WHAT WILL IT TAKE TO MAKE OUR CITY SAFE?

The Southeastern Pennsylvania Chapter of Americans for Democratic Action will host a forum to address the question of what can be done to curb violence and make Philadelphia safe for everyone.

The forum will be held on Saturday, April 26th, 10 am to 12 noon, at the First Unitarian Church, 2125 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia.

Featured speaker will be new Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey, who will be joined by a panel that will include Bilal Qayyum from Men United for a Better Philadelphia, Dorothy Johnson Speight, or another representative from Mothers in Charge, and Bryan Miller from CeaseFire PA.

Daily News Columnist Elmer Smith will moderate.

Guess which ones?

A. Michael Nutter
B. David Kairys
C. Brett Mandel
D. John McNesby
E. Mary Catherine Roper

No no, I love everyone. Anyway, if this gets past rhetoric and posturing, it seems like a great chance to hear what is really going on with the city's plans to get at gun violence and that awful murder rate. Regardless, that's a pretty interesting group of people to have in one room--the head of the ACLU, a giant of the civil rights bar, the head of the FOP, and whatever it is that Brett Mandel is.

Feb. 19, 2008 at 4:00-6:00. Free and open to the public (RSVP to SPIN@temple.edu). Temple University, Klein Hall Moot Court Room, 1719 N. Broad St.

The SPIN forum will explore legal, policy and political solutions to Philadelphia's most intractable problem - gun violence. In a city where 392 people were killed last year and three police officers were shot in a week, stemming the tide of gun violence is the key to Philadelphia's revitalization. Panelists will examine the positive and negative implications of Mayor Michael Nutter's “Stop and Frisk” plan and evaluate alternative approaches. Please join us to engage with members of the community, law enforcement, politicians, researchers, students, and advocates to inform the policy debate about how to eliminate the guns yet preserve civil rights.

Speakers: MICHAEL NUTTER, Mayor of Philadelphia; DAVID KAIRYS, Temple University, Beasley School of Law; BRETT MANDEL, Philadelphia Forward; JOHN J. MCNESBY, Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police; MARY CATHERINE ROPER, Pennsylvania ACLU

Forum Sponsors: Temple University Beasley School of Law; Temple Law Student Bar Association; Government Affairs Society; National Lawyers Guild, Temple Law Chapter

Following the Forum, Temple will recognize members of the Rubin Public Interest Society.

The Inquirer has done some independent analysis of the recommendations in Ramsey's crime plan: specifically, it has looked at where resources are being sent and why.

One big shock: Point Breeze and five other districts with among the worst crime rates in the city last year don't get any more police or money under the plan.

Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey, who released his plan on Jan. 30, identified nine high-crime districts where he wants to shift 200 officers to patrol duty. The 17th District, which includes Point Breeze and Grays Ferry, was not among the chosen few.

The nine districts Ramsey selected for special attention are some of the city's most populous and account for nearly two-thirds of Philadelphia's homicides.

But six less-populous police districts - including the 17th - have higher crime rates than some of the districts Ramsey wants to target, according to an Inquirer analysis of the Police Department's 2007 crime statistics. Crime rates provide analysts a way to compare the number of offenses among areas with different populations - the higher the rate, the greater the likelihood someone in those areas will be a victim of a crime.

The apparent reason: Ramsey is committed to getting numbers down, and the more people who live in an area, the more cold hard crime numbers. Even if the crime rate by population is lower, as in areas like University City and Chestnut Hill--both of which are getting added resources.

Ramsey's chosen districts combined account for 55 percent of the city's population. Consequently, they have the highest number of violent crimes. And it is the total number of crimes that Ramsey is focused on reducing.

So this numbers game at least partly accounts for who is targeted for extra help, and who isn't:

Four of the districts Ramsey chose have better-than-average violent-crime rates - the city average is 1,456 incidents per 100,000 residents. They are the 14th District in Northwest Philadelphia, the 35th District straddling Broad Street in the north, and the 18th and 19th Districts in West Philadelphia. They include some of the city's most stable neighborhoods: Chestnut Hill, Mount Airy, West Oak Lane, Wynnefield, University City.

Conversely, six districts that reported some of the worst violent-crime rates last year did not make the commissioner's list: the Sixth District, which includes eastern Center City and North Philadelphia; the 16th District, including Mantua and Powelton in West Philadelphia; the 23d District in North Philadelphia; the 24th and 26th Districts, encompassing Kensington, Fishtown and Port Richmond; and the 17th.

Stepping back, most of the reforms Ramsey has proposed are great because they touch on basic policing. If they are achieved, they will help every area in the city, even those that aren't targeted for extra resources.

However, there's one thing that is agreed upon by basically everyone who cares about and pays attention to the crime problem: we need to target resources to where the problems are. This holds for stop-and-frisk (use the data we have to focus on problem corners rather than casting a broad net), as well as where to send patrol officers on their rounds and where to put the money and bodies.

When we are talking about the murder rate, numbers are people, so any drop in that rate is a good in itself. However, this is a very calculated distribution of our limited resources, and that calculation doesn't take into account the desperate need of people in places like Point Breeze, where there are less people but more destructive crime.

Below, Dan respectfully and appropriately asked for focus on the loss suffered by the Goode family. It is a loss that is both painfully particular--a family member--and horrifically general.

