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POLICING STRATEGIES FOR THE 21ST CENTURY 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

MAY 19, 2015 

Serial No. 114–29 

Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary 

( 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://judiciary.house.gov 
(II) 

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY 

BOB GOODLATTE, Virginia, Chairman 

F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., 

Wisconsin 

LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas 

STEVE CHABOT, Ohio 

DARRELL E. ISSA, California 

J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia 

STEVE KING, Iowa 

TRENT FRANKS, Arizona 

LOUIE GOHMERT, Texas 

JIM JORDAN, Ohio 

TED POE, Texas 

JASON CHAFFETZ, Utah 

TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania 

TREY GOWDY, South Carolina 

RAU ́ L LABRADOR, Idaho 

BLAKE FARENTHOLD, Texas 

DOUG COLLINS, Georgia 

RON DeSANTIS, Florida 

MIMI WALTERS, California 

KEN BUCK, Colorado 

JOHN RATCLIFFE, Texas 

DAVE TROTT, Michigan 

MIKE BISHOP, Michigan 

JOHN CONYERS, JR., Michigan 

JERROLD NADLER, New York 

ZOE LOFGREN, California 

SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas 

STEVE COHEN, Tennessee 

HENRY C. ‘‘HANK’’ JOHNSON, JR., 

Georgia 

PEDRO R. PIERLUISI, Puerto Rico 

JUDY CHU, California 

TED DEUTCH, Florida 

LUIS V. GUTIERREZ, Illinois 

KAREN BASS, California 

CEDRIC RICHMOND, Louisiana 

SUZAN DelBENE, Washington 

HAKEEM JEFFRIES, New York 

DAVID N. CICILLINE, Rhode Island 

SCOTT PETERS, California 

SHELLEY HUSBAND, Chief of Staff & General Counsel 

PERRY APELBAUM, Minority Staff Director & Chief Counsel 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

MAY 19, 2015 

Page 

OPENING STATEMENTS 

The Honorable Bob Goodlatte, a Representative in Congress from the State 

of Virginia, and Chairman, Committee on the Judiciary ................................. 1 

The Honorable John Conyers, Jr., a Representative in Congress from the 

State of Michigan, and Ranking Member, Committee on the Judiciary ......... 2 

WITNESSES 

David A. Clarke, Jr., Sheriff, Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office, Milwaukee, 

WI 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 5 

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 8 

W. Craig Hartley, Jr., Executive Director, Commission on Accreditation of 

Law Enforcement Agencies 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 12 

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 14 

Susan Rahr, Executive Director, Washington State Criminal Justice Training 

Commission and Member of President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century 

Policing 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 43 

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 45 

Matthew Barge, Vice President & Deputy Director, Police Assessment Resource Center (PARC) 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 47 

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 49 

Deborah A. Ramirez, Professor of Law, Northeastern University School of 

Law, Boston, MA 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 60 

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 62 

LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING 

Material submitted by the Honorable Luis V. Gutierrez, a Member in Congress from the State of Illinois, and Member, Committee on the Judiciary ... 90 

Material submitted by the Honorable Cedric Richmond, a Member in Congress from the State of Louisiana, and Member, Committee on the Judiciary ......................................................................................................................... 94

APPENDIX 

MATERIAL SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING RECORD

Letter from Rabbi Meyer H. May, Executive Director, Simon Wiesenthal 

Center .................................................................................................................... 112 

Response to Questions for the Record from David A. Clarke, Jr., Sheriff, 

Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office, Milwaukee, WI .......................................... 119 

Response to Questions for the Record from W. Craig Hartley, Jr., Executive 

Director, Commission on Accreditation of Law Enforcement Agencies ........... 122 
Page

IV 

Response to Questions for the Record from Susan Rahr, Executive Director, 

Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission and Member of 

President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing ................................. 125 

Response to Questions for the Record from Matthew Barge, Vice President 

& Deputy Director, Police Assessment Resource Center (PARC) .................... 127 

Response to Questions for the Record from Deborah A. Ramirez, Professor 

of Law, Northeastern University School of Law, Boston, MA .......................... 131 

OFFICIAL HEARING RECORD 

UNPRINTED MATERIAL SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING RECORD

Material submitted by the the Honorable Sheila Jackson Lee, a Representative in Congress from the State of Texas, and Member, Committee on 

the Judiciary ......................................................................................................... 109 

http://docs.house.gov/Committee/Calendar/ByEvent.aspx?EventID=103474 
(1) 

POLICING STRATEGIES FOR THE 

21ST CENTURY 

TUESDAY, MAY 19, 2015 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY

Washington, DC. 

The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:09 a.m., in Room 

2141, Rayburn Office Building, the Honorable Bob Goodlatte 

(Chairman of the Committee) presiding. 

Present: Representatives Goodlatte, Chabot, Issa, King, Franks, 

Gohmert, Jordan, Poe, Marino, Gowdy, Farenthold, Collins, DeSantis, Walters, Buck, Ratcliffe, Bishop, Conyers, Nadler, Lofgren, 

Jackson Lee, Cohen, Johnson, Pierluisi, Chu, Deutch, Gutierrez, 

Bass, Richmond, DelBene, Jeffries, Cicilline, and Peters. 

Staff Present: (Majority) Shelley Husband, Chief of Staff & General Counsel; Branden Ritchie, Deputy Chief of Staff & Chief; Allison Halataei, Parliamentarian & General Counsel; Chris Grieco, 

Counsel, Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, 

and Investigations; Kelsey Williams, Clerk; (Minority) Perry 

Apelbaum, Staff Director & Chief Counsel; Danielle Brown, Chief 

Legislative Counsel & Parliamentarian; Kennan Keller, Counsel; 

and Maggie Lopatin, Clerk. 

Mr. GOODLATTE. Good morning. The Judiciary Committee will 

come to order. And without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare recesses of the Committee at any time. 

We welcome everyone to this morning’s hearing on policing strategy for the 21st century. I will begin by recognizing myself for an 

opening statement. 

Policing is an inherently dangerous job. Our law enforcement officers deserve our gratitude for the work they do on a daily basis 

to make sure that our streets are safe, the most helpless in our 

communities are protected, and those who commit crimes are 

brought to justice. 

I am very concerned that force is used appropriately, and that 

police officers are taking appropriate steps to protect innocent civilians when they make encounters. There is increasing unrest in our 

urban communities about policing. Protests in Ferguson, New 

York, and Baltimore were the outgrowth of the use of force by police officers stopping a suspect. Although no charges were filed 

against the officers in question in two of those cases, it is clear that 

there is widespread disagreement about the actions of police in 

those instances. 
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What started as peaceful protests turned into violent riots where, 

again, the police reaction to those riots was brought into question. 

At the same time, I am increasingly concerned with the repeated 

targeting of our police and law enforcement personnel. Last week, 

we learned that two more police officers were killed. Officers Dean 

and Tate responding to a routine traffic stop in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, were gunned down by a group of five men. 

This comes on the heels of the more widely known murders of 

Officers Ramos and Liu in New York. It has been reported that 

they were specifically targeted by a man looking to kill a police officer. 

While I refuse to consider the actions of police officers in Ferguson and New York as justifying the responses that befell those 

cities, it is clear that we must find a better way for our police and 

citizens to interact both in everyday situations and when more difficult circumstances arise. 

We have a distinguished panel before us today with deep knowledge of police training, tactics, and policies. We have longstanding 

leaders in the police community. We have instructors responsible 

for police training. Finally, we have those tasked with monitoring 

those police departments that have not met the standards we require of them. 

I am hopeful that this will be a constructive and positive hearing 

that focuses on current rules and regulations in place, the training 

our officers receive, and how we can train them better in order to 

apprehend criminals while minimizing harm to innocent citizens. 

I am especially interested to hear what we can do to raise the 

level of trust among our police officers and citizens while still protecting both. 

Policing will never be an easy or safe job, but I believe we must 

do everything we can to ensure that our officers have the tools and 

training they need to protect themselves and our Nation’s citizens. 

I would also like to thank the gentleman from Michigan, Mr. 

Conyers, the Ranking Member, for working with us so closely to arrange this hearing. And I was also inspired by the gentlewoman 

from Texas, Ms. Jackson Lee, who has been speaking with me for 

some time about this issue. I thank them both. 

I want to assure all of you that the purpose of this hearing and 

the ongoing efforts of this Committee following this hearing is to 

make sure that we are doing everything possible to address the 

problems that have arisen in recent months, to make sure that our 

communities are safer, our police officers are safer, our citizens’ 

rights are protected, and that we will not rest until we make 

progress in those regards. 

At this time, it is my pleasure to recognize the Ranking Member 

of the Committee, the gentleman from Michigan, Mr. Conyers, for 

his opening statement. 

Mr. CONYERS. Thank you, Mr. Goodlatte, our Chairman. 

Members of the Committee, and to our distinguished witnesses, 

and to those who have come to this hearing, law enforcement accountability is an issue that is very topical, given current events, 

but also one that has long been a concern of mine and many other 

Members. 
3 

As a Member of Congress, I have stood on the streets of Detroit 

with a bullhorn and appealed for calm while my city burned 

around me in 1967. Thinking back, there was a race riot in Detroit 

in 1943. 

On too many occasions, I have met with the grieving relatives of 

those who have lost their lives at the hands of police. But I have 

also met with the families of police officers who lost their lives in 

the line of duty. Some of these officers were killed by violent criminals while other officers were inadvertently killed by some of their 

colleagues who could only see the color of their skin. 

I have cochaired town hall meetings with fellow Members of Congress and others across this Nation in response to policing incidents in Chicago, Miami, New York, and Los Angeles. At these 

meetings, we tried to help the residents of these cities make sense 

of how to respond to their collective sense of loss and to understand 

the role of the Federal Government in protecting their civil rights. 

I have proposed numerous bills to both help protect the safety of 

police officers and to provide a system of accountability for law enforcement. 

For example, I worked with Attorney General John Ashcroft at 

the invitation of President George Bush to craft Federal legislation 

intended to end use of racial profiling in police practices, which is 

currently pending in this Committee as H.R. 1933. Next month, I 

plan to introduce comprehensive legislation dealing with accreditation, data collection, and policing practices. 

Fortunately, our Committee has generally approached the issue 

of policing with a strong, bipartisan spirit. We have enjoyed success 

in passing reform legislation—notably, the passage of the Pattern 

and Practice Enforcement statute, which was codified as Section 

14141 of Title 42 of the United States Code in 1994. And we twice 

passed the Traffic Stops Statistics Study Act under the chairmanship of Chairman Henry Hyde. 

By scheduling today’s hearing, Chairman Goodlatte continues 

this legacy and is commended for his willingness to face a difficult 

issue that has divided communities around the United States. 

Any discussion of law enforcement accountability must be premised on the recognition of the dangerous and difficult job that all 

police officers perform. The vast majority of police officers perform 

their jobs professionally and without bias. But like any profession, 

there are those who make it difficult for the rest to serve their communities. 

At the outset, I must agree with Professor Orlando Patterson 

when he says that the complex and confounding questions raised 

by Ferguson, Baltimore, and other cities go well beyond the issues 

of racism and violent police behavior. What occurred in those cities 

clearly resulted from a vicious tangle of concentrated poverty and 

culturally disenfranchised youth, as well as a countervailing culture of law enforcement disconnected from their communities and 

that is lacking appropriate standards and oversight. 

Yesterday, President Obama was in Camden, New Jersey, to 

highlight his Administration’s initiatives to address the challenges 

of policing in our inner cities. While I support the President’s efforts and look forward to working with him to implement his programs, there is no substitute for concrete performance standards 
4 

for State and local law enforcement agencies that receive billions 

of dollars each year in Federal funding. 

For reform-focused police executives, many of the current administrative programs are merely icing on the cake and probably will 

not reach many chronically underperforming or troubled departments. 

The entire purpose of Section 14141 was to add teeth to Federal 

enforcement that was absent in the grantmaking process. Although 

pattern and practice enforcement has been effective in cases of individual departments, it is far too resource-heavy to reach across 

the more than 17,000 police departments in our country. 

There must be another way, and I hope that today we can talk 

about the combination of Federal, State, and local measures that 

are essential to support necessary changes in policing culture. 

The national outcry that arose after Michael Brown’s death is 

nothing new to those who are students of policing practices. From 

the Sean Bell, Abner Louima, and Amadou Diallo incidents in New 

York, to the Eddie Macklin shooting in Miami, to the Timothy 

Thomas Over-the-Rhine shooting in Cincinnati, and the Donovan 

Jackson beating in Englewood, the response is nearly always the 

same: national outcry followed by well-intentioned programs that 

never quite get to the heart of the matter. 

Out of respect for all who have lost their lives over the last 9 

months, both law enforcement and civilian, I hope that we can 

dedicate ourselves to engaging the difficult issues to make lasting 

change in our community. 

I thank the Chairman. 

Mr. GOODLATTE. Thank you, Mr. Conyers. 

And without objection, all Members’ opening statements will be 

made a part of the record. 

We welcome our distinguished panel of witnesses today. And if 

you would all please rise, I will begin by swearing you in. 

Please raise your right hand. Do you and each of you solemnly 

swear that the testimony that you are about to give shall be the 

truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God? 

Thank you very much. Let the record reflect that the witnesses 

responded in the affirmative. 

Sheriff David A. Clarke, Jr., has served as a sheriff in Milwaukee 

County, Wisconsin, since March 2002, when he was appointed by 

then-Governor Scott McCallum. He was elected in November 2002 

and is currently serving his fourth term as sheriff. Sheriff Clarke 

holds a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice management from 

Concordia University in Wisconsin, a master’s in security studies 

from the Naval Postgraduate School, and has completed various executive education programs with the FBI and at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. 

Matthew Barge is the vice president and deputy director of the 

Police Assessment Resource Center, PARC. Among Mr. Barge’s 

areas of expertise are use-of-force policies; officer training; and 

counseling law enforcement agencies to achieve efficient, constitutional policing. Mr. Barge graduated summa cum laude from 

Georgetown University and holds a J.D. from the New York University School of Law. 
5 

Susan Rahr is executive director of the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission, a position she has held since 

2012. From 2005 to 2012, she served as the first female sheriff in 

King County, Washington. She previously spent over 30 years as 

a law enforcement officer. She received a bachelor’s degree from 

Washington State University and currently serves as a member of 

President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing. 

W. Craig Hartley Jr. is the executive director of the Commission 

on Accreditation of Law Enforcement Agencies, CALEA. He began 

his career with the Greensboro, North Carolina, Police Department 

in 1989 and served in a number of positions within the agency before becoming assistant chief of police. Prior to joining CALEA, Mr. 

Hartley worked for the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice 

Services, where he led the department’s Public Policy, Planning, 

and Research Division. Mr. Hartley holds a bachelor’s in criminal 

justice from Appalachian State University and a master’s in public 

affairs from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. 

Professor Deborah Ramirez teaches criminal justice at the Northeastern University School of Law in Boston, Massachusetts. Much 

of her work focuses on strengthening partnerships between law enforcement and communities, which is integral to building trust and 

fair, effective policing. Professor Ramirez received a bachelor’s degree at Northwestern University and a J.D. from Harvard Law 

School. 

All of your written testimonies will be entered into the record in 

their entirety. I ask that each of you summarize your testimony in 

5 minutes or less. 

To help you stay within that time, there is a timing light on your 

table. When the light switches from green to yellow, you have 1 

minute to conclude your testimony. I shouldn’t say this to law enforcement personnel, but it works like a traffic light. When the 

light turns red, it signals that your 5 minutes have expired. But 

when it turns yellow first, that means speed up. [Laughter.] 

Sheriff Clarke, you may begin. 

TESTIMONY OF DAVID A. CLARKE, JR., SHERIFF, 

MILWAUKEE COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE, MILWAUKEE, WI 

Sheriff CLARKE. Good morning, Mr. Chair, and honorable Members of the Committee on the Judiciary. Thank you for the opportunity to state my view, which is backed by 37 years of experience 

from ground level concerning police accountability, aggression toward police, public safety concerns, and what might be the right 

thing for us to work on now. 

Since the events that led to riots in Ferguson, Missouri, police 

use of force has become scrutinized nationally. Police use of force 

should be scrutinized—locally, that is. It should be examined in 

terms of factual data and circumstances that led to the police action and not from the emotional foundation of false narratives or 

catchy slogans like, ‘‘hands up, do not shoot,’’ ‘‘no justice, no peace,’’ 

or ‘‘Black lives matter.’’ Let us leave that conduct for the public to 

engage in, not the mainstream media or those elected officials who 

cannot resist the opportunity to exploit the emotions of an uninformed or misinformed public simply for political gain. 
6 

We will no doubt hear a lot of statistics thrown about today, 

some distorted to achieve a predetermined agenda. Others are legitimate. 

In 2013, the U.S. Department of Justice under Attorney General 

Eric Holder did a study in conjunction with the National Institute 

of Justice on traffic stop data. They found that when you use control factors that statistics and research require for legitimate findings, any racial disparities are attributed to differences in offending. 

The studies show that Black drivers violated speeding and other 

traffic laws at much greater rates than Whites. That conclusion of 

the study under an Eric Holder-led DOJ might be ugly to some, but 

is what the data and research have found. 

That same study showed that three out every four Black drivers 

said the police had a legitimate reason for stopping them. 

The same is true in arrest and incarceration data for AfricanAmerican males. Participation rates in violent crime explain the 

disparity of why so many Black males are locked up in prison. 

