Recently, a big kerfuffle has been made about Sanders’ statements concerning crime during his 2006 senate campaign have been made at this site.
I can only wonder, did they actually even read what was written on that page, or just stop when they saw the words “crime bill”?
Let’s read what he actually wrote here.
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Voted for Over $650 Million to Fight Crime. Is this at all controversial?
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Voted for $200 Million for Local Police Programs. Is this at all controversial?
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Voted for $1.8 Billion for Police Officers and $233 Million for Crime Prevention Programs. Is this at all controversial?
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Voted for $30.5 Million for Anti-Drug Program, the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas Program . Has HIDTA been widely accused of being discriminatory? Not to my knowledge. HIDTA is:
The purpose of the program is to reduce drug trafficking and production in the United States by:
- Facilitating cooperation among Federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies to share information and implement coordinated enforcement activities;
- Enhancing law enforcement intelligence sharing among Federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies;
- Providing reliable law enforcement intelligence to law enforcement agencies needed to design effective enforcement strategies and operations; and
- Supporting coordinated law enforcement strategies which maximize use of available resources to reduce the supply of illegal drugs in designated areas and in the United States as a whole.
Is that controversial? I’ve been trying to find examples of claims that HIDTA is a generally abusive program and am not finding much — I found a specific example of a couple local jursidictions abusing their HIDTA money, and I found that the NDAA of 1990 prioritized giving military equipment to HIDTA areas (aka, their militarization) — but that’s the fault of the NDAA of 1990 and not the creation of HIDTA areas.
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Voted for $175 Million for Public Housing Drug Elimination Program. What is PHDEP? It’s a mixture of law enforcement and community initiatives (the exact nature of them determined locally) to… well, you can read about it here (emphasis mine):
• Faced with different local needs, grantees adopted a wide variety of strategies.
• The most commonly implemented activities were drug education (80 percent of all programs), youth sports and recreation (71 percent), and youth education and tutoring (64 percent).
Is this controversial?
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Voted for $9 Million for Anti-Drug Program, the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas Program. See above.
SANDERS: STRONG ON THE COPS PROGRAM
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Voted for the 1994 Crime Bill that Created the COPS Program. Note: this entire section is focused on the COPS Program, not the Crime Bill as a whole. What is the COPS program? It’s stated objectives are (emphasis mine):
The Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office) is the component of the U.S. Department of Justice responsible for advancing the practice of community policing by the nation's state, local, territorial, and tribal law enforcement agencies through information and grant resources.
Community policing begins with a commitment to building trust and mutual respect between police and communities. It is critical to public safety, ensuring that all stakeholders work together to address our nation's crime challenges. When police and communities collaborate, they more effectively address underlying issues, change negative behavioral patterns, and allocate resources.
The COPS Office awards grants to hire community policing professionals, develop and test innovative policing strategies, and provide training and technical assistance to community members, local government leaders, and all levels of law enforcement. Since 1994, the COPS Office has invested more than $14 billion to help advance community policing.
How is that objective in any way different from what Sanders is campaigning on — that police departments should be made of the people that represent them? From the program’s stated objective, should we be surprised that Sanders would support it?
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Voted for $7.5 Billion for Cops on the Beat Program . Cops On The Beat provides funding to implement COPS.
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Voted for Reauthorization of COPS Program . See above.
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Voted for $300 Million Increase to $1.3 Billion Total for COPS Program . See above.
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Voted for $11.7 Million Increase for COPS Meth Seizure Program . You can read the amendment here. It moves money from “International Broadcasting” in the justice bill to COPS.
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Voted for $106.9 Million for the COPS Program. See above.
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Voted for $200 Million for Local Law Enforcement Including $100 Million for COPS . See above.
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Voted for $10 Million Increase in Funding for COPS Program . See above.
SANDERS: STRONG ON BULLETPROOF VESTS FOR POLICE
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Voted to Double Funding for Police Bulletproof Vests to $50 Million a Year. Is this at all controversial?
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Voted for $25 Million for Police to Buy Bulletproof Vests. Is this at all controversial?
SANDERS: STRONG ON TOUGH PENALTIES FOR CRIMES AGAINST CHILDREN
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Voted for Mandatory Life Sentences for Repeat Child Sex Offenders. Is this particularly controversial?
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Voted for Expansion of Wiretaps to Investigate Crimes Against Children. Are wiretaps obtained through the court system to investigate child abuse controversial?
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Voted to Include Sexual Abuse in Definition of Child Abuse . Is this at all controversial?
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Voted for Increased Funding for Child Abuse Prevention Programs to $20 Million. Is this controversial?
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Voted for Tougher Federal Sentencing Penalties for Violent Crimes Against Children . Is this particularly controversial?
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Voted for Zero Tolerance for Possession of Child Pornography and Increased Penalties for Internet Sexual Predators . You might find some controversy here because it’s a “zero tolerance” law, but probably not much.
