President Obama made his case on Tuesday for an overhaul of the nation’s sentencing laws, telling a gathering of top law enforcement officials here that putting large numbers of nonviolent drug offenders in prison was neither fair nor an effective way of combating crime.
While insisting that he did not harbor a “bleeding-heart attitude toward crime and justice,” Mr. Obama said the country should face up to the fact that policing priorities needed to shift away from locking up millions of nonviolent drug offenders — especially young black and Latino men.
“That’s not a sustainable situation,” Mr. Obama said. “It is possible for us to come up with strategies that effectively reduce the damage of the drug trade without relying solely on incarceration.”
Seizing on an issue that has attracted rare support from conservatives and liberals in Washington, Mr. Obama is hoping to keep the pressure on Congress, which is already working on legislation that would turn back parts of the tough-on-crime approach of the 1980s and ’90s.
“I am encouraged by what Congress is doing,” Mr. Obama told members of the International Association of Chiefs of Police. “I hope they get a bill to my desk so that I can sign it.”
Mr. Obama told the officers that everyone must confront the tensions that exist in some communities between minorities and the police, tensions, he said, that grow out of a long history in America.
“It’s not something that any individual person here is responsible for, but we all have a responsibility to do something about,” Mr. Obama said.
The president is also seeking to shift the conversation about policing and racial bias away from charges of police abuse to a larger discussion about ways to improve the fairness and effectiveness of the criminal justice system.
The president addressed the convention in his hometown, Chicago, which has struggled in recent months with a sharp rise in murders and other violent crimes. That increase has come as a series of shootings of unarmed black men by police officers across the country has contributed to increasing mistrust between African-Americans and the police.
Taking note of the city’s high murder rate, Mr. Obama also renewed his call for gun control measures, though he did not announce any new proposals to limit gun purchases.
The president received a warm response from the law enforcement officials in the crowd, many of whom have said that more robust gun control measures would help keep police officers safe. On Monday, many police leaders at the conference called on Congress to pass universal background checks for firearm purposes, one of many proposals that failed to pass after the mass school shooting in Newtown, Conn.
“It’s too easy for criminals to buy guns, and that makes your already dangerous job far more dangerous than it should be,” Mr. Obama said. “And it makes the communities so fearful that it’s harder for them to be a good partner for you.”
In appearing before the law enforcement crowd, Mr. Obama praised officers for repeatedly risking their lives to make communities safe around the country.“Every day, you risk your lives so that the rest of us don’t have to,” Mr. Obama said, citing the case of a New York City police officer who was shot and killed last week in the line of duty. “You serve and protect to provide the security that so many Americans take for granted.”
The president said he rejected “any narrative that seeks to divide police and the communities that they serve.”
“I reject a story line that says, when it comes to public safety, there’s an ‘us’ and a ‘them,’ ” he said. He added that he would continue to work hard as president to “make sure that the work being done by law enforcement is appreciated and supported.”
Mr. Obama’s speech came the day after the White House publicly disagreed with the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, over his suggestion that violent crime was on the rise in response to increased scrutiny of the police. Mr. Comey said that officers had curtailed their policing efforts for fear they would be caught on video and subject to criticism. He also questioned the term “mass incarceration” that has been used by the Obama administration to characterize the arrests of thousands of minorities for nonviolent drug offenses in the 1980s and ’90s.
Mr. Obama largely stayed away from those issues and focused instead on matters on which many of the thousands of police officers in the room agreed.
Though many chiefs are afraid of the consequences of releasing offenders from prison — particularly with limited job support, drug treatment or social services — there is a growing consensus among many in policing that police officers and courts are called on too often to address problems that society leaves unaddressed.
“If we only focus on the police, we are only going to be partially satisfied with the improvements of the criminal justice system,” Will Johnson, the police chief in Arlington, Tex., said in a forum before the president spoke. Chief Johnson noted, to huge applause, that the government was quick to pay for body cameras for officers, but not drug or mental health treatment.
