Barbara Kennelly: “I represent a city in my First Congressional District in Connecticut, a city that has very many exciting things about…”

“I represent a city in my First Congressional District in Connecticut, a city that has very many exciting things about it. But like many cities in this modern day, we have some terrible problems. Two years ago the problems really became much worse. We had the invasion of three different gangs, and the people in our town became very worried, not only worried, they became frightened. We had drive-by shootings; we had car hijackings. We had situations where people were thought to be somebody else and got shot. Understandably our citizens remained disturbed, and people like myself who pretend to have some answers and hold ourselves out as elected officials who should be able to help, were equally disturbed. I really wondered what to do next. How could I help? But something very positive happened and that was the crime bill we passed last year. There were three things in that crime bill that held out hope to the people of my city. The first thing was additional cops. In that bill the cop program provided additional police for city streets.”