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Voted for Increased Federal Penalties for Crimes Against Children and the Elderly. Same as all the above.
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Voted for Tougher Federal Penalties for Child Sex Crimes. See above.
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Voted for Youth Offenders Alternative Punishment Bill. According to VoteSmart, this bill “provides suggestions for alternative punishments, including programs providing job training activities, community service, electronic surveillance, substance abuse treatment, and others.” — Is this at all controversial?
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Voted for $500 Million for Youth Crime Prevention. It’s a long bill which you can read here. My favorite part, though? It has to spell out:
`(b) PROHIBITED USES- Notwithstanding any other provision of this Act, a unit of local government may not expend any of the funds provided under this title to purchase, lease, rent, or otherwise acquire--
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- `(1) tanks or armored personnel carriers;
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- `(2) fixed wing aircraft;
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- `(7) vehicles not primarily used for law enforcement;
unless the Attorney General certifies that extraordinary and exigent circumstances exist that make the use of funds for such purposes essential to the maintenance of public safety and good order in such unit of local government.
Ah, America….
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Voted for Creation of Sex Offender Database . These databases are somewhat controversial — but not associated with the controversy of the Crime Bill.
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Voted for $100 Million in Anti-Juvenile Gangs and Drug Trafficking Grants . Again, looking over the bill, there’s nothing particularly controversial there.
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Voted for $497 Million for Juvenile Justice Programs . See above.
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Voted for $259 for Juvenile Crime Prevention Programs . See above.
SANDERS: STRONG ON FIGHTING VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND FUNDING ANTI-CRIME PROGRAMS
Sanders Voted for Violence Against Women Act and Tried to Restore It After the Supreme Court Overturned it in 2000. Is this at all controversial?
Sanders goes on for quite a bit about the importance of this bill — it seems to be the vote that he cares the most about having made.
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So I ask: where is the huge controversy about this? Because he supported COPS? Is the concept that Sanders would support a program with the stated goal of involving local community members in the policing of their own communities somehow shocking?
What is it about the Crime Bill that was so controversial?
* It created 60 new death penalty offenses from existing crimes
* It created 50 new federal offenses focused on “gang crime”, which had the effect of targeting mostly minority youth.
* It eliminated all higher education support for prisoners, increasing the risk of recidivism
* It gave large amounts of money to build new prisons
* It created a “three strikes you’re out” provision addressing repeat offenders, which helped load up the newly created prisons
It has been argued that the large numbers of new officers created by the COPS program, combined with the new crimes and penalties imposed by the crime bill, were also a contributor to the faults by leading to overenforcement. But as far as the goal of making police departments more representative of their communities, that has been a core Sanders issue.
Would Sanders have written a crime bill like that? No. How do we know? Because he stated it, when he voted for the bill:
Mr. Speaker, let me begin with a profound remark: Two plus two equals four.
In other words, there is a logical and rational process called cause and effect. In terms of Newtonian physics, that means that every action causes an equal and opposite reaction. In other words, Mr. Speaker, there are reasons why things happen, as controversial as that statement may be.
A farmer neglects to tend and care for his fields—it is likely that the crop will fail.
A company neglects to invest in research and development—it is likely that the company will not be profitable.
In a similar way, Mr. Speaker, a society which neglects, which oppresses and which disdains a very significant part of its population—which leaves them hungry, impoverished, unemployed, uneducated, and utterly without hope, will, through cause and effect, create a population which is bitter, which is angry, which is violent, and a society which is crime-ridden. This is the case in America, and it is the case in countries throughout the world.
Mr. Speaker, how do we talk about the very serious crime problem in America without mentioning that we have the highest rate of childhood poverty in the industrialized world, by far, with 22 percent of our children in poverty and 5 million who are hungry today? Do the Members think maybe that might have some relationship to crime? How do we talk about crime when this Congress is prepared, this year, to spend 11 times more for the military than for education; when 21 percent of our kids drop out of high school; when a recent study told us that twice as many young workers now earn poverty wages as 10 years ago; when the gap between the rich and the poor is wider, and when the rate of poverty continues to grow? Do the members think that might have some relationship to crime?
Mr. Speaker, it is my firm belief that clearly, there are some people in our society who are horribly violent, who are deeply sick and sociopathic, and clearly these people must be put behind bars in order to protect society from them. But it is also my view that through the neglect of our Government and through a grossly irrational set of priorities, we are dooming tens of millions of young people to a future of bitterness, misery, hopelessness, drugs, crime, and violence. And Mr. Speaker, all the jails in the world, and we already imprison more people per capita than any other country, and all of the executions in the world, will not make that situation right. We can either educate or electrocute. We can create meaningful jobs, rebuilding our society, or we can build more jails. Mr. Speaker, let us create a society of hope and compassion, not one of hate and vengeance.