Providing for Congressional Disapproval Under Chapter 8 of Title United States Code, of the Rule Submitted By the Department of the Army, Corps of Engineers, Department of Defense and the Environmental Protection Agency Relating to Revised Definition of Waters of the United States

Floor Speech

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Mr. KENNEDY. Madam President, with me today is Mr. Seth Brazier, who is one of my colleagues in my Senate office.

Madam President, I want to talk about my city today, the city of New Orleans. The city of New Orleans is iconic, and the whole world knows it.

My first job in State government was with a reform Governor, back in the late 1980s, named Governor Buddy Roemer.

Japan was doing extraordinarily well at that time economically, making many foreign investments, and Governor Roemer traveled to Japan to try to convince Japan to invest in Louisiana. And when the Governor got back, he told me: Kennedy, my first meeting was very enlightening.

He said: In my first meeting, I met with about 50 Japanese business people.

He said: I asked them how many of you have been to Louisiana?

The Governor said three of them raised their hand.

He said: Then I asked them another question. I asked these 50 Japanese business people: How many of you have been in New Orleans?

He said: Twenty-five of them raised their hand.

The city of New Orleans is iconic. Every State, every country would love to have a New Orleans. Our city was founded over 300 years ago. We are one of the oldest in America. It was founded in 1718. Our city is envied for--let's see--our food, our music, our architecture, our diversity, our dialects, our merriment, and our festivals--for our celebration of life. In New Orleans, we dance with or without music.

But New Orleans is under attack. People there are being murdered. They are being shot. They are being raped. They are being stabbed. Their stuff is being stolen, and our quality of life is being degraded because of crime--because of crime, a cancer on our city.

I want to give you a sense of the breadth of our problem. In 2022, we had 280 murders in New Orleans. The victims ranged from six months of age to 91 years old. Ten percent of these victims were under the age of 18. Seventy percent were people of color.

Listen to this. One out of every eight Black males who live in New Orleans between the age of 15 to 24 will be shot--one out of eight. Statistically, it is more dangerous to be young and Black in New Orleans than it was to be a marine in the battle of Fallujah during the height of the insurgency in Iraq. Those are the numbers.

Last year, my city had the highest murder rate in the country, twice the murder rate of Atlanta--twice. We had the most murders since 1996. Our murder rate was up 141 percent since 2019, and it is not just murder. Shootings in 2022 were up 88 percent from 2019, carjackings up 156 percent, armed robberies up 20 percent, and it is not much better in 2023.

Now, behind these sterile statistics are real live human beings, flesh and bones, blood and tissue.

In one of the most appalling cases that we have had, about a year ago, in an area in New Orleans that we call Mid-City, four teenagers--a 17-year-old boy, a 16-year-old girl, and two 15-year-old girls--four teenagers, carjacked a 73-year-old grandmother.

The teenagers pulled the grandmother out of the car and drove away, but the grandmother's arm got tangled in the driver's seatbelt. The teenagers kept going. They dragged her for a block until her arm was severed. This lady bled to death at the scene.

Crime in New Orleans is affecting all of us in our city--residents, visitors--every part of our city, but no one is hit harder than our low-income communities. That is true both in terms of public safety, and it is also true economically.

Most poor people are not criminals. They are not. But criminals often prey on our lower income fellow citizens, particularly in their own communities. Existing businesses then leave and they take jobs with them and unemployment goes up and we have more poverty.

And those businesses that remain in our lower income communities-- they are often mom-and-pop shops with a small margin of profit--they have to pay more for insurance; they have to pay more for security; they have to pay more for credit, so they have to raise their prices, and that makes people even poorer.

That is what crime does.

We have tried--we in New Orleans, we have tried everything. We have around 900 police officers--we need 2,000--because many of our police officers retire every day.

We have tried paying higher salaries. We have tried paying better benefits. We have tried curfews. We have tried task forces. We have tried social programs. We have tried afterschool programs. We have tried crime cameras. We have tried facial recognition. We have tried conflict management. We have tried mentoring. We have tried youth clubs. We have tried job training. We have tried enhanced educational opportunities. We have tried prosecuting juveniles as adults. We have tried hotspot policing. We have tried 12-hour shifts. We have tried hiring administrative personnel to take the paper workload off our cops to get them back on the street. You name it, and we have tried it.

We have tried everything but one thing--stop and frisk. Stop and frisk. Under the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, a police officer may stop a suspect on the street without probable cause, and that police officer can stop that person on the street without probable cause so long as that police officer has what is called reasonable suspicion to believe that the person stopped has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime.

And after that person is stopped, if the police officer has reasonable suspicion to believe the person stopped might be carrying a weapon, the police officer can pat down that person on the outside of his or her clothing. That is called stop and frisk. It is a very effective law enforcement practice. It is used by police officers every day in virtually every city all across America, and it has been used since 1968.

