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The President: At the
front end, I've got to
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tell you, I'm a huge
fan of "The Wire."
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I think it's one of
the greatest not just
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television shows, but
pieces of art in the
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last couples
of decades.
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I was a huge
fan of it.
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What is it that you saw,
you learned, you heard
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that made you start
thinking about the culture
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of the drug trade, and how
-- its impact on the inner
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cities and -- that
compelled you then
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to want to tell
these stories?
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David Simon: Well, I
was in Baltimore, and
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it's a very -- it's a
drug-saturated city, or it
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certainly was in the early
1980s when I arrived.
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And this was a time where
people thought they could
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arrest their way out
of a drug problem.
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The President:
Right.
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David Simon: And they
actually tried to do that.
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And what became
increasingly obvious to me
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over the years of covering
it was that when you
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devote yourselves to
street-level drug
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enforcement, when you try
to win the drug war, you
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only have a limited number
of resources, a limited
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amount of resources.
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The President: Right.
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David Simon: And I watched
the police department in
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Baltimore, and then I
noticed it in other
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cities, other cities with
the same sort of problems
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of drug use.
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They stopped
doing police work.
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The President: Right.
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David Simon: They were
arresting people for
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drugs, and that was
presumptive police work,
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but actually
it wasn't.
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And at the same time
that the numbers
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of drug arrests and the
incarcerations for drug
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arrests went up, and they
were small incarcerations.
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They were two, three
months city jail because
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you couldn't put
them everywhere.
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The President:
Right.
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David Simon: You couldn't
build prisons fast enough.
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The President:
Right.
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David Simon: Meanwhile,
the arrest rates for rape,
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robbery, murder
were going down.
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And the one thing that
makes cities safer is
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competent retroactive
investigation of felonies.
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That actually can
make a city safer.
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The President:
Right.
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David Simon: But to do
that, you have to use and
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not abuse informants;
you have to know how to
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testify in court; you have
to write a search warrant
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that is -- that's
going to hold up.
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The President: You know,
the good news is, is that
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some of the smarter police
departments started
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to figure this out.
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David Simon:
Right.
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That's true.
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The President: And we've
seen reductions in violent
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crime in most big cities
in America, in some cases
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precipitously, partly
because, I think, there
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was an awareness that
we were so invested in
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street-level drug
transactions that we were
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losing focus on what
was really important --
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David Simon: Right.
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The President: -- which was
people wanted to be safe.
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On the other hand, what we
know is that a consequence
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of that was this
massive trend towards
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incarceration, even of
non-violent drug offenders.
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And I saw this during
the period that you were
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reporting and then, you
know, starting to write
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for television.
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I saw this from the
perspective of the state
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legislator, this
just explosion of
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incarcerations,
disproportionately
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African-American
and Latino.
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David Simon: Yep.
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The President: And the
challenge, which you know,
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you depict in your show
is folks go in at great
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expense to the state, many
times trained to become
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more hardened criminals
while in prison, come out
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and are basically
unemployable.
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David Simon: Right.
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The President: And end
up looping back in.
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David Simon: Permanently a
part of the other America.
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The President:
Exactly.
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David Simon: And you
can't be pulled back.
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Nobody incarcerates their
population at this level.
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The President:
Right.
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David Simon: And to look
at it, when I came in as
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a police reporter, the
federal prison population
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was about 34 percent
violent offenders.
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The President: Yeah.
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David Simon: When I left
as a police reporter
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13 years later, it
was about 7 percent.
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The President: Right.
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David Simon: So these
were less violent people
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getting longer sentences.
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Of course, there was the
elimination of parole
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and good time.
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And you know, all you
had was good time.
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And so people
were staying in.
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The President:
Right.
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David Simon: And you're
absolutely right.
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They come back out
completely tarred.
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They can't vote.
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They can't participate
in their community.
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They've lost
track of families.
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Families have
been destroyed.
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Communities have
been upended.
