As he recalled visits he and his late son Beau Biden had to seedy Wilmington areas in the past, President Joe Biden on Tuesday urged for a return to community policing, saying that was where they saw the “greatest basketball.”
According to Biden, he and his son, the state’s former attorney general, used to demand that police officers hand up their mobile phones and interact with the people they were tasked with defending.
He mentioned “the bucket,” a housing development that is now gone.
And he used to frequent the East Side, also known as the Bucket, which has the highest crime rate in the nation. There was a spot on the East side where I was the only white lifeguard employed there, he said.
And you could always tell where the state’s and the city’s greatest basketball is by where everyone turns up, the man said.
President Joe Biden spoke about visiting East Wilmington’s difficult areas during a speech in Pennsylvania. He demanded a return to neighborhood policing
He would go down and hang out while my now-17-year-old grandson and I would sit on a bench. Local, city police used to ride in the automobile as well. He would then approach a window and rap on it, saying: “Dammit, get out of the vehicle and meet these folks. Allow them to see you. Tell them who you are. Tell them your identity “‘, according to Biden.
Then, on a day when Biden and his White House staff emphasized increased police funding in opposition to the “defund the police” campaign, Biden brought up the 1992 crime law he co-authored. The law’s harsher punishments have come under fire in recent years amid concerns about the prevalence of mass imprisonment. Additionally, it included money for local governments to employ police personnel.
Do you still recall what happened to community policing? From having enough police officers on the streets, to communities doing well and determining they don’t need more, things have changed. As a result, they cut down on the cops. So there weren’t two officers in each car. Each car had a police officer inside. And I don’t blame one officer for staying in the vehicle in those particular communities, he said.
Biden mentioned his time as a 19-year-old lifeguard at a Wilmington pool where most of the swimmers were African American
Biden makes a stop at The Warehouse, a community center for teens in East Wilmington, on November 03, 2020 – Election Day – in Wilmington, Delaware
The president said people in East Wilmington at the time were afraid to contact police for ear of retribution
‘Every single officer handed his mobile phone number to the owner of the local booze shop, the local church, the local grocery store, and the local hamburger place,’ he added, adding that his son would ‘guarantee’ this. So pick up the phone and call if there’s an issue,’ he said.
Then Biden related a personal experience he had when visiting the East Side, in which he described a now-deceased lady who had complained about gang activity in the area. I’ve got the local police’s phone number, you say.
She would call, and they made a pledge not to reveal her identity because they anticipated backlash. And the crime rate started to decline—this was not a joke—she continued.
During the campaign, Biden previously cited his time spent working as a lifeguard at the age of 19. Biden was one of a small number of white lifeguards working at the pool where swimmers were mostly black, according to those who came to know him there.