In 1968, the U.S. Supreme Court decided a case--a very famous case-- called Terry v. Ohio. Terry v. Ohio. The very liberal Chief Justice--I don't use the word ``liberal'' in a pejorative sense. I am just describing him as many scholarly works have. The very liberal Chief Justice Earl Warren actually wrote the opinion in Terry v. Ohio, and he was joined in that opinion by Justices Hugo Black, John Harlan, William Brennan, Potter Stewart, Byron White, Abe Fortas, and Thurgood Marshall. They all said together: Here is our opinion, Terry v. Ohio.

And what did that opinion say? That opinion said that under appropriate circumstances, stop and frisk is permissible. It is perfectly constitutional under the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Now, I want you to note that a police officer cannot stop and frisk somebody on a whim, on a hunch. A cop does not have unfettered discretion.

In order for a police officer to stop a person on the street, that police officer--let me say it again--must have reasonable suspicion-- reasonable suspicion--to believe that the person has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime.

And once again, once the person is stopped, the cop can frisk that person on the outside of his clothing--called a pat-down--only if the cop has reasonable suspicion to believe that the person stopped is carrying a weapon.

Why does this cop have this authority? To protect the cop during the questioning.

Reasonable suspicion is not a hunch. It is not a whim. It is an objective standard. It is not probable cause. You have to have probable cause to make an arrest, to conduct a search, for example, of someone's home. Probable cause is a higher standard, but reasonable suspicion is an objective standard. Reasonable suspicion exists, according to the case law, as you know, Madam President--reasonable suspicion exists when an objectively reasonable police officer, given the facts and circumstances of that particular situation and considering the cop's training and experience, would suspect that a person, as I have said, has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime. And if probable cause is then established, of course, the person can be arrested.

Every cop in America who goes through training academy--and every cop in America does. Every cop in America knows about stop and frisk. Every cop in America is trained in the law enforcement practice of stop and frisk.

Let me give you an example: Let's suppose a police officer is driving by and he sees an individual late at night walking along the street with a coat hanger or a slim jim--do you all know what a slim jim is? It is sometimes called a lockout tool. It is a way to get into a car if you have lost your keys.

If a police officer sees someone late at night walking down the street with a coat hanger or a slim jim looking in cars, the police officer can stop that person. Can he arrest that person? No, he does not have probable cause. No crime has been committed, but he has reasonable suspicion to stop and talk to that person.

And once he stops to talk to that person, if he sees a big bulge here in his top pocket, he may have reasonable suspicion to believe that person has a weapon, and it would be dangerous for him, the police officer, to keep talking to that person. So the police officer--he can't make him take his jacket off or anything. He can just pat him down to see if there is a weapon.

Now, I repeat: Cops all over America stop and frisk suspects every single day, and they have for 50 years.

And you know who endorses it? The U.S. Supreme Court.

Now, like all police practices, it can be abused. Stop and frisk can be abused. And when it is, it can be and it should be challenged in court, and the abusing officer should be held accountable. But most officers don't abuse it.

As many people know, Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg--two New York mayors back-to-back--used stop and frisk extensively during the crimewave of the 1990s and the early part of this century to fight crime and gun violence in New York City. We have all read about that. Crime fell dramatically. Now, some have said that is due, in part, to stop and frisk. Some have said that stop and frisk had nothing to do with it. Some have said that in some cases, the New York Police Department abused stop and frisk, and those who maintain that position said that too often police officers were stopping and frisking people on the basis not of reasonable suspicion but on the basis of race or national origin. And that is wrong.

A case was filed called Floyd v. City of New York. Floyd v. City of New York. It was a class action. It was filed against New York Mayor Bloomberg and others, alleging that the NYPD was not stopping people on the basis of reasonable suspicion but on the basis of race and national origin.

The Federal district court in that case ruled in favor of the plaintiffs. The NYPD then set about the business of reforming its stop and frisk policy, but Mayor Bloomberg left office, Mayor Bill de Blasio became mayor, and for all practical purposes, he completely stopped the practice of the stop and frisk.

So stop and frisk can be abused, and it is important to establish practices and procedures to guard against that abuse.

But let me put this another way. This is how I look at it. Some cops may and have violated the legal requirements for a proper Terry v. Ohio stop and frisk. And when that happens, that may make that person a racist or at least guilty of committing a racist act. But that does not mean that the practice of stop and frisk is inherently racist. Because some knuckleheads abuse it does not mean that the practice is inherently racist.

In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court, with only one dissent, has said that, properly applied, it does not violate the Constitution of the United States and can be an effective law enforcement tool.

So when there is abuse, the abuse is on the cop. It is on the officer. And most officers don't abuse stop and frisk.

And if it is proven he did something wrong, he should be held accountable. The time has come. The time has come for my city of New Orleans to try stop and frisk. It is time.

Now, some of our public officials in New Orleans are going to probably disagree with me, and some are going to say: Well, we are using stop and frisk already.

They are. Every now and then. Sometimes. But if you go talk to the average cop on the street in the city of New Orleans--I have; I have talked to many of them--they are going to tell you: The people with the flags in their offices--the politicians and the big shots and the political hierarchy--they are discouraging us from using stop and frisk. They don't want us to use stop and frisk.

I think it is time. We tried everything else, Lord knows. It is time to allow the men and women of the New Orleans Police Department to use stop and frisk without fear of losing their jobs.

