement for situations that were better suited for a social worker or a mental health expert.

I would have loved to have had the STAR Program when I was working for the city and county of Denver, and I would have loved it when I was the superintendent of the Denver Public Schools, where a lot of my job was working with the Denver Police Department to keep our schools safe and to reduce the ticketing of kids so they weren't cycling through the criminal justice system prematurely.

All of this experience led me to write this bill, and I view this as one more area wherein Colorado offers a model for the country to take on the rise in crime in a smart and thoughtful way.

Americans have a reasonable expectation--a reasonable expectation-- that Washington cares as much about their safety as they do, and they expect the people they send to Washington to actually come up with useful solutions. I think this bill meets that test. It responds to the needs of law enforcement and to the needs of communities. I don't know how anybody here could object to it.

If you want to reduce violent crime, you should support this bill. If you want trained experts responding to nonviolent 9-1-1 calls instead of police officers, you should support this bill. If you want to save taxpayers money, you should support this bill. So I hope my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will take a look at this proposal, and I gladly welcome their support. ______

By Mr. DURBIN (for himself and Mr. Blumenthal):

S. 4520. A bill to establish the Food Safety Administration to protect the public health by ensuring the safety of food, preventing foodborne illness, maintaining safety reviews and reassessments of food additives, enforcing pesticide residue tolerances, improving the surveillance of foodborne pathogens, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source