Pubdate: Sun, 20 Apr 2003
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA)
Copyright: 2003 Philadelphia Newspapers Inc
Contact:  http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/340
Author: Robert Moran, Inquirer Staff Writer

SERIOUS CRIME IN PHILA. DROPS UNDER SAFE STREETS

Serious crimes have dropped 13.6 percent since Mayor Street launched his 
controversial - and expensive - Operation Safe Streets crackdown in May, 
according to police data.

Though crime in Philadelphia has been declining in recent years, the drop 
has accelerated since police began flooding selected neighborhoods to 
disrupt open-air drug markets.

While criminologists caution that many factors - such as the economy and 
longer prison sentences - affect crime rates, the statistics seem to 
bolster the mayor's contention that his initiative is working.

Operation Safe Streets is a cornerstone of Street's reelection effort and 
has drawn criticism because of its cost - $35 million over the first year 
and $100 million over five years. Still, in an interview last week, Street 
said the program "by all objective measures" has been a success.

More important, he said, the quality of life in many neighborhoods has been 
improved "not just significantly, but dramatically."

Philadelphia is bucking a U.S. trend of increasing crime. In 2001, crime 
rose nationally after a decade of declines, and last year many major 
cities, including Los Angeles and Boston, saw increases. New York reported 
a drop.

James Alan Fox, a criminal justice professor at Northeastern University in 
Boston, viewed the numbers in Philadelphia with caution.

Safe Streets "could, or even, could likely" be responsible for the decrease 
in crime, Fox said.

"The question is whether you'd have the decline anyway without the 
program," Fox said.

Crime has been falling in Philadelphia since then-Police Commissioner John 
F. Timoney began implementing reforms in the late 1990s.

But a comparison of how fast crime is falling indicates that Safe Streets 
may be a force in reducing crime in the city's historically drug-ravaged 
neighborhoods.

A review of police statistics shows that serious crimes - categorized in a 
group that ranges from murder and robbery to car theft - dropped 13.6 
percent in the first 11 months of Safe Streets compared with the same 
period a year earlier.

The statistics include preliminary numbers for February and March. In the 
same 11-month period in 2001-02, serious crimes fell 3.75 percent compared 
with 2000-01.

During Safe Streets, overall crime - which includes lesser offenses such as 
vandalism and prostitution - has dropped 9.5 percent.

On May 1, 2002, Police Commissioner Sylvester M. Johnson deployed officers 
to several hundred of the city's worst open-air drug locations. The 
officers' job was not to make mass arrests but to deter blatant drug dealing.

That, law enforcement officials say, resulted in a ripple effect, reducing 
other types of crime.

"Drug dealers are no longer operating openly on streetcorners," said James 
M. Kasson, special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration 
in Philadelphia.

"They have moved their businesses inside buildings, houses and cars," 
Kasson said. "As a result, there is less opportunity for open street 
violence and confrontations."

Indeed, there does seem to be a palpable change, an increasing sense of 
order, in some neighborhoods once notorious for their lawlessness.

In parts of the city, the improvements have been developing over several 
years. Operation Sunrise under Timoney began transforming Kensington in 1998.

Meanwhile, the 25th Police District in North Philadelphia, once regarded as 
the worst district in the city, is still a rough place, but nothing like 
when it earned the nickname "the Badlands."

"It's changed a lot," said Officer Richard Prior as he patrolled the 
district. "There's actually pauses in the [police] radio now," he said, 
"where before it was nonstop."

Safe Streets, however, appears to have had no noticeable spillover effect 
in neighboring municipalities. Police in Bensalem, Bucks County, and Upper 
Darby, Delaware County, said there has been no increase in crime that could 
be attributable to Safe Streets.

In Camden, serious crime has dropped 12.5 percent in the last year, 
according to statistics. Camden police credit their own antidrug 
initiative, Operation Sunburst, which was modeled after Operation Sunrise 
in Philadelphia.

Safe Streets recently became an issue in the mayoral campaign when Street's 
Republican challenger, Sam Katz, raised questions about the effectiveness 
of the program and called it "scarecrow policing," a term used privately by 
some skeptical officers.

However, when asked if Safe Streets was responsible for the crime drop, 
Katz said last week in an interview: "I would say that, in part, it is."

But Katz raised concerns about whether some neighborhoods are getting 
shortchanged on police protection, and whether Safe Streets can be 
sustained financially.

So far, the Police Department has spent $32.5 million more in overtime 
during Safe Streets than it did in the same period the previous year, 
according to the City Controller's Office.

Facing tough economic times, Street is looking to cut city expenditures. 
But he expressed confidence he would be able to pay for Safe Streets.

"We intend to aggressively continue and support it," the mayor said.

Safe Streets has evolved from hundreds of officers standing on corners to a 
mix of officers on foot, on bikes, and in patrol cars, either parked or 
making repeated patrols in a tight area.

At 12th and Huntingdon Streets in North Philadelphia, where Street held a 
news conference on the first day of Safe Streets, an officer still stands 
watch.

Josephine Willis, 48, of 12th Street, said her neighborhood is a lot safer. 
"The kids can come out and play," she said, watching over her grandchildren 
as they rode bikes on the sidewalk. "You don't have to worry about shootings."

An estimated 50 fewer gunshot victims will be treated at city hospitals 
during this first year of Safe Streets compared with a year earlier, when 
691 such cases were reported, according to tracking by the Pennsylvania 
Trauma Systems Foundation, a nonprofit organization that oversees trauma 
centers at major hospitals.

If Safe Streets ends, Willis warned, "the drug dealers will come right 
back." Some city residents think it has ended already.

"It was good - while it lasted," said Dorothea Gordon, 54, of the 7200 
block of Greenway Avenue, another original Safe Streets location.

Residents said officers stood at the corner, walked neighboring blocks, 
even checked on residents in their homes. Last fall, the police left.

"Are they going to bring them back?" asked Lillian Mears, 72, of 72d 
Street. Before Safe Streets, Mears and her neighbors described drug-dealing 
in front of their houses at all hours.

The residents acknowledged that, although the Safe Streets officers are 
gone, the neighborhood remains relatively peaceful.

But they worry about this summer.

"The less they [drug dealers] see of the police officers," Gordon said, 
"the more they'll come back."

Longtime antidrug activist C.B. Kimmins said residents who are enjoying 
safer neighborhoods need to get active in their communities to "maintain 
that difference."

Otherwise, if things get bad again, Kimmins said, "You can't say the Police 
Department let us down, the mayor let us down."
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MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager