The truth behind the surge in police in Philadelphia

Sept. 23, 2007
By Tom Ferrick Jr.
Inquirer columnist

Mayor Street and Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson have decided to attack the root cause of the violence problem in Philadelphia: The news media.

It began when Johnson tried (and, in fact, succeeded) in getting the media to swallow whole a story about the state police arriving in Philadelphia - à la the Seventh Calvary - to help local
police combat violence. Johnson said he decided to ask for help because "we're attacked in the news media every day about the violence in the city."

Missing from the dog-and-pony show, which featured the commissioner and various local and state officials, was one salient fact: Exactly how many state troopers were being deployed on this mission?

The commissioner would not say. Didn't want to tip off the bad guys. (Though the bad guys probably could figure it out just by counting the number of guys in Smokey-the-Bear hats they saw.)

A few days later, Mayor Street revealed the truth about the trooper surge.

There are five.

"Five," Street said, holding up the fingers on his right hand. To add to the 6,680 Philadelphia police on the streets.

I'd call it a drop in the bucket if it wasn't an insult to the drop and the bucket.

Street may have been holding up five fingers, but metaphorically he was holding up one. The middle one. And it was directed at - can you guess? - the news media.

The mayor was attending a city-sponsored jobs fair at the Liacouras Center in North Philly on Wednesday when he let the number slip.

His point: The media give scant coverage to events such as the jobs fair - which is a way to address the causes of crime - while lapping up the media show staged by Johnson. "It says something about the priorities of the [news] industry," the mayor told reporters. Does it strike you as odd - maybe even surreal - that the mayor chose to attack the media by, in effect, accusing his own police commissioner of staging a shameless publicity stunt? The media-being-fools part I get. But, how about his own police commissioner being a charlatan? That is weird.

It is not unlike Street to hang subordinates out to dry. It's part of his charm. He did it when Johnson first replaced John Timoney, by letting Johnson carry the title "acting commissioner" for months before making the appointment official. Let's grant the mayor his critique that we pay too much attention to the bad news (the homicide rate) and not enough to the good (job programs that
keep young men off the streets).

What matters here is what the events reveal about the city's strategy for reducing violent crime.

It doesn't have one.

It has media events aplenty. We have the arrival of the state troopers. We have Johnson's recent dictum to senior command to begin patrolling at least four hours a week. We have the mayor attending a jobs fair.

But all of that is trumped by the numbers - of homicides and shootings - that continue to rise. Since the media insist on focusing on those, doesn't that make it part of the problem? Or so reasons the mayor.

The reality is that both Street and Johnson believe there is little they can do to reduce those numbers. That the situation is beyond their control. And they have specifically repudiated a strategy of policing their way out of the problem: through more police, arrests and prosecutions.

As Johnson put it earlier this year, in a moment of candor: "Traditional policing is not working. We locked up 74,000 people last year. We confiscated 6,000 guns and $140 million worth of drugs. If we put another 1,000 police officers out there, we're just going to make more arrests."

He made those remarks in response to proposals being made by the candidates for mayor that the city hire more police to patrol the streets.

The mayor was even more explicit. His exact words: "I am unwilling to pay for an additional 500 police officers, because I know the costs you will have to pay. I am unwilling to have new prison beds. . . . I would rather put the money in the front-end programs that are designed to deal with the root causes of the problem. If I go out and build prison beds, I am throwing in the towel on
prevention efforts."

Of course, the problem with the root-cause approach is that it can take years (decades? centuries?) to pull up those roots.

In the meantime, when in doubt, blame the media.