Black makes are disproportionately involved in violent crime, and 

this violence is predominantly perpetrated against other Black people. It is not the result of a discriminatory criminal justice system. 

Blacks make up 37.5 percent the prison population at the State 

and Federal level. If we release those convicted on drug charges 

alone, the percentage of Black males in prison would drop to 37 

percent, a mere one-half of 1 percent. So much for the myth of 

Black males filling our prisons merely for drug convictions, not to 

mention that illegal drug use is the scourge of the Black community and leads to a great deal of the violence that occurs. 

The police use of force data also tells a different story than the 

false narrative propagated by cop-bashers and the liberal mainstream media. A recent study that looked into police use of force 

between 2009 and 2012 showed this breakdown: 61 percent, or 915 

of the 1,491 people who died from police use of force were White 

males, while 32 percent, 481, were Black males. 

It is a myth that police kill Black males in greater numbers than 

anyone else. 

Black-on-Black crime is the elephant in the room that few want 

to talk about. We could talk about the police use of force, but it 

does not start with transforming the police profession. It starts by 

asking why we need so much assertive policing in the American 

ghetto. 

Are police officers perfect? Not by any stretch of the imagination. 

Are police agencies perfect? Not even close. But we are the best 

that our communities have to offer. 

Instead, the conversation should be about transforming Black 

underclass subculture behavior. The discussion must start with addressing the behavior of people who have no respect for authority, 

who fight with and try to disarm the police, who flee the police, 

and who engage in other flawed lifestyle choices. 

Bashing the police is the low-hanging fruit. It is easier to talk 

about the rare killing—fortunately, rare—of a Black male by police 

because emotion can be exploited for political advantage. 

The police are easier to throw overboard because they cannot 

fight back politically. This, however, is counterproductive and will 
7 

lead to police pulling back in high-crime areas where good, lawabiding Black people live. Black people will be the losers in all this 

as violent crime rates skyrocket over time. This means more Black 

crime victims. 

Economist and author Thomas Sowell, a man I admire, said this 

about policing: If people who are told that they under arrest, and 

who refuse to come with the police, cannot be forcibly taken into 

custody, then we do not have the rule of law when the law itself 

is downgraded to suggestions that no one has the power to enforce. 

Sowell further pointed out that, for people who have never tried 

to take into custody somebody resisting arrest, to sit back in the 

safety and comfort of their homes or offices and second guess people who face the dangers inherent in that process—dangers for 

both the officer and the person under arrest—is yet another example of the irresponsible self-indulgences of our time, unquote. 

Thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Sheriff Clarke follows:] 
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Mr. GOODLATTE. Thank you, Sheriff Clarke. 

Mr. Hartley, welcome. 

TESTIMONY OF W. CRAIG HARTLEY, JR., EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, COMMISSION ON ACCREDITATION OF LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES 

Mr. HARTLEY. Chairman Goodlatte, Ranking Member Conyers, 

and Members of the Committee, on behalf of the Commission on 

Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies, commonly referred to 

as CALEA, thank you for this invitation today to present ideas on 

policing strategies for the 21st century. As a part of this discussion, 

I think it is important to recognize that every year, over 1 million 

police officers dispersed across 18,000 agencies make over 40 million public contacts, where they encounter incredibly sensitive and 

highly emotional situations. 

These interactions result in millions of arrests annually, and police use force or the threat of force 1.4 percent of the time, using 

mostly low-level applications. Statistically, this is a strong indication to the adherence to the democratic principles of public safety 

service in this country. However, this can only occur where there 

are trusting relationships between the community and the police. 

Recently, the country has observed situations where this confidence has eroded, resulting in undesirable outcomes. Although 

there is no single solution, CALEA accreditation provides a strategy that institutionalizes best practices through the application of 

policing standards. The model promotes community confidence and 

instills accountability across all levels of participating agencies. 

About 5 percent of law enforcement agencies participate, which 

equates to a little more than 25 percent of the Nation’s law enforcement officers working for enrolled agencies. Given this level of penetration, the standards serve as a powerful tool to influence police 

policy and practice. 

These standards remain relevant through a dynamic process of 

review by leaders in the public safety industry, which include practitioners, academicians, judicial officials, and other subject matter 

experts. 

Additionally, research from leading professional associations is 

leveraged, and the process considers information from special interest groups on such topics as victims’ right and procedural justice. 

CALEA recently launched a review of standards to consider findings from the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing and 

recent DOJ investigations of police agencies, all this with a focus 

on creating service philosophies that balance the need for safety 

and security with constitutionally protected rights and freedoms. 

The process of accreditation also focuses on intended outcomes. 

This is accomplished through a sophisticated system of linking 

agency policies to standards, and ensuring practices complement 

organizational directives. It is reinforced through data collection, 

onsite observation, agency reporting, community input, and public 

commission hearings. 

As examples of these standards, participating organizations must 

develop effective citizen complaint procedures. This must include 

investigations of all complaints, including those of an anonymous 

nature. The procedures must establish timelines for notification to 
13 

complainants and result in the posting of summary data for public 

consumption. 

From an operational perspective, integrity in criminal investigation procedures is included in the accreditation process. This involves accountability with the preservation, collection, maintenance, and presentation of evidence. Policies related to interviews, 

lineups, and show-ups must be developed and followed. 

CALEA accreditation requires agencies to develop community involvement practices to include establishing liaisons with community organizations, the involvement of community members in the 

development of policy, and publicizing agency objectives. 

Although these are only a few outputs of accreditation, it demonstrates how standards address core issues impacting community 

confidence while supporting police as an institution. 

As an association, CALEA supports reasonable legislation to improve professionalism in the field of public safety. We support the 

concept of voluntary participation in accreditation to promote productive relationships with agencies. We support incentives that 

support agencies pursuing accreditation. And we advocate for 

stronger interaction with other governmental and nongovernmental 

entities for standards development. And we value approaches that 

gradually and systematically transition public safety agencies to 

programming with reasonable implementation timelines and technical assistance. 

The more than 1,030 public safety agencies enrolled in CALEA 

accreditation have voluntarily committed to demonstrating professional excellence through standards, compliance, and assessment. I 

would encourage lawmakers to support accreditation as an important tool for addressing the professional delivery of police services 

as part of 21st century policing strategies. 

Thank you, Mr. Chair. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Hartley follows:] 
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Mr. GOODLATTE. Thank you, Mr. Hartley. 

Ms. Rahr, welcome. 

TESTIMONY OF SUSAN RAHR, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, WASHINGTON STATE CRIMINAL JUSTICE TRAINING COMMISSION 

AND MEMBER OF PRESIDENT OBAMA’S TASK FORCE ON 

21ST CENTURY POLICING 

Ms. RAHR. Mr. Chair, Members of the Committee, it is my honor 

to be invited to testify today. 

I would like you to know a little bit about my background, so you 

can put my comments in context. I started policing in 1979 as a 

patrol deputy, and for the next 33 years, I had the privilege of serving my community in assignments such as patrol, undercover narcotics. I commanded our gang unit in the Seattle metropolitan area 

for 3 years and spent a great deal of time working with police conduct cases and training. 

When I retired as the elected sheriff in 2012, I had the good fortune of coming to our State’s police academy, where we train all 

10,000 law enforcement officers in the State of Washington. I have 

learned a great deal from those recruits. 

As we embark on this dialogue today, I think it is critically important that we consider a wide range of factors that impact the 

environment in which police operate and that we consider strategies that are most likely to increase public trust and improve public safety. 

I would like to highlight two of these major factors. To add to the 

context, I think we have a tendency to talk about the bad apples. 

I would like to talk about the barrel and the people who make the 

barrels. 

The first factor is the absence of a national coherence in policing. 

We have 18,000 individual police departments, each with unique 

cultures and reflecting the policies and practices that are a product 

of those 18,000 local governments with a diverse range of values 

and expectations. Agency size ranges from one officer to more than 

34,000 officers. About half of those 18,000 agencies have 10 officers 

or less. 

All of these departments operate in one of our 50 States, each 

with a unique system of justice that dictates how criminal cases 

are initiated, processed, and adjudicated. Although many States 

mandate peace officer certifications and standards for hiring and 

training, most States exert limited control over their local law enforcement. Outside of consent decrees and the distribution or withholding of Federal funds, the influence of the Federal Government 

on local policing is also limited. 

The bottom line is, there is no single description of United States 

police culture and practice. The environment and challenges faced 

by police departments vary widely, and the control and oversight 

of our police is almost exclusively local. 

The second major factor to consider is that police departments do 

not operate independently. In most cities, police chiefs are hired or 

fired by the mayor or another elected municipal executive. Most 

sheriffs are elected by the voters that they are sworn to protect and 

serve. 
44 

When police exert control over citizens, they do so at the behest 

of an official elected by the people. Crime control strategies do not 

emerge in isolation, nor do decisions about police accountability. 

Those decisions are made by independently elected officials and 

prosecutors. 

Too often, the scrutiny of disturbing incidents begins and ends 

with the police department with little examination of those factors 

outside the agency that influence priorities and practices. 

The importance of a broader focus of inquiry was illustrated in 

the recent examination into the government practices in the City 

of Ferguson. The findings serve as a powerful example of the influence of governing forces outside of the police department itself. 

Ideas for improving policing in the 21st century need to consider 

both of these major factors. Most changes in policies and procedures must be adopted by local governments in order to be implemented. For example, the requirement to use body-worn cameras 

must consider local and State laws related to the gathering, management, and disclosure of data, as well as local and State laws 

protecting individual privacy. 

These changes will take time, require a great deal of cooperation, 

and, in some cases, the barriers may be insurmountable. 

There are, however, meaningful steps that can be taken at various levels of government without changing laws. These steps will 

improve the culture of policing and expand police training in ways 

that contribute to increased public trust and improved safety. The 

recommendations of the President’s task force contain a full range 

of actions that can be implemented immediately and some that are 

more long-term strategies. 

One of the areas of focus contained in the recommendations relates to the police training. I sent to you a copy of an academic report that I co-authored. It was published by the Kennedy School at 

Harvard and published by the National Institute of Justice. This 

paper expounds on the importance of addressing the leadership culture in police departments and suggests a path toward improving 

culture through effective training. I hope these ideas will be beneficial as this Committee explores ways to improve policing in the 

21st century. 

Thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Rahr follows:] 
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Mr. GOODLATTE. Thank you, Ms. Rahr. 

Mr. Barge, welcome. 

TESTIMONY OF MATTHEW BARGE, VICE PRESIDENT & DEPUTY DIRECTOR, POLICE ASSESSMENT RESOURCE CENTER 

(PARC) 

Mr. BARGE. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Conyers, distinguished Members of the Committee, my name is Matthew Barge. 

I am the vice president and the deputy director of the Police Assessment Resource Center. 

For 14 years, PARC has provided independent counsel to upward 

of 30 police agencies and communities, helping them solve problems and incorporate best practices on effective, safe, and constitutional policing. 

I want to thank you for the opportunity to appear before you 

today. 

In light of recent events, some have wondered whether local police agencies are capable of transforming or repairing trust with 

the communities they serve. I am here to tell you that police departments can change and, indeed, are changing. Real reform is 

difficult and messy work, but agencies can put in place the systems, the policies, and the culture necessary to self-manage the 

risk of unconstitutional policing and enhance community confidence. 

Some agencies affirmatively seek reform. The voluntary implementation of PARC’s recommendations in Portland, Oregon, for example, led to significant decreases in use of force and complaints 

about police, without increases in crime or officer injury. 

However, local law enforcement is not always good as self-identifying problems. I work daily with police officers who represent public service at its most selfless and laudable. But the departments 

where they work often resemble what might happen if a 

stereotypical department of motor vehicles ran the U.S. military, 

an inefficient, inept bureaucracy overseeing a rigid command and 

control structure. 

This produces a culture often resistant to new approaches, transparency, and real accountability. Where issues fester, the U.S. Department of Justice may exercise the authority granted by this 

body to conduct an investigation into alleged patterns of misconduct. Where allegations are substantiated, a Federal court overseeing a consent decree may result. 

The process is akin to emergency open-heart surgery for police 

departments. It addresses serious systemic issues and is used selectively and at critical moments. Currently, DOJ is enforcing 10 consent decrees. PARC’s executive director is the court-appointed independent monitor for one, addressing the Seattle Police Department, 

where I serve as his deputy. 

Regardless of how reform is initiated, the bedrock of policing in 

the 21st century must be a strong, responsive relationship between 

the Nation’s police departments and the communities that they 

serve. 

To that end, a common playbook of specific, real-world reforms 

is emerging for promoting public and officer safety, efficiency, constitutional rights, and public trust. 
48 

First, officers need more specific guidelines on using force in the 

real world. The bare, often vague requirements of courts in this 

area may work for judges in the comforts of their courtrooms, but 

officers in communities need clearer and more pragmatic rules. 

Second, departments need internal mechanisms for critical selfanalysis. For instance, a standard DOJ consent decree reform is 

the creation of a dedicated board for critically evaluating all uses 

of force so that a department can continually update policy, procedure, and training in light of real-world lessons learned. Likewise, 

permanent civilian oversight mechanisms can give communities a 

real-time check and important say in how policing is conducted. 

Third, too many agencies have no idea what their officers are 

doing. If data exists on use of force or stop activity, it is often inaccurate, inaccessible, or ignored. Policing in the 21st century needs 

to take full advantage of the information systems that we take for 

granted in so many other areas of public and private life. 

Fourth, in the cities where we work, we continually hear from individuals that the weights and burdens of law enforcement are not 

equally shared, and there is some empirical evidence to support 

that proposition. The challenge for police departments is to find 

ways of addressing an issue that, at minimum, is deeply affecting 

the police-community relationship. Forward-thinking departments 

are providing officers with training on minimizing the effects of implicit bias and on person-based decision making. 

Modern American policing faces an era of unparalleled challenges with too many communities viewing the police as ‘‘them’’ 

rather than ‘‘us.’’ The challenge law enforcement agencies must embrace is to implement the kinds of common-sense steps that might 

enhance accountability and enhance public trust. 

With that, I thank you again for the opportunity to be here. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Barge follows:] 
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Mr. GOODLATTE. Thank you, Mr. Barge. 

Ms. Ramirez, welcome. 

TESTIMONY OF DEBORAH A. RAMIREZ, PROFESSOR OF LAW, 

NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW, BOSTON, MA 

Ms. RAMIREZ. Thank you, Chairman Goodlatte, Ranking Member 

Conyers, and the House Committee on the Judiciary. 

The police killing of Michael Brown and Eric Garner in July and 

August of 2014 have triggered protests not only in the cities in 

which those killings occurred, but also throughout this country. 

Since those shootings, there have been others, Freddie Gray in Baltimore and Walter Lamar Scott in South Carolina. 

It is plain to me, and I expect to all of you here today, that these 

protests are not just about the unwillingness to prosecute all but 

one of those officers for these shootings, but about a long, simmering resentment in the African-American and Latino communities that the criminal law applies differently to them than it does 

to White Americans; that the police too often stop and frisk Latino 

and African-American youths with impunity and without reasonable, articulatable suspicions; that automobiles driven by AfricanAmericans, especially in White neighborhoods, are too often 

stopped by police for driving while Black; that the death of a Black 

man at the hands of police is seen as more forgivable than the 

death of a White man; that prosecutors are less willing to see Hispanic and African-American defendants as candidates for rehabilitation who deserve and need a break, and, therefore, they are more 

willing to press for mandatory sentences against them; and that 

more Black men age 18 to 21 are in prison or in jail than in college. 

We can and should debate how accurate the statistical studies 

are and how accurate these perceptions are, and whether they are 

more accurate in some States and municipalities than in others. 

But I think we can agree that these perceptions are accurate more 

often and in too many places than we would want them to be, and 

that the perception itself is a reason for great concern because, beyond the statistical studies, we cannot be one Nation if a significant percentage of our community members believe they are receiving an inferior quality of justice or no justice at all. 

The protests have provided an impetus for change, but they cannot produce change by themselves. We need to ensure that these 

protests are different from previous protests, and that they do not 

merely cry out for justice, but actually lead to more justice. 

To accomplish that, we need a roadmap for change. And we need 

to press our leaders in Congress and elsewhere to follow that roadmap and travel to a place where justice is more and fairer. 

To move past these tragedies, we need to do some concrete 

things. First, we need to strengthen police-community relations by 

creating community-policing models focused on the development of 

partnerships between police organizations and the communities 

they serve. 

How? New infrastructure and architecture. Infrastructure and 

architecture that might provide the coherence we need and the coherence we need to bring to this enterprise. We need to create in 

every State federally funded community-policing institutes dedicated to creating the tools, templates, training, and best practices 
61 

for bringing the police and the community members to the table for 

discussions on how best to keep their communities safe and strong. 

And we need to increase police transparency by letting the public 

know what the police are doing, and that can only occur when 

State and local police departments are required to keep data regarding police stops, searches, and shootings, and to record the 

race of persons stopped, searched, or shot. Why? Because you cannot possibly manage what you do not measure. 

Transparency also means requiring police to install cruiser cameras, to wear body cameras, and to monitor police discretion to turn 

those cameras off. 

My last point is about accountability, which means that allegations of police misconduct or situations in which a police officer 

shoots a civilian should be handled by an independent inspector 

general. The investigation and prosecutorial decision should not 

rest in the hands of a district attorney dependent on that police department for its criminal investigations, past and future. 

So we need police-community partnerships, a State institute to 

support them, cameras, data collection, and an independent inspector general to investigate police misconduct. 

