Marc Morial

And I felt like we had to create a movement atmosphere.

You know, a movement atmosphere to get people active and involved.

And we tackled the, you know, the violence problem is what compelled me to run for office.

We were having, you know, we had 450 murders, something of that sort.

1993, 1994, we had a corrupt and ineffective police department.

And I drove around driving past some playgrounds.

broken bottles, broken basketball goals.

I said, this is not going to sustain.

This is not how it should be.

And it really, in almost a fit of just passion, I said, I'm going to do something about all of this.

And so I embraced a strategy to deal with violence that was multifaceted.

You know, in those days, people would get in these long debates.

Oh, you know,

We need more police.

No, we need more social programs.

We need more this.

I said, you know, we're going to have more of all, right?

But we're going to fix this police department, and ultimately we're going to need some more policemen.

But we're going to have a different quality of officer.

We're going to have a different set of standards.