Clinton crime plan would add 100,000 cops

PHILADELPHIA – Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, campaigning Friday in Philadelphia, announced a $4 billion-a-year anti-crime plan that would put 100,000 new police officers on the streets and help state and local governments reduce the flow of repeat offenders back to prison.

She also would eliminate the mandatory federal five-year sentence for crack-cocaine users as part of the package’s emphasis on steering nonviolent offenders away from incarceration.

But violent crime was on Clinton’s mind as she spoke in West Philadelphia, a neighborhood that Mayor Michael Nutter said was too tough for Osama bin Laden and where people, he added, are “more worried about Al-Gangster than al-Qaida.”

Clinton said her proposals would cut the murder rate in big cities by half. She said crime was reduced to historic lows during her husband’s presidency with federal funding then for police, since cut, and an assault weapons ban, among other policies.

“We have to get back to doing what we know works,” Clinton said during an event at the gymnasium of the West Branch YMCA. “I’m old-fashioned about that. I think that you should actually look for solutions to problems, to find out what works and execute – enough with the speeches, enough with the talking.”

Though violent crime has increased during the past two years after dropping for more than a decade – and cities such as Philadelphia are facing sharp upticks in murder rates – the issue has not played a prominent role on the presidential campaign trail, receiving far less emphasis than Iraq and the economy.

To stop the revolving door between prison and the streets, Clinton said her program would include $1 billion to give grants to states to fund anti-recidivism measures, including education, job training and drug rehabilitation.

Clinton supports a Senate bill that would repeal the five-year term for crack users, who are predominantly black, because the federal law punishes them more harshly than those who use powder cocaine, who are mostly white. That disparity has long been a target of civil rights and other organizations.