The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

ers it's b that evening leading the news is friday us troops re occupy positions deep in iraq soviet president gorbachev said saddam's fate lies with the iraqi people sharply lower energy costs and wholesale prices down for the third straight month where the details in our new summer in a moment jon after the news summary our lead story is the police brutality case in los angeles we have a jet pre k report and a newsmaker interview with police chief daryl gates from los angeles followed by four perspectives on whether what happened there is an aberration or part of a patter with clothes with the regular friday

analysis of david gergen and mark shields funding for the newshour has been provided by pepsico yes yes and by at and t and made possible by the financial support of viewers like you and the corporation for public broadcasting us troops have been redeployed to positions further inside iraqi marine brigadier general richard neal said the movements were designed to better control the farthest north positions occupied since the end of the war and washington the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff general colin powell had this comment nothing nothing

thank you kurdish rebels claimed control the day of ninety five percent of a kurdish area of a rat next to the turkish border they also charged iraqi army troops are using helicopter gunships to attack civilians president bush said wednesday such use of helicopters could delay a formal cease fire robin in moscow today serbian president gorbachev said the turmoil in iraq must be settled by the iraqi people as comment appeared to signal that saddam hussein would get no assistance from the soviet union mr gorbachev held talks with secretary of state baker mr baker said afterwards the leading failed to break a stalemate on arms

control treaties with the soviet union he said us soviet relations have improved after a tense period during the gulf war he also said he was pleased with <unk> jobs efforts to defuse tensions with the baltic republics mr gorbachev later went on soviet television to appeal for a massive yes votes in sunday's referendum on preserving the union isn't such a vote would maintain stability in the country and he's the way for reform or just you know in an earlier regularly as he said voting yes would only perpetuate the imperial eunuch very essence of the soviet union the leader of yugoslavia is eight man presidential council resigned today was softer peaches said the country was heading towards a civil war for which he did not want responsibility the resignation came after five days of anti communist protests in the capitol of belgrade a hostage anniversary was observed today in washington it was on march

sixteen nineteen eighty five that associated press correspondent carrie anderson was taken hostage in beirut lebanon on a group calling itself islamic jihad still holds the forty three year old journalist today family and friends mark the anniversary in a ceremony on capitol hill former hostage the reverend lawrence yun bo spoke of his contact with anderson while the two were held together six years ago i looked in through a crack in the clothes closet and i saw men chained to a bed going forward that's jerry anderson months later janice and i will be together and we suspect about two josephs joseph a vote poland and joseph of new covenant both were dreamers sucher and it is to speak to these josephs and as joseph of jewish covenant joseph of christian conn it was smart restraints dreams of freedom so once again on this feast of st joseph which is much thinking why evergreen everything that

is going to be a dream of freedom project five other americans are also being held hostage eleven on the r thomas sutherland joseph's a scipio edward austen tracey allen steam and jesse turner in economic news sharply lower energy costs helped push wholesale prices down by six tenths of a percent last month the third consecutive monthly decline industrial production also fell in february by eight tenths of a percent that's the fifth straight monthly decline and the longest lived since the last recession eight years ago for los angeles police officers were indicted a day in the highly publicized videotaped beating case three white officers kicked unplugged a twenty five year old black man on march third as other officers watched a witness photograph the incident and that papers been shown all over the world district attorney are reiner announce today's indictment he said the supervising sergeant and three officers were charged with felony assault with a deadly weapon and undo force under the color of

authority reiner said the investigation is still underway to determine what charges should be filed against other officers at the scene and that set the limits on me tonight we go on now to a further look at the issue of police brutality in los angeles and elsewhere and timbre of human shields are separate from us to the newshour tonight is police brutality in the wake of today's indictments in los angeles the videotape beating motorist up for speeding has triggered a national debate over how frequently such incidents occur throughout the country the federal government announced yesterday that it will investigate fifteen thousand complaints of police brutality going back over six years we'll hear from the police chief of los angeles and for people with different views first geoffrey k a public station casey at los angeles as a background report on the case since receiving