The roadmap does not end here today at this table. The next part 

is the most difficult. How do we implement it? The system is broken. We need Democrats and Republicans to come together to craft 

a roadmap to justice and figure out how to fund and implement it. 

Only then will we be able to create stronger and safer communities. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Ramirez follows:] 
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Mr. GOODLATTE. Thank you, Ms. Ramirez. 

I will begin the questioning and start with you, Sheriff Clarke. 

When you talk with citizens, do they want more or less of a police 

presence? Do they complain more about the actions of the police or 

about the inactions of the police? 

Sheriff CLARKE. They ask for more. They complain about both, 

and I think that is human nature. They want safer neighborhoods. 

They want safer communities. They know they are going to have 

to have assertive policing in some of these high-crime areas to get 

that done. 

It is situational. They complain about slow calls for service responses, things like that, which can have an effect on a person’s 

trust in their law-enforcement agency. In other words, we call but 

they do not come. 

So it is fluid and, like I said, situational. We deal with it on a 

situational basis. 

Mr. GOODLATTE. Do your officers generally feel—I don’t know 

what the right word is—welcome, comfortable in these tougher 

communities to the police? 

Sheriff CLARKE. Without a doubt. It is one of the hallmarks, I believe, of my administration to create a relationship. When we talk 

about trust, I believe, in the Milwaukee area anyway—that is what 

I can speak to, personally—there is a great relationship. We, meaning law enforcement officers, do not have a great relationship with 

the criminal element. There is no doubt about that. But I think 

sometimes, this—I believe it exists, this lack of trust within segments of the community, but not as a whole within the minority 

community. I bristle at that perception. 

Mr. GOODLATTE. Good. I am glad to hear that. 

Mr. Hartley, you wrote in your testimony that only 5 percent of 

the Nation’s law enforcement agencies participate in accreditation. 

That really surprised me. 

What is the biggest obstacle you face in terms of getting other 

agencies accredited? Is it leadership, cost, or something else? 

Mr. HARTLEY. I will tell you, I think it is a combination of all 

those things. I think it really starts with the leadership prerogative 

about what those organizational leaders think is important to them 

and the delivery of leadership across their organizations. 

We do hear concerns that the cost of accreditation is too much. 

We also hear that the in-kind cost associated with involvement in 

the process is difficult because our accreditation process requires 

them to do things that they otherwise may not do. 

I can tell you that the process is really structured around key 

and fundamental, sound principles of police service delivery. So the 

process of accreditation does not increase the accountability that is 

already there. It measures accountability and serves as a yardstick 

and a framework to keep organizations focused on key and fundamental areas. 

But again, it does relate to cost in some cases and in-kind services and management of the process, Mr. Chair. 

Mr. GOODLATTE. Thank you. 

Ms. Ramirez, is there a problem with current legal precedents as 

they relate to use of force? Does it result in second-guessing of officer decisions? 
66 

Ms. RAMIREZ. I am sorry, is the question whether or not—— 

Mr. GOODLATTE. I will repeat it. 

Is there a problem with current legal precedents as they relate 

to use of a force? And does it result in second-guessing of officers 

decisions? 

Ms. RAMIREZ. I do not think this is primarily a legal problem. I 

think it is a problem with the community not fully understanding 

all of the pressures, procedures, protocols that the police are engaged in, and the police not discussing and educating the community about the things that the police have to take into account as 

they go through a stop-and-search process. 

But I do not believe this is a legal problem. I think it is a training problem. I think it is a problem that would be solved with better community policing. 

Mr. GOODLATTE. Thank you. 

Mr. Barge, I will let you answer that same question, but I also 

want to add, you mentioned in your testimony that after your organization was called into Portland, there was a sharp drop in officerinvolved shootings, use of force, and citizen complaints without any 

increase in officer injuries. What do you think most directly causes 

that? 

Mr. BARGE. As a legal precedent question, I think that, as I said 

in my testimony, judges and courtrooms use a very different set of 

rules to guide fair and efficient decision making. Officers on the 

street, I think as all of us can attest to, you do not have the luxury 

of examining all of the facts as they turned out to be and have to 

make split-second judgment calls. 

So I think one thing police agencies can do right now is to ask 

themselves, how do I want our police officers to react in these 

emerging use of force situations, and craft more specific, clearer 

guidance where appropriate, and hold their officers rigorously accountable to those policies. The policies can do what the courts cannot as a condition of an officer being employed in that department. 

As to Portland, I think that what we did there was to institute 

a number of reforms that are very tested. They have been implemented in places where the DOJ has gone in the consent decree 

process. And in Portland, we had an opportunity to implement 

those reforms in a voluntary capacity. The city wanted us there, 

and the police department wanted us there. 

It was about instilling mechanisms whereby the police asked 

themselves difficult questions, asked what we could learn from incidents that went wrong, asked what we could do differently in the 

future. 

I think that kind of culture, just by the numbers the city auditor 

found there, really changed the department for the better. 

Mr. GOODLATTE. Thank you very much. 

The gentleman from Michigan, Mr. Conyers, is recognized for his 

question. 

Mr. CONYERS. Thank you. 

I appreciate the different contributions from each of the five panelists, and I think we are off to a good discussion. 

I would like you to know that thanks to the Chairman and Mr. 

Scott and Mr. Sensenbrenner, we have been having hearings about 

overcriminalization. They started out for 6 months, and Chairman 
67 

Goodlatte added 6 more months to it, it was so effective. This 

moves us further along. 

But the fact of the matter is, how do we change this culture? 

This goes back a long ways. This isn’t a recent phenomenon at all. 

So I am thinking about how we get into this infrastructure and 

architecture that we are trying to move to, and I would like to look 

at that for just a moment. 

But before we do, I would like to raise the question of police prosecutions. We all know the conundrum. The prosecutor and the police work together much of the time, and then all of a sudden, the 

prosecutor has to decide whether to prosecute one that he has been 

working with a long time. 

Professor Ramirez and any of the rest of you, please, let us look 

at that for a moment. 

Ms. RAMIREZ. As a former Federal prosecutor, I have worked 

with law enforcement, and I know firsthand the difficult and dangerous work that they do. But I also believe that when there has 

been a civilian who has been shot or police misconduct, it is very 

hard for a prosecutor who works day in and day out with these law 

enforcement officers, and knowing that they worked with them in 

the past and the future, to make an independent decision, which 

is why I think we need a process different from the process that 

we have now. So I talk about having an independent inspector general make the decision. 

Mr. CONYERS. Yes. 

Ms. RAMIREZ. But also, we need more transparency in the decision-making process. So right now, we have a secret grand jury 

process. Maybe we need something more like an inquest process or 

some kind of new process in which, in these instances, we can develop a way to be more transparent about that pretrial investigation that takes place now by a prosecutor in the grand jury context. 

And I wanted to say one more thing about reducing use of force. 

The studies have shown that in departments where they have used 

cameras, body cameras and cameras in the car, that there has been 

a significant decrease in use of force, and it gives us the opportunity to learn from the recorded instances about best practices for 

deescalation. 

So when we have cameras and there is an incident, whether the 

officer succeeded or failed to deescalate, we can learn more about 

it. 

Mr. CONYERS. All right. What has been your experience, sir, in 

terms of this problem? More or less, where do we go from here? 

Mr. Hartley, what do you think? 

Mr. HARTLEY. As it relates to prosecution of police officers? 

Mr. CONYERS. No, we can go wider than that. 

Mr. HARTLEY. I think to just kind of parlay that discussion into 

a little more broad sense, I think the most important thing for any 

organization to do is to prepare for that bad event. 

We know that regardless of the best planning, you are still going 

to have people that are engaged in fundamental decisions around 

the enforcement of law that have impacts on communities. But the 

reality of it is that if the preparation takes place in the proper way 

with the proper folks around the table, it relieves those expecta-
68 

tions of negativity, if you will, and it promotes organizational confidence in how the process will be managed. 

I do not feel comfortable saying that one size fits all for each 

agency, because I think each jurisdiction brings on different attributes that has to be considered in the development of those 

types of things. 

Mr. CONYERS. Of course. 

Mr. HARTLEY. But for the public’s consideration and for the officers’ consideration, confidence in the process is important, and it 

has to do with planning for the event from start to finish and include community contacts, media engagement, and other processes 

related to the legal system. 

Mr. CONYERS. Thank you very much. 

Ms. Rahr, just in closing, do you see some hope in President 

Obama’s recent statements on the subject, when he was in Camden 

yesterday? 

Ms. RAHR. I do. I think that there are a number of recommendations that will be helpful to every police department in the Nation. 

For some departments, they will be able to follow many of those 

recommendations. I hope that, as time goes on, the distribution of 

Federal funding and resources will take into account the cooperation of agencies that are doing their best to follow those recommendations. 

Mr. CONYERS. Thank you. 

Mr. GOODLATTE. The Chair thanks the gentleman. 

The Chair recognizes the gentleman from South Carolina, Mr. 

Gowdy, for 5 minutes. 

Mr. GOWDY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Professor Ramirez, you mentioned a couple of cases in your opening statement, and I know that time is short when you only have 

5 minutes, and you were not able to address other cases. I wanted 

to ask you whether or not you were familiar with a few other cases. 

Sandy Rogers and Scotty Richardson from Aiken, South Carolina, are you familiar with that case? 

Ms. RAMIREZ. No, sir. 

Mr. GOWDY. How about Roger Dale Rice from Laurens, South 

Carolina, are you familiar with that case? 

Ms. RAMIREZ. No, sir. 

Mr. GOWDY. Eric Nicholson or Marcus Whitfield from Greenville, 

South Carolina? Are you familiar with that case? 

Ms. RAMIREZ. No, sir. 

Mr. GOWDY. Russ Sorrow from Greenville, South Carolina? 

Ms. RAMIREZ. No, sir. 

Mr. GOWDY. Or Kevin Carper from Spartanburg, South Carolina? 

Ms. RAMIREZ. No, sir. 

Mr. GOWDY. Professor, those are just a handful of the more than 

340 police officers who were killed in the line of duty in South 

Carolina. And Kevin Carper’s case is most instructive because his 

partner did CPR on the suspect that killed Kevin, trying to save 

his life. 

Let me ask it another way. Are you familiar with the case of 

Ricky Samuel? 

Ms. RAMIREZ. No, sir. 

Mr. GOWDY. How about Tamika Huston? 
69 

Ms. RAMIREZ. No, sir. 

Mr. GOWDY. How about Nell Lindsey? 

Ms. RAMIREZ. No, sir. 

Mr. GOWDY. Miranda Auell? 

Ms. RAMIREZ. No, sir. 

Mr. GOWDY. Santiago Rios? 

Ms. RAMIREZ. No, sir. 

Mr. GOWDY. Those are all folks that were the victim of 

intraracial homicides in South Carolina. And I hasten to add, there 

were not protests either with those police officer killings or any of 

the intraracial killings. 

And I suspect you agree with me, Professor, that all lives matter. 

Whether you are killed by a police officer or your next-door neighbor, you are every bit as dead, aren’t you? 

Ms. RAMIREZ. Yes, sir. I, actually, as a former prosecutor and 

someone who has worked with police officers, have the deepest respect for them. 

Mr. GOWDY. So do I. And despite that deep respect, Professor, I 

still maintain the objectivity of prosecuting police officers who engaged in misconduct. We have a process in place, if you don’t think 

you can be fair. It is called recusal, which is what some of us did 

in every single one of our officer-involved shootings. We recused it 

to another prosecutor, so he or she could make that decision. 

So there is a process in place. You called for a process. There is 

one. It is called recusal. 

Do you know, as a former prosecutor, or can you deign, what 

may have been the biggest impediment to our being able to successfully prosecute homicide cases, particularly homicide cases involving victims of color? In my criminal justice jurisdiction, do you 

know what the biggest impediment was? 

Ms. RAMIREZ. In Massachusetts, one of the biggest impediments 

is trying to get witnesses to come forward. 

Mr. GOWDY. You are exactly right. You are exactly right. You 

have a victim of color and we had trouble getting witnesses to cooperate with law enforcement and prosecutors, which then, as you 

know, diminishes the quality of that case and your ability to prosecute it, which may result in a lesser plea bargain because you do 

not have the facts, which may then result in what you said in your 

opening statement, which is people have a tendency to treat Black 

lives differently than White, when the reality is the case wasn’t 

quite as good. Isn’t that a possibility, too? 

Ms. RAMIREZ. For every prosecutor who is out there, this is a serious problem, and you are correct in pointing that out, sir. 

Mr. GOWDY. Right. And it wasn’t just me pointing it out, Professor. I happened to have a fantastic chief of police when I was 

the D.A., fantastic man by the name of Tony Fisher, who happened 

to be an African-American chief of police. And he lamented the 

exact same thing you and I are talking about. 

It is the loss of life in his community and the refusal of people 

to cooperate, even in a drive-by shooting of an 8-year-old at a birthday party, a drive-by shooting outdoors where the whole world saw 

the car drive by, and nobody would cooperate with the prosecution 

in the murder of an 8-year-old. 
70 

So I hope that part of this 21st century police strategy conversation that we are having includes getting people to cooperate with 

law enforcement, so you can hold people to the exact same standard regardless of the race of the victim. 

And I want to say this, too. I want to thank my friends Cedric 

Richmond and Hakeem Jeffries and others who are working on this 

issue, because they want a justice system that is colorblind. After 

all, it is represented by a woman wearing a blindfold, so let us go 

ahead and make it colorblind. And both of those guys have worked 

really, really hard and will continue to do so, because let me tell 

what you my goal is. My goal is for witnesses to feel comfortable 

cooperating. 

But here is my other goal, and I am out of time but I am going 

to share it with you. I want to get to the point where we lament 

the death, the murder of a Black female like Nell Lindsey just as 

much if it is at the hands of an abusive husband, which it was, as 

we would if it would have been at the hands of a White cop. I want 

to get to the point where we are equally outraged at the loss of life, 

and I hope we can get there. 

With that, I would yield back. 

Mr. GOODLATTE. The Chair thanks the gentleman and recognizes 

the gentlewoman from Texas, Ms. Jackson Lee, for 5 minutes. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Chairman, thank you so very much. And 

let me thank both you and the Ranking Member, my Ranking 

Member, for listening and engaging and leading. And I was delighted to participate in the process. 

And I would like to say to my colleagues that this effort of criminal justice reform is going to be a Committee effort. Every Member’s input and assessment and analysis and legislative initiatives 

will stand equal, I believe, in the eyes of the Ranking Member and 

the Chairman and, certainly, those of us who serve as the Chairperson and Ranking Member of the Crime Subcommittee, as I do. 

America will not be responded to unless this Committee works 

together, and that our efforts are in unison and collective, responding, of course, to the many witnesses that will come before us. 

So this is the first hearing, and I think America should recognize 

the very large step that we are making. 

Sheriff Clarke, let me thank you for your service. We may agree 

to disagree, but there is no disagreement with your service and the 

sacrifice that you represent. As you indicated, we met a couple of 

weeks ago. 

Just May 15, I was on the west side of the campus of this great 

Congress, dealing with the many families who had lost loved ones 

in law enforcement. So my tone today will be that we do ill when 

we take each other’s pain lightly. The pain of ‘‘Black lives matter,’’ 

the pain of ‘‘hands up, don’t shoot,’’ the pain of ‘‘I can’t breathe.’’ 

That is pain. 

And it is equally the pain of Mr. Geer who was on the steps of 

his house August 2013 and was shot in Virginia. He happened to 

be an Anglo or Caucasian male. 

What we have to do to make a legislative step of monumental 

change that gives our officers the confidence of their work, further 

enhance their training, is to be able to work together. My line of 

questioning will be how do we fix these problems and how do we 
71 

get the 5 percent number, that is a lot of officers, to be 25 percent, 

50 percent accreditation. That is what the American people, I 

think, are looking at. 

I do not want anyone’s pain to be diminished, and I sit here 

today recognizing that pain. 

So let me just quickly say this regarding statistics. James 

Comey, the director of FBI, said the following about the Uniform 

Crime Report, the now 3-year-old source that was cited in the sheriff’s testimony. He said the following, the demographic data regarding officer-involved shootings is not consistently reported to us 

through our Uniform Crime Reporting program. Because reporting 

is voluntary, our data is incomplete and, therefore, in the aggregate, unreliable. 

Mr. Hartley, I have thought that data is important, introduced 

a bill called the CADET bill to gather statistics of shootings by police and by individuals against police, because I believe in fairness. 

So if this was required, would that be an asset to CALEA, as you 

do your scientific work, of providing insight for training? 

Mr. HARTLEY. Ms. Jackson Lee, let me first start by saying that 

I think data helps drive decision making, and it helped drive it in 

an important way because you do not know what you do not know 

sometimes. And what we find is organizations that engage with 

CALEA in accreditation discovered data in the process that really 

helps them make fundamental decisions that drive the organization 

in a responsible way toward community service. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Do you have enough money to accredit all of 

the police departments across America? Would you need some 

incentivizing, some funding to help you do that? 

Mr. HARTLEY. Well, we do not need the incentivizing or funding 

to help that occur, but those organizations sometimes do. Organizations that participate with us range in size from 10,000 to 10. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. So funding to them would be a helpful component of police accountability? 

Mr. HARTLEY. I think that would support agencies in this mission. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. I have a series of questions. On the CALEA 

standards for body cameras, police arrests and transport, and independent review of lethal force by law enforcement, are there standards—that is the question—on body cameras, police arrests, and 

transport? 

One of the issues I am concerned about, because when the issue 

came out in Baltimore, it wasn’t sort of put aside, police departments were saying all over, you know what, those are some of the 

things we do. 

But do you have standards on that and use of lethal force? 

Mr. HARTLEY. We do have standards on all of those subjects. The 

one related to transport didn’t particularly address the issue faced 

in Baltimore. However, there is a standard that encourages the 

safe transport of individuals, regardless of the type—— 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. But we need to help to enhance that and 

make that a noticeable part of policing across America. 

Mr. HARTLEY. Well, I think that standards themselves are a dynamic, living tool. I think as we encounter new issues, and we cer-
72 

tainly will, we have to be prepared to make adjustments in those 

standards to address those issues. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. May I quickly ask you, Ms. Rahr, you have 

written about the obstacles of implementing changes in training 

programs, particularly opposition from those wedded to the status 

quo. Can you explain that? And can you also add to your conversation? 

I do not want any police officer to not go home to their family. 

That is a mantra that we all stand by, you know, everyone says, 

we have great relationships. I am a big believer in community-oriented policing. The father of community-oriented policing lives in 

Houston, Lee Brown. 

But could you comment on that, and the idea of deescalation in 

training and how that impacts on police interaction? 

Mr. GOODLATTE. The time of the gentlewoman has expired, but 

the witness will be allowed to answer the question. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is a very exciting hearing. It generates a lot of questions. Thank you. 

Ms. RAHR. Thank you, sir. 

I have described the philosophical shift that I have been promoting for a couple of years as moving our culture closer to a 

guardian mentality rather than a warrior mentality. I believe the 

warrior mentality was a result of a political movement that started 

in the 1960’s when we declared war on crime, war on drugs, war 

on all sorts of things. The police agencies across this Nation responded, as they do to their political leadership in their communities. 

What I am trying to do is help our new police officers find the 

right balance, because officers absolutely must have keen warrior 

skills and they must be able to use them without hesitation or policy. But I want them to consider their role within our democracy, 

and that role needs to be the role of a protector with the goal of 

protecting people rather than conquering them. 

When you try to initiate this type of a mindset shift, there is naturally going to be resistance. The greatest resistance I have encountered is just the misunderstanding of what I am talking about. 

When I have the opportunity to explain it in more depth, most officers will say to me that is how good cops have always done it. 

I want our recruits on their first day on the street to have the 

wisdom of a good cop with 20 years’ experience. 

Mr. GOODLATTE. The time of the gentlewoman has expired. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Thank you. I yield back. 

Mr. GOODLATTE. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Michigan, Mr. Bishop, for 5 minutes. 

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I would like to thank the panel for your testimony today. Grateful for the time you have taken to be with us today. 

Sheriff, I had an opportunity to speak with the law enforcement 

community in my community, and I did a roundtable discussion. I 

had an open dialogue about the events of the day and some of the 

concerns that have been raised in this very discussion. 

They were concerned, as well, about some of the bad actors in 

their own rank and file that we have been seeing around this country and very concerned about it, but also were adamant about the 
73 

fact that they express that the vast majority of the officers they 

work with, the emergency response personnel, are hardworking, 

good professional people who are there for a common purpose, and 

that is to serve the public. 

They are concerned that that does not resonate, that we see more 

now about the bad acting, some of the negative that has gone on 

out there. And it is important we identify and we deal with that 

and we not tolerate it in any way, shape, or form. But it is also 

important that we do whatever we can do to really rally behind 

those who have given so much in the law enforcement community. 

I think I would really like to know from you, what is going on 

with the morale of the law enforcement community? Are you having problems with recruitment and retention of officers as a result 

of all that has gone on around the country? 

Sheriff CLARKE. Mr. Chair, Congressman, we are at a tipping 

point, and it is something that I expressed not too long after what 

happened in Ferguson, Missouri, about the psyche of the American 

police officer who watches these things go on, just like anybody else 

does. And the constant bashing and maligning of the profession is 

starting to take its toll. 

I just spent this week in the D.C. area for the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial week, police week, if you will. And I 

talked to law enforcement officers from across this country, and the 

one common theme I heard from them, first of all, their mindset 

is they are beleaguered right now. But the common theme that I 

heard is, you know, Sheriff, I do not know if I want to continue to 

take that extra step anymore, because I do not want to be the next 

Darren Wilson. I do not want to be the next, you know, officers in 

Baltimore or New York or anywhere, because they, in a good faith 

effort—we are talking about the good faith action of law enforcement officers. We operate in an environment of chaos and uncertainty when we get sent to these calls. 

Sometimes in this imperfect world, things can go horribly wrong, 

which they did in Ferguson, Missouri. I am not going to get into 

whose fault that was, but something went horribly wrong. 

But some of the best law enforcement work that goes on all 

across the country is called self-initiated. It is not the call for service. When an officer gets sent to a call for service, something already happened. It is reactive. The crime already occurred. But the 

self-initiated policing is when that officer, that man or woman, uses 

their experience, their sixth sense, if you will, their street sense, 

that criminal activity may be afoot. And they establish the reasonable suspicion so they can make that stop consistent with our Constitution, and they go and investigate. They pull that car over, or 

they go and what we call, you know, stick up a group of individuals 

hanging on a corner or casing an area, so to speak, and we start 

to investigate. 

In self-initiated policing, you are going to find the guns that are 

being used to transport to and from drive-by shootings. You are 

going to find prohibited persons with firearms. You are going to 

find drugs. You are going to find people wanted on serious felony 

warrants, through self-initiated policing. 

When that starts to fall off, and there will be a lag time. This 

won’t happen overnight. The cops in this country aren’t going to 
74 

quit. But over time, when they start to worry, they look and they 

see that suspicious vehicle or they see that suspicious individual 

and say, maybe not today, I do not want this thing to go haywire 

on me and, next thing you know, I am one of those officers who 

becomes a household name in America. 

That is going to be a lag time, okay. I do not like to create 

hysteria. But over time, I think it is going to have an effect on 

crime rates in those communities that need assertive policing the 

most, and that is our minority communities. 

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you, Sheriff. 

I guess my time is up, Mr. Chairman, so I would yield back the 

balance. 

Mr. GOODLATTE. The Chair thanks the gentleman and recognizes 

the gentleman from New York, Mr. Nadler, for 5 minutes. 

Mr. NADLER. Thank you. 

Before I ask the question, let me just make an observation. Sheriff Clarke talked about the sixth sense, about taking that extra 

step. Sometimes taking that extra step is very necessary, but sometimes we maybe want the officer not to take that extra step. Maybe 

that is sometimes the problem and that leads into the question of 

changing police culture, which Ms. Rahr talked about. 

Ms. Rahr, what is the greatest challenge in changing police culture? 

Ms. RAHR. I think the greatest challenge is recognizing that we 

have a real variety of cultures already existing across the country. 

When officers come to begin their career of service, most of them 

come to the table with the goal of doing something good, doing 

something to benefit the community. And then they are confronted 

with the realities of trying to do those good things. 

As a result, sometimes they take on a tougher persona, and they 

may lose sight of their original reasons for coming in the door. 

I think we need to work harder within the agencies, the leadership within the agencies, to support our police officers, make sure 

that they are healthy both mentally and physically, and that they 

feel supported by the agency. If an officer does not feel support inside their agency, they are not going to be willing to take a risk 

and try something different. They are not going to be willing to 

take as much of a risk to go out on a limb to protect someone. 

I think the internal culture of policing is absolutely critical. And 

when that is strong and healthy and confident, officers will be willing to try something different. 

Mr. NADLER. And what, if anything, can we in Congress do to 

help this change? 

Ms. RAHR. I would love to see Congress provide funding for improved training. I will just cut right to the chase. 

There are a number of excellent programs already in existence 

that could literally transform the profession of policing in this 

country. 

I have been involved for the last couple of years with a program 

called Blue Courage, and that program seeks to support police officers, build their pride, build their sense of high morale, and especially assist them in seeing their appropriate role as the guardian 

in democracy. That program costs money, and agencies that want 
75 

to acquire that training have to pay for an officer on overtime to 

fill the districts. 

Mr. NADLER. Appropriating money for training. Anything else? 

Ms. RAHR. Besides training? 

Mr. NADLER. Besides money? 

Ms. RAHR. Oh, besides money, I am sorry. I think just the recognition that individual police agencies need to be supported. There 

is not going to be a one-size-fits-all Federal solution to this. 

Mr. NADLER. Thank you very much. 

Professor Ramirez, all over the country, we have had a number 

of problems, obviously, with violence against citizens who turned 

out not to have weapons or be guilty of anything. And sometimes 

the police officer gets prosecuted. Sometimes the police officer does 

not. Sometimes people are happy with it. Sometimes they are not. 

We have seen these controversies. 

And, of course, it has been suggested that the D.A.s are too close, 

they have to work day-to-day with the police officers. They are too 

close to make that decision without being thought partisan, whether they are or not. 

Should we have a law or regulation that mandates a special prosecutor or special master for investigations of police officers on the 

grounds that the D.A.s are, in fact, too close to do this fairly? 

Would that be a good idea? 

Ms. RAMIREZ. I think it would be a good idea. 

Mr. NADLER. Would that enhance community confidence and impartiality? And what are the negatives on it? 

Ms. RAMIREZ. Yes. While we do have a recusal system, that 

recusal system is now in the hands of the district attorney, so the 

district attorney in Ferguson did not recuse himself. And I think 

having laws and a process would create more legitimacy and more 

transparency to the public. 

Mr. NADLER. Thank you. Also, Professor, what is the greatest impediment to prosecuting police officers who violate constitutional 

rights of individuals in their official capacity? Obviously, we do not 

do—what is it? 18?—deprivation of civil rights under the color of 

law very often by law Federal Government. 

So what is the greatest impediment to prosecuting police officers 

who ought to be prosecuted, and there are some, obviously? 

Ms. RAMIREZ. I am someone who has prosecuted police officers. 

I would say that the first impediment is that, in a prosecutorial office when you work with police, when you work with law enforcement, it is very hard to decide to prosecute—— 

Mr. NADLER. What we talked about in our previous question? 

Ms. RAMIREZ. Right. 

Mr. NADLER. Okay, because my time is running out, obviously, 

there have been a lot of controversial encounters, in some of which 

police officers were prosecuted and others in which they weren’t, 

sometimes the D.A. was excoriated for prosecuting, sometimes for 

not prosecuting. Would it be better for the sense of justice on the 

part of relatives of victims, would it be better for the police officers 

who could be exonerated by this, if police officers used body cameras all the time whenever they had such an encounter? 

Ms. RAMIREZ. I think cameras are critical at this juncture, and 

we know that four things happen when you put cameras in place, 
76 

because we have done research on this in both Great Britain and 

in this country when cameras were used. 

First, the use of force diminishes, and that is important, because 

police officers know they are being recorded during an incident. 

Second, complaints against police officers diminished significantly, which reduces the cost and process of adjudicating these incidents after the fact and trying to find facts. 

Surprisingly, the third thing is that there has been an increase 

in successful prosecution of domestic violence, because the police 

can record on the scene at the time what happened. 

The fourth thing that would be very helpful in moving the police 

culture from a warrior culture to a guardianship culture is that you 

could begin to have guardianship metrics. The current metrics are 

warrior metrics. How many people did you arrest, search, seize? 

How many guns did you seize? How many drugs did you seize? 

If you had cameras, you could begin to do two things. You could 

begin to evaluate officers on guardianship values. You could look 

at every 100th tape and say, was this officer respectful? Were they 

courteous? Did they follow procedures? Did they try to deescalate? 

Finally, it serves as an early warning system to the police, because if you are watching on a regular basis randomly some of 

these cameras, you will discern who are the bad apples who have 

anger management issues and other issues. 

Mr. NADLER. Thank you. I yield back. 

Mr. GOODLATTE. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Arizona, Mr. Franks, for 5 minutes. 

Mr. FRANKS. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. You know, Mr. 

Chairman, to paraphrase the poet, we sleep safe in our beds at 

night because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who 

would do us harm. And, certainly, I believe that the people that 

wear the uniform, the many women that wear the uniform, fit in 

that paradigm very well, because unless there are those that are 

willing to stand between the innocent and the malevolent, then the 

malevolent will prevail. I think that those who wear the uniform 

and place themselves in those dangerous positions are among the 

most noble figures in our society. 

And, Sheriff Clarke, I heard you on one of the television interviews and was so struck by your clarity and your eagle-eyed approach, and I thought this gentleman personifies that nobility that 

we talk about. And I really think that my children and the children 

of this country have a safer, more hopeful future because of people 

like you. 

So I would suggest to you that others have come to the same conclusion. That might be why you are here in this hearing this morning. 

My question is first for you, have the recent events and the press 

response to those events had any kind of impact on your officers 

or made them more likely to employ strategies and tactics that 

might actually compromise their safety or the safety of the community? 

Sheriff CLARKE. Mr. Chair, Congressman, without a doubt, it is 

part of the tipping point that I talked about. You know, we need 

balance in this, obviously. And even if we find balance, maintaining 

it is going to be even more difficult. An officer delaying that thing 
77 

that is telling him or her to do a certain thing that does not happen 

may cost them their lives. 

But let me say this about the use of body cameras. I am for this, 

the use of this technology. I think it is a force multiplier. It can 

only help. 

But what I have been advising, I think we are rushing into this, 

because we are going to end up with the law of unintended consequences. There are some privacy issues involved. It potentially 

could lead to fewer people wanting to come forward and cooperate 

with the police, especially in our minority communities where cooperating with police can lead you to a very bad conclusion. You 

do not want to be seen doing that. You do not want to be 

videotaped cooperating with the police. So we need to think about 

what impact it will have on witnesses wanting to come forward or 

even calling to report crime. 

And I just want to close by saying that the use of body cameras 

and the early evidence that it is leading to fewer complaints and 

fewer instances of force, there is evidence to suggest this, not to 

show it, that that isn’t just the result of the officer knowing that 

someone is watching. It is also letting the person who the officer 

is dealing with know, if I make a false complaint against this officer, it is going to be on video. And that could lead to a decrease 

in complaints as well. So I do not want everybody to presume that 

it is because the officers are being watched, that they are changing 

their behavior. 

And the same with suspects. They know they are being 

videotaped. Maybe they are less likely to fight the police and engage in some of that behavior as well. 

So that is why I say I support that, the use of those body cameras. But there are some things associated with it that have not 

been flushed out yet. I just say, let us not rush into this because 

it is not a panacea. 

Thank you. 

Mr. FRANKS. Thank you, sir. 

Ms. Rahr, in your testimony you discuss the absence of a national coherence in policing. I wonder how you would propose to implement national policing standards while still ensuring that local 

police departments maintain the autonomy necessary to be relevant and effective in their own jurisdictions? 

Ms. RAHR. Sir, I haven’t suggested national standards. What the 

task force worked on were recommendations to provide guidance 

and to provide more support for police departments. I do not think 

we will ever come to a place where we have national standards for 

police policies and procedures. There are just too many different 

variables in each community. 

Mr. FRANKS. Well, Mr. Chairman, I would just suggest, sir, that 

while I think everyone sees our police force, in general, as guardians, I am thankful that there are enough warrior mentality among 

them to hold back those that would desecrate the innocents. And 

I would yield back with that. 

Mr. GOODLATTE. The Chair thanks the gentleman and recognizes 

the gentleman from Tennessee, Mr. Cohen, for 5 minutes. 

Mr. COHEN. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I want to thank you for 

holding this hearing. It is most important. 
78 

And I want to say on the front end, I started my legal career, 

I was a lawyer, as the attorney for the Memphis police. I spent 3 

1/2 years working for the police, and I understand policing and appreciate policing, and know it is essential for an ordered liberty 

and a society that has on the frontlines men and women willing to 

risk their lives. 

And I have great respect for Mr. Gowdy and I am happy he is 

back here. He mentioned that he looks for the day that we rue the 

death of the lady, I forget her name, who was apparently killed by 

her husband in a domestic violence situation, the same as we rue 

the problems when a White policeman kills a Black citizen. 

And I would have to say, with great respect for Mr. Gowdy, there 

is a big difference. One is a private tragedy; the other is a public 

tragedy, because it is under color of law. And while we would like 

to see no crime whatsoever—and that would be wonderful—we can 

only mostly be concerned about color of law killings. And that is 

something we should be concerned about. It is a big difference. 

A question for Professor Ramirez, you mentioned an investigation, prosecutorial decisions rest in the hands of D.A.s, and Mr. 

Gowdy mentioned recusal. Recusal is up to the D.A. 

And in the recommendations of the President’s task force, there 

were recommendations that we have an independent prosecutor. 

Congressman Clay and I have introduced a bill that requires States 

to adopt independent prosecutor laws or face a cut in Byrne JAG 

funding. This would present a solution. 

Is part of the reason that the problem exists is perception? Is 

that part of the reason why you think it is important to have an 

independent prosecutor, because the perception the public has that 

there is not independent analysis of the cases and independent determination of who should be prosecuted? 

Ms. RAMIREZ. Yes, sir. It is primarily a matter of perception, because I believe that prosecutors across the country try to do the 

best that they can and exercise the best judgment. But because of 

this inherent conflict, there may be the perception in the eye of the 

public that this was not a fair and full hearing. 

Mr. COHEN. The D.A.’s main witnesses are always police. 

Ms. RAMIREZ. Correct. 

Mr. COHEN. In my community, the D.A. hires, which makes 

sense, former sheriff’s people or police people to be their investigators. 

Ms. RAMIREZ. Yes, sir. 

Mr. COHEN. Yes, so there is an inherent conflict. That is the reason we have our bill, Lacy Clay and I, because we think not only 

would it eliminate the perception, but also there are certain cases 

where there are politics are involved. And a base for the D.A. who 

is elected is law enforcement, and that is a political problem. So 

that is number one. 

Ms. Rahr, you were a member of the President’s task force, and 

thank you for your work and your colleagues’ work. The task force 

recommended the use of independent prosecutors as well, where 

police use force and it results in death or injury. 

Was the recommendation based on instances where D.A.s did not 

pursue cases against police as aggressively as they should have, or, 
79 

again, was it based on the mere perception of the conflict of interest and the damage that perception can have on public trust? 

Ms. RAHR. In our debates and conversations, the primary focus 

was on the perception. It is in recognition that we have to maintain 

public trust. 

There are many prosecutors across this Nation that are perfectly 

capable, I believe, of doing an objective investigation and prosecution of police shootings. Unfortunately, we have to maintain public 

trust. And when you try to balance those two issues, it was the 

consensus of the task force that public trust had to have more 

weight than just the pragmatism of having that particular prosecutor. 

Mr. COHEN. We are down to my last minute, but you mentioned 

training. Part of the bill I have with Representative Clay requires 

some kind sensitivity training for police to recognize ethnic differences, gender differences, et cetera, et cetera, and maybe sexual 

orientation differences. 

Do you think this would be helpful for police to have training in 

terms of the diverse societies that we have today? 

Ms. RAHR. I do believe it would be helpful to have training. I 

wouldn’t title it ‘‘sensitivity training’’ because I think the police 

would shut down immediately. 

Mr. COHEN. I agree with that. 

In my last minute, Sheriff Clarke, let me ask you this. You mentioned in your testimony that much of the population in State and 

Federal prisons was for violent crime. Probably, that is true. But 

in the Federal system, it is mostly for drug crime. There is not so 

much violent crime there. That is where the drug situation really 

fills up the Federal prisons. 

You said that illegal drug use is the scourge of the Black community. And it is a problem and leads to a great deal of violent crime. 

Would you agree that marijuana possession is not the scourge of 

the Black community and does not lead to violent crime the same 

way that meth, crack, cocaine, and heroin do? 

Sheriff CLARKE. No, I wouldn’t agree with that at all. 

Mr. COHEN. Well, that is interesting. I wish I had more time to 

talk with you. 

Thank you for allowing me this opportunity. A defense attorney 

is not supposed to ask a question they don’t know the answer to, 

but it was such an obvious answer, I never thought I would get 

that answer. [Laughter.] 

Mr. GOODLATTE. The time of the gentleman has expired. 

The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Iowa, Mr. King, for 5 

minutes. 

Mr. KING. Resisting the temptation to yield the balance of my 

time to Mr. Cohen. 

Mr. COHEN. Thank you, Mr. King. 

Mr. KING. I would point out that I have in my hand an article 

from Investor Business Daily, and it is dated, by the way, the 6th 

of May, but is titled, ‘‘Obama praised Baltimore police he is now 

investigating.’’ It points out the study that the gentleman from 

Tennessee referenced, the President’s Task Force on 21st Century 

Policing, which I have in my hand. 
80 

And it also quotes from the police chief of Baltimore, who said 

he changed outdated procedures that put officers at odds with the 

community. This goes back to March of 2015. The date of this article is the first week or so in May. 

It is interesting to me, as I listen to the testimony of Ms. Rahr, 

and I give you credit for contributing to that report as well, that 

you would like to see a shift from the warrior mentality to that of 

a guardian. And I think of the night I came here and I watched 

live on television the encounters with Baltimore police and rockthrowing mobs. And I saw the Baltimore police retreat from rockthrowing mobs. 

So I would ask you, is there a time they need to convert back 

to the warrior mentality and was that the time? 

Ms. RAHR. I want to clarify when I talk about a guardian mentality, that absolutely does not imply retreat. It does not imply 

weakness. It implies being able to do two things at once. 

Mr. KING. You can do that by just answering my question, also. 

Ms. RAHR. I am sorry? 

Mr. KING. You can also clarify by just answering my question. 

Was Baltimore a time there should have been more of a warrior 

mentality when they were facing rock-throwing mobs and retreating in the face of rock-throwing mobs? Was that a time that there 

needed to be an engagement of the police rather than a retreat? 

Ms. RAHR. They needed to use warrior tactics while having the 

mindset of a guardian. 

Mr. KING. Okay, thank you. 

I would turn to Mr. Ramirez, and your testimony was very interesting to me. And I began thinking about our Constitution and 

where it says in the First Amendment, I will paraphrase, but also 

accurately, Congress shall make no law respecting the right of the 

people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for redresses of grievances. Do you agree with that statement? 

Ms. RAMIREZ. Yes, sir. 

Mr. KING. And there is no prohibition in that statement that I 

read, and would you agree, that prohibits Congress from making a 

law or enforcing a law that would prohibit the people from violently 

assembling to petition the government for redress of grievances? 

Ms. RAMIREZ. Congress does have the right to restrain violence 

in any form. 

Mr. KING. Yes. And so we agree that freedom of speech isn’t the 

right to yell fire in a crowded theater? 

Ms. RAMIREZ. Correct. 

Mr. KING. Then we could also agree—no, I will ask you. Is it 

then lawful or unlawful for one to pay protesters and encourage 

them to become violent? 

Ms. RAMIREZ. I think that is a crime. 

Mr. KING. Yes. And I would agree with that also. 

I would point out that my—and ‘‘encourage violence,’’ I want to 

pull that part out as a separate clause in my statement here for 

this purpose. I have in my hand a stack of tweets and stories and 

messages about protesters in Ferguson, Missouri, who now are protesting that they didn’t get paid for the work that they did. And 

I put that word ‘‘work’’ in quotes. 
81 

Have you reviewed any of that? Are you knowledgeable about 

any of that information, Ms. Ramirez? 

Ms. RAMIREZ. No, but, I would say this, that at this juncture, the 

most helpful thing that we could do is to try to bring the community and the police together in dialogues at the local level. 

Mr. KING. I do understand that. That was in your testimony, and 

I think the panel understands it. 

But if you were presented with information that indicated that 

there was a funder or funders who had hired protesters that may 

well have been to bused into places like Ferguson, Missouri, or sent 

to places like Baltimore, and we ended up watching buildings and 

businesses be burned and property damage being created, and in 

some cases assault, would that be worthy of an investigation, 

would you think, by the local police force? 

Ms. RAMIREZ. Yes. 

Mr. KING. And what about the U.S. Attorney General? 

Ms. RAMIREZ. I think that if there is evidence that someone was 

being paid to engage in violent protests and engage in violence, 

then that is a serious problem. 

Mr. KING. But you wouldn’t think that if they didn’t say violence, 

if they just said protest, and it turned into violence, that wouldn’t 

be a crime? 

Ms. RAMIREZ. That is a different situation. 

Mr. KING. Thank you. 

I would like to turn and ask Sheriff Clarke if he could respond 

with his reflections upon this exchange that he heard? 

Sheriff CLARKE. Sure. I was a little disappointed there weren’t 

more aggressive prosecutions and attempts to investigate some of 

the behavior of some of the rioters who were captured on videotape. 

One of the ones that stands out to me is a group of young individuals standing and dancing on top of a police cruiser that had been 

destroyed, so to speak, as if they had captured some sort of ground. 

That is government property. 

In Wisconsin, we have a statute of inciting a riot. I think those 

things should be used on both sides. There just seems to be too 

much focus on what the police may have done, you know, prior to 

the riots breaking out. 

As you indicated, there is a more socially acceptable way under 

our First Amendment to display your frustrations, your anger, and 

it is not rioting. It is not destroying property of other people. 

We saw that night what Baltimore would look like without the 

police, with police stepping back as they did. Some say retreating. 

It was an ugly situation for a great American city. 

Mr. KING. Thank you, Sheriff. 

I thank the Chairman and the witnesses and yield back the balance of my time. 

Mr. GOODLATTE. The Chair thanks the gentleman and recognizes 

the gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Johnson, for 5 minutes. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank you 

and the Ranking Member for agreeing to hold this hearing. 

Sheriff Clarke, I heard about and read about your astigmatic testimony—that is the word I am trying to use—astigmatic testimony. 

Please note my strong respect and support for police and law enforcement, and also note my strong insistence that the rule of law 
82 

apply to all, regardless of whether a person is a civilian or law enforcement. 

The failure to prosecute police officers, militarize police responses 

to peaceful protests, and video footage of people dying by the hands 

of law enforcement have led us to where we are today. 

While discussing police accountability is an essential way to improve the relationship between the community and law enforcement, I hope that this Committee will hold additional hearings that 

will allow us to specifically focus upon grand jury reform, use of 

body cameras, and the DOJ’s data collection and transparency 

practices. 

Before we witnessed the militarization of police in Missouri, I 

had been working on the Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act, 

which prevents local police forces from receiving MRAPs, tanks, 

and other weapons left over from the war. And I am very grateful 

and humbled that President Obama yesterday issued an executive 

order that virtually ends the 1033 program. 

I have also introduced the Grand Jury Reform Act, which calls 

for the use of special prosecutors and independent law enforcement 

agencies when there has been a police killing. 

And also, I have introduced the Police Accountability Act, which 

would expand the DOJ’s authority to bring charges against law enforcement officers. 

Sir, have you ever heard the name Ariston Waiters before? I am 

sure that you haven’t. He was just a 19-year-old unarmed Black 

male, just a typical unarmed Black male down in Union City, Georgia, who was shot while lying on his stomach. Shot twice in the 

back by a law enforcement officer, a police officer from Union City. 

Shot twice in the back at close range. 

The officer who killed Mr. Waiters allegedly exhibited signs of 

posttraumatic stress disorder. He was an Afghanistan war veteran. 

According to the Anxiety Disorders Association of America, there 

are 40 million adults in the United States over the age of 18 who 

suffer from anxiety disorders, and 7.7 million of those Americans 

suffer from posttraumatic stress disorder. 

I am concerned about the role mental health issues play in officers using excessive force against civilians. We have talked about 

police officers receiving training on how to apprehend people suffering from mental illnesses, but what is your department doing to 

make sure that officers themselves aren’t suffering from mental illnesses? 

Sheriff CLARKE. Mr. Chair, Congressman, that is one of the most 

difficult situations that law enforcement officers today are dealing 

with, the mentally ill. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Would you agree that there must be some out 

there among the 7.7 million Americans suffering from 

posttraumatic stress disorder who are law enforcement officers? 

You would not deny that, would you? 

Sheriff CLARKE. I do not have any data to refute it. 

Mr. JOHNSON. But would you think that there may be some cases 

where there are officers who are suffering from posttraumatic 

stress disorder and who are serving currently in law enforcement? 
83 

Sheriff CLARKE. If I had to guess, yes. I had such a situation 

with one of my patrol sergeants who served in the first Gulf War, 

I believe, and he slapped around a handcuffed prisoner. 

I not only had him charged with a felony, he went to prison for 

18 months. 

Mr. JOHNSON. You are to be commended for that. 

Sheriff CLARKE. It was a hard thing to do. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Does your department have a system of monitoring police officers or your officers periodically, just to determine 

whether or not they have any mental health issues that could impede their ability to protect and serve the people? 

Sheriff CLARKE. No, not a systematic one. We have our standard 

early warning system. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Do you think it would be wise for the Federal Government—I noticed that in your statement, you say that, I am 

quoting you, ‘‘Police use of force should be scrutinized—locally, that 

is.’’ Does that mean you do not think that the Federal Government 

should concern itself with these issues at all? 

Sheriff CLARKE. It is not that I do not think the Federal Government should concern itself. I think the Federal Government should 

observe what is going on across the Nation with all these issues, 

but I think it is a slippery slope. 

Mr. JOHNSON. You say it should be scrutinized locally, though. 

Does that mean to the exclusion of the Federal Government? 

Sheriff CLARKE. Well, if I could finish the sentence—— 

Mr. GOODLATTE. The time of the gentleman has expired, but the 

witness is allowed to answer the question. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you. 

Sheriff CLARKE. Sure, it should be scrutinized, without a doubt. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you. 

Mr. GOODLATTE. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Marino, for 5 minutes. 

Mr. MARINO. Thank you, Chairman. 

It is a pleasure to have you here today. Sheriff, if you could zero 

in on an issue for me concerning resources, if you had the money, 

would you hire more sheriffs, deputy sheriffs? And where would 

you put them, what would you do with them? 

Sheriff CLARKE. Yes, I would hire them. I am in a court battle 

now with the county. I have had to sue the county to be able to 

hire some more law enforcement officers. I would put them in the 

field based on what the data is showing where the crimes are occurring, and not just the crime but to provide a consistent visible 

presence as a deterrent to crime, not just making arrests and writing citations, but to deter and prevent. 

Mr. MARINO. I agree with you. If you need help in that case with 

your superiors who fund money for your sheriff’s office, let me 

know. I will be glad to join in and help. 

Sheriff CLARKE. I will do that. 

Mr. MARINO. Ms. Ramirez, I come from a long line of law enforcement people. We take it very seriously. I was an assistant district 

attorney. I was a district attorney. I was a United States attorney. 

My colleague here was one of the best assistant U.S. attorneys in 

the country. And I prosecuted cases myself. 
84 

And I did not base my decision to prosecute cases involving African-Americans or police on color or on the police. I based it on the 

rule of law. It had nothing to do with who committed the crime and 

who didn’t and what police were involved. 

And you stated that you had a difficult time choosing over law 

enforcement and police. I never did. If you have a difficult time like 

that, you shouldn’t be a prosecutor. 

Why would you prosecute if you made that statement that I have 

a difficult time prosecuting police if they broke the law? 

Ms. RAMIREZ. In my particular situation, as an assistant U.S. attorney, we had not prosecuted police officers in the past. And the 

U.S. attorney at the time said to me, do you plan to practice law 

as a defense attorney here in Boston afterward? 

Mr. MARINO. Okay. Let me reclaim my time. You are going to get 

into the U.S. attorney or that individual. 

You know you have a step to go to if you have a complaint about 

prosecuting a case in the U.S. attorney’s office. You can go from 

one person to another and you can actually go to the Justice Department. Now, you also raised the issue—— 

Ms. RAMIREZ. Which we did, sir. And may I say—— 

Mr. MARINO. No. I am asking the questions here. 

Ms. RAMIREZ. Okay. 

Mr. MARINO. You also raised the issue of recusal, that it is up 

to the district attorney. It is up to the U.S. attorney. In the State 

courts and even in Federal courts, if there was a recusal, we looked 

at it very seriously. I have recused myself from cases and my staff. 

But, you know, it is not totally up to you. You can take that step 

to the judge. You can petition the court for recusal and petition as 

to why. You didn’t mention that. 

And here is another thing I ran into as a prosecutor, as my colleague said. It was very difficult to get young African-American 

males to testify against others, even in cases where a family member was killed. 

Can you address that for a little bit, please? 

Ms. RAMIREZ. That is one of the most important problems that 

needs to be addressed, and I want to talk about how we addressed 

it in Boston. 

Mr. MARINO. Would you please do it quickly? I only have a 

minute and a half. 

Ms. RAMIREZ. We went to the community organizations. We went 

to the faith-based community. And we talked to the community and 

asked them why people were unwilling to come forward as witnesses. There were a myriad of causes. We set up a process and 

hearings. 

As a result, we had I do not know how many cold cases that were 

solved through a process in which the faith-based community went 

out, did outreach to the community. The community organizations 

did that, and we have improved on that. 

Mr. MARINO. Okay, reclaiming my time, I agree, and that is a 

good way to handle it. But you do agree it is a problem. 

Ms. RAMIREZ. It is definitely a problem, sir. 

Mr. MARINO. It is a big problem. You had an extensive, exemplary career, but have you ever ridden in a car with a police officer 

when they are faced with a quick reaction situation? I know you 
85 

couldn’t do it as an assistant U.S. attorney. But as a D.A., have you 

been on the street when a police officer had to make a split-second 

decision that has taken the United States Supreme Court 2 years 

to determine what is right and wrong in a 5-4 decision? 

Ms. RAMIREZ. Yes, I have been in cars where police had to make 

split-second decisions. I will tell you, I found it very frightening. 

And they do a job I could not do. 

Mr. MARINO. There is a difference between a split-second decision and the fact that someone has to determine over a period of 

time what is right and wrong. 

You cherry-picked a lot of cases, but you didn’t bring up the issue 

that the number keeps coming up, that 93 percent of the young 

Black males, those ones that are murdered, 93 percent are killed 

by young Black males. Why is this happening, and what can we do 

to change that? 

Ms. RAMIREZ. That is a serious problem, sir, but I do agree with 

others who have said that what happens under color of law is different from what happens privately between private individuals. 

They are both problems, but they are different problems. And 

when someone kills under color of law, that merits a different process. 

Mr. MARINO. I think any prosecutor worth his or her salt understands that very, very much. 

I yield back the time. 

Mr. GOODLATTE. The time of the gentleman has expired. 

The gentlewoman from California, Ms. Chu, is recognized for 5 

minutes. 

Ms. CHU. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Ms. Rahr, you have used a new approach of policing called 

LEED, Listen and Explain with Equity and Dignity, which puts a 

premium on conversation and listening during a police encounter. 

Could you walk us through a hypothetical situation where LEED 

has worked to deescalate a situation and tell us why it works? 

