Motion to Instruct Conferees on H.R. 2112, Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2012
Floor Speech
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Mr. FATTAH. I thank the gentleman from Washington State, who's the ranking member on the Appropriations Committee, and I thank our chairman, Chairman Rogers. I'm very pleased that we are having a motion to instruct and that actually we're moving appropriation bills.
I rise in support of the gentleman from Washington's motion to instruct, particularly in support of additional disaster relief and also the COPS program.
It's critically important that we continue the national declining crime rates, and because of the layoffs or dismissals of over 12,000 police officers and the fact that we have over 30,000 law enforcement jobs that are unfilled today in our country, we see in many cities now a rising level of criminal activity.
I want to mention that in Paterson, New Jersey, we heard from the gentleman who used to be mayor of Paterson that they've had to lay off 125 police officers, a fourth of the police force there, and they've experienced a 15 percent increase in crime. And I think that one could draw a correlation between these two. In Flint, Michigan, the police force has been cut by two-thirds over the last 3 years, and its murder rate is higher than that of Baghdad. Last January, Camden, New Jersey, was cut by 163 officers, 44 percent of the total force.
It's critically important that we understand the direct nexus between the Federal effort which began many years ago to put cops on the street and to assist local officers and the dramatic declines that we've seen for more than a decade now in criminal activity in our country, and I would hope that this motion to instruct would inform all of the conferees how important this is in addition to the disaster relief.
When we call 911, we want to be calling for a police officer, not dialing for a prayer.
So we need real help, and the conferees will have an opportunity to adjust the figures hopefully in line with what we want as an ideal. If we can fund police officers in Iraq and Afghanistan, we can fund them in Flint, Paterson, and in Camden, New Jersey, and in other cities similarly situated.
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