I do not believe that the New Orleans Police Department is racist. Let me say it again: I do not believe that the New Orleans Police Department is racist, systemically or otherwise. I do not believe that the average New Orleans Police Department police officer is racist. My God, the NOPD is 58 percent Black and people of color and 35 percent White.

Now, we have a Federal consent decree in New Orleans for our police department. It is between the U.S. Department of Justice and the city of New Orleans. It oversees the New Orleans Police Department or, as we call it, NOPD. It was signed and entered into by Mayor Mitch Landrieu in 2010.

The consent decree does not prohibit stop and frisk. In fact, the consent decree provides for stop and frisk. I want to quote from the consent decree:

NOPD officers may only conduct investigatory stops or detentions where the officer has reasonable suspicion that a person has been, is, or is about to be engaged in the commission of a crime.

Does that sound familiar?

That is right out of Terry v. Ohio, where the U.S. Supreme Court almost unanimously said stop and frisk, when used appropriately, is a very effective law enforcement tool.

Now, the consent decree goes on--wildly, in my opinion. It mandates a stop-and-search data collection and review procedure. So the consent decree says, if you are going to use stop and frisk, you have got to collect all the data.

I think that is a great idea.

The consent decree also requires the police officer, when he or she uses stop and frisk, to document the stop and frisk and detail the reasonable suspicion in writing--in writing. In New York, they call this report a UF-250 form. I don't know what it is called in New Orleans. They have been using stop and frisk so infrequently, I am not sure they have one. But it requires the cop who does the stop and frisk to sit down and say: Here is the suspect. I had reasonable suspicion, and here, with specificity, is why. And let me say, collecting the data and requiring the reporting after the fact is standard operating procedure. This is nothing new. It is standard operating procedure in every police department in America. It is also common sense.

There is a gentleman in New Orleans by the name of Mr. Ronald Serpas. Mr. Serpas is a former superintendent. We call our chief of police at NOPD a superintendent. He is a former NOPD superintendent. Mr. Serpas is also a former chief of the Washington State Patrol, and he is now a professor of, I think, criminology at Loyola University in New Orleans.

I don't speak for the superintendent, and I don't want--intend to. But he has written a number of articles in support of stop and frisk in New Orleans.

He has said that the NOPD today has been reduced to only responding and reacting after a crime has been committed, when the damage has been done. The former superintendent says: What we need in New Orleans is more proactive policing to prevent crime, like stop and frisk.

Now, the former superintendent has analyzed the publicly available data on the NOPD consent decree. We collect data on our consent decree. It is publicly available. In fact, the city council has put up a dashboard for the consent decree, and one of the provisions in the dashboard has a stop-and-search feature. You can go on the stop-and- search feature on the internet and see how many stops and frisks the police department has done in the past 180 days. So you have a date, and it looks back 180 days.

This is what the former superintendent found after he analyzed the stop-and-search feature on the website. And I will give you an example; I don't know if I was clear about the 180 days.

For example, January 2, 2015, on that day, if you went back 180 days, the NOPD had conducted 32,913 stops in the prior 180 days.

Let me say that again: January 2, 2015--8 years ago--in 180 days prior, the NOPD had conducted 33,000 stops.

As of January 18, 2023, 8 years later--really 7, because it is January--NOPD had conducted 5,095--let's call it 5,000 stops over the past 180 days. So 5,000, down from 33,000; and that 5,000 is spread over 6 months. Do you see a trend here?

Now, during COVID, as you would expect, stops and frisks in New Orleans were down. People were inside. Following COVID, the stops increased--according to the superintendent who analyzed the data-- increased to 14,303 in the 180 days before August 17, 2021.

So think back to August of 2021, over the prior 6 months, the NOPD did 14,303 stops. But after that day, there was an uninterrupted decline in the number of stops, down to 5,095 today.

So the stops are up here. They came down. They went down further because of COVID. They went up to 14,000 in August of 2021, and then they kept going down. That doesn't exactly, but it closely tracks crime rate in New Orleans, because stop and frisk is used to proactively prevent crime.

Look, I want you to understand. The problem in New Orleans--I love my city. I love my State. I love my city too. The problem in New Orleans is--I don't want you to think that we have thousands of previously law- abiding New Orleanians turning to crime. That is not what is going on. We don't have a bunch of law-abiding people who have now turned to crime in my city. That is not what is happening.

The problem we have is with career criminals. And they are running rampant, and our cops are spread thin. And we have some public officials--not all of them but there are some--that think cops are a bigger problem than criminals. And they think that criminals really shouldn't be prosecuted--they are not bad; they are just sick. This is America. You can believe what you want, but that is what is going on in my city. It is not a majority, but it is more than a handful.

We tried everything. We need to allow police officers to stop and frisk. We need to allow our police officers to stop and frisk. It should be carefully monitored. It should be done legally. But it should be done. We have tried everything else, everything under the sun, to stop the extreme recidivists. Nothing has worked. And maybe this perfectly legal, very effective police practice, stop and frisk, which is used every day across America, will help.

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