President Joe Biden on Tuesday recalled being a lifeguard in rough neighborhoods in Wilmington, Delaware.
“There’s a place where I was the only white guy that worked as a lifeguard down in that area, on the East side,” Biden said, referring to his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware.
The president recalled he used to spend time with his now deceased son Beau Biden, who was the attorney general at the time, in the area called “the bucket,” referring to an old public housing project that was a haven for drug dealers, prostitutes, and vandals.
“And you know, you could always tell where the best basketball in the state is, or the best basketball in the city is, it’s where everybody shows up,” Biden said.
Biden recalled his son would get upset when he saw police officers sitting in their cars instead of walking the streets and meeting people. He said:
When my son was the attorney general, he’d go around in the tougher neighborhoods and he would ensure that every single cop gave his cell phone number to the local liquor store, the local church, the local grocery store, the local hamburger joint, so that if there’s a problem they would pick up the phone and call.
Biden said he once visited an old Victorian-style apartment building where a woman told him about people living beneath her plotting gang activity.
He said that he made sure she had the phone number of a local police officer.
“She’d call, they’d promise not to identify her, because they knew there would be retribution, and the crime rate began to drop for real. Not a joke,” Biden said.
Biden sometimes refers to the tough neighborhood where he spent time as a lifeguard, including a bizarre 2017 speech about facing off with a local gangster known as “Corn Pop.”
“Corn Pop was a bad dude, and he ran a bunch of bad boys. Back in those days, to show how things have changed … if you used pomade in your hair, you had to wear a bathing cap,” Biden said.