Ms. RAHR. The purpose of developing the LEED model is to simplify the principles behind procedural justice and give officers very 

specific tangible, behavioral direction. 

In situations where there is conflict, taking the time, if there is 

not a threat present—I want to be very clear about that. If someone is pointing a gun at you, you do not listen and explain. You 

do what you have to do. 

But in most police interactions in the community, there is time. 

And if officers are reminded of the benefit of listening, that will 

help set that interaction going down the correct track. 

Most police officers, like myself, we like to step in and control 

things, and we have to be reminded to stop and listen. When people say police should treat people with respect, the most effective 

way to convey respect is to listen, so we really want to emphasize 

that for our officers. 

The other area where many officers forget is that we know the 

system inside out. We know how the process is going to work. We 

know what is going to happen next. People we are interacting with 

do not know that. It is that lack of knowledge that creates another 

level of conflict. 
86 

And again, if the officer is reminded, tell the person what they 

can expect, they will be more likely to cooperate. 

When we talk about equity, that is simply to underscore to make 

sure you are recognizing, whatever biases you bring to the table, 

make sure you are making your decision on the outcome in an equitable way. 

And always leave the person you are interacting with with their 

dignity in tack, and act with dignity yourself. 

A lot of officers will mock whenever we use an acronym, and I 

get that. But it is also a very effective way to teach very specific 

behavior. 

Ms. CHU. In fact, talking about dignity, studies have shown that 

people in a community care more about how they are treated by 

police rather than the actual outcome of a police encounter. Police 

that may pull people over for a driving offense may find that people 

care more whether they were treated fairly by the police officer 

than whether they actually got the ticket. 

But as you have acknowledged in the past, empathy and patience 

do not necessarily come naturally for some police recruits. Something as simple as officers having friendly nonenforcement-related 

conversations with community members have shown to have huge 

benefits in building community trust. 

How do we change things so that the system values these characteristics in our police? 

Ms. RAHR. I think we start in the training academy by modeling 

that type of behavior and being very clear about that as an expectation. 

We also need to clarify that empathy is not the same as sympathy. Empathy means you understand what the person on the 

other side of the interaction is experiencing. I think it starts with 

training. 

I think it was mentioned by another witness that we have to 

come up with appropriate measures. People will rise to those 

things that are measured. When we find ways to measure officers 

behaving in ways that convey respect and dignity, that behavior 

will increase. 

Ms. CHU. Mr. Barge, thank you for acknowledging the role that 

implicit bias might play in making the type of quick decisions that 

police encounter every day. Social science research has shown that 

even individuals who believe that everybody should be treated 

equally may be affected by implicit biases or subconscious association between people of color and a perception of aggression and 

crime. 

Can you give us an example of a situation in which an officer’s 

perception about an individual might be influenced by the way they 

react to that individual? And how can police departments work to 

preemptively dismantle this implicit bias? 

Mr. BARGE. I think that one of the prototypical examples is one 

that Sheriff Clarke mentioned earlier, sort of the self-initiated stop, 

maybe a broken taillight, that kind of thing, not even necessarily 

the initiation of the stop but how that interaction proceeds in that 

critical first few seconds. It may be informed much more about, I 

think with any of us, sort of broad categories that we are placing 

a new person who we have never met with or interacted with be-
87 

fore into generalized buckets. And if officers do not do as training 

in several jurisdictions is starting to offer them instruction on, to 

slow down the situation where possible and sort of try to use very 

intentional decision-making strategies, I think they risk, especially 

because they often have to make these split-second decisions, being 

in some instances overly swayed by the subconscious sort of factors 

that they may not even be aware of, and if they were aware of, 

they would want to make sure were not going into their decision 

making. 

Ms. CHU. Thank you. I yield back. 

Mr. GOWDY [presiding]. I thank the gentlelady from California. 

The Chair would now recognize the gentleman from Texas, the 

former U.S. attorney, Mr. Ratcliffe. 

Mr. RATCLIFFE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Although far less successful or accomplished than you, Mr. 

Chairman, or my other colleague, Mr. Marino, I was also a Federal 

prosecutor and, as such, certainly believe in enforcing the law. 

Unfortunately, our national dialog currently on this issue reveals 

a mistrust on all sides of the issue that we are here to talk about 

today. But I very much appreciate all of you being here today to 

talk about how we as a society can address this in a sensitive, careful, and effective manner. And I wish that I had the opportunity 

to make inquiry to each one of you, but there are time restrictions 

and I do not. 

So I am going to focus at least initially on the witness in the 

field, if you will, you, Sheriff Clarke. I would like to first ask you, 

does your police department have clear policies on the use of force? 

Sheriff CLARKE. Mr. Chair, Congressman, yes, sir. 

Mr. RATCLIFFE. Do you have an opinion, and I am sure that you 

do, as to whether or not there is a problem with the law as it currently stands related to the use of force in this country? 

Sheriff CLARKE. No, I do not. 

Mr. RATCLIFFE. Okay. So it is your opinion that, as a Member of 

Congress with my colleagues here, there isn’t anything that we 

need to do at this point to make it clearer to officers, so that officers are not second-guessed, if you will, as much as they are currently? 

Sheriff CLARKE. I think that is a proper role for Congress, advisory oversight a little bit. But when the mandates start coming 

down as to how we should do our job at the local level, I am going 

to push back a little on that. 

Mr. RATCLIFFE. So community policing certainly is intended to 

take the edge off of interactions, if you will, between the police and 

the communities that they serve. But would you agree with me 

that police work by its very definition is one that must involve conflict? 

Sheriff CLARKE. It has great potential for conflict because of 

human interaction. 

Mr. RATCLIFFE. Certainly, with respect to the end of the day, regardless of how the officer goes about his or her job, he or she has 

the responsibility to enforce the law, whether they are doing it with 

a smile on their face or not? 

Sheriff CLARKE. Huge responsibility. 
88 

Mr. RATCLIFFE. Yesterday, the President’s task force on policing 

issued findings that focused squarely on this issue of community 

policing. I know it is a very hefty document, but I was wondering 

if you had a chance to review it? And if so, what are your thoughts 

with respect to the findings? 

Sheriff CLARKE. On the 21st century project? 

Mr. RATCLIFFE. Yes, sir. 

Sheriff CLARKE. Yes, I did read it. I didn’t like a lot of it from 

the beginning. When the task force was put together, there were 

no elected sheriffs. I know my colleague is a former sheriff, but no 

elected sheriffs on the panel. I found that interesting. I also didn’t 

see a lot of representation for a two-way exchange of what life was 

like for an officer on the street. They had some police administrators there. They had one organization that represents some fraternal organization of police, but that does not give the day-to-day 

example of what life is like on the street and why we have to do 

some of the things that we do. So I thought it fell a little short. 

Recommendations were heavy on Federal involvement, Federal 

control. Those are technical fixes that, okay, we can do that. But 

it is not going to change the behavior of many law enforcement 

agencies or the behavior of many of the individuals of color that we 

come in contact with on the street that end up in deadly confrontations. It does not reach far enough to do that. 

Mr. RATCLIFFE. So, Sheriff, this is your opportunity to talk to 

Members of Congress. What would you like our takeaway to be 

with respect to that report or those findings, or corrections that you 

think are not reflected in there that you would like to make to 

that? 

Sheriff CLARKE. One of the things that is not addressed that we 

keep glossing over, and I said ‘‘we.’’ We keep glossing over conditions that have led to the rise of the underclass of the American 

ghetto, where people can’t find meaningful work. They have to send 

their kids to poor schools. Kids don’t have a chance to reach their 

God-given potential to break out of that cycle of poverty, entrenched poverty. 

We have to look at some of the urban policies that have been enacted at the State and the Federal level that continue to feed into 

this growth of the underclass. What we are experiencing recently, 

it is not poor generally or Black people generally. It is the 

underclass behaviors. 

Kids growing up without fathers. School failure. Failure to stay 

in the workforce consistently. Failure to raise your kids. Father-absent homes. Those have nothing to do with the police. 

You can try to transform the police all you want, but as long as 

those behaviors, those lifestyle choices, are going to continue to 

grow in these urban centers, where the most assertive policing is 

needed, you are still going to have these confrontations. 

And when you try fight the police and disarm the police, so on 

and so forth, things are not going to end up well for you. I do not 

care how much more we pour into training. It approaches it as if 

it is linear. The world we live in is very asymmetrical. 

Mr. RATCLIFFE. Sheriff, thank you for your insights and for your 

thoughtful comments. 
89 

Again, I thank all the witnesses for being here today on this important subject. 

I see my time is expired. I yield back. 

Mr. GOWDY. Thank the gentleman from Texas. 

The Chair would now recognize my friend from Illinois, Mr. 

Gutierrez. 

Mr. GUTIERREZ. Thank you so much, Chairman Gowdy. 

First of all, I would like to thank all the witnesses for making 

their presentations here this morning. And I would like to talk just 

a little bit. 

I met with a group of young people from the Phoenix Military 

Academy in the City of Chicago, White youth, Hispanic youth, 

Black youth. Military academy, these are the best of the best. 

Have a conversation, everybody. We should have some of those 

people. I mean, I think, with all due respect to everybody here, we 

are a little too old to be having this conversation among ourselves 

about the problems that the police are encountering with young 

people. I would simply suggest next time we invite some those 

young people, those bright, dynamic young people. 

You know what they are going to tell you, Sheriff Clarke? I listened to a young Black man, Lieutenant Colonel in the Phoenix 

Military Academy, tell me that he has learned how to deescalate 

when he is confronted and comes into an exchange with a police 

officer. That almost brought tears to my eyes, that this wonderful, 

brilliant young man dedicated to this country, graduated from his 

class, has to talk about deescalating. He does not see the police as 

a source of protection. He sees it as somebody that he has to 

learn—the police have to be the adults. The children have to learn 

how to be adults many times, in how it is they exchange with police officers. 

We are having a conversation here where people are saying, well, 

Black people do not care about Black people. Nobody has made that 

claim here. I don’t know why certain of my colleagues here say, 

well, they are not outraged when a Black person kills a Black person. That is not the issue here. It is really not the issue here. 

That is, certainly, an issue we might want to talk about. But it 

is not the issue. Nobody made the claim that that is a good thing. 

You know, that rioters are out there getting paid. Nobody said 

here it is a good thing that rioters should be paid. I could understand when you are making an argument against something that 

somebody is like sustaining. But it seems as though we are talking 

past each other as adults in this room instead of having young people. 

So I would just like, for the record, because I know there won’t 

be enough time, I would like for the record, Mr. Chairman, these 

are the questions that the Phoenix Military Academy students, if 

I could just add this, Mr. Chairman, for the record? 

Mr. GOWDY. Without objection. 

[The information referred to follows:] 
90 

Mr. GUTIERREZ. Thank you so much. 

Look, there is a young Latina, Jasmin Esquivel. She said, how 

can minorities feel less of a double standard during interactions 

with the law? Why does it feel like Whites are treated with more 

respect than minorities when questioned by police? 

These are students. To everybody here, understand something, I 

have talked to different groups of high school students, and they 

all tell you the same thing in the inner city. 

In Chicago last week, there were 45. So, Sheriff Clarke, you are 

right, too. There were 45 shootings in 1 weekend in the City of Chicago. 

Did I lock my grandson, Luisito, up? No. Did I tell my daughter 

do not go out on the streets? No. 

In my neighborhood, none of those shootings happened, in the 

neighborhood that Luis Gutierrez the congressman lives in. It is a 

tale of two cities. The shootings happen in geographical areas. 

In my city, when I grew up, the majority of the population in the 

City of Chicago was White, so you would expect a majority of the 

police officers to be White. Yet today, when Whites no longer constitute a majority, the majority of police officers in the City of Chicago are White. 
91 

Is it that we are selling everybody that only White folks want to 

be police officers and care about this? I think that is a fundamental 

problem. 

So we go to Ferguson where there might be two Black police officers in a population that is almost 70 percent African-American. 

That kind of disconnect is going to cause problems—I would think 

we would want to talk about some fundamental changes about how 

is it that we recruit people. 

I do not know, Sheriff, maybe you can answer this question, 

maybe you can help me. In Chicago, what I feel is, when I go talk 

to the cops in my district, and I go into some of the areas where 

there is more gang violence, I find it to be younger cops and I find 

that the older cops, like my dad, if he worked somewhere, by the 

time he had any seniority, he took the good shift, right? Are the 

young police officers getting the brunt of the work? What do you 

think? 

If the police officers, like when you joined the police force, the 

older veteran police officers who might have the training and the 

experience, are they the ones in the neighborhood where there is 

a lot of trouble, where you might need more veteran police officers? 

Or does seniority give you a better shift? 

Sheriff CLARKE. Some of that is a collective bargaining agreement. You get shift assignment. I agree with your assessment 

there. The older, wiser, more experienced are earning better assignments because of collective bargaining rules. That is an issue. 

Mr. GUTIERREZ. I know we have gone over time. I just want to 

say, Mr. Chairman, I hope we can have another hearing. I had a 

conversation with Mayor Rahm Emanuel. I don’t know how many 

of you got to hear his inaugural speech yesterday, where he dedicated it to the youth, and how it was that in the City of Chicago 

that no police force, that no government, was going to take the 

place of a good mom and a good dad, but that we have to be there 

to make sure that those parents have the resources, and that we 

stop living, even in the City of Chicago, in a tale of two cities where 

people feel safe in part of the city and where the police and the 

community are in sync with one another and another part where 

they are not. 

The last thing is, let us bring the young people. With all due respect, I am 61, so in some places I am a senior citizen already. Let 

us bring some young people. 

There are not enough young people around here or out there. 

They are 100 percent, as you all know, of our future and you are 

not going to settle this issue, I believe, in great measure, until we 

get young people and listen to their voices. 

Mr. GOWDY. The gentleman from Illinois is certainly very young 

at heart, and he yields back. 

The Chair will now recognize the gentlelady from California, Ms. 

Bass. 

Ms. BASS. Thank you, Mr. Chair. 

I realize that our subject matter today is talking about policing, 

but I do want to make reference because it has come up several 

times about why there is not outrage when African-Americans are 

killing African-Americans. I just have to tell you that it is always 

very frustrating to hear this raised, because it is as though people 
92 

are not working on a daily basis day in and day out to address 

these issues in neighborhoods. 

I started an organization 25 years ago. I spent 14 years every 

day working in South Central Los Angeles in the height of the 

crack cocaine and Blood and Crips and all of that was going on, to 

address the crime, to address homicide. There are people working 

in communities all over this country. 

But the frustration we have always felt is that it is never covered 

in the news. What is covered in the news is when there is an incident between the police and, frankly, it is new that that is even 

covered in news, because the only thing that is new here are cell 

phone cameras, frankly. 

What has been going on in communities that is getting a lot of 

coverage now has been going on for years. So to say that communities are not concerned, to say there is not the outrage over the 

homicide rate, is just not accurate. 

I spent one summer in one area where homicides were concentrated. We did a whole effort, and we were able to go 3 solid 

months without homicides. Then the resources ended. 

So we have to look at the root causes as to why the problems 

exist. It is not just a matter of behavior. I frankly do not believe 

that it is the policeman’s job, and I agree with you Sheriff Clarke, 

it is not up to the police completely to address these problems. But 

what has to change in communities is the police working with the 

community. 

Unfortunately, people are fearful of the police in some of the 

communities. It was also asked what do people in tough neighborhoods want to see happen? People in tough neighborhoods want the 

same thing that anybody wants. They want to be safe in their 

homes and they want to be safe in their neighborhoods. 

Frankly, these issues are not just happening in ‘‘ghettos.’’ And I 

think it is shameful, frankly, for the communities to be referred to 

that way. 

I have a brother who lives in Beverley Hills, okay? He gets 

pulled over by the police, stretched out on the ground, and asked 

why he is there. I think it is well known throughout the country 

that African-Americans, folks of color, can be outside of their ‘‘ghettos’’ and still have to deal with issues related to the police. 

A question was raised as to why folks do not cooperate with the 

police. Well, I will give you a couple of examples that I experienced 

on a daily basis working in South Central L.A. I cannot tell you 

how many people told me, well, I called the police, and I called 

about this crack house, and police went to the crack house and they 

said Ms. Jones down the street called and said you were selling 

crack here. 

People do not feel the police will keep them safe. And, frankly, 

there are not enough resources in the community to relocate people. 

So you want people to go and testify and put their lives at risk? 

If there were more resources, then people would be much more cooperative. 

We had a lot of problems in L.A. We were actually able to turn 

the situation around with the new chief, with community-based policing. We are having some of the same problems emerge again. 
93 

But we had a past police chief who said, when there was a spate 

of people who were dying because of chokeholds, he said at a press 

conference the reason that African-Americans were dying of 

chokeholds was because our veins were different, they collapsed 

quicker. We, fortunately, were able to get rid of that police chief. 

But these situations can be turned around. I listened to the testimony of Ms. Ramirez and Ms. Rahr, and there are other ways to 

go about policing. And we have seen some changes in our communities. 

Like I said, some of our problems are reemerging in Los Angeles 

again. But I just wanted to ask, in the last seconds, if, Ms. Ramirez, if you can give examples of a couple of communities that have 

turned the situation around where the police department works in 

cooperation with community organizations, where the police department has changed their perspective from the warrior mentality 

over to a mentality that works in partnership with communities, 

and where crime has been reduced, and where trust has been increased with the police department. 

Ms. RAMIREZ. The one I know best is Boston. We have decreased 

homicide rates. We have decreased the number of people we have 

incarcerated. And crime has gone down. 