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And if it was this
Draconian, and it worked,
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then maybe we can have
a discussion that said,
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"What we're doing
was working."
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The President: The
trade-offs were worth it.
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David Simon: Yeah.
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It's terrible, and we're
losing a lot of humanity,
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but hey, it's working.
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The President:
Yeah.
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David Simon: But
it doesn't work.
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The President:
Right.
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David Simon: It's Draconian,
and it doesn't work.
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The President: I've been
looking at -- because
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as part of the fall-out of
what you described, as the
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economy is recovering,
unemployment's coming down
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drastically.
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But one of the puzzles we
have is we still have low
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participation rates --
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David Simon:
Right.
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The President: --
among the population
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and the aggregate.
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But when you break down
why people are not
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getting back in the labor
force even as jobs are being
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created, a big chunk
of that is the young
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male population.
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David Simon: With
a felony history.
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The President: With
felony histories.
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David Simon: Yeah.
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The President: And so
now, where we have the
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opportunity to give
them a pathway towards
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a responsible life,
they're foreclosed.
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And that's
counterproductive.
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David Simon: The guy who
was the model for the
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character Omar --
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The President: Yeah.
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David Simon: -- in "The
Wire," was a real guy
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named Donnie Andrews.
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I never thought I'd be
saying his name in the
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White House, but he's a
guy who lived the life on
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the street.
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He spent years
robbing drug dealers.
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He lived -- he
lived hard.
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The President: Yeah.
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David Simon: And he
eventually caught a
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17-year bit, and
he deserved it.
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But he went in, he wasn't
caught; he actually went
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in on conscious because
it finally got to him.
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The President: Yeah.
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David Simon: And he did
everything that the
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prosecutors wanted him
to do, and he came --
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he came out 17
years later.
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And all he wanted to
do was give back
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to West Baltimore.
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The President:
Yeah.
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David Simon: He had taken
so much, and he'd been
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in for 17 years.
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He just wanted to address
himself to the disaster.
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The President: Yeah.
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David Simon: And on paper,
that man who was an
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extraordinary man; he
was one of the most
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amazing people I
met in my life.
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On paper, he was a
convicted felon and
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a convicted murderer, and
there was no -- there was
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nothing that could get
him from that extremity.
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The President: Right.
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David Simon: You know,
multiply that by hundreds
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of thousands of lives that
have been disconnected and
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have no way to
channel back into --
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The President: Well, and
part of what -- Omar's,
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by the way, my favorite
character on my favorite show.
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David Simon: That was the
part -- I was worried
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about that when
you said it, but --
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The President: (laughs)
But you know, part of what
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your show depicted was
also that there's a
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generational element
to this, right?
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So you've got entire
generations of men being
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locked up, which means
entire generations of boys
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growing up either without
a father, or if they see
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their dad, they're
seeing them in prison.
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David Simon: Right.
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I mean, this is not
happening in a vacuum.
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These are the places
in America where the
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industrialization has
had the most affect.
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The President: Right.
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David Simon: And where the
unemployment rates --
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the actual unemployment rates
among young black males
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in my city are -- bear no
resemblance to the actual
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unemployment
rate nationally.
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The President: Right.
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David Simon: And so that's
something that has to be
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countered, which is that
the drug trade itself,
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it's like a company town.
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And this is an industry so
large and, so -- with so
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much money around it that
it's hard to -- it's hard
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to get around it if
you grow up amid it --
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The President:
Yeah.
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David Simon: -- and
certainly without role
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models that know how
to maneuver around it.
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And to undo that, taking
the overlay that is the
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drug war and at least
ratcheting it down and
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making it proportional
in some way is essential
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because right now, you
know, what drugs don't
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destroy, the war against
them is ripping apart.
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The President:
Yeah.
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Well, here's
the good news.
