Evan McMullin's answer: Yes
Donald Trump's answer: No, it should be a police department's or officer's choice to wear one
Darrell Castle's answer (Constitution Party): No but it should be a decision made at the state and local level
Gary Johnson's answer (Libertarian Party): Yes, this will protect the safety and rights of police officers and citizens
Q: Should convicted felons have the right to vote?
McMullin: Yes, but only after completing their sentences and parole/probation
Trump: No
Castle: Yes, but only after completing their sentences
Johnson: Yes
Q: Should prisons ban the use of solitary confinement for juveniles?
McMullin: Yes
Trump: No
Castle: No, it is necessary for violent criminals who are a danger to themselves and other inmates
Johnson: No, it is necessary for violent criminals who are a danger to themselves and other inmates
Mike Pence's answer: Yes
Tim Kaine's answer: Yes
Gary Johnson's answer (Libertarian Party): Yes, this will protect the safety and rights of police officers and citizens
Donald Trump's answer: No, it should be a police department's or officer's choice to wear one
Q: Should convicted felons have the right to vote?
Mike Pence's answer: Yes
Tim Kaine's answer: No
Gary Johnson's answer (Libertarian Party): Yes
Donald Trump's answer: No
Q: Should prisons ban the use of solitary confinement for juveniles?
Mike Pence's answer: Yes
Tim Kaine has not answered this question yet.
Gary Johnson's answer (Libertarian Party): No, it is necessary for violent criminals who are a danger to themselves and other inmates
Donald Trump's answer: No
Tim Kaine's answer: Yes
Mike Pence's answer: Yes
Gary Johnson's answer (Libertarian Party): Yes, this will protect the safety and rights of police officers and citizens
Donald Trump's answer: No, it should be a police department's or officer's choice to wear one
Q: Should convicted felons have the right to vote?
Tim Kaine's answer: No
Mike Pence's answer: Yes
Gary Johnson's answer (Libertarian Party): Yes
Donald Trump's answer: No
Q: Should prisons ban the use of solitary confinement for juveniles?
Tim Kaine has not answered this question yet.
Mike Pence's answer: Yes
Gary Johnson's answer (Libertarian Party): No, it is necessary for violent criminals who are a danger to themselves and other inmates
Donald Trump's answer: No
Evan McMullin: No
Darrell Castle's answer: No but it should be a decision made at the state and local level
Gary Johnson's answer: Yes, this will protect the safety and rights of police officers and citizens
Donald Trump's answer: No, it should be a police department's or officer's choice to wear one
Q: Should convicted felons have the right to vote?
Darrell Castle's answer: Yes, but only after completing their sentences and parole/probation
Gary Johnson's answer: Yes
Donald Trump's answer: No
Q: Should prisons ban the use of solitary confinement for juveniles?
Darrell Castle's answer: No, it is necessary for violent criminals who are a danger to themselves and other inmates
Gary Johnson's answer: No, it is necessary for violent criminals who are a danger to themselves and other inmates
Donald Trump's answer: No
Opposing @realDonaldTrump is about putting principle over power, a virtue some in Washington are too quick to abandon. #NeverTrump,
STEIN: Martin Luther King Jr. said it best: We are facing the triple monsters of racism, militarism and extreme materialism--a.k.a. capitalism. We need to build coalitions to link racial justice to climate justice to immigrant justice and to peace and democracy. We are calling for police review boards so that communities are controlling their police and not the other way around. We demand full-time investigators readily available for communities to examine all cases of death & serious injury in police custody. It shouldn't require an act of God to get the Department of Justice to investigate a murder at the hands of the police. We've been there in the border towns where people have not only been fighting for immigrant rights, but just for plain old civil liberties. Along the border, the cops can just violate your civil liberties at will. Civil rights don't really exist.
A: I'm going to have the backs of the men and women who carry the badge in this country. I know the overwhelming majority of them are doing the right thing every day under extremely difficult circumstances. In the rare instances if they're not, we're going to speak out about that. I'm proud to say I'm the only governor in America who signed a law that says there needs to be an independent investigation any time there's a death of someone in police custody.
A: Well, it relates to things like early childhood education, poor kids, people who are in prison, giving them a chance to get their lives back if they want to earn their way there. But let me say that I knew that, number one, we would save money by taking people out of prison and letting them get a job where they could become a taxpayer. To me conservatism is giving everybody a chance to be able to be successful.
