Bill Clinton: “Give her a hand. [Applause] That's great. Well, I think there are several things that you can do as a young person in…”

“Give her a hand. [Applause] That's great. Well, I think there are several things that you can do as a young person in your community to stop crime. But let me just mention, if I might, two or three. One is, people always talk today about gangs, people joining gangs and how bad it is, right? But the truth is, everybody wants to be in some kind of gang. If you play on a football team, it's a gang, right? If you belong to a certain church, that's a group of people who believe like you do, and you're with them every Sunday, and they're part of your crowd, and it's part of your identity. In other words, all of us want to be with other people who are like us, who make us feel good and important because we're a part of their group. In a way, the Kramer School is a gang, right? It's a group of people who go here, and there's a limited number of people, and others don't go here. So the first thing I want to say to you is, I think that the more you can do as a young person to get other young people to associate with each other in positive ways, the less likely they'll be to associate with each other in negative ways. You can't just tell kids no all day; sometimes you've got to have something to say yes about. There has to be something to say yes to. And you can ask adults to do what they need to do; if there needs to be more opportunity for recreation or something else that adults should do, provide for you, so that people can have positive associations, I think that counts, first thing. The second thing I think is important is that we know crime goes down where police officers work in neighborhoods on a consistent basis, know the young people, know the adults, and work to prevent crime instead of just to catch criminals. So the second thing you could do is to help organize people in your neighborhood to work with people in the police to stop crime before it happens, that is, to report suspicious things; if you think there is drug dealing going on or you think there are people with illegal weapons or you think there is something else going on, there's some risk that might be happening, to let people know in advance. And that really counts for a lot. I have seen cities in this country with very tough neighborhoods where the crime rate dropped dramatically because the people in the neighborhood got organized and worked with the police on the front end to stop things from happening. The third thing you could do that I think is really important is to do everything you can to organize young people to keep each other in school, because most people who show up for school on time, stay in school, learn something when they're in school, and try to work out their problems in a positive way in school don't wind up getting in trouble with the law. Those are the three things that I think you could do that would have the biggest impact on the crime problem. Family Life”