international attention christian the videotaped beating of rodney blame game has thrust the los angeles police department and the international spotlight early in the morning on march twenty five year old construction worker was stopped by police for speeding is a matter of dispute the scene was videotaped by a nearby resident the pictures tell the story of the first shopping him with a stun gun three police officers pummeled king who was unarmed with a night sticks while other officers stood by king was released from jail with no charges filed against healthcare of spirit hear from a lot of solid roof on we don't have reverend king's doctor says patients suffered extensive injuries including a fractured skull and possible brain damage five days after the incident la police chief daryl gates recommended felony

prosecution for the officers who became an invalid to discipline the twelve officers to watch this is once again an aberration that is being rejected and then by this department by all the members of the department over and over again we are saying this is not a representation of work the boston police department and you won't find anyone will not find a police officer in this in the city that will in any way of can you justify what those are is nowhere with the outrage over the king beating more fervently expressed been in la is black community the sunday after the incident mark ridley thomas campaigned in various black churches for city council seat ridley thomas is executive director of the local branch of the southern christian leadership conference really

outside church the congregants we spoke to said the only thing that surprised them about the king beating was that it had been videotaped i myself i was a surprise this type of thing happens all the time with the black youth in los angeles is happening even for not as severe and i'm not surprised at all your love has been always suspect it doesn't matter what we're coming out where we're going we're the men carry and we're going to just we're the ones still in the courts i'm a suspect the newest member of la civilian police commission melanie lomax

agrees she disputes the notion that the king beating was an isolated case i don't see it as an aberration i mean i know i'm on i'm more than willing to be convinced has an aberration but i don't i view it is at their that way at all i used to be a lawyer for the end of the ways he paid and over a period of five years in the mid eighties when i was so stay with their organization i really just we received complaints of police brutality that as to allegations of violence by police officers critics point to the fact that last year alone the city of los angeles and ended up a point one million dollars in settlements and on was arising from police misconduct lawsuits all too often say critics offices are guilty of repeat offenses part of it is odd you know by a margin of police officers who are not we do have this is one of the officers involved in this incident have been a lot of presents i hand by and a new question why that

officer was fired earlier for beating up the sit ins but many police officers say they've been dishonored by the brutal behavior of just a few bad apples what we're talking about is three individuals or parkinson's as opposed to the internet or it's not us that's not the way we i never have and i don't think we will please personnel insist on distancing themselves from those who participated in the assault on rodney king nonetheless some found explanations for the behavior without condoning it the situations were unique high speed chases and the dynamics that take place or unique officers really yeah get involved in these situations there's a lot of adrenaline flowing they're highly charged up and at the end of that pursuit there's a lot of physical energy that's ken tucker says there's a tendency to get russia

drivers are evading punishing pursuits and knowing that this happens statistically the department's recognize this and they've signed of regulations as a supervisor have to be there and they had a supervisor there and i i can't speak for him but i don't know what happened that permitted this to happen and not permitted people to new sense of what the responsibilities work will probably happen that incident that there was a supervisor on the scene and that sets a supervisor is responsible for whatever takes place the other officers watching standing by watching for their supervisors and what type of action he's going to take and they would fall in the median of supervisors shows and they're basically puts us in a difficult position approach one of our series and say what's going on here officers say that at the best of times this is a high stress occupation they understand how attention can get

out of control it's the nature of the job we see people and the worst in vail all up all at the heart of the recession a lot of testing was psychological testing lab testing and i think we have the best people for the job working on the job but obviously so much stress during during every single baby in and day out of the city than there were stolen and there's a possibility that some might say the la police commission has pledged to investigate officer training but at thursday's meeting an overflow crowd was not interested in an academic discussion of policy says said the police chief looked on stoically as the audience yelled for his removal and speaker of the speaker castigated his leadership of the delegates within the los angeles police chief for thirteen years says he has no intention of stepping down and we're joined now by

alison battled police and a police chief delegate steve gates thank you for joining us after all the opinion that has surfaced to the contrary and we just heard some of that in that report are you still convinced that the king beating was an aberration in your floors well i think there's different interpretations of what i meant by aberration i said aberration i ate mainly significant extent of the building so i was talking about the aberration of fear and people are saying well are other instances of excessive force or course there are we have complaints so that we have sustained compliance we have taken action i think someone just indicated that one of the officers there have been yeah we've taken disciplinary action against that off service on a previous occasions so why write about an aberration and i i i just believe that this the intensity of this situation were such that it indeed was an aberration i wonder what you made of the los angeles times poll that said that

