Bill Clinton: “Well, I accept that. The answer to your question is no, I haven't thought about that. Maybe I should think about it, but…”

“Well, I accept that. The answer to your question is no, I haven't thought about that. Maybe I should think about it, but I haven't. But let me answer you in this way: When I have talked about putting more police officers on the street, I've always talked about it with two things in mind. First of all, keep in mind that in the last 30 years, there has been a dramatic worsening in the ratio of police to crime. Thirty-five years ago there were approximately three policemen for every serious crime, every felony reported. Now there are three felonies for every police officer. That puts enormous pressure on those police officers. I'm not justifying abuse. I'm just talking about the kinds of pressures in the day-to-day work of the cops on the beat, out there on the front line living with all this. So I believe that if you had more police officers who were well-trained, you would have a reduction in tensions. But secondly and more importantly, I believe it's important to go to community based policing, where you have the same group of police officers, unless they're misbehaving, working in the communities month in and month out, year in and year out, establishing relationships with people in the communities so that you dramatically reduce the likelihood of abuse or fear, because people know each other. They've got people walking the beats. They know the first names of the police officers. They see them as friends. In the cities where I have seen that happen, I have seen not only a decline in crime but also an increase in mutual trust and understanding between folks in a community and folks in the uniforms. So I think you've made a very good point. It's not just important that we have more police officers, but the structure of policing, in my judgment, has to be more rooted in particular communities. And I think if we did that, the crime rate would go down significantly. And by the way, there is a lot of evidence, probably in a lot of the cities in which you live here, that that would in fact occur. Thank you very much.”