Who's really working to reverse the murder epidemic in Philadelphia?
Aug. 06, 2021
Want to know if a metropolis government is failing? There are usually three flashing carmine indicators. The first is when it'south not able to see the daily basic needs of its citizenry, like reliably picking up the trash. The second is when murder and mayhem reign and urban center leaders tin can no longer make the streets condom for its citizens.
And the 3rd is when, in the face of those two daunting weather, it seems similar city leaders have effectively thrown in the towel. Oh, they however show up for piece of work and become through the motions, but rather than engage in action and experimentation, you get a whole lot of defensiveness and shoulder-shrugging. Resignation, rather than passion.
Welcome to this very moment in Philadelphia, folks. Yesterday, I tuned into the mayor's once-every-ii-weeks printing conference on the scourge of gun violence and came abroad… less than confident that in that location'due south an all-hands-on-deck sense of urgency at play.
MORE ON REDUCING GUN VIOLENCE IN PHILADELPHIA
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- Councilmember Curtis Jones calls for a gun violence "Marshall Plan"
- Why won't Mayor Kenney enact city leaders' plans for ending gun violence?
- Is Council's $100 1000000 plan a existent solution to gun violence?
- Would better policing reduce gun violence?
Allow's review yesterday's performance. Nosotros heard the mayor read a statement in a robotic monotone updating how $22 million volition be dispersed to anti-violence community partners in the next month that provide "trauma services, mental well-beingness support services, and services to help those at-risk maintain and keep a chore."
And then we heard Erica Atwood, the city's manager of Criminal Justice and Public Safety, who, channeling Bobby McFerrin ("Don't worry, be happy"), said her update would exist "elevating assets over deficits." She went on to introduce us to Dope Prove Concerts, which brought rapper Lil Durk to town, and is offering internships in event production to at-hazard youth. We met Atwood's CJPS "Brand Ambassadors" and heard near efforts to mentor and go on engaged young Philadelphians.
I'm non saying that the tactics and programs the mayor and Atwood outlined are unproductive—though it's hard to tell when goals, timetables and meaningful commitments to public accountability are barely mentioned. Just allow'south assume for the moment that none of the investments Kenney and Atwood outlined will go to waste. The fact remains: It was now sixteen minutes into a press briefing during a gun violence crisis, and none of what we'd heard was probable to relieve a shooting victim'due south life tomorrow.
Nor did the subsequent presentation from Police force Commissioner Danielle Outlaw and her staff stir a lot of confidence. Outlaw noted that homicides are currently upwards 26 per centum over last year, before noting that they were up "40 percent a few months ago." This, according to Outlaw and her lieutenant, is skilful news—"a downward tendency."
"Philadelphia is lawless right now," Thomas said. "There's this perception that you lot tin practice annihilation you desire and go away with it. When a one-year-erstwhile is getting shot, something has to happen. Stuff has to be shut down."
Not exactly a call to arms, so to speak, is it? More than similar spin. The fact is that murder has been rising in Philadelphia for all six years of Jim Kenney's mayoralty. When he took office, the urban center had posted its everyman murder rate in 60 years. It has increased a whopping 78 percent since and so, including jumps of 13.7 percent in 2022 and 12 per centum in 2018, as well as a 40 percent surge last twelvemonth.
So excuse me for doubting that a drop from 40 percentage more than dead Black and brown bodies to 25 percent more dead Black and chocolate-brown bodies qualifies every bit progress.
If government isn't approaching this crisis with the blitz of adrenaline our moment calls for, who is? Well, I found at least 3 examples.
"We will stop you if you make u.s.a.."
Kickoff, it'due south non true that all cities are suffering through an avalanche of killings. We've written well-nigh how, through smart, collaborative public safety, Newark and Camden have greatly reduced shootings and homicides. And in the metropolis of Chester, in one case a hotbed for gang activity and criminal offence, homicides are downward by 63 percent this yr.
Nosotros've written ofttimes nigh the smart, community-oriented, carrot-and-stick approach that has worked in all of these towns, merely the other affair they all have in common is a style of leadership that treats gun violence like the existential threat it is. In Delco, District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer—a reformer who likewise incarcerates those who need to be off our streets —told the Inquirer, "We told them, We know who you lot run with. We know your groups. You can't have grouping shootouts anymore. We will help you lot if yous ask us, but we will stop you lot if you lot make us."
That's the blazon of message no leader in Philadelphia is willing to so directly convey—non the mayor, not the police commissioner, and not the district attorney, who doesn't fifty-fifty bother to nourish these updates but doesn't hesitate to criticize law enforcement, every bit though he were a pundit and not role of the team charged with keeping the peace.
Remember Mike Chitwood Sr., the most busy cop in Philadelphia history and, near recently the police chief in Upper Darby? He was an unlikely reformer, also, but it didn't finish him from making an example of those who violently violate the social contract. He'd inundate the airwaves with his signature slogan: Non in My Town, Scumbag.
Excuse me for doubting that a drop from 40 percent more expressionless Black and brown bodies to 25 percent more dead Black and brown bodies qualifies as progress.
At yesterday's press conference, in stark contrast, Mayor Kenney extended his heartfelt condolences to those defenseless upward in our swirl of violence and commented on how sad information technology all is. We don't need our leader to exist sad. We demand him to exist pissed that a modest grouping of anti-social assholes are belongings his streets earnest and decimating Black and brownish communities.
Isaiah Thomas does seem pissed
Urban center Councilman Isaiah Thomas does seem pissed. Two weeks ago, at a press briefing at 51st and Haverford, where a 1-yr-old was shot, he deviated from the script of his colleagues and suggested that what we need goes across funding mentoring and trauma treatment programs. "Philadelphia is lawless correct at present," he said. "There's this perception that yous tin can do anything you want and get away with it. When a one-twelvemonth-quondam is getting shot, something has to happen. Stuff has to be close down."
