Citizens Agenda on Crime

The number tattooed on everyone’s psyche is 406. That’s the total of homicides in the city in 2006, the highest in a decade.

But that is just the beginning of the crime story in Philadelphia.

In 2006, we also had 11,000 or so robberies, about 11,000 serious assaults, nearly 11,500 burglaries and 38,000 thefts. Add to that the 11,600 motor vehicle thefts, the 821 rapes, and the 200-plus arsons and what have you got?

That’s close to 85,000 serious crimes – also known as felonies – committed in one 12-month period in Philadelphia.

Let’s call the people who committed these 85,000 crimes the bad guys.

Against them, we – the citizens – have arrayed about 7,000 police, and an additional 5,000 city employees engaged in criminal justice: prosecutors, prison guards, probation and parole employees, to name the major categories.

Let’s call them the good guys.

The central question is: How do we deploy and use our good guys to most effectively and efficiently contain the bad guys? And let us be realistic: No one expects crime to disappear. There has been crime since Cain slew Abel.

But, the mission of Mayor Michael Nutter is clear. Politically, he is committed to doing something about the murder rate. His broader mandate is to lower the frequency and severity of crime.

It won’t be easy because of the sheer volume of crime; the brisk drug trade; the spread of handguns; the breakdowns of family and neighborhood order; the high cost of arresting, prosecuting and jailing bad guys.

But, here is where you start:

The No. 1 Priority

Focus efforts on the group most at risk: Young and poor African American males.

Why it matters: Violence among this group is epidemic and accounts for a very high percentage of gun crime. There are only 66,000 young, black males between the ages of 15 and 29 in Philadelphia; in the last three years, 5,000 from that cohort have been shot or killed.

What to do: Focus your policing and prevention resources on this group, which includes many of the city’s repeat offenders. Don’t spray interventions broadly across the city just to score political points. Go after the heart of the problem in ways that make sense, even if candor about the special problems this group presents makes some people uncomfortable.

Near-term actions

New top cop: Give the police department new leadership. Someone from outside the insular police bureaucracy – who grasps the importance of public perception. Done, with the naming of Charles Ramsey, former Washington, D.C., police chief, as the new police commissioner.

Try stop-and-frisk: Done properly, these policing tactics are constitutional and effective. Remember, the goal is to get illegal guns out of people’s hands before they can use them. But good training, clear monitoring and accountability for abuses are key to maintaining public support.

The eyes have it: Expand the use of camera surveillance in high-crime areas, and chart carefully how much impact it has. (Only the police should operate cameras, though.)

CompStat rocks: Revive this system that uses computer analysis to drive policing strategy and enforce accountability on commanders. It waned under Commissioner Sylvester Johnson, but it worked for John Timoney. It could work again. Citizens particularly would like more public information on crime trends and on how police have responded to chronic problems they’ve reported.

Focus on youth: Philadelphia has some model programs that identify at-risk youth and target them for sustained interventions to prevent crime and violence. Study which produce the best results. Find money to take them to scale across the city. Better to spend $1 for prevention today than $10 down the road for arresting, prosecuting and jailing.

Help them stay EX-offenders: This is the other key target group. Recidivism is high because of the anger and despair offenders take with them when they leave prison, the lack of options awaiting them back home, and their lack of readiness to seize what options do exist. Expand programs to offer released cons drug treatment, job training and support systems. Expand incentives to employers to hire ex-offenders. Give those employers advice on how to make such risks work for them – and their new employee.

Long-term efforts

Guns do kill: The road is long and the way is steep, but work to get reasonable anti-handgun legislation through Harrisburg. Building partnerships with Pennsylvania’s other gun-haunted cities holds promise.

Witnesses, not “snitches”: Urge clergy, schools and civic leaders to offer a strong, sustained counter message to the “stop snitching” mentality. Back that up by increasing penalties for witness intimidation. Also increase budgets for considerate treatment of witnesses during trials and for witness protection.

Crime czar: Nutter has in effect created this post within his administration, as called for in the draft agenda. Now, empower the czar to wield the power of the purse to force the disjointed fiefdoms of the criminal-justice system to work together. Too many crimes and criminals now fall through the cracks.

Charter changes: Make two changes to allow the city to recruit better police leadership and stronger rank-and-file officers. 1)  Let the commissioner hire and fire more top commanders as executive positions. There are now only four. 2) Make it easier for the department to recruit officers from outside the city.

Ideas from citizen forums

Change attytood: Citizens mostly get that there’s no easy fix. But City Hall’s recent attitude that nothing more can be done frustrates them.

More than numbers: At forums, few citizens listed “more police” as their No. 1 priority. They know it takes more than that. And they suspect that a lot of officers on administrative duty, “driving desks” as the phrase goes, could be redeployed to street patrol.

Prevention, parenting: Support for programs that intervene with youth and try to counter the root causes of violence is high. So is frustration with weak, permissive parents.

(Illustration by Tim Ogline)