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Clinton to Speak at N.A.A.C.P. Conference in Ohio as G.O.P. Convention Begins ‘Madness Has to Stop,’ Hillary Clinton Declares at N.A.A.C.P. Conference
(about 1 hour later)
Hillary Clinton will not be letting the Republican Party have Ohio all to itself this week. CINCINNATI — Responding to the killings of police in Baton Rouge, La., and Dallas and the recent deaths of two black men at the hands of law enforcement, Hillary Clinton on Monday offered a blunt declaration: “This madness has to stop.”
As the Republican convention to nominate Donald J. Trump gets underway in Cleveland, Mrs. Clinton will address black leaders at the annual N.A.A.C.P. conference across the state in Cincinnati on Monday morning, and she will attend an organizing event with volunteers in the afternoon. “Watching the news from Baton Rouge yesterday, my heart broke,” Mrs. Clinton said at the annual convention for the N.A.A.C.P. “Not just for those officers and their grieving families, but for all of us.”
The N.A.A.C.P. also invited Mr. Trump to address its annual conference, which major candidates from both parties have used in previous years as an influential setting to speak to black constituents, but it said that the presumptive Republican nominee had declined. Making her own appearance in Ohio as the Republican convention began in Cleveland, Mrs. Clinton condemned the killings of police officers while also pressing law enforcement to make reforms.
Mrs. Clinton relied heavily on the support of black voters to defeat Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont in the Democratic primaries, and, until recent news events, it remained an open question how much Mrs. Clinton would emphasize race relations and an overhaul of the criminal justice system in a general election. “We have difficult, painful, essential work ahead of us to repair the bonds between our police and our communities, and between and among each other,” Mrs. Clinton said.
But after the shootings of several black men by police officers and an ambush in Dallas that left five police officers dead, Mrs. Clinton has spoken at length about her vow to work to end “systemic racism” and to better integrate police forces into the communities in which they serve. Several African-American women whose children died while in police custody and whom the Clinton campaign has named “mothers of the movement” will speak at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia next week. Mrs. Clinton’s remarks came at a fraught time, following a string of deaths of black people after encounters with the police, and after the killings of police officers in Dallas and, on Sunday, in Baton Rouge, La.
In her speech on Monday, Mrs. Clinton is expected to build on her previous calls, including imploring white Americans to have more empathy for African-Americans who fear encounters with the police. Responding to those events on Monday, Mrs. Clinton said that “anyone who kills a police officer and anyone who helps must be held accountable.”
The event is intended as an implicit contrast to Mr. Trump, whom black voters have largely rejected, according to recent polls, and whom Mrs. Clinton has accused of stoking racial tensions. “As president, I will bring the full weight of the law to bear in making sure those who kill police officers are brought to justice,” she said. “There can be no justification, no looking the other way.”
“This man is the nominee of the party of Lincoln,” Mrs. Clinton said in Springfield, Ill., last week. “We are watching it become the party of Trump. And that’s not just a huge loss for our democracy — it’s a threat to it.” At the same time, Mrs. Clinton said, the recent deaths of black men at the hands of police in Louisiana and Minnesota “drove home how urgently we need to make reforms to policing and criminal justice.”
But message alone will not win Mrs. Clinton the state of Ohio, and in addition to speaking at the conference, she will meet with volunteers and encourage get-out-the-vote efforts across the state. Her campaign has invested heavily in Ohio, where early voting starts in September and where Mr. Trump lags in establishing an organization. “There is, as you know so well, another hard truth at the heart of this complex matter: Many African-Americans fear the police,” she said.
Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump are tied at 39 percent in Ohio, according to an NBC News poll. In March, Mrs. Clinton held a six-percentage-point lead over Mr. Trump in the state. Donald J. Trump declined an invitation to appear at the convention, according to the N.A.A.C.P. Mr. Trump has emphasized his support for law enforcement, and has said he wants to impose the death penalty on anyone who kills a police officer. On Sunday he posted messages on Facebook decrying the Baton Rouge shootings and saying, “Our country is a divided crime scene, and it will only get worse!”
Law enforcement’s relationship with the black community was the focus of Mrs. Clinton’s first major policy speech of her campaign last April. She called for an overhaul of an “out-of-balance” criminal justice system that disproportionately targeted African-American communities.
As the nation confronted scenes of protests in Baltimore after the death of Freddie Gray, who died from injuries he suffered in police custody, Mrs. Clinton named several other black men killed at the hands of white police officers and declared “a time for honesty about race and justice in America.”
That time has only become more urgent.
Mrs. Clinton’s calls to limit prison sentences for low-level drug offenders and better incorporate police officers into the communities resonated in a Democratic primary in which she relied heavily on African-American voters to defeat Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
But the recent shootings of two black men, Alton B. Sterling in Baton Rouge and Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minn., and the ambushes that left five police officers dead in Dallas and three in Baton Rouge have thrust policing and the criminal justice system into the general election.
The Democratic National Convention next week in Philadelphia will include remarks by several African-American mothers who have lost children to gun violence or in clashes with the police and who have campaigned across the country on behalf of Mrs. Clinton.
The issue is a complex one for Mrs. Clinton. Many criminal justice experts view her pledge to tackle “systemic racism” in the criminal justice system and prioritize ending “the era of mass incarceration” as a repudiation of policies on policing and prison building associated with her husband’s administration and the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act.
Back then, crime was a major concern in many American cities, and Democrats were still scarred by the 1988 presidential campaign, when the elder George Bush defeated Michael Dukakis after the Willie Horton ad depicted Mr. Dukakis as soft on violent crime.
The 1994 law created stricter penalties for drug offenders and devoted billions of dollars to putting more police officers on the street and building new prisons. From 1990 to 2014, the adult prison population nearly doubled to roughly 2.2 million prisoners.
Speaking at the N.A.A.C.P. conference last year, former President Bill Clinton disavowed part of the anti-crime legislation he had once considered a top accomplishment. “I signed a bill that made the problem worse,” Mr. Clinton said, referring to the many black men in prison for nonviolent drug offenses. “And I want to admit that.”