two thirds of the people responding said incidents of brutality by your force are common two thirds of the people in los angeles responding said incidents are common what seo was a pivotal time for a poll to be taken some unlikely out of it out of the hills of shooting the wounded to the state had been played over more than people were shot we were devastated by what we can understand the reactions of people to this one tape i think it for a cold out the old eyes of asians in the minds of people and i think that what you see resort in that survey there was a reflection of what the table had been seen on their television sets every single night one of the people who wrote to the times a father gregory are below a pastor of that the law is mission church in boyle heights you said that the tape wasn't a surprise to the poor people and people of color live in his parish because it just looked like a home video to them

about the police brutality that is common and unchecked you said no this is a roman catholic priest writing this in the times like a girl once again this is his heels we've heard from him in the past i can only tell you that this department has a history of taking complaints whenever one when anyone indicates that we have there conductors ourselves improperly matter what that conduct is we take those complaints were investigated thoroughly completely benefactor of those complaints have been going down in the past three years as civil suits against the department have been going down in the last three years those are indicators of what kind of contractors is occurring in the face you heard one of the harem women in that to jeffrey case report saying it's the blacks could get beaten to respond or that the feather that there is a strong racial element and as we know the place so i know that's a signal that i am very young are unhappy that their duty to come up los

angeles is a very diverse city i think the reference to potential racer involvement there is a dangerous kind of reference and i'm hopeful that that will not emerge oh i hope the references are kept to a minimum because i don't think it is counterproductive the world and so i was going to say that there's no question that we do spend a good deal more time in the black community on there is a great deal of crime in that community there's been a great deal of violence my community if you look at the number of homicides in our city or perhaps any city with a significant black population will find that the majority of homicides dr black and so we spend time trying to protect the people trying to do our very best to ferret out the crime we're very aggressive department in attempting to do that that means we're going to contact of many people who have not done anything but we're in korea and do what they have done or what they might give a downbeat

be doing because we have no way of ascertaining whether good or bad people the young the executive director of the american civil liberties union in southern california ramone are reversed and told us that your force has an audiotape of that king incident which you won't release and she says she assumes you will release it because it would reveal racial slurs when to comment on that i don't know what she she's talking about we have provided to the grand jury heard everything that we have i don't know nothing about an audiotape that contains starch nothing at all and everything we haven't we haven't provided the grand jury all that will be available soon i'm sure surged sue is there not your time there is an audiotape of j shatz and it has not been released yet to enter the public not have the public know what was that she will we

simply as part of a year the material was deceptively granger what else are you doing with in your department now to work follow up on this incident over sunday and they say that that this department moved into this thing very quickly i think or commentator indicated that took five days of that not i saw the tape life the first time on tuesday morning of my detectives were knocking on the district raised nor for complaint a criminal complaint can see officers on thursday afternoon us spring fest work we're conducting an internal investigation over charging the officers who were involved in this working every officer who was at the same time they were beginning to do some internal things we're looking at how our entire training structure under what we think we have very good with a real model training program we're going to take it apart piece by piece and with all the excessive force complaints that that we received in trying to correlate are training with those excessive force complaints to see if we somehow missed something that that we should

not want your personal reaction looking at the tape and seeing other officers standing and watching including the supervisor how did you as a policeman over many years feel watching that well as a guy i think that's where i think the word aberration because that to me that's exactly what was i could not believe that any police officer america would involve themselves in a situation like that certainly not any supervisor of any police department but an lapd supervisor lapd officers that is just beyond belief absolutely beyond belief that's when the aberration term average can argue for joining is an eternal journey still to come on the newshour tonight a four way discussion of the issues raised by the los angeles case anger initiates a first assist ludwig on public television we're taking a short break now so your public television station can i ask for your

support that support helps keep programs like this on the air stations not taken a pledge break the newshour continues now with another look at the persian gulf war two weeks ago operation desert storm commander norman schwarzkopf great reporters on the ground war to date was the air force's turned to tell its story the briefer was the air force chief of staff general merrill mcpeak i'm delighted to be here today to tell an american success story a great victory achieved against a strong enemy and with the loss on our part i want to talk for just a few moments about the opening minutes of the air war because they are dramatically influence the outcome of the entire war i don't know where you were on the evening of sixteen january here in washington the early