The Boston Police Department has been working with the faithbased community and community groups on both issues. On issues 

of homicide, so if we have all these cold cases, as I said earlier, how 

are we going to get witnesses to come forward? One example of 

that is some witnesses said I would be happy to tell my account 

to someone who is not a police officer. Then some of that could be 

used for corroboration to get search warrants. 

There are many other examples in this country of excellent community-policing models were homicides have gone down. There are 

now 14 States that have decided to decarcerate. In each of those 

States, where they have taken the money from the criminal justice 

system that they were using to incarcerate people—in Massachusetts at $51,000 a year per inmate—taken the money and said, the 

system we have is too expensive, ineffective, and racially disparate. 

We are going to use that money to invest in education, to invest 

in treatment. Those communities have saved money and crime has 

gone down. 

Ms. BASS. Thank you. I yield back. 

Mr. GOWDY. The gentlelady from California yields back. 

The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Louisiana. While 

I realize a lot of people have worked on criminal justice reform, Mr. 

Richmond has been talking about it since the very first day he got 

to Washington. 

Mr. Richmond? 

Mr. RICHMOND. Mr. Chairman, thank you for yielding. 

First, I would like to ask unanimous consent to enter into the 

record a Washington Post article that gives two Pinocchios to factchecking Giuliani’s claim that 93 percent of Black murder victims 

are killed by other Blacks, because of the relevance of the statistic. 

Mr. GOWDY. Without objection. 

[The information referred to follows:] 
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Mr. RICHMOND. Let me just start with answering the question 

that my colleague posed. The real question, in his mind, is Blackon-Black crime and what do we do to solve that. Well, the first 

thing we do not do is cut Pell Grants and cut Head Start, which 

gives you a 9-to-1 return on your investment, and Pell Grants help 

you get to college. We all know that education is the best path out 

of poverty, and the circumstances in these neighborhoods. 

So we could start there, which we have done every year since I 

have been in Congress, with the budgets that we have passed. I 

think that is a very good start. 

Another start is to just have the conversation. I talk about it all 

the time. If anybody is concerned, I am here and willing to address 

it. 

I think that as a young African-American male who grew up in 

the inner city, I can have a lot to offer. 

Mr. Chairman, I prefer not to focus where we have differences. 

I think we have many. But I think we have some very similar 

goals, which is to keep our police officers safe and keep our constituents safe and to provide honest services. Whether it is police 

or whether it elected officials, people deserve honest service. 

Let me just ask a question from your policing. Do you believe 

that the makeup of the police department is important, in terms 

of looking similar to the community that it polices? 

Sheriff CLARKE. I believe that. 

Mr. RICHMOND. I was asking you that because I wanted to share 

some of my real-life experiences as a young African-American male, 

and why I think it is so important. 

The first time I was pulled over, when I got home from college 

and I was in St. Charles Avenue, the fancy part of town, in my 

mother’s car. I did not have my license. A Black officer stopped me. 

He went through the process to get my information, ran it, came 

back to the car and said, ‘‘I see a Morehouse sticker on the back 

of your car. You go to Morehouse?’’ I said yes. He said, ‘‘Well, Martin Luther King, who went to Morehouse, said the man can’t ride 

your back if your back isn’t bent.’’ He said, ‘‘You need to go home.’’ 

And he let me go, and I went home. I never forgot that. 

While I was in the legislature, I saw a White officer stop a car 

full of White kids on the State Capitol grounds who were all smoking marijuana. He gave them a lecture and then called their parents to come get them. 

In all of my experience, if that White officer had stopped a car 

full of Black kids with marijuana, I do not think his answer would 

have been to lecture and call the parents. 

And it may just be cultural, but I think we have to look at the 

entire system. When we talk about diversion programs, whether 

they are being applied evenly, because we know once a kid gets a 

conviction, especially an African-American male, his life goes in a 

completely different direction, whether it is marijuana or whether 

it something more serious. He has a harder time getting financial 

aid to go to college. He has a harder time getting a job, all of those 

things. 

Without a job or without being engaged in society, it is hard to 

be a good parent. We have to make sure our law enforcement 
99 

scheme, law enforcement practice, is not adding to the hurdles that 

many people are going to face anyway. 

So the question becomes, how do we ensure that those officers 

who have a lot of discretion when they make a stop, how young African-American and minority men and women feel that officer 

would give them the same lecture, the same break as an AfricanAmerican officer or a officer who is looking their vested interests? 

I hope you can answer that. 

Sheriff CLARKE. The use of discretion is always going to be scrutinized. I reject the notion that every time a White officer stops a 

car full of Black kids that they are necessarily going to go to jail. 

Mr. RICHMOND. I don’t think it is every time, but it is going to 

be the majority of the time. 

Sheriff CLARKE. Okay, well, let us just move beyond that. 

What I talk to young people about, young people of color, Milwaukee has a significant Black population, when I am in these 

schools, in these neighborhoods, I talk about lifestyle choices. When 

you engage in behavior and make flawed lifestyle choices, there has 

to be some accountability. It does not mean your life should be ruined. Maybe there could be a learning experience. I do not think 

an arrest for a small amount of marijuana early in your life is 

going to be a life-ruining experience. It is not. Will you recover? 

The greatest virtue that my parents instilled in me, the product 

of a two-parent family, the ability to overcome obstacles. You make 

mistakes. My dad said, you are going to make mistakes, you are 

going to fall down, you are going to fail, you are going to make 

questionable decisions. Learn from it and move on. 

I think that is a better message for even the individuals who 

have gotten into these situations. I had a young man once stop me 

on the street and said, ‘‘Sheriff, I am a convicted felon and can’t 

find work. Nobody will hire me because of my felony conviction.’’ 

I said, ‘‘Do you have kids?’’ He said, ‘‘Yes.’’ I said, ‘‘How many?’’ He 

said, ‘‘Three.’’ I said, ‘‘There is your job right there, to make sure 

your kids do not end up in the predicament that you are. Go home 

and be a good dad.’’ 

You know, he thanked me for it. I do not know whether he actually did it. But sometimes that message is a little more helpful to 

an individual than for me to commiserate in his misery, saying it 

is unfair, and the man, and this and that, and the discriminatory 

criminal justice system, and the racist police. That is not going to 

help the guy. 

That is what I try to do. I do not control all law enforcement officers, but I am not going to let people indict them with this broad 

brush like we have the tendency to do sometimes. 

Mr. RICHMOND. In closing, and I see my time has expired, I 

would just say two things. I think we should remove the barriers 

that keep people from moving on and learning and getting past 

that mistake, which may have been a marijuana conviction or 

something else. 

Another thing I would just say is I think it is great advice to tell 

him to be a father, but at the same time, he still has to get a job 

and put food on those kids’ plates, because you cannot learn in 

school if you are hungry. 

Thank you, and I yield back. 
100 

Mr. GOWDY. The Chair thanks the gentleman from Louisiana 

and recognizes the gentlelady from Washington, Ms. DelBene. 

Ms. DELBENE. Thank you, Mr. Chair. 

I want to thank all the witnesses for being with us today, in particular, our former Kent County Sheriff from Washington State, 

Ms. Rahr, for being here with us. 

Actually, I had a question for you. I know that you have made 

many changes since you have been at the Criminal Justice Training Commission, and you talked a lot about transitioning away 

from a boot camp or military style approach to training officers toward a process that emphasizes the role as police as part of the 

communities, as guardians and protectors rather than military 

warriors. 

After a long career as an officer yourself, when you got to the 

CJTC, you replaced the trophy case with the U.S. Constitution and 

put in place training procedures that included recruits being 

sprayed with pepper spray so they know what it feels like, instituting psychology classes so trainees can better understand the 

people they will eventually be working with and protecting and 

interacting with. 

I know your methods have not been without skeptics. I wondered 

if you could share with us why you think a new approach to training our young men and women to serve as police officers is needed, 

especially today, and how these training methods translate to different outcomes or interactions in practice. 

Ms. RAHR. Thank you for the question. I want to clarify that I 

do not condemn the training practices in the past. I think we have 

learned a lot through research and science about how to prepare 

officers to be more effective. That has been one of the biggest areas 

of resistance, people being offended that somehow by improving our 

training that we are criticizing what used to be. That is not the 

case. We have learned more. 

In terms of pepper spraying the recruits, many people have misinterpreted that as an attempt to get them to feel empathy. Actually, the reason we do that is we want to put them in a fight-fortheir-life stress situation, so they can learn for themselves that 

they can overcome extreme pain, extreme fear, and still carry on. 

When I talk about a guardian mindset, I have to continually reemphasize this is not a kinder, gentler way of doing the job. It is 

just the opposite. We have actually increased our firearms training. 

We have increased our defensive tactics training, because we want 

to create strong, effective police officers who have the confidence 

that they do not have to behave in an intimidating manner. 

When someone has confidence, that actually tends to deescalate 

as well. 

I think that when we were too focused on the boot camp method 

of training, it detracted away from our ability to train officers to 

be critical thinkers. When they were so worried about simply getting the right answer and memorizing a checklist, it took away 

from those critical-thinking skills. 

So what we have tried to shift toward is more of an officer training, a military officer’s type of training, where you really focus on 

critical thinking and confidence. 
101 

Ms. DELBENE. Yesterday, President Obama signed an order restricting certain military equipment from going to police. Do you 

think that is also part of this transition? How do you feel about 

that? 

Ms. RAHR. I want to be clear that many of those pieces of equipment that police departments obtain through the 1033 program are 

very much needed in the field. When I was sheriff, I cannot tell you 

how many times I needed that armored personnel carrier to either 

rescue an officer pinned down behind gunfire or a citizen pinned 

down behind gunfire. An armored personnel carrier allows police 

officers and hostage negotiators to get closer to the scene to actually find ways to resolve the conflict without gunfire. 

Unfortunately, when the program started, there was not a lot of 

accountability and training that went with it. I believe that is what 

the changes in the law focus on. 

Police departments will still be able to get armored personnel 

carriers, because they are absolutely necessary to have in the field. 

The weapons, the rifles, that type of equipment, those are also necessary, and they are less expensive when we get them through the 

military. 

So I hope there is an opportunity down the road for people to understand more clearly the benefits of that program, but also the necessity of the accountability that comes with it. 

Ms. DELBENE. Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. 

Mr. GOWDY. Thank the gentlelady from Washington. 

The Chair would now recognize his friend from New York, Mr. 

Jeffries. 

Mr. JEFFRIES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for your 

work on criminal justice reform, as well, as we try to work toward 

a productive resolution of the challenges we face here in America. 

I think most would agree that, in a democracy, we just need a 

balance between effective law enforcement on the one hand and a 

healthy respect for the Constitution, for civil rights, and for civil 

liberties on the other. 

What people want in inner city communities like those I represent, or as Sheriff Clarke would refer to as the ghetto, what people want is to make sure that the constitutional principle of equal 

protection under the law applies to everyone. There is concern that, 

in certain instances, that is not the case. 

The overwhelmingly majority of police officers are hardworking 

individuals who are there to protect and serve the community. 

That is my position. I believe that is the position of everyone who 

is genuinely interested in police reform. 

But we cannot ignore the fact that we have a problem in some 

instances with excessive use of police force, and the fact that often 

it is the case that when a police officer crosses the line, they are 

not held accountable by the criminal justice system. That creates 

consequences in terms of a distrust in many communities, perhaps 

leading to the absence of cooperation. 

Let me start with Sheriff Clarke. You mentioned in your testimony that Black-on-Black crime is the elephant in the room that 

few want to talk about. Is that correct? 

Sheriff CLARKE. Yes, sir. 
102 

Mr. JEFFRIES. We have had a very robust discussion about it 

today. Have you been satisfied? It has come up several times. 

Sheriff CLARKE. Not at all. 

Mr. JEFFRIES. Okay, you are not satisfied. Now, I agree it is a 

problem. 

Eighty percent of Whites kill Whites, correct? 

Sheriff CLARKE. I won’t dispute that figure. 

Mr. JEFFRIES. Okay. Actually, it is 83 percent. 

Now, is White-on-White violence a problem in America that we 

should also have a robust discussion about? 

Sheriff CLARKE. Mr. Chair, Congressman, violence in America, in 

general, is problematic. But if you look at the rates, that is where 

it starts coming a little more into balance in terms of the data I 

have seen, and I have looked at a lot of it. The White-on-White 

crime does happen at the 80 percent figure you put out there, but 

when you look at the rates of it, these two are not even close. 

Mr. JEFFRIES. The rates are roughly equivalent in terms of the 

context of people who live next to each other, and because of housing, segregation patterns, or just where people tend to live in 

America, ethnic violence, racial violence, tends to occur within the 

same group. 

So elevating it beyond that fact I think is irresponsible. We all 

want to deal with the Black-on-Black violence problem. 

It was mentioned that there is a cooperation issue in the Blackon-Black violence context. I do not think I have heard the phrase 

‘‘blue wall of silence’’ mentioned here. So if we are going to have 

a conversation about cooperation, when someone crosses the line, 

it seems to me to make sense that we also have to deal with what 

may be another elephant in the room, to use your term, Sheriff 

Clarke, the blue wall of silence. 

The overwhelmingly majority of officers are good officers, but 

what often occurs is that when an officer crosses the line, the ethic 

is not to cooperate or participate or speak on what a bad apple officer has done. 

Professor Ramirez, would you agree that that is perhaps something we should also be focused on? 

Ms. RAMIREZ. I think it is a serious problem both at the Federal 

and State level. 

As I said earlier, in my own experience, in trying to prosecute police officers, here is just one problem. The FBI and DEA said we 

will not even serve subpoenas on a case in which a police officer 

is a defendant. 

Here is a second problem: They tried to testify in the case in 

favor of the police officers, saying that they had made their own 

independent evaluation of the case. 

This is the case, by the way, that was adjudicated guilty against 

all officers, and they were incarcerated for between 10 and 20 years 

after the trial. 

As you know in Boston, we had a problem with the FBI, that 

there were FBI agents who were engaged in a series of misconduct 

with Whitey Bulger. That went on for many years and was not 

prosecuted. 

Mr. JEFFRIES. Thank you, Professor Ramirez. My time is getting 

ready to expire. 
103 

But, Sheriff Clarke, you also mentioned the use of force should 

be examined in terms of factual data and not an emotional foundation of false narratives. Is that correct? Did I get your testimony 

correct in that regard? 

Sheriff CLARKE. Mr. Chair, Congressman, yes. 

Mr. JEFFRIES. Okay. Now, was the reaction to the Eric Garner 

case, who was choked to death using a procedure that had been 

banned by the NYPD for more than 20 years, wasn’t resisting arrest, said, ‘‘I can’t breathe’’ 11 times, 11 different occasions, there 

was no response by all of the police officers there, was that a false 

narrative that people in the City of New York and the country are 

reacting to, sir? 

Sheriff CLARKE. Mr. Chair, Congressman, first of all, he was not 

choked to death, not from the report I had seen out of the grand 

jury testimony and even from the medical examiner’s report. He 

wasn’t choked to death. 

Mr. JEFFRIES. The medical examiner ruled the death a homicide 

by asphyxiation. In the ghetto, that is called being called choked 

to death, sir. 

Sheriff CLARKE. Well, we can have this discussion later on about 

the facts, because we could be here for a while. My understanding 

is he died of a heart attack, okay? 

But anyway, you said he was not resisting arrest. He was resisting arrest. He was told that he was under arrest and put his hands 

behind his back, and he would not do so. 

That is why I put in my remarks here, the reference from Thomas Sowell about when law enforcement officers tell someone they 

are under arrest and they cannot use force to execute that arrest, 

we do not have the rule of law when it is merely a suggestion for 

them that they are going to jail or to put their hands behind their 

back. 

Those are behaviors, like in the instance of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, where some different choices by the individual 

could have helped the situation. In other words, Mike Brown was 

just simply told to get out of the street. 

Mr. JEFFRIES. Sir, my time has expired. But for you to come here 

and testify essentially that Eric Garner is responsible for his own 

death when he was targeted by police officers for allegedly selling 

loose cigarettes, which is an administrative violation for which he 

got the death penalty is outrageous. 

If we are going to have a responsible conversation, we have to 

at least agree on a common set of reasonable facts that all Americans interpret, particularly in this instance, because they caught 

the whole thing on videotape. 

I yield back. 

Mr. GOWDY. The Chair thanks his friend from New York. 

The Chair will now recognize the gentleman from Texas, Judge 

Gohmert. 

Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I thank all the witnesses for being here, for your thoughtfulness. 

Obviously, you have spent a lot of time on these issues through 

your career, rather than just the time here today. 

It is a difficult issue. I saw a report, though, this morning from 

the task force. I understand we have a member here. It quotes the 
104 

task force as saying, ‘‘The U.S. Department of Homeland Security 

should terminate the use of the State and local criminal justice system, including through detention, notification, transfer requests, to 

enforce civil immigration laws against civil or nonserious criminal 

offenders.’’ 

I am wondering, to fix the problem that we saw explode there in 

Ferguson and in Baltimore, is there anybody, any one of our witnesses, that thinks preventing State and local law enforcement officers from notifying the Feds about people illegally in the country, 

that that would do anything to solve the problems in Ferguson or 

Baltimore? Anybody? 

I mean, I am also perplexed, having been a prosecutor, rode 

along with law enforcement back in those days, a district judge 

handling felonies, a court of appeals chief justice, we had a real 

problem with the Federal Government not picking up criminals. 