A: We came out with a unanimous recommendation to create a statewide policy on the use of deadly force, and examination and recruiting and hiring practices [amongst police forces]. And now it is really critical that the community understands the challenges of police and that police can understand what is going on inside the community.
A: I think that there's a problem across the country with our citizens and our police force interacting with each other in a positive, constructive way. We need to engage in a different way. And you see what we have done in Camden. There we brought in an entirely new police force and we trained them in a different way in community policing.
Q: Recently Hillary Clinton said, "race still places a significant role in determining who gets ahead in America and who gets left behind"; do you agree?
A: I think there's still racism in our society. And every leader in our country should be speaking out against that and should be doing everything we can to provide opportunity for everyone.
TRUMP: It's a massive crisis. It's a double crisis. I look at these things, I see them on television. And some horrible mistakes are made. But at the same time, we have to give power back to the police because crime is rampant. I believe very strongly that we need police.
Cities need strong police protection. But officers' jobs are being taken away from them. And there's no question about it, there is turmoil in our country on both sides.
Q: Do you understand why African Americans don't trust the police right now?
TRUMP: Well, I can certainly see it when I see what's going on. But at the same time, we have to give power back to the police because we have to have law and order. And you're always going to have mistakes made. And you're always going to have bad apples. But you can't let that stop the fact that police have to regain control of this tremendous crime wave that's hitting the US.
KASICH: I don't agree with that. Look, we're just looking for the drugs that we need to administer it. And in this debate, sometimes we forget the victims. Listen, I review all these cases. And to some people I've said we will let them stay for life in prison if I wasn't certain of who did what. But I've had these grieving families come to see me. And look, it's about justice. It isn't about revenge, it's about justice. And I support the death penalty and will continue to do that, because a lot of times, families want closure when they see justice done.
Q: What about religious objection to the death penalty?
KASICH: I think it's consistent with my Catholic faith. If I didn't, I'd have to exorcise it. But look, at the end of the day, I'm also a secular official, right? I'm also the governor. Now, it doesn't mean that my faith doesn't influence me. But I have a job to do as administrator of the state of Ohio.
O`MALLEY: It's interesting, isn't it? For all of the progress that we make, there's always so much more that needs to be done. When I was elected in 1999, our city had become the most violent, addicted, and abandoned city in the US. But we went on in the next ten years to achieve the biggest crime reduction of any American city. And now, Baltimore's population is growing again with greater numbers of young people moving back here. Sadly it's also true that we still have huge pockets of poverty in our city; and the anger that erupted in our city did so in some of the poorest, hardest hit neighborhoods. But still, I would not have been elected with 91% of the vote first time or reelected four years later with 88% of the vote if we were not making substantial progress.
Unlike President Obama's recent action, this bill will require the return of all equipment currently being used by law enforcement agencies that becomes prohibited under this legislation.
"Big government has created an incentivized system in which local law enforcement is provided mass amounts of equipment to build up forces that resemble small armies. We can eliminate the wasteful spending these programs have created and stop the militarization of our police forces," Senator Paul said.
KASICH: Well, regardless of whether the verdict was right or wrong, the people of Cleveland should be proud of themselves for being a model of non-violent protest. When there are large numbers of people who do not think the system works for them, we have to respond to it. That's why I created a task force on integration police into the community. And there were two recommendations up front: a policy regarding the use of deadly force, statewide in Ohio, and secondly research into the recruiting and enrollment of minority police officers. We've got to make sure that people in these communities know that there's an opportunity for them that there is hope, that people and authority are listening, that there will be solid responses.
One of Bush's central themes during the 1994 campaign was his desire to streamline the execution process for death row inmates. In order to do this, he proposed limiting death row inmates to only one appeal with the state, a measure he hoped would speed up the state's execution process. Bush named his plan "one trial, one appeal," and released it in the spring of 1994.
Enacting the "one trial, one appeal" plan would have required Florida voters to approve an amendment to the state's constitution, but this hurdle didn't dissuade Bush. In November, he reiterated his goal, saying, "I want to accelerate, not slow down, the enforcement of the death penalty in Florida."