morning hours of seventeen january in baghdad you're like me are watching today on cnn reporters in the rashid hotel there were out on a balcony reporting a vacancy in a going up in the sky and i was a hacker report the iraqis were saying the same firm as what was really happening are start their craft loans or warcraft which these iraqi radars could not see i jumped off the nature are actually slightly before h hour and blinded the iraqi early warning system by knocking out these radars and then proceeded on into iraq to begin to work on the rest of the strategic targets it was a very heavy attack very precisely delivered and my judgment the iraqi air force never recovered from this opening attack we took the initiative at the beginning and we held it throughout the rest of the war period

this was perhaps the new thing that has the worst this was certainly the poorest weathered forty years in baghdad and kuwait very i say fourteen years because we'll wait wait here for so i have forty years of good climber logical that maybe this is a worst weather in hundred years from all we know was at least twice as bad as predicted and as a consequence we lost a lot of targets especially to the one seventeen were low cloud cover prevent them from acquiring the target and they simply brought the new mission so another factor which you know was different than expected was the amount of effort that we've put on jay z's guns and the way we had to improvise and figure out how to handle the scud problem now we thought from the beginning that we would have to have tax cuts what surprised this was a report about three times the effort that we thought we would on this other job alanna shows him or failure of bomb attacks against other year

iraqi or four spaces in her grandchildren i'm sure because that's such a really dramatic explosion that we know that something unnatural are here we have to break coming out more fans of of that particular shelter and there's another attack with a large secondary coming out the top oh finally got on the ground so we captured some iraqi or feels here's an aircraft children were taking a picture out the side of a helicopter has a shelter much sun damage which recede entry wound on the side there's another shelter of some essential a blown apart this is is that debate over the viewer i want to say a word or joe buck iraqi air force i think they did rather well under the circumstances they're very good outfit they happen to be the second best air force in this fracas

and having a second best air force as like yemen second test program it's often the strategy before i think before ramadi is it conceivable that way or the other well david an easier question well i'll tell you my private convictions of this is the first time has been a field army has been defeated by air power general mike leake also said are in the fourteen day air war coalition forces dropped more than eighty eight thousand five hundred tons of explosives on iraqi targets we continue

our discussion now on police brutality with four different perspectives hubert williams is the former police director of north korea newark new jersey is now president of the police foundation which provides technical support and assistance the police departments across the country paul weiland is an officer with the washington dc metropolitan police department is a twenty year veteran of the force and has served eighteen of those years in the violent northeast section of the district after john conyers democrat michigan is a member of the house judiciary committee and as a representative of the congressional black caucus or does the attorney general of the united states this week to investigate the pattern of police brutality nationwide he joined us from detroit ramona redstone is the executive director of the american civil liberties union of southern california she is in los angeles tonight like to be beginning first with you chief william someone ask you the same question that rahman asked he needs to close the interview a few months ago when you saw this today what was your reaction when you first saw i was stunned shocked

i had never seen anything that like that before and didn't believe that that type of incident with that level of force in that many people of dissipating in standing by could occur in american law enforcement i know the police brutality is a problem that's been a long standing problem with that level of the dissipation something that i didn't think that there was your reaction when you first saw the tape well i was stunned because of the year the maoists and the viciousness of the tape but it came from los angeles and ten years ago my subcommittee held hearings on police brutality and we raised the same questions of how systemic how ingrained it was and so far what i was saying is here we go again you know this is a part of the african american experience in the united states police abuse

is not something new that you haven't started recently has ridged and what did you think when you first all that right my first thought was i'm so glad we have it on tape this time this is not unique it happens over and over again it happens in minority communities and we know that it's been happening over the past few years it here also on as a member as a working police officer three thousand miles away when you saw that they were happy i think that the family and sick or what it was so shocking i was done it was not improving a lot was it chief gates is use the word aberration they use to begin tonight is beyond belief you think it's an aberration based on your experience as a place offering options for mike spencer plays off from washington their place off of always put in a position to respond to violence very quickly and police officers to