They would tell our local law enforcement this person is illegally 

in the country so we have jurisdiction. This task force makes a 

comment about nonserious criminal offenders. 

I think it was nine DWIs a fellow had who was in my court. He 

finally came to felony court after he hurt and nearly killed some 

folks. But I sentenced him to prison because he was not being deported. And about 6 months later, he is back in my courtroom because, he said, through the interpreter, well, the Federal people 

took me to the border and told me to walk across the bridge. Then 

when they left, I came back across. He got back, got drunk again, 

in another accident. 

I am really having trouble with the task force thinking this is 

going to solve any problems with regard to racial difficulties in our 

cities. 

Perhaps you can help me out here. I know, Ms. Rahr, you had 

a really great career. You have served your community, your country now. 

Do you see just having State and local law enforcement to avoid 

any discussion about immigration, is that really going to help problems in our cities? 

Ms. RAHR. As I recall, the recommendation does not say there 

should be no cooperation. The discussion that we had in the task 

force involved the balance of public safety. There are many communities where there are large groups of undocumented people living 

in neighborhoods that commit crimes and are victimized by crimes. 

Because there is such a fear of being deported, a lot of victims do 

not call the police because they are afraid of deportation. 

This is particularly a problem in domestic violence situations. 

Mr. GOHMERT. I know, I saw that same concern by the big group 

of people illegally here in the gallery that were trying to disrupt. 

I have seen people illegally here in this gallery disrupting. I did not 

note a lot of concern about law enforcement deporting them, because you have to be pretty ignorant about what is going on in this 

country to think you are at risk for deportation. 

Anyway, I am more concerned about the victims who are victims 

of crime needlessly, if we would enforce at least the immigration 

laws on those who commit crimes. We are not doing it. 

What I see is a disregard for law enforcement, because they are 

not even going to help because this person is illegally in the coun-
105 

try. So nothing is going to happen to them, and I end up being the 

one victimized. I hear that as much as anything. 

But I appreciate your sensitivity to these issues. I know the first 

couple of murder cases I worked on as a prosecutor, it was an African-American who shot an African-American in both cases. They 

were both in bars. We had people in the community, including the 

African-American community, saying, well, they should not have 

been there. It is not that big a deal. I found it offensive then that 

anybody would care about the race, and when somebody kills somebody else, it is not big deal. 

I am still concerned after all these years. We prosecuted those. 

We had concern. We did not care what the race was of the victim 

or the defendant. A killing is a killing. 

And I am glad that you all care about law enforcement in America. Thanks for your input. 

Mr. GOWDY. The gentleman from Texas yields back. 

The Chair will now recognize the gentleman from Rhode Island, 

and then the gentleman from Texas after that. 

The gentleman from Rhode Island, Mr. Cicilline? 

Mr. CICILLINE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank you to our witnesses for being here. 

I think everybody on this Committee brings their own life experiences and perspectives here. Before I came to Congress, a long time 

ago, I was a criminal defense and civil rights lawyer. Most of my 

civil right cases involved claims of police brutality. I went from 

that to being Mayor of Providence, where I was acting public safety 

commissioner for 8 years overseeing, obviously, the Providence Police Department, and proud to report that in those 8 years, we 

brought the crime rate to its lowest rate in 40 years. 

So I bring my own set of experiences and have deep, deep respect 

for law enforcement and for the hard work of dedicated, good police 

officers. 

And nothing will be seared in my mind more directly than April 

17, 2005, when a police officer was murdered in the Providence police headquarters. So I understand the hard work of our police, and 

I understand the importance of what they do. 

I think we do have to focus on systems, which build good review 

and detection of police misconduct, good oversight and civilian reviews, prosecutions, all of that. 

But what I want to focus on because the fact is those are important to do and we have to do them to rebuild trust between the police and the community. But in many ways, it is too late when 

those problems have already occurred. 

So what I really want to focus on is what do we do to help ensure 

that those kinds of situations do not occur? How do we build this 

mutually respectful relationship between police and community? 

I had a police chief who always used to say you should have a 

family doctor, a family lawyer, and a family police officer. We built 

a community-policing model in which there were lieutenants that 

were in charge of a neighborhood. They knew the residents in that 

neighborhood. Everyone in that neighborhood had their cell phone 

numbers. They were on housing boards. There were in nonprofits. 

They became part of the community. That is what helped result in 

the lowest crime rate in 40 years. 
106 

So that is good not only for the community but for the police officers, the good police officers who deserve to have the respect and 

trust of their community. 

But at the core of this, as my chief used to say, the most powerful weapon I have, the most powerful piece of equipment, is the 

trust of the community. That is the single best tool I have to reduce crime in the city. We saw the results of that kind of attitude. 

So what I would like to hear from the witnesses, I think there 

are two ways to help achieve that kind of paradigm. Accreditation 

is one, and community-policing implementation is the other, not a 

unit within your department, but the entire department embracing 

this attitude of service and guardianship. 

So what are the impediments, Mr. Hartley? Providence went 

from a department when I took office that was under investigation 

by the Department of Justice for patterns and practice violations 

and other investigations to an accredited police department. But 

that is a hard process. 

So is it resources? How can we help more departments go 

through this accreditation process, so that we know they have 

standards and practices in place that respect this important balance that was mentioned between keeping communities safe and 

respecting the civil rights of individuals? What are the impediments? What can Congress do to assist many more police departments to go through that accreditation process? 

Mr. HARTLEY. Thank you. I will tell you, it is a complicated picture, because, as you know, it costs to be involved in this programming, so we talked a little bit about funding to help support organizations that want to pursue that. 

I also think it is critically important there is a broader awareness that there are other resources throughout the law enforcement 

and public safety community that exist to help agencies go through 

that. If you have been involved in it yourself, you know there are 

police accreditation coalitions out there that bring tremendous resources, because some organizations simply do not have the capacity to develop policy to support accreditation itself. So those organizations exist to help shepherd organizations in that particular direction. 

Mr. CICILLINE. Should we consider requiring departments over a 

certain period of time to at least develop a plan to reach accreditation? I mean, it is sort of the gold standard of policing that I think 

police departments universally aspire to. But rather than just encourage it, should we be considering some system where we require 

departments at least to articulate a plan to get that place? 

Mr. HARTLEY. I think the requirement to consider how you might 

implement it is important, but I also will tell you the way we are 

structured to review agencies and assess their credibility, if you 

will, does not have investigatory authority, nor are we seeking 

that. In some ways, if you require it, it becomes a regulatory body, 

which in some ways I think prevents the integrity of the process 

from moving forward effectively, so I want to be cautious about 

that. But I think incentives to support organizations moving in 

that direction is critically important. 

Mr. CICILLINE. I have just a few seconds left. I just wonder if any 

of the witnesses have any suggestions on how we might encourage 
107 

or incentivize departments to really transform themselves into this 

community-policing model. 

I know, Ms. Ramirez, you talked about a community-policing institute. But I think the other part of that which no one has mentioned today is we have to figure out ways to encourage or require 

our police departments to ensure they reflect the diversity of the 

communities they serve. We have too many departments across 

this country that do not look like the people that they serve. And 

the value of people coming from the neighborhood who understand 

the cultural traditions and social mores, the different parts of the 

neighborhood, who are parts of the community and return back to 

that neighborhood after work at night, is incredibly valuable. 

I do not know that we have heard enough about how we ensure 

police departments reflect the diversity of the communities they 

serve. 

Ms. RAHR. In my experience, the most important thing to lead 

somebody to go into a career of law enforcement is to have a personal connection to someone who is already a cop. The way you get 

that is by building community trust and those connections. 

I know it is very popular to say officers should live in the communities where they police. In my county, most of our officers cannot afford to live there, so it is not realistic. But when you assign 

a deputy or officer to the same neighborhood for a long period of 

time, those connections grow. When that officer or deputy is rewarded for participating in the community, not just enforcing the 

law but also participating, that connection grows. 

It is the anonymity that really is the enemy here. 

Mr. CICILLINE. Ms. Ramirez, it looks like you wanted to say 

something? 

Ms. RAMIREZ. This is on diversifying police departments. I just 

wanted to add a fact. In Massachusetts, we have a civil-service system, and every police department chief who has been chief while 

I was there has tried to diversify the police department. The top 

scorer in Massachusetts, the person who got the highest grade on 

the exam they have to take to be a police officer, was 328th on the 

list. The reason for that is a whole series of preferences, mostly veteran preferences. 

I think a lot of the police chiefs are trying to figure out how they 

can reform the civil service system such that they can diversify the 

police department. 

They are stuck. They need some help. Do they need an inspector 

general? Do they need a State community justice institute? Or do 

they need some fact-finding process that can look at to what extent 

there are legal and civil-service challenges for police chiefs who are 

trying to diversify their police departments. 

Mr. GOWDY. The Chair thanks the gentleman from Rhode Island 

and would now recognize the gentleman from Texas, Judge Poe. 

Mr. POE. I thank the Chairman. I am over here on this end. I 

thank all of you for being here. 

I am a former prosecutor in Houston, a former judge. I spent 30 

years at the courthouse. I tried people who assaulted and killed police officers, both as a prosecutor and a judge. And I have tried 

cases as a prosecutor of police officers who have killed individuals 
108 

and charged with violation of the law. So I have seen both sides 

of this perspective for a long time, having only tried criminal cases. 

Sheriff, I will start with you. Do you have any idea how many 

arrests, felony arrests, are made a year by police agencies in the 

country? 

Sheriff CLARKE. No, I do not. 

Mr. POE. Would you care to guess? 

Sheriff CLARKE. No. 

Mr. POE. I do not have any idea either. Does anyone know how 

many arrests are made by police officers? 

Sheriff CLARKE. Mr. Chair and Congressman, it is available 

through the Bureau of Justice Statistics, and I believe the FBI 

would probably have some data on that as well. 

Mr. POE. Okay, we will find that out then. 

Would you say or not the vast majority of those encounters with 

the police and a citizen are done according to the rule of law on 

the part of the peace officer? 

Sheriff CLARKE. Without a doubt. 

Mr. POE. How many would you say are not, there is some violation of the law, some violation of the rights of the accused in those 

felony cases? 

Sheriff CLARKE. Averages is what I am basing that on. 

Mr. POE. So what would it be? 

Sheriff CLARKE. I wouldn’t care to assign a number to it, because 

I do not know. 

Mr. POE. Is it the majority or minority? 

Sheriff CLARKE. It is very low. 

Mr. POE. It seems to me that any police agency needs to have 

a plan for all circumstances. Would you agree with that or not? 

Some type of response, community policing, a protocol, whether it 

is a 101 arrest. 

I will give you an example. I am sure you are familiar with the 

event that took place in Waco, the town of the Chairman’s alma 

mater, Baylor, this weekend, where you have five gangs, motorcycle gangs, three of which, the Cossacks, the Bandidos, and the 

Mongols, all assembled together in a place. 

Trouble ensued. Shots are fired. And a dozen police officers are 

there. Nine people are killed. Others are wounded. But the shooting stopped. 

The police, 11, 12 police officers, maybe a few more, arrested 170 

individuals. 

Do you think that having a plan to respond to that type of situation is important for a local police agency to have? 

Apparently they did, they had some plan involved. 

Sheriff CLARKE. Without a doubt, but I also think that in the moments leading up to that, the question I had was what kind of intelligence they had or information that this thing was going to go 

down, just in terms of these rival groups coming together. 

Mr. POE. I am sure they had lots of intelligence. It appears they 

had intelligence. To me, that is part of a plan, is it not, to respond 

based on the intel you get that something may take place? 

Sheriff CLARKE. Right, and part of that response really needs to 

be the preplanning, pre-staging, pre-marshaling of resources. When 

you have that many individuals coming together, you cannot just 
109 

*Note: The submitted material is not printed in this hearing record but is on file with the 

Committee. Also, see Submissions for the Record by Rep. Jackson Lee at: 

http://docs.house.gov/Committee/Calendar/ByEvent.aspx?EventID=103474. 

have a handful of officers. You do not have time to wait for calling 

in reinforcements. The planning is huge. 

Mr. POE. No matter what the situation is, whether it is going to 

be a big event or small event, police planning and response so that 

the rule of law is followed, no matter the circumstances, is a good 

idea for policing, is it not? 

Sheriff CLARKE. It is critical, yes. 

Mr. POE. Okay. How many peace officers were killed in the line 

of duty last year? 

Sheriff CLARKE. Last year? I know they added 238 names to the 

wall here at the national. Some of those were previous years, 

though. I do know that it is up nearly 90 percent so far in the first 

quarter of this year, around 54 officers killed in the line of duty. 

So the exact total out of that 238 for last year, I do not have. 

Mr. POE. I have more questions. I will submit them in writing, 

Mr. Chairman. Thank you. 

Mr. GOWDY. Thank you, Your Honor. 

The gentleman from Texas yields back. 

The Chair will now recognize the gentlelady from Texas, who has 

a unanimous consent motion. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. May I, in unanimous consent, just say one or 

two points, Mr. Chairman? 

First of all, let me ask the Chairman to have unanimous consent 

to enter into the record the following documents: a statement and 

testimony from the American Civil Liberties Union; a statement 

from the National Urban League; Executive Order 13688, which 

provides Federal standards for acquisition of military equipment; a 

letter from myself, Mr. Scott, Mr. Cohen, and Mr. Conyers, requesting a hearing in 2014; and then an article entitled, ‘‘Law Enforcement’s ’Warrior’ Problem,’’ to be added into the record.* 

Mr. GOWDY. Without objection. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. And then, Mr. Chairman, if I might, just in 

thanking the witnesses, just make one simple comment. That is, I 

want to express to all of you the significance of your testimony, and 

that the Judiciary Committee, through our Chairman and Ranking 

Member, and those of us who work on these issues, are very serious about coming forward in the spirit of recognizing the pain of 

an officer’s death, and the pain of a civilian’s confusion and apprehension about police, and maybe even their death. 

Frankly, I believe we can find that common ground. I hope you 

will allow us to inquire of you. We did not get to question everyone. 

I hope you will make yourself resources as we go forward to address a mother’s pain, and as well as find that even place. 

And I end my remarks by quoting a philosopher, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. ‘‘Treat people as if they were what they should 

be, and you help them become what they are capable of becoming.’’ 

Justice Hand said, ‘‘If we are to keep our democracy, there must 

be one commandment.’’ And, Sheriff Clarke, I think this is what 

you are speaking of. ‘‘Thou shall not ration justice.’’ 
110 

Everyone deserves justice. We do not deny your officers justice, 

and we have to let the civilian population, no matter who they are, 

know that they will get justice. 

That is what this Committee’s purpose is. I hope that we will 

have more provocative hearings, maybe those who have lost loved 

ones, maybe young people who are raising the signs because of 

their passion of ‘‘Black lives matter,’’ ‘‘all lives matter,’’ ‘‘hands up, 

don’t shoot,’’ and as well, ‘‘I can’t breathe.’’ Let us give all of those 

people dignity. 

This hearing has been one to give all of us, including, Sheriff, all 

the men and women you represent. 

I yield back to the Chairman. 

Mr. GOWDY. The gentlelady yields back. 

On behalf of Mr. Conyers and the entire Committee, I want to 

thank our panel of witnesses for your expertise, for your experience, your life experience, your perspective, your collegiality, not 

only with one another but also with the Members of the Committee. 

I could not help but think while Judge Poe was talking, and 

Tommy Marino and Mr. Richmond and Mr. Jeffries, that we are all 

in part beneficiary but also part prisoner of our own background, 

our own experience. Prosecutors may not have the benefit of a judicial view like Judge Poe has. Or what Cedric described growing up 

is something that I would not have experienced growing up. 

So I think it is a good idea for us, to the extent we can, to rely 

upon the experiences of other people, well-intentioned people. 

There were a lot of issues raised, all of which are important. The 

issue I hope we can have another Committee hearing on, at some 

point—I think, Hakeem, Mr. Jeffries from New York, touched upon 

it—the failure to cooperate on that end impacts the prosecution of 

police officers who have done wrong. 

I saw the failure to cooperate in the faces of moms and dads who 

are trying to get justice for their murdered young people, because 

other witnesses would not cooperate. 

I think we all want a justice system that is respected. In fact, 

we have to have a justice system that is respected or we will not 

make it. 

So I hope this is the first of many hearings. 

Again, on behalf of Mr. Conyers, and all the other Members who 

participated, we want to thank you for your participation. 

This concludes today’s hearing. Without objection, all Members 

will 5 legislative days to submit additional written questions for 

the witnesses or additional materials for the record. 

With that, thank you very much. We are adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 1:07 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.] 
(111) 

A P P E N D I X 

MATERIAL SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING RECORD
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Letter from Rabbi Meyer H. May, Executive Director, 

Simon Wiesenthal Center 
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114 

ATTACHMENT 
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116 
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118 

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119 

Response to Questions for the Record from David A. Clarke, Jr., Sheriff, 

Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office, Milwaukee, WI 
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121 

f 
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Response to Questions for the Record from W. Craig Hartley, Jr., Executive 

Director, Commission on Accreditation of Law Enforcement Agencies 
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124 

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Response to Questions for the Record from Susan Rahr, Executive Director, Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission and Member of President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing 
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f 
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Response to Questions for the Record from Matthew Barge, Vice President 

& Deputy Director, Police Assessment Resource Center (PARC) 
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129 
130 

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Response to Questions for the Record from Deborah A. Ramirez, 

Professor of Law, Northeastern University School of Law, Boston, MA 
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Æ