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I have been a police officer
for a very, very long time.
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And you see these notes in my hand
because I'm also a black preacher.
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(Laughter)
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And if you know anything
about black preachers,
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we'll close, and then we'll keep
going for another 20 minutes.
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(Laughter)
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So I need this to keep
pushing this thing forward.
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I've been a police officer
for a very long time,
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and I mean I predated technology.
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I'm talking about before pagers.
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(Laughter)
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Laugh if you want to,
but I'm telling the truth.
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I predate War on Our Fellow Man --
I mean, War on Drugs.
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I predate all of that.
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I predate so much
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and I've been through ebbs and flows
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and I've been through good and bad times,
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and still I absolutely love
being a police officer.
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I love being a police officer
because it's always been a calling for me
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and never a job.
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And even with that,
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my personal truth is that
law enforcement is in a crisis.
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It's an invisible crisis,
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and it has been for many, many years.
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Even though we in law enforcement say,
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"You know what?
We can't arrest our way out of this."
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We say in law enforcement things like,
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"Yeah, it's illegal to profile."
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You know what?
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In law enforcement, we even agree
that we have to adopt this thinking
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and become more oriented
to community policing.
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And yet all the while, still,
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we continue in the same vein,
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the same vein that contradicts
everything that we just admitted.
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And so that's the reason for me,
several years ago.
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Because I was tired of the racism,
I was tired of discrimination,
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I was tired of the "-isms"
and the schisms.
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I was just so tired.
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I was tired of the vicious cycle,
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and I was tired of it even
in the beloved agency
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in the department that I still love today.
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And so my wife and I, we sat down
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and we decided and we targeted
a date that we would retire.
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We would retire and I would
go off into the sunset,
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maybe do ministry full time,
love my wife a long time.
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Y'all know what I'm talking about.
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(Laughter)
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But we decided that I would retire.
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But then there was a higher power than I.
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There was a love for the city
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that I loved, that I grew up in,
that I was educated in --
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a city that pulled my heart
back into the system.
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So we didn't retire.
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We didn't retire
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and so what happened was,
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over the next -- I would say,
18 months, 19 months,
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I had this passion to implement
some radical policing.
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And so now, over the next 19 months,
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I shifted, and I transcended
from being a drug sergeant --
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ready to retire as a drug sergeant --
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and went from level to level to level,
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until I find myself
as a district commander,
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commander of the worst district
in Baltimore city.
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We call it the Eastern District,
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the most violent district,
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the most impoverished district --
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46 percent unemployment in that district.
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National rating at that time,
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national rating, the AIDS
and the tuberculosis [rating],
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was always on the top 10 list
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for zip codes for cities
across the nation,
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or just zip codes across the nation.
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The top 10 -- I didn't say state,
I didn't say city --
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that little neighborhood.
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And I said, you know what?
We gotta do something different.
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We gotta do something different.
We gotta think radical.
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We gotta think outside the box.
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And so in order to bring change
that I desperately wanted
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and I desperately felt in my heart,
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I had to start listening
to that inner spirit.
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I had to start listening
to that man on the inside
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that went against everything
that I had been trained to do.
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But we still did it.
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We still did it because we listened
to that inner spirit,
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because I realized this:
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if I was to see real police reform
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in the communities that I had
authority over for public safety,
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we had to change our stinkin' thinkin'.
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We had to change it.
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And so what we did
is we started to think holistically
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and not paramilitarily.
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So we thought differently.
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And we started to realize
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that it could never be
and never should have been
-
us versus them.
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And so I decided to come
to that intersection
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where I could meet all classes,
all races, all creeds, all colors;
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where I would meet the businesses
and the faith-based,
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and the eds, the meds,
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and I would meet all the people
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that made up the communities
that I had authority over.
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So I met them and I began to listen.
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See, police have a problem.
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Off the top, we want to bring
things into the community
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and come up with these extravagant
strategies and deployments,
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but we never talk
to the community about them.
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And we shove them into the community
and say, "Take that."
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But we said we'd get rid
of that stinkin' thinkin',
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so we talked to our communities.
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We said, "This is your community table.
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We'll pull up a chair.
We want to hear from you.
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What's going to work in your community?"
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And then some great things
started to happen.
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See, here's the thing:
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I had to figure out a way to shift
130 cops that were under my tutelage
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from being occupiers of communities
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to being partners.
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I had to figure out how to do that.
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Because here's the crazy thing:
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in law enforcement, we have evolved
into something incredible.
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Listen, we have become great protectors.
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We know how to protect you.
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But we have exercised that arm
so much, so very much.
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If I was a natural police department
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and I represented a police department,
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you would see this incredible,
beautiful, 23-inch arm.
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(Laughter)
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It's pretty, ain't it? It's cut up.
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No fat on it. Mmm it look good.
It just look good!
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(Laughter)
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That's a great arm -- protection!
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That's who we are, but we've exercised
it so much sometimes
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that it has led to abuse.
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It's led to coldness and callousness
and dehumanized us.
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And we've forgotten
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the mantra across this nation
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is to protect and serve.
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Y'all don't know that? Protect and serve.
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(Laughter)
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So you look at the other arm,
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and then you look at it
and ... there it is.
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(Laughter)
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You know, it's kinda weak.
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It looks sickly.
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It's withering and it's dying
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because we've invested so much
in our protective arm.
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But we forgot to treat our communities
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like they're our customers;
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like they're our sons and daughters,
our brothers and sisters,
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our mothers and fathers.
