Ramsey's 21-page crime plan is, 10 or so pages of filler aside, a steady and sober one. It completely skirts the most troubling parts of Mayor Nutter's campaign rhetoric. Sure, like a bunch of us have observed, it's all in the implementation. But if they can implement this basic return to high visibility, community-based policing, the city will be much better off.
I like when Chief Ramsey says that the changes he is making are sustainable, that it's not Safe Streets and Safer Streets and the Return of Safe Streets--short-term infusions of money that get eaten up in overtime and then are gone.
But I really hope that 'high visibility' 'community-based' policing is not code for bringing misguided 'broken windows'-style policing to Philadelphia.
That would add more victims--and deep costs--to the battle against crime and neighborhood decay.
The Inquirer this morning has an article that claims the crime plan is about just that, those broken windows: "Small arrests aim for major impact."
The new commissioner aims to drive violent crime down 20 percent this year by focusing on fundamentals - shifting more officers from special units to basic patrol. A key tactic of the plan is to focus on quality-of-life issues - such as public intoxication, loitering and gambling - that sometimes escalate into violent crimes or drive law-abiding residents to move elsewhere.
This is a startling leap: is it really 'gambling' that is driving people out of their deeply-scarred neighborhoods? Is there a causal link between cracking down on public intoxication and stopping shootings, rapes, and violent assaults?
The real question the article raises is, will our violent crime problem be fixed one $10 marijuana bust at a time?
As [Officer] Schoch patrolled the neighborhood, he looked for unusual behavior or groups on corners.
"Any time there's a large group of people, you have the potential for victims," he said. He was also on the lookout for pizza deliverers, who have been targets of recent robberies.
About an hour after he hit the road, driving east on Godfrey Avenue near Mascher Street while listening to the police radio and carrying on a conversation, Schoch jerked his head to the left. In seconds, he wheeled his car into a U-turn to intercept the drug transaction. The time was about 5:40.
"Come here," Schoch ordered the first man, who made a quick move away from the officer and tossed a wadded tissue under a parked car. Schoch forced him against his car. He told him to relax and extend his arms behind him for the handcuffs. The suspect, Ivory Jackson, 48, was still clutching a few dollars in his fist.
"I don't want to go through this again," said a bewildered Jackson, who wore a knit cap and an oversize coat.
After Schoch put the suspect into the back of the squad car, he explained what he had witnessed.
"Everything happens with your hands - a narcotics deal, a weapon. I couldn't even tell you what his face looks like. You watch the hands."
It's a small deal, a 1-gram bag of marijuana worth $10. A "dime bag" in the vernacular.
One of the two guys turns out to have a fraud warrant out on him, and they both get taken in and booked. The article is blase about whether or not this is productive or a waste of resources:
Some officers say the effort invested in making a case like this - Schoch and Leva spent two hours processing paperwork and evidence - removes officers from the street to hunt for worse offenders.
But Schoch said such arrests sent a strong message of intolerance for all crime. And it's impossible to say, until the arrest is made, when a minor stop might yield a bigger fish - somebody with a warrant for a violent crime, or somebody carrying an illegal weapon.
Sometimes these small arrests lead to information about bigger crimes, Schoch added.
"Some cops tell me I'm wasting my time with these arrests," he said. "I say I wouldn't want that stuff going on in my neighborhood."
Someone, explain to me what we get from an arrest like this?
The jury is somewhat out on the exact mechanics of the alleged deterrent effects of this "order-maintenance" or "broken windows" policing. I am happy to fight it out in the comments. But the costs of this policing are clear. A Temple study found that 88% percent of inmates in the city prison system are there for nonviolent, low-level offenses. We are under court order to get people out of the prisons who don't need to be there. The collateral costs of incarceration have been catalogued again and again: difficulty finding jobs, loss of resources in families and communities. Our new mayor and concilpeople like Wilson Goode have recognized the need to target reentry and probation to help get people out of the system, into jobs, and away from crime.
We don't need a crime plan that will throw a bunch more people into jail who don't really need to be there. Let's hope the article just shows irresponsible journalism, not policing.
