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Julian Castro on CrimeDemocratic Presidential Challenger; former HUD Secretary |
CASTRO: I want to commend Beto for how well he has spoken to the passion and the frustration and the sadness after what happened in his hometown of El Paso. A few weeks ago, a shooter drove 10 hours inspired by this president to kill people who look like me and people who look like my family. White supremacy is a growing threat to this country, and we have to root it out. I'm proud that I put forward a plan to disarm hate. I'm also proud that I was the first to put forward a police reform plan. We need to root out racism, and I believe that we can do that, because that doesn't represent the vast majority of Americans who do have a good heart. They also need a leader to match that, and I will be a president that matches that.
CASTRO: I agree with Senator Booker that a lot of what Vice President Biden helped author in 1994 [in the Crime Bill] was a mistake. But let me say, when we talk about criminal justice reform, there are a lot of things that we can talk about -- sentencing reform, cash bail reform, investing in public defenders, diversion programs. I'm proud that I'm the only candidate that has put forward a police reform plan, because we have a police system that is broken and we need to fix it. And whether it's the case of someone like Tamir Rice or Michael Brown or Eric Garner, we need to ensure we have a national use of force standard and that we end qualified immunity for police officers so that we can hold them accountable for using excessive force.
CASTRO: A good example, the other day, of the Department of Justice not going after Officer Pantaleo. [On July 17, 2014, NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo, who is white, arrested Eric Garner, who is black, for selling cigarettes; Garner died from Panataleo's chokehold -Ed.] He used a chokehold that was prohibited by NYPD. He did that for seven seconds. Eleven different times Eric Garner said that he couldn't breathe. He knew what he was doing, that he was killing Eric Garner, and yet he has not been brought to justice. That police officer should be off the street.
Q: Mayor de Blasio, why is that police officer still on the force?
DE BLASIO: The federal Justice Department told the city of New York that we could not proceed because the Justice Department was pursuing their prosecution. And years went by, [so the City will now prosecute].
NINE CANDIDATES HAVE SIMILAR VIEWS: Cory Booker; Peter Buttigieg; John Delaney; Tulsi Gabbard; Kamala Harris; Bernard Sanders; Elizabeth Warren; Marianne Williamson; Andrew Yang.
Many Democrats have called for ending or not renewing the federal government's contracts with private prison companies. Sen. Warren would leverage federal public safety funding to extend the ban to the state and local levels.
13 CANDIDATES HAVE SIMILAR VIEWS: Cory Booker; Peter Buttigieg; Bill de Blasio; John Delaney; Tulsi Gabbard; Kirsten Gillibrand; John Hickenlooper; Amy Klobuchar; Beto O`Rourke; Bernard Sanders; Eric Swalwell; Elizabeth Warren; Andrew Yang.
Candidates who have called for abolishing capital punishment altogether say inmates sentenced to death should have their sentences commuted to life without parole.
I will work to ensure funding so that every officer who patrols our streets wears a body camera. I will target unconscious racial biases in policing and increasing accountability of law enforcement officials. This will include executive actions aimed at demanding immediate data collection on use of force by law enforcement, strengthening and increasing enforcement of federal protections against discriminatory policing, and directing increased resources to unconscious bias awareness trainings.