Bush "does not flip-flop," a Bush adviser said. "He learns. When he learns, he changes." Bush was particularly influenced by the experience of governing: he suddenly had access to measurements of what worked, and what did not, on issues like juvenile justice
GINGRICH: First, I think we do need criminal justice reform. The system doesn't work right. We have people locked up who shouldn't be. We tear apart communities that need young men to be able to go back home. So, I think we need serious hearings at the federal level. Second, there has to be some recognition--and this will probably get me in trouble--young people should be told, when a policeman tells you to stop, stop. There's a dual requirement here. You have the first African-American president. You have an African-American attorney general. And six years into their effort, we're in some ways further apart. That's a tragic failure of leadership. The community has to respect the police. And the police have to respect the community. And both have failed.
Q: Are you saying that this is the fault of Barack Obama?
GINGRICH: I'm saying that the president and attorney general use language which is divisive.
CARSON: That does happen.
Q: Has that ever happened to you?
CARSON: Yes. The attorney general of Missouri, last year, had a report that came out that said in the Ferguson area [where a police killing of a young black man sparked riots], blacks were seven times more likely to be stopped, and twice as more likely to be arrested.
Q: Whose fault is that?
CARSON: Well, the real question is, what can we do about this kind of situation? You know, everybody's going to be off in their little corners. And people are product of their life experiences. But can we actually solve this problem? And there are a lot of things that we can probably talk about.
CARSON: There are a lot of things. For instance, police being equipped with cameras.
Q: There is a movement of having the cameras on this.
CARSON: 85% of these things would be stopped by that.
OTHER GUEST: Rialto, California equipped their police officers with body-worn cameras, and the crime rate dropped, and the also the complaints about abuse by police officers.
PATRICK: It's very important I think that DOJ is investigating whether there's been a violation of civil or constitutional rights.
Did you want to see an indictment?
PATRICK: Without knowing all the facts, of course I wanted to see an indictment. And mostly because I think a trial & the transparency of a trial would be good for the community. And because so many of us have the supposition that police officers are not going to be held accountable & not going to have to answer for the shooting of unarmed, young, black teenagers. But the facts & the process, as the president said, does have to be respected. That is separate and apart from the anxiety so many black people have about encounters with law enforcement. The anxiety that some in law enforcement have about their encounters with black people and the startling lack of understanding between the two.
BEN CARSON: I think the issues are really much bigger than what has been portrayed to be. I've seen police excesses, living in inner city Detroit and inner city Boston. But I've seen a lot more situations where the police saved the situation. And I'm not sure that this is a police versus black community issue. You know, anger issues get in the way. And if you take race out of the issue altogether, and you take a group of young men and you raise them with no respect for authority, not learning to take on personal responsibility, having easy access to drugs and alcohol, they're very likely to end up as victims of violence or incarceration. It has nothing to do with race. So, yes, is there racism? Are there problems? Yes. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow. But we need to start looking at bigger issues here. We have to develop our resources appropriately.
PAUL: If you're African American and you live in Ferguson, the belief is, you see people in prison and they're mostly black and brown, that somehow it is racial, even if the thoughts that were going on at that time had nothing to do with race. So it's a very good chance that had this had nothing to do with race, but because of the way people were arrested, that everybody perceives it as, "My goodness, the police are out to get us," you know? I don't know what happened during the shooting, so I'm not gonna make a judgment on the shooting. But I do know what's happening, as far as that you look at who's in our prisons.
White people have accounted for more than half of all executions in the United States since 1976. Kentucky has executed three people since 1976--all white males--but none since 2008. The state's death penalty has been on hold since 2010 pending the outcome of a state lawsuit.
Paul said he did not know if the death penalty is an important issue to minority voters, whom he has been courting in recent months.
PAUL: It's the biggest voting rights issue of our day. There may be a million people who are being prevented from voting from having a previous felony conviction. I'll give you an example: I have a friend who, 30 years ago, grew marijuana plants in college. He made a mistake. He still can't vote, and every time he goes to get a job he has to tick a box that says convicted felon. It prevents you from employment. We should be for letting people have the right to vote back, and I think the face of the Republican Party needs to be not about suppressing the vote, but about enhancing the vote. My bill would allow somewhere a million people to get the right to vote back.
GOV. RICK PERRY: Well, state by state those decisions are made about how you're going to punish those who commit the most heinous crimes against your citizens. And in Texas, for a substantially long period of time, our citizens have decided that if you kill our children, if you kill our police officers, for those very heinous crimes, that the appropriate punishment is the death penalty. I think we have an appropriate process in place, from the standpoint of the appeals process, to make sure that due process is addressed. And the process of the actual execution I would suggest to you is very different from Oklahoma. We only use one drug. But I'm confident that the way that the executions are taken care of in the state of Texas are appropriate.
