Biden Tells Weird Story About Visiting High-Crime Area Of Delaware Where ‘Best Basketball In The State’ Was Played
- He made the comments in a speech in Wiles-Barre, Pennsylvania.
- He promised to renew the ban on assault weapons and called for funding more police.
- The president also presented community policing initiatives.
- He mentioned trips he and his late son Beau took to a rough area of East Wilmington
- He made comments at the event criticizing ‘MAGA Republicans’ who supported the attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
- “You are either on the side of the mob or on the side of the police,” he said.
President Joe Biden on Tuesday called for a return to community policing as he recalled the trips he and his late son Beau Biden took to tough Wilmington neighborhoods in years past, adding that this was the place to see the “best basketball.” .
Biden said and his son, who served as state attorney general, used to pressure police officers to hand over their cellphones and engage directly with the communities they were meant to protect.
He mentioned a now-demolished housing project known as ‘el balde’.
‘And what he used to do was go down to the east side, called the Hub, the highest crime rate in the country. There is a place where I was the only white man working as a lifeguard in that area, the east side,” he said.
“And you could always find out where the best basketball in the state is, the best basketball in the city, where everybody performs,” he said.
President Joe Biden during a speech in Pennsylvania recalled visiting troubled neighborhoods in East Wilmington. He asked to return to the community police
He would come down and hang out and sit on a bench with my grandson who is now 17 years old. And the police used to be in the car, the local police, the city police. And he would go up and bang on a window and say, “Get out of the car, damn it, meet these people. Let them see you. Let them know you. Let them know who you are,” as Biden said.
Biden then brought up the 1992 crime bill he helped write, on a day when Biden and his White House team emphasized greater investment in policing, in direct contrast to the ‘defund the police’ movement. policeman’. The law’s tougher sentences have drawn criticism in recent years amid complaints about rates of mass incarceration. It also contained funds for communities to hire police officers.
Do you remember what happened with the community police? We went from having enough police on the streets to cities that are doing well and decide they don’t need more police. So they reduced the police forces. So you didn’t have two cops in each vehicle. You had a cop in every vehicle. And I don’t blame a cop for not going out in certain neighborhoods, for not getting out of the car,” he said.
Biden mentioned his time as a 19-year-old lifeguard at a Wilmington pool where most of the swimmers were black.
Biden makes a stop at The Warehouse, a community center for teens in East Wilmington, on Election Day, November 3, 2020, in Wilmington, Delaware.
The president said people in East Wilmington at the time were afraid of contacting police for retaliation.
He said his son “would make sure every cop gave his cell phone number to the local liquor store owner, the local church, the local grocery store, the local burger joint.” So if there’s a problem, pick up the phone and call,’ she said.
Biden then told a story from his own visit to the East Side where he spoke of a woman, now deceased, who complained of gang violence in her neighborhood. I have a phone number for the local police.
She would call, they promised not to identify her because they knew there would be retaliation. And the crime rate started to drop, really, not kidding,” she said.
Biden previously mentioned his stint as a 19-year lifeguard during the campaign. People who met Biden at the pool recalled that he was one of the few white lifeguards working in the pool where the swimmers were predominantly black.
