President Obama on Ferguson decision: ‘Keep protests peaceful’

November 24

President Barack Obama boards Air Force One for departure from McCarran International Airport Sunday. (Isaac Brekken/Associated Press)

In an interview conducted by ABC News chief anchor George Stephanopoulos that aired Sunday, President Barack Obama called for peaceful protests in Ferguson and for restraint by police officers there after a decision is announced. He was careful to express concern about both protesters and law enforcement officials. But he did says that the country needs to do “a better job of training our law enforcement to be sensitive to the concerns of minority communities.”

Below are excerpts from the interview transcript:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let’s talk about Ferguson. Everyone’s waiting for the grand jury to hear, what the final word from the grand jury is. Your FBI has warned about possible violence in the wake of that decision. What is your message to the people of Ferguson and others who are looking to protest?

OBAMA: Well I think, first and foremost, keep protests peaceful. You know, this is a country that allows everybody to express their views. Allows them to peacefully assemble to protest actions that they think are unjust but using any event as an excuse for violence is contrary to rule of law and contrary to who we are. You know, part of what I have asked Eric Holder to do is to not just engage with the folks in Ferguson, but to engage nationally in a conversation between law enforcement and communities of color that often times feel as if they not being treated fairly by law enforcement officials. Sometimes their concerns are justified, sometimes they’re not justified. Law enforcement has a very tough job. But what is clear is that that lack of trust between communities and law enforcement crops up not just in Ferguson but in places all across the country–

STEPHANOPOULOS: Are you worried here?

OBAMA: You know, we saw during the summer the possibility of even overwhelmingly peaceful crowds being overrun by a few thugs who might be looking for an excuse to loot or to commit vandalism. What I’ve done is called Jay Nixon, the Governor of Missouri, to make sure that he has a plan to respond in a careful and appropriate way to any potential violence. To be able to sort out the vast majority of peaceful protesters from the handful who are not.

OBAMA: But – over the — in the end, what I have confidence in is that if we do a better job of training our law enforcement to be sensitive to the concerns of minority communities, then over time trust can be built in part because minority communities typically are subject to more crime. They need law enforcement more than anybody and there are a lot of communities in my hometown of Chicago, for example, who want to actually see more police in but they want to make sure the police are trained so they can distinguish between a gangbanger and a kid who just happens to be wearing a hoodie but just otherwise is a good kid and not doing anything wrong.

The White House said Friday that it is encouraging Ferguson protesters to express their views peacefully following Monday night's expected announcement of the grand jury decision on whether to indict officer Darren Wilson. (Reuters)

STEPHANOPOULOS: One of your heroes, John Lewis, has suggested that if there’s no indictment in this case, it would be a miscarriage of justice, and another turning point like Selma. Do you agree with that?

OBAMA: You know, I love John, I didn’t see the quote, so I don’t want to comment on what John specifically said. But I will say this – that the kinds of ongoing problems we have with police and communities of color around the country are not of the sort that we saw in Selma. We’re not talking about systematic segregation or discrimination. They are solvable problems if in fact law enforcement officials are open to the kind of training and best practices that we’ve seen instituted in lot of parts of the country.

OBAMA: One of the things I was proudest of when I was in the state legislature, way back when I was in Illinois, in Springfield, was to pass both a racial profiling law and a law governing police interrogations. And in each case I worked with the police, and – both state police and local police organizations, and what they found was that they actually ended up doing better police work, had more trust, you started seeing a reduction in complaints about the behavior of the law enforcement. So we know how to do this, but there’s got to be a commitment on the part of law enforcement to do it. And the community has to then give law enforcement that’s operating in good faith a chance to improve its practices.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Do you think it would make sense for you to go to Ferguson after this decision?

OBAMA: You know, I’m going to wait and see how – how the response comes about. But what does makes sense is for not just me but my entire administration to work with willing partners at the state and local level to see how we can address some of these systematic issues.

STEPHANOPOULOS: What about the broader issues of race? I was struck by a poll I saw recently that said since 2009 the number of African Americans who think that race relations are getting better has actually gone down.

OBAMA: Well, you know, we go in sort of ebbs and flows. I think that my own experience tells me that race relations continue to improve. If you think about just in our lifetimes – we’re about the same age – where we’ve traveled, there’s no way to say that somehow race relations are worse now than they were 10 years ago, 20 years ago, or 50 years ago. Part of what happens is that they get a lot more attention today – occasionally problems that used to be pretty common 20, 30 years ago weren’t videotaped…

STEPHANOPOULOS: …everybody knows it instantly…

OBAMA: Now, you know, somebody’s got a camera and people see it and, you know…

STEPHANOPOULOS: It could be a good thing sometimes…

OBAMA: …which is a good thing. I mean, a good thing in the sense that it lays bare – and I’ve said this before as an African American male, there have been times where I have experienced discrimination as a young man – it’s been a while since it happened – and, you know, I think that folks on the other side of it might not understand why there are concerns or mistrust. Not because they’re in denial, just they haven’t experienced it. And so when people start seeing these instances, then they start saying “okay, maybe we understand what we’re talking about.”

OBAMA: But, it’s important not to overreact either. Or to suggest somehow that we haven’t made progress. One of the things that I think the presidency drives home is – in a democracy, progress is incremental. You know, and it goes in stutter-steps and sometimes there is some backsliding. But the overall trajectory I think is positive.

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