PERRY: I don't know whether it was inhumane or not, but it was botched.
Q: But you don't even want to see the government held responsible for forcing a heart attack because they couldn't inject the proper lethal drugs?
PERRY: There is an appropriate way to deal with this. And obviously, something went terribly wrong.
Q: Is it appropriate for a pause in our national discussion and application of the death penalty, the president talking about bias, uneven application, soul-searching questions that he'd like the country to take. Do you agree with that?
PERRY: It may be appropriate for a pause in Oklahoma. But the president all too often, whether it's on health care or whether it's on education or whether it's on this issue of how states deal with the death penalty, he looks for a one-size-fits-all solution centric to Washington D.C. And I will suggest, that's one of the problems we have in this country. We're a very diverse country.
JINDAL: We've submitted the two-drug protocol to a federal court. So, the judge will have to decide whether we're allowed to proceed. We will likely support legislation in this session to give the Department of Corrections more options. And we actually have a different protocol. We weren't able to get that one-drug protocol. So, we're likely to go to the legislators this year to ask them to give the Department of Corrections other options. Like many states, we're not always able to find and secure these drugs.
These arguments [did not] sway Perry, who on previous occasions refused to halt the executions of Mexican nationals whose consular rights were denied. Perry positions himself as a defender of Texas law against international law, and he has US Supreme Court decisions on his side, notably a 2008 ruling that treaties cannot be enforced in state courts without a specific federal law implementing them.
PERRY: Without a doubt, a tragic event. The jury made the decision. And although there maybe people on either side of this that don't agree with how it came out, the fact is that we have the best judicial system in the world and we respect it. A very thoughtful case was made by each side, the jurors made the decision, and we will live with that.
Q: Critics have said that the justice system is innately racist, is unfair to African-Americans. Do you think that?
PERRY: I don't. I think our justice system is color blind, and I think that you don't find people that always agree with the jury's decision. The system may not be foolproof; you have that appellate process, but in this case, I will suggest that two very capable teams laid out the issues and that jury made the right decision from their standpoint.
The Convention Against Racial Discrimination would help effectively address racial profiling in a way that existing civil rights law does not. Racial profiling continues to be a widespread and pervasive problem throughout the United States, impacting the lives of millions of people in the African American, Asian, Latino, South Asian, Arab and Muslim communities. Congress can take direct action to help address the scourge of racial and ethnic profiling by bringing this country into conformity with the Convention Against Racial Discrimination.
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| 2020 Presidential contenders on Crime: | |||
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Democrats running for President:
Sen.Michael Bennet (D-CO) V.P.Joe Biden (D-DE) Mayor Mike Bloomberg (I-NYC) Gov.Steve Bullock (D-MT) Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D-IN) Sen.Cory Booker (D-NJ) Secy.Julian Castro (D-TX) Gov.Lincoln Chafee (L-RI) Rep.John Delaney (D-MD) Rep.Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) Sen.Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) Gov.Deval Patrick (D-MA) Sen.Bernie Sanders (I-VT) CEO Tom Steyer (D-CA) Sen.Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) Marianne Williamson (D-CA) CEO Andrew Yang (D-NY) 2020 Third Party Candidates: Rep.Justin Amash (L-MI) CEO Don Blankenship (C-WV) Gov.Lincoln Chafee (L-RI) Howie Hawkins (G-NY) Gov.Jesse Ventura (I-MN) |
Republicans running for President:
V.P.Mike Pence(R-IN) Pres.Donald Trump(R-NY) Rep.Joe Walsh (R-IL) Gov.Bill Weld(R-MA & L-NY) 2020 Withdrawn Democratic Candidates: Sen.Stacey Abrams (D-GA) Mayor Bill de Blasio (D-NYC) Sen.Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) Sen.Mike Gravel (D-AK) Sen.Kamala Harris (D-CA) Gov.John Hickenlooper (D-CO) Gov.Jay Inslee (D-WA) Mayor Wayne Messam (D-FL) Rep.Seth Moulton (D-MA) Rep.Beto O`Rourke (D-TX) Rep.Tim Ryan (D-CA) Adm.Joe Sestak (D-PA) Rep.Eric Swalwell (D-CA) | ||
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