US Presidency
2013

Traditionally, these are issues of state and local government, the criminal code. And law enforcement is traditionally done at the state and local levels, not at the federal levels. That doesn't mean, though, that as a nation we can't do some things that I think would be productive. So let me just give a couple of specifics that I am still bouncing around with my staff, so we're not rolling out some five-point plan, but some areas where I think all of us could potentially focus. Number one, precisely because law enforcement is often determined at the state and local level, I think it would be productive for the Justice Department, governors, mayors to work with law enforcement about training at the state and local levels in order to reduce the kind of mistrust in the system that sometimes currently exists. When I was in Illinois, I passed racial profiling legislation, and it actually did just two simple things. One, it collected data on traffic stops and the race of the person who was stopped.