respond with a violent to defend themselves but it's supposedly controlled violence as opposed to the minimum force necessary to complete unison first arrest someone that's resisting the minimum force is always what you what we have always been trained to do and to use and that's the way it should work hopefully that's the way it works but in los angeles and the night outside of los angeles and his ribs and you've also been very active in this a nationally is adjust los angeles give me give me what what kind of information can you work and you put on this nationally i think every aclu office receives lots and lots of complaints about police brutality large metropolitan cities where populations are changing where there is a great diversity now among the peoples of a particular community were beginning to find increasing police brutality sensitivity training training by police departments has not kept

up with changing american life and many many police officers certainly not all and certainly i believe there are very very good police officers out there who tried very very hard but in many instances we now find that they lack the sensitivity to handle the kind of people they come into our they say every single day in their police work in the sixties we were a society far more sensitive to racial differences to differences among and between us that sensitivity is now diminishing we now find that racial jokes are ok in the sixties we were willing to tell those kinds of jokes today we find that there is growing racism growing feeling against people of color and it is reflected in what we see on the streets of our major cities julia relented williams i think that she's had a point where his plays have not restraining is

not kept up to the point where we can properly treat a handle culturally diverse communities there's a lot that we need to do and our police departments to improve the way police perform in these communities i think however the problem is the promise is more complicated than that because our society is that increasingly more violent since the sixties week have a lot of guns in the street now big military battlefield type weapons a police officers find themselves with a thirty eight caliber of some cases as nine millimeters up its assault rifles people are very tense and stressed out in this environment in this tension in this pressure affects the way police act and respond they willingness to hesitate how much information they collect come in before they actually make a judgment call to use force but not talking about the la ensign it does use of force in general like using that gun which is a problem so i see the problem is as

is more complex i think that the research just absolutely right there is a tremendous amount that got to do with respect to training but also the environment is changed and we need to get these guns off the streets and we need to reduce the level of violence a hot and talk about the year the and the violent environment in which you were exploited explain it to those well i came on part in nineteen seventy one when they were talking about these he was the crime capital of the world and there was a big push to increase the department in science and over the years things seemed to have gotten better until the beginning of the eighties and then there was this drastic increase in violence and it's to the point now where back when i came on what was supposed to be the worst ever was its it's nothing like it's much for switzerland where he just people have no idea what is going on out there will tell us you have officers and large cities that on a daily basis

are confronting violent people armed very heavily and with an attitude that they do not care that person is going to do something as out of control and you have to respond with control and it's a rollercoaster ride you're constantly respond to high stress instant decision type situations and then afterwards what do you do to relieve yourself and and i think that's where the departments traditionally have missed their opportunity they teach you about what you shouldn't do and what you should do in the academy and then they put you out there there's no preventive stress maintenance program there's nothing there's nothing there's no program out there to get an officer has had problems on the street and they say the problems on the streets all officers are you are emotionally were emotionally dangerous job and down once you're on the academy you're on your own personal health there's one khan is how would you run as an impossible situation but all i have to do it any how to

draw the lines between how much of this is being caused by the more violent situation that exists on the street and an increasing racism or what well that's a question we've been looking at in this way we passed the alarm creating a study that would be now capped by fbi in terms of racially motivated incidents we've also been a falling patterns of police brutality and there is some connection here we know that racial tensions are on the rise in this country but our committees have been looking at severe cases of what i term systemic police brutality in cities like new york los angeles we've been in chicago we were asked to come in at least a half dozen other cities and what i think it makes a very important about this case

is that we now have a a kind of a situation where all the usual alibis and defenses they can use the other the validity of unvarnished brutality won't will not work this time and so we see an opportunity to help defuse a national situation and their meeting with the attorney general the director of the fbi was absolutely critical and causing a national investigation in which we will began to examine these underlying causes in there in addition i call than the general accounting office the investigative arm of the congress and so i think that we are now at a moment in american history and police and law enforcement that we can do something at the national level ought to be is that crisis of confidence that exists now in los angeles and perhaps will be

able to help at the national level about this very awful problem here when jubilee there's a possibility that a good for good could come from this awful thing that happened and also i think that the silver lining in this cadogan is that perhaps for the first time will be able to take a look at this problem the fbi keeps uniform crime statistics because we consider crime to be a serious problem this problem of police brutality goes directly to our democracy the quality of life and our city's the way police do with the public the volatility of our cities we don't have a uniform system of record keeping this information is not readily available as a matter of fact in some of the textbooks internal affairs records other personal property of the police chief that's to eliminate judicial intrusion there needs to be established in our country uniformed recordkeeping system to make certain that the public perception and the perception of the department on insect everyone knows what

