President Barack Obama says that “there were times where I didn’t” deserve to get pulled over by the police.
Obama, appearing at the International Association of Chiefs of Police’s annual conference in Chicago Tuesday argued, “most of the time I got a ticket, I deserved it. I knew why I was pulled over but there were times where I didn’t.”
“And as a report that came out just this week reminded us,” suggested Obama, “there are a lot of African-Americans not just me who have that same kind of story of being pulled over or frisked or something and the data shows that this is not an aberration.”
“It doesn’t mean each case is a problem,” claimed Obama. “It means that when you aggregate the cases and you look at it, you have to say there’s some racial bias in the system. Now, problems of racial justice or injustice have been running themes throughout this country’s history in every institution.”
“In every institution and by the way, bias and stereotypes oftentimes go both ways. So eliminating bias is not something that falls on the police alone. The good news is our divides are not as deep as some would like to suggest. I will tell you. I don’t know anybody in the minority community that does not want strong, effective law enforcement.”