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And so somehow, along the way,
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we've gotten out of balance.
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And because we are a proud profession,
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it is very hard for us to look
in the mirror and see our mistakes.
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It's even harder to make a change.
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And so, as I try to hurry
and get through this,
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I need to say this:
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it's not just law enforcement, though.
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Because every one of us
makes up a community.
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Everybody makes up a community.
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And as communities -- can I say this? --
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we have put too much responsibility
on law enforcement.
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Too much.
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(Applause)
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And then we have the audacity
and the nerve to get upset
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with law enforcement
when we take action.
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There is no way in the world
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that we, as a community,
should be calling the police
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for kids playing ball in the street.
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No way in the world that we
should be calling the police
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because my neighbor's
music is up too loud,
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because his dog came over
to my yard and did a number two;
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there's no way we should
be calling the police.
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But we have surrendered
so much of our responsibility.
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Listen, when I was a little boy
coming up in Baltimore --
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and listen, we played
rough in the street --
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I ain't never see the police
come and break us up.
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You know who came? It was the elders.
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It was the parental figures
in the community.
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It was those guardians,
it was that village mentality.
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They came and said, "Stop that!"
and "Do this." and "Stop that."
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We had mentors throughout
all of the community.
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So it takes all of us, all of us.
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And when I say community,
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I'm talking about everything
that makes up a community, even --
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listen, because I'm a preacher,
I'm very hard on the churches,
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because I believe the churches
too often have become MIA,
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missing in action.
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I believe they have shifted
over the last 10, 20 years
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from being community churches,
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where you walk outside your door,
round the corner and you're in church.
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They shifted from that and became
commuter churches.
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So you now have churches who have
become disconnected by default
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from the very community
where they're planted.
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And they don't take care
of that community.
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I could go on and on,
but I really need to wrap this up.
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Community and policing:
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we've all lost that precious gift,
and I call it relational equity.
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We've lost it with one another.
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It's not somebody else's fault --
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it's all of our fault.
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We all take responsibility in this.
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But I say this: it's not too late
for all of us to build our cities
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and nation to make it great again.
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It is never too late.
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It is never too late.
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You see, after three years
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of my four-and-a-half-year
commandship in that district,
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three years in,
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after putting pastors
in the car with my police
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because I knew this --
it's a little secret --
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I knew this:
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it was hard to stay a nasty police officer
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while you're riding around
with a clergy.
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(Laughter)
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(Applause)
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You'd be getting in and out of the car,
looking to your right, talking about:
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"Father, forgive me, for I have sinned,"
all day long -- you can't do it!
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So we came up with some
incredible initiatives,
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engagements for our community
and police to build that trust back.
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We began to deal with our youth
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and with those who we consider
are on the wrong side of the fence.
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We knew we had an economic problem,
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so we began to create jobs.
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We knew there was sickness
in our community
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and they didn't have access
to proper medical care,
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so we'd partner up.
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We got to that intersection
and partnered up
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with anybody that wanted
to partner with us
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and talked about
what we needed holistically,
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never thinking about the crime.
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Because at the end of the day,
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if we took care
of the needs of the people,
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if we got to the root cause,
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the crime would take care of itself.
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It would take care of itself.
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(Applause)
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And so, after three years
of a four-and-a-half-year stint,
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we looked back and we looked over
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and found out that we were
at a 40-year historical low:
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our crime numbers, our homicides --
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everything had dropped
down, back to the 1970s.
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And it might go back further,
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but the problem is, we only
started keeping data since 1970.
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Forty-year crime low, so much so,
I had other commanders call me,
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"Hey Mel, whatcha doin', man?
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Whatcha doin'? We gotta get some of that!"
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(Laughter)
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And so we gave them some of that.
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And in a short period of time,
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the city went to a 30-year crime low.
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For the first time in 30 years,
we fell, Baltimore city,
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to under 200 homicides -- 197 to be exact.
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And we celebrated,
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because we had learned
to become great servers,
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become great servers first.
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But I gotta tell you this:
these last few years,
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as much as we had learned
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to become great proactive police officers
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and great relational police officers
rather than reactive,
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these last years have disappointed me.
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They have broken my heart.
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The uprising still hurts.
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It still hurts my heart,
-
because truly I believe
that it should've never happened.
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I believe it should've never happened
-
if we were allowed to continue
along the vein that we were in,
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servicing our community,
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treating them like human beings,
treating them with respect,
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loving on them first.
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If we continued in that vein,
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it would've never happened.
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But somehow, we went back
to business as usual.
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But I'm excited again!
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I'm excited again, because now
we have a police commissioner
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who not only talks
about community policing,
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but he absolutely understands it,
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and more importantly, he embraces it.
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So I'm very excited now.
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Listen, I'm excited about Baltimore today,
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because we, as many cities,
I believe shall rise from the ashes.
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I believe -- I truly believe --
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(Applause)
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that we will be great again.
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I believe,
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as we continue to wrap arms
and continue to say,
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"We're in this together,"
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because it's not just an intersection:
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once we meet, we now gotta get
on the same path for the same goals,
-
and this city will become great again.
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This nation will become great again.
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Because we have the same goal:
we all want peace.
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We all want respect for one another.
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We all want love.
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And I believe we are back on that road,
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and I'm so excited about it.
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So listen, I thank you for giving me
a few minutes of your time.
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God bless you all.
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(Applause)
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God bless you.
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(Applause)