the police department hasn't everything is open and above board i think that this may move us in the right direction the police have brought one to be free from these negative perceptions about brutality brutality exists it's clear that doesn't exist at the same degree in some cities some cities it's more that exist sometimes it increased sometimes it decreases but how are we demonstrate what i indicated to show that i'm pleased of what was relatively free of racism of this kind of violent was major much immediately a to do the kind of assessment and study that will provide the data and the information that will ensure everybody that the problem if the problem does occur we will have a record of it it will not be an invisible problem that would not be something depend upon the accident that someone has a video camera going and i think that'll be good for american law enforcement to be good for the community in a bigger far republic i saw you not in his region you agree with that well what i agree with that but i also

want to add that i think the moral tone is set by police chief lester williams was the chief of the very difficult police department difficult in that it was a in a city where there was a great deal of violence i think when more than a dozen officers can stand by and watch a man being brutally beaten those offices knew that they thought they could get away with it the tone is set by the leader of a department so that one of the things that we need to have our leaders of police departments or sensitive to diversity who will set examples by saying the right things are police chief in los angeles has a history of brutal and insensitive remarks and i think that that sends a message to the police officers in his department is that true or sirloin or not the los angles case but do you feel that you get the message from on high as to how useful to conduct yourself toward the people you deal with all our heart i certainly agree on any organization any institution when you come in as a new officer

you have your if you have no opinions on a lot of things and the organizations have formed those opinions and and you're going to fit into that organization in that manner i believe that police officers in general are brutal and go look for the job if they beat if if you have a brutal police officer there you have to have something in that will take care of that mean you know there may be lots of reasons why an officer would do something like this are factors that that they would never excused conduct like that that's not where officers out there for he avoided what you think about that region's point that that it tones up on the top boneless ribs is intimately involved with her community channeling it so generally let let me i fixed expects extricate myself from the situation until conceptually with the issues that she's raising the police chief does set the tone and tenor of the police department that can deal with effective leadership lack of corruption

official department could utilization of public funds and sensitivity to the community and community can turns out the chief does do all those things it is not solely determine outcomes but he imports them no egg carton conyers share your committee's work with dead verify that as well not necessarily about los angeles but just in general least you can have a lot to say about her the way his officers conduct themselves what we think that they are systemic character of police violence the amount of it in a geographical area is always influenced by that the person at the top of the pop up though this is a quasar military institution and we find that there is normally etcheverry close relationship between the attitude of the police chief and a kind of combat that to get out on the streets i know those robes and almond thank you

aha aha it is the end of the week and that means girdle and she helps charity workers in washington has more julie bergan and shales means of course david gergen editor at large of us news and world report news in los angeles tonight mr shales syndicated columnist with the washington post mark one of the political and look at how big a political issue as this whole police brutality matter that we've been dishonest and i think ryan's enormous issue and i think that's true nope no doubt about it but the los angeles case has just captured the public attention now is any question that anybody who acts as an apologist for what that tape shows dozen dramas disservice to that thousands of dedicated american police officers men and women who every day face an enormously difficult and

dangerous task of dealing with the violence in our society degas has ed is represented and reflected to be winning a lot of the fact that for five americans are concerned about going out of their own homes in their own neighborhoods at night so crime is now this is a politically it's a question of looking at the federal government finance it was people's answers ten more police on the street and i can't seem to get the criminals on the street in historic and crucially they have not looked at the realm of that answer but historically traditionally politicians and washington have tried to scratch that that that the mosquito bite of the public is saying is mostly a local and they had question marks on crime widespread fear among whites and so forth but among many blocks but it also points to a larger question that we don't want to talk about were much less corrupt country on the problem of race class the what we see here in los angeles i've been here for a few days and they're

among blacks there is a widespread perception that the police of the excessive use of force not only in this from mccain answered but not many others among whites there's a growing fear of gangs of minority gangs this is a city which is a harbinger of the future in sicily work there's some money that ninety five languages being spoken that the minorities which is increasing made up of minorities in a question about bringing harmony among races minorities is his business show that almost transcends crime and what about the points in march raised about the federal role in all of this i mean is this something that we've that has left primarily to the state level of the local level and in the federal government comes in much much further back well i think justice it sets the moral tone and i am a police department i think the president and the federal government's mr confirmation even though they don't force all the laws so the question of how the fed or the federal government to pursue as a crime what sort of the

