Police Chief Organization Seeks Crime Commission

IACP Urges McCain, Obama To Appoint Crime Panel
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The International Association of Chiefs of Police, saying that someone in the U.S.
is the victim of a violent crime every 22 seconds, today called on the next president
to create during his first 100 days in office a national commission on criminal justice
and homeland security.

IACP urged presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama to discuss
the crime issue during the campaign. The commission, the first of its kind since 1965,
would conduct a comprehensive review of the criminal justice system, and would be
required to provide the nation with a strategic plan to guide public safety and
homeland security efforts in the years ahead.

The commission, and other recommendations, is outlined in a new IACP report,
"To Protect and Defend: The Public Safety and Homeland Security Challenges Facing the Next President."

"Our nation's homeland security focus must be redirected to America's hometowns
and neighborhoods," said Ronal Serpas, Nashville police chief and co-chair of IACP's
Research Advisory Committee. "President Johnson's 1965 Commission on Law Enforcement
and Administration of Justice brought us new ways of measuring crime,
an emphasis on research needed to combat crime in a free society, and
evidence of what crime prevention and control programs worked,"
said criminologist Charles Wellford of the University of Maryland.

"A new commission would do all of this and, given the research base
we now have to work with, establish a firmer foundation for confronting
crime and terrorism in the 21st Century."