9:00 AM EST

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary

(Seoul, Republic of Korea)

Embargoed Until 9:00 AM EST Sunday, November 22, 1998

STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT

The 1997 Uniform Crime Report released by the FBI today shows that

murder, rape, robbery, assault, and even juvenile crime fell across the

board last year. Serious crime has now fallen for six years in a row.

With the murder rate down by more than 25 percent since I took office, and

now at its lowest level in three decades, Americans are safer today than

they have been in many years. Our strategy of putting more police on the

beat and getting guns off the street is working. Americans have taken back

their neighborhoods, and shown that rising crime and deadly violence need

not be tolerated. But in far too many communities, crime remains a serious

problem, and our work is far from done. We must continue the job of

putting 100,000 more police on our streets, tougher laws on our books, and

more effective crime prevention in our schools. With these efforts, we can

keep driving down the crime rates -- and keep tipping the scales of justice

in favor of law-abiding Americans.

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