rules except for instance on the exclusionary rule that regard in the fourth amendment and quite important as as guideposts for state local law enforcement we have now the president put forth of course crime bill this week in itself by baidoa to many people it's a good deal because it's tougher but i think we have to remember what happened with the federal prison system in the last few years in nineteen eighty one we had twenty five thousand people in federal prisons today we have the some sixty thousand people in federal prisons in the projections by the federal government are going to have a hundred and fifty thousand by nineteen ninety five putting more more people in prison all across the country doesn't seem to solve the crime problem like what about that kind of a president charts the congress has said we we had won this war in a hundred days can you win that can you do something about this crime bill on other legislation in in a hundred political juliet i think the crime positions of the two parties and george bush's is traditionally republicans regard the vast majority of americans favor the death penalty a vast majority of

americans favor gun control and so in each party seemed to do it emphasized that part of the political agenda which it supports the republicans choose today to work talk about the death penalty enlarging it and forcing it i haven't the democrats say no let's let's instead talk about gun control republicans don't wanna talk about gun control democrats don't want talk about the death penalty and i say with this seems to be the kind of a more let's switch no subject that it probably was a political purely political event of the weekend that was the decision of the republican and democratic governor of louisiana buddy roemer switched to the republican party david house aide how big a deal is this well the republicans are just like courted buddy roemer that he has been a conservative manner especially was in the congress he was a local boat we really ought to run a reagan there in the early nineteen eighties and he had been at a party at a republican for a long time to remember the part of the president there personally lobbied him and talked to a lot of ugliness of republicans on this is because as of as a big swiss possibly a little

i have to say it my own reading of that is that this has a lot more to do with them local issues and the kind of race he felt he was going to have to run if he remained a democratic senate might well lose and his run for reelection at the right move over the republicans in the field would be better for many them about a shot so i think it's a well republicans are jubilant about i would caution against re election and for national implications market has been there as a proxy of what our closer view i think that their buddy roemer as its conversion jimmy hayes a democrat louisiana gossamer dreams just a crack for the festival is i think it's a bigger significance and david this really i think is the biggest victory domestic political fight for george bush from the persian gulf a buddy roemer waited until word the results were in from that an enormous victory the popularity of george bush in louisiana's public criticism in his day he was coming up for the year and to the oval office to the rose garden this coming tuesday out with his sick children had to be welcome in about a

private prison so i think it i think it is significantly david's right that the local factories of pain and buddy roemer did run in nineteen eighty seven as a young as a pro life and i'd democrat who was opposes day watering will seek reelection ninety anyone as a pro choice republican support the existing state lottery so he's a flexible your leader it's emitted by rumors a sweatshirt is not the necessary else's are the beginning of something some way that there has been a trend to send in the last two years of that was as bush was in office a biblically when lee atwater i was healthy and and run in the republican national committee there were a lot of the democrats at the state legislative level who are switching over in the south and south is looking at more and more republican territory and he is in an unfairness to by romans is an interesting fellow at me and he said he

was in the i was he was a boll weevil david wright is also the game probably the most impassioned speech on the house floor and to remake of martin luther king's birthday a federal holiday it is pro sanctions is pro affirmative action is poachers he's not because of the usual republican profile the city's nobody accepted as great republican party on affirmative action in the lives of women in the arts bs and say what was the other republicans eyed sentiment thank you david aired in march ailes thank you both again the main stories of this friday us troops re occupy positions deep interact joint chiefs chairman collin powell said there was no special significance to the redeployment it said the troops were moving only to demonstrate us presence in iraq soviet president gorbachev said saddam hussein's faith should be in the hands of the iraqi people in this country sharply lower energy costs and wholesale prices down for the star the third straight month and urgent and

robin was say on monday night with the new secretary of education lamar alexander and others for a look at whether the desert storm approached and saw the education problems in this country and a nice weekend on jim lehrer thank you and not funding for the newshour has been provided by at and t at and to connect and equipment working on computers to communications at and t the right choice and by pepsico and made possible by the financial support of viewers like you and the corporation for public broadcasting many thanks video cassettes of the

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