I caught upwardly with Thomas earlier this week. He'southward yet a basketball game coach at Sankofa Freedom Academy, a higher prep charter schoolhouse, where 78 percent of the student body is below the poverty line. "One of my kids just witnessed somebody getting shot," Thomas told me. "He'due south a big teddy bear of a kid. Does everything right. Now his mom is looking to leave Philly with him. I'm talking to her about seeing if he can stay with me and my married woman. We've got so many traumatized kids right at present and I'm simply not seeing the urgency to help them and to save them."
As proof of the administration's tendency to comprehend a failing status quo, Thomas tells me there's another, less talked almost virus in our midst: Unanswered calls to 911. There was, tellingly, no mention of this during the mayor's press conference. "Information technology happens all the time, and that's where that perception of lawlessness starts," Thomas says. "Information technology'due south happened to me. Rings and rings and rings. Anxiety is already loftier when you're calling 911. When no 1 picks up, you feel like yous accept to take the police into your own hands."
Final year, during the protests after George Floyd's murder, Thomas witnessed looting and dialed 911 to no avail. So he ran to a police station and told a sergeant that stores were beingness burned down two blocks away. "Nothing we tin do virtually that," he says he was told.
"I'1000 talking to police and elected leaders in Camden and other cities all the fourth dimension, looking into what works," Thomas says. Only the best policies in the world are doomed to neglect if they're implemented past a beaten-down, shoulder-shrugging, status quo-embracing civilization that seems allergic to adopting a can-do mental attitude.
Terminal calendar week, State Rep. Kevin Boyle tweeted—and promptly deleted—an odd assault on Thomas, whose "driving equality" bill proposal was recently praised past Usa Today. It would keep constabulary from pulling over motor vehicles for violations like having a broken tailgate, oft a pretense for stopping Black drivers. Thomas has some feel in this, having been pulled over roughly twenty times under false or questionable pretenses.
"Information technology'southward a rite of passage for a Black homo," Thomas says. "You always have to be witting of the blazon of motorcar you drive, the type of neighborhood you lot're in, the blazon of center contact you make with an officer. Now, I've never been arrested or suffered significant harm, though the fashion they search yous is the equivalent of soft rape, all in your individual parts. It wasn't until I was 19 or 20 that I realized this isn't what anybody goes through. Then I've got lived experience on top of the data."
Despite that, Boyle, a one-time political ally, attacked Thomas: "In a city with a murder charge per unit so out of control he'southward literally championing efforts to further restrict policing…Total fraud!"
"When I talk about making our schools better, no one says, You're anti-instructor, or anti-child," Thomas says. "When an institution doesn't work to the do good of anybody, y'all accept to try and make it better. You lot can't expect at the videos and lawsuits of the last year and say our criminal justice system is perfect."
Thomas took the high road in response, but the bigger picture nonetheless resonates. His driving equality legislation is non anti-constabulary; in fact, he'due south worked behind the scenes since first introducing the pecker terminal fall to get support for it from the police as well as the Public Defender's Office.
"When I talk nigh making our schools better, no one says, Y'all're anti-teacher, or anti-child," Thomas says. "When an institution doesn't work to the benefit of everyone, you accept to endeavor and go far better. You can't look at the videos and lawsuits of the concluding year and say our criminal justice system is perfect."
Thomas, at least, is trying. Only it's a fine line he walks. His driving equality bill, opposite to Boyle's knee-wiggle reaction, is a common-sense reform. But when he talks about consequences for gun violence, he runs the risk of deviating from the social justice warrior script and being wrongly accused of favoring mass incarceration. Yes, we've locked up way too many low-level, non-fierce offenders. But there are some folks who should confront the threat of incarceration, for all of our sakes'.
Looking at gun violence through a business lens
Thomas' colleague in City Council, Allan Domb, shares Thomas' sense of urgency, fifty-fifty though information technology's unlikely that the Condo King has been pulled over in Rittenhouse Square for not having hubcaps on his souped-up ride. But his point of entry on the issue of gun violence comes right from his background as a successful businessman.
Domb has seen the steady stream of funding devoted to anti-violence programs these many years and has wondered simply what we accept to show for it. What kind of return on this investment are taxpayers getting? It's an of import question now that the city will be investing a record $155 million. This week, Quango President Darrell Clarke and the mayor announced the creation of a "Violence Prevention and Opportunity Monitoring Grouping," which will help "build on what's working through evaluation," according to the printing release.
But, again, there'southward no mention of goals, timetables, or efforts at transparency. How well-nigh a follow-the-money website? Or weekly public CompStat-like meetings?
"In business, no one would invest $155 million without regularly measuring results," Domb says. When he read almost the success in Chester, Domb got pissed: How'd Chester turn the corner on what nosotros're still struggling with? So yesterday he spent ii hours peppering the legendary criminologist David Kennedy—the father of the focused deterrence policing strategies that accept worked in Boston and Chester alike.
"He's a bright guy," Domb reports. "His recommendation is that we should be investing in our management of our GVI program [the adjacent generation of focused deterrence] so nosotros can evaluate it past the week, so we know what'southward working and what isn't so we tin pin quickly. That requires leadership."
In their own ways, Stollsteimer, Thomas and Domb are all thinking afresh nearly a solvable urban center problem and are approaching it with a palpable sense of mission and optimism. Now, if just the mayor, police commissioner and commune attorney would take some notes.
Header photo: Philadelphia Councilmember Isaiah Thomas | courtesy of Jared Piper for Philadelphia Urban center Council 
Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/reverse-murder-epidemic/