Horrifically general because it is one of several recent police shootings, one of all too many black men killed in our city, of people killed in our city, and of people lost to one part or another of an endlessly failing drug war.

Dan also pointed to Mayor Goode's careful moderation. But Mayor Goode also said:

"I don't know anything except that, when someone is shot in the back, it raises questions that need to be objectively looked at."

Stop there for a moment.

This, two weeks after police in another corner of the very same neighborhood--Germantown--shot another man who was fleeing, running away from them, fired into a house filled with 50 people celebrating New Year's Eve, killing one man and injuring two others, including the nine-year-old he was pushing up the stairs away from those bullets. A hardworking immigrant man is dead, the wrong man arrested, and no gun yet found.

This, the same weekend police shot and killed a man who, while having a gun, may or may not have pointed it at police. All we know is one of two officers saw him "slowly take his handgun out of his waistband and hold it down by his side."

I am not a police officer, I don't know if the shootings were 'justified', and I am not judging those officers, though I agree with the stark truth of what Mayor Goode said about how deep the questions are that are raised when someone is shot by the police in the back. There will be investigations for all of that. For now the mayor and police commissioner and DA have my trust.

But just stop and think about those lives that were lost, and for what.

The undercover officers who shot Timothy Goode were patrolling to make drug arrests. Maybe a person in that situation was selling, maybe he was buying and maybe he was doing nothing illegal, was just in one of the many corners of corners of our city where drugs and drug selling and people carrying guns are all around.

But this--being shot and killed in the course of some corner drug bust--it's an almost incomprehensibly huge cost. And it is not a cost that we can continue to bear.

David Simon, who co-writes "the Wire" on HBO, the clearest mirror to American cities I have ever seen, whatever Mark Bowden says, says the show is about "how contemporary American society—and, particularly, 'raw, unencumbered capitalism'—devalues human beings."

“Every single moment on the planet, from here on out, human beings are worth less. We are in a post-industrial age. We don’t need as many of us as we once did. So, if the first season was about devaluing the cops who knew their beats and the corner boys slinging drugs, then the second was about devaluing the longshoremen and their labor, the third about people who wanted to make changes in the city, and the fourth was about kids who were being prepared, badly, for an economy that no longer really needs them.

Histrionic or not, it's true. The near-half the people sitting in city jails because they cannot afford bail are being treated as expendable. The people hurt or killed on all sides of the battle for the corners, they are being treated as expendable. Same with the thousands of kids who enter high school but aren't there by the end. There's no point to my sitting here preaching except to say that it is pretty clear that our moral imperative is to revalue every person and block in this city.

There will be a debate about tougher gun laws this morning.

Tune in, call in...discuss.

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http://www.whyy.org/91FM/radiotimes.html

Radio Times with Marty Moss-Coane
Monday, November 19

Hour 1
Should Pennsylvania pass tougher gun laws? Governor Ed Rendell will address the House Judiciary Committee this week to urge passage of several bills including one that would limit handgun purchases to one a month. We'll debate this with MELODY ZULLINGER the Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Federation of Sportsmen's Clubs, who opposes addition gun restrictions, and BRYAN MILLER a co-founder of CeaseFire PA who supports tougher controls on handguns.

Peter Amuso was just endorsed by CeasefirePA because of his support for sensible gun legislation. The power of the District Attorney's Office is essential in our fight to move legislation through the general assembly. Let's help Peter win this important office by contributing now!!! www.peteramuso.com Visit his web site and help out another progressive.

We all know that gun violence is out of control in the City. Most of us now know families that have been dealt blows from our inability to deal with it. Even in the last few years of my comfortable, sheltered, middle-class life, two families that are close to mine lost young men to a bullet. And two weeks ago, Lance and Lisa Haver- two of Philadelphia's best people- had their lives dramatically changed when their son Darren was struck down.

And now in the past few days, just when it couldn't seem to get worse, the City has descended further, with three police officers shot in one week. When police officers are shot with the frequency that appears to be happening in our city, the only thing we get is total chaos.

On my pre-dawn drive to Princeton this morning, some mindless FM station had their DJ's talking with bloodlust about anyone who shoots a police officer. That is not the road I ever want this site to go down. But, when police officers are shot in the face when making traffic stops, or shot in the head when walking into a robbery, it is one more sign that amidst all that is good about our city and its citizens, there is a major illness that has to be cured. Almost nobody naturally thinks that life should be so devalued.

We all have to look in the mirror, and think about the society that we live in and contribute to, that is developing people who hold human life in such low regard.

Terrible update: In the last few minutes, CBS 3 has reported that Officer Cassidy, shot while attempting to stop a robbery, died this morning.

Thanks to Kate for the heads up:

Anderson Cooper 360 on CNN:

"Bloodbath in the city of 'Brotherly Love.' Why weekends have become war on the streets in Philadelphia. An "AC 360°" special investigation, tonight at 10 ET."

http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/anderson.cooper.360

I mean, I really preferred the sixth borough- aren't wetrendy type national coverage we had for a while, but this should be interesting. What interests me is how deep they actually go? Will it be strictly transactional type stuff, or will we be getting into root causes?

It is with a lot of sadness, that we pass along the news that gun violence has struck home for the child of one of Philadelphia's truly good guys, Lance Haver. On Saturday night, his 24 year-old son Daren was getting some late night food on Cheltenham Ave, and was shot in the neck. Although he survived, he lost the ability to move, and the ability to breath on his own.