Joe Biden: “The answer is, I absolutely do. I thank my friend for calling that to my attention. Let me not just mention the…”

“The answer is, I absolutely do. I thank my friend for calling that to my attention. Let me not just mention the sheriffs. I am going to quote, now, from a few of the leading police officers of America. By the way, let's put this in context again. When the overall crime bill was drafted by me years ago, the way it got drafted was, I did not sit down with any sociologists or academics or welfare workers or, you know, liberal think tanks. I literally called in the presidents of the seven leading police organizations in America, from NAPO to NOBLE, FOP, et cetera. They sat around my conference table for the better part of 4 months. I said: You tell me what you need. What do you think you need to fight crime? In the overall crime bill, they said they needed about a third of it going to prevention. When I sat down to draft the juvenile justice bill for our side of the aisle, with my colleagues, as a follow-on, I called the same people back in. Some of the presidents were changed. They were not all the same officers, the same people. To a person, they reinforced what the Senator from Vermont just said. Let me give an example. Mr. President, 170 police chiefs, sheriffs, prosecutors, the president of the Fraternal Order of Police, the International Union of Police Associations, and the leaders of the Crime Victims Organization, came out with a call for action. They title it 'A Call For Action From America's Front Line Against Crime,' made up of those organizations I just named.”