Speaking of "All in the Implementation"
I'm going to come out and say that people caught selling drugs should be arrested and should go to jail, and that this is not a waste of anyone's time. In most cases, though, a policeman can do the job of maintaining public order without arrests -- especially by squelching nuisances and breaking up disturbances. However, there has to be an understanding that this behavior doesn't spiral into or become construed as harassment.
The real issue to my mind has to do with sentencing and decriminalization, etc. In other words, this is a political problem, not in itself a policing problem. A policeman can lock someone up, or they can make them move off the corner. There is very little else they can do to solve our problems.
Yes and no
people way more experienced than me (hi, Seth Williams) can probably speak better to how things work, and the limits of what is possible from the prosecution/sentencing end, but:
I'll go out on a limb and say there is no point in making an arrest that does not actually have positive effect in preventing either more dealing or more serious crime. If the $10 weed bust can't or won't be prosecuted, what's the point? If it will result in a penalty with no deterrent effect or that doesn't actually get the person physically off the corner for longer than it takes them to post bail, what's the point?
We get more people who, when they are looking for a job, will have a positive arrest record. We have more resources tied up. And I am not sure the actual arrests for the low-level crimes has the positive effect we are looking for--as opposed to heightened police visibility itself, which may in fact have those effects (if a displacement effect can be avoided).
I am happy to get into it here when I'm less tired, or may make a second (hopefully much more substantive and less complain-y) post, but I think the key is avoiding sweeping and convenient generalizations about deterrence and looking very specifically about what 'order-maintenance' arrests prevent what types of larger criminal activity, so we can actually weigh cost and benefit. There are studies that have been attempting to do this...
Again, I'm trying to think
Again, I'm trying to think of thresholds, and also how police can maintain public order short of an arrest, especially where that arrest is unlikely to result in a prosecution. I'm also thinking of police officers in London, who very rarely carry guns or make arrests -- and truth be told, of old cowboy movies. (Why can't we bring the title "peace officer" back?) But since I am even less experienced than Jen in these matters, take this all as "what if?" and with a big grain of salt.
In this scenario, one idea would be to hold the suspects and effect a search of the area, seize any drugs (and maybe cash) involved in drug transactions, then release the suspects (since there may be insufficient evidence to tie any of them to what you found).
I agree that prosecuting
I agree that prosecuting people for minor non-violent offenses like the dime bag deal is wasteful and counter-productive in the long run.
However, other posters are correct that this is a problem with our laws, not policing. If soft drugs were decriminalized, or at least became misdemeanor offenses, this kind of strategy would be productive in targeted neighborhoods.
If you pick up someone for this kind of offense and they are not armed with an illegal weapon or have a warrant out for their arrest, write 'em a ticket and throw 'em back out on the street. But this kind of policing has two major benefits:
1) It sends a message that the police are paying attention. Will it stop people from buying weed? Of course not, but it will encourage people to *take it off the street*, thus improving quality of life.
2) It helps find illegal weapons. In many neighborhoods, we know there are a lot of guns around. Misdemeanor policing has the side effect of getting a lot of guns off the street.
This approach, combined with the "community policing" effort, will help clean up our streets.
Hi!
Those are good points and yours and other's concern for quality of life, itself, are well taken.
Even though there are problems with the laws themselves and the larger system of fighting the drug trade, the police department does have a lot of room to prioritize how they patrol and what arrests they make. This is just a fact. And we all know, resources are limited.
That's why being able to show actual causality (between types of arrests and specific reduction in crime numbers) matters.
The article is talking about "small arrests". Not stops. Not catch-and-throw-back, or whatever.
So while I am sympathetic to a lot of what has been brought up in comments, I just really want to call attention to how this:
Is a big jump. That's not saying that without stopping someone and searching them, you don't know if there is an illegal gun or larger crime to find. We've talked about that to death in the context of stop and frisk, and though there are real concerns, stops to search for illegal guns (and run names for warrants) are constitutionally permissible with reasonable suspicion.
But this is saying you have to arrest for the small crimes to stop larger ones. And that's lazy logic and often just wrong.
Jennifer- Just to be clear,
Jennifer-
Just to be clear, your contention is not that quality of life crimes don't matter, right? It's more that Philadlephia's criminal justice system is overburdened to the point of bursting and its vitally important in terms of the courts and who we invest resources holding in our county jails that we focus on violent crime, first and foremost. That non-violent offenders, especially low-level drug crimes and the indigent, take up far too much resources that could be better used in alternate programs and that justice could be served by not having them rotting in overcrowded county jails, right? Is that really the same thing as saying that people should not be arrested for "quality of life crimes"? To me its more saying that we really need to focus on the criminal justice system as a whole and that incarceration best serves violent offendors and other solutions (Drug Court, for example) is better for non-violent offenders.
I'm all for prioritizing violent crimes and looking for solutions that work rather than a one-size-fits-all approach for lesser crimes but I think it would be wrong to say that just because a crime is non-violent that violators should not face arrest or other sanctions.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
I hopefully half-addressed this above
I guess I think quality of life issues should be addressed, but that the answer is not always criminalization. You leave room for this by referring to 'other sanctions'. Anti-loitering and public drunkenness ordinances are good examples of how in an attempt to get at real problems of social disorder, behavior is criminalized in an often non-productive (and discriminatory, if you care about that) way. Hopefully Dan or someone can get more into the substance of how this has worked in the past, and why it's so problematic.
But yes, absolutely things that affect people's ability to live happily and functionally (that sounds weird, but hopefully you know what I mean) should be addressed. I think that arrests in a lot of cases are a pretty blunt stick to use.
Another yes
A major problem I have with the type of policing the article highlights (celebrates?) is how un-targeted it is. I have been very happy to hear from the mayor, the police chief, and members of council a clear focus on targeted policing. Specifically, looking at the population leaving prison to identify opportunities for intervention, refining the parole system, etc. Each of these possible initiatives involves working with people who have been identified as high risk of repeat offending, specifically with regards to violent/serious crime or criminal behavior that is likely to lead to that.
To a certain extent, sure, that's not the police department's role and I am realllly happy we have Everett Gillison as Deputy Mayor for Public Safety to focus on it. But there's no point in throwing police resources around relatively indiscriminately, as I think everyone involved agrees (I think this website did finally come to some hard-won consensus that a stop-and-frisk program, for example, should not charge people with small drug possession charges because of much the same cost-benefit analysis. I'll be honest, reading today's article I kept waiting for them to do the search and find the illegal gun and was kind of shocked when the payoff turned out to be a small drug charge).
Why did you leave Philly: Dice
Great, great post.
I will write some more tomorrow, but, let us all hope that this is just a newspaper story, and not where the crime plan is going.
Let me just state some obvious points. Acting like putting someone in jail for a ten dollar bag of pot is smart policing is so wrongheaded because:
1)Um, we have tried this. Ever heard of the narcotics squad? Busting people for low level drug possession like this is about as effective deterrent to drug use as... hmm, I can't think of a good analogy. How about this: IT DOES NOT WORK.
2)On an equity basis, how many middle-class kids, or middle-class adults, are getting locked up for a dime bag of pot?
3) How much money does Philadelphia absolutely waste every year on the war on drugs? Seriously, the answer to the money pit that is the war on drugs is not a greater emphasis on the war on drugs.
4) What is the destruction that is wrought from having such a huge population with criminal records, many of which are non violent, and hurt no one?
5) I get tested regularly by the US Anti-Doping Agency, so, illegal drugs are not my thing. I do, however, consume enough caffeine to kill a small child, and, I bet it is more addictive than pot. And, shockingly, I have smoked, inhaled, and in all likelihood, so have you. So, since most people have, how about we acknowledge that, and if we want it off the streets, we get it off the streets without burdening one piece of society with the burden of our collective 'guilt.'
6) Going after kids playing dice on the corner will not bring back jobs to Philadelphia. It will not end poverty, or fix or schools. It will not magically keep people from leaving Philadelphia.
It will do a great job of continuing to alienate a large part of our city from the police department, and give people records which will make it incredibly difficult for them to get jobs and be productive members of society. Great.
PS
We of course have devised two genius solutions to problem gambling, so this will not be an issue soon enough(1, 2).