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There is an increasing
realization on the left,
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but also on the right
politically that what
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we're doing is
counterproductive either
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from a Libertarian
perspective -- the way
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we treat non-violent drug
crimes is problematic --
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and from a fiscal
perspective, it's
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breaking the bank.
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David Simon: Right.
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The President: You end up
spending so much more
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on prison than you would with
these kids being in school
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or even going to
college that it's
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counter-productive, and it
means everybody's taxes
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are going up, or at
least services that
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00:08:08,821 --> 00:08:10,823
everybody uses are
being squeezed.
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Or we can't hire cops to
deal with violent crime
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as you talked about.
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We're all -- we're
all responsible for
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at least finding a
solution to this.
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And the encouraging thing
is, I think awareness
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is increasing in part because
violent crime has gone
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down in a lot
of big cities.
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People are more open
to having a discussion
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about this.
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David Simon: Yeah.
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They're not as
frightened.
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The President: And, you
know, I think we have
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to seize that
opportunity.
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But part of the challenge
is going to be making
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sure, number one, that
that we humanize what
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so often on the
local news is --
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David Simon: Right.
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The President: -- just a
bunch of shadowy characters.
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And tell their stories,
and that's where the work
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you've done has
been so important.
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And then the second
thing is enlisting
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law enforcement as
an ally on this.
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Now, Eric Holder, my
attorney general,
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we started talking about
this several years ago
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when I first came
into office.
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And one of the things
that we tried to do was
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to change how we
talk to U.S. attorneys
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and their offices
about what is a measure
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of effective
prosecution.
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And when we came into
office, I think what was
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probably true in a lot of
States Attorney's Offices,
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the measure was, how
much time do you get?
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David Simon:
Charge the maximum.
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The President:
Charge the max.
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David Simon: Yeah.
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The President: And you
know, our point was
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effectiveness as a
prosecutor involves
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thinking about justice and
being proportional in how
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you think about
these issues.
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David Simon: Right.
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The President: And that's
something we can do
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administratively, but
ultimately we're going to
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need legislation.
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And that's where raising
awareness is going to be
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important.
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David Simon: Exactly.
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The President: And
law enforcement and
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prosecutors have to be
able to talk about this.
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And we have to, you know,
let them know -- and you
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show this in "The Wire" as
well -- in the same way
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you've got to be able to
humanize those involved in
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the drug trade, we have to
remind ourselves about the
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police; they've got a scary,
tough, difficult job.
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And if the rest of society
is saying, "Just go deal
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with this, and we don't
want to hear about it" --
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David Simon: Right.
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The President: -- and
you're just on the
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frontlines, and, "Just
keep it out of our
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sight lines.
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And you know, it's not
our problem," you know,
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we're betraying
them as well.
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And ultimately you're
going to have to address
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some of the
environmental issues.
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And I know that's not
fashionable because the
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notion is, you know,
you don't want to make
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excuses for criminals.
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What we understand and
what, you know, perhaps
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one of the most moving
sections of "The Wire"
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was that whole depiction of
the schools in Baltimore
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in public schools, is that
if kids are left so far
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behind that they don't
have recourse, you know,
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they're going to see
what else is available
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to survive.
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David Simon: They're
going to learn one way
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or the other.
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The President: They're
going to learn something.
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David Simon: Yeah.
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The President: And the --
and so we're going to have
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to think about schools,
and counselors, and mental
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health, and
ultimately jobs, and
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reindustrialization,
and I think we
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understand all of that.
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But if we can start down
this path to a more
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productive way of thinking
about drugs and its
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intersection with law
enforcement, 20 years
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from now, we can say to
ourselves, "Well, maybe
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we got a little smarter.
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And you know, we didn't
get here overnight."
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We're not going to get
out of it overnight.
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But the fact that we've
got people talking about
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it in a smarter way gets
me a little encouraged.
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David Simon: From your
mouth to God's ear.
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The President:
Yeah.
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I enjoyed it.
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David Simon: Thank
you very much.
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The President:
Thank you.