Testimony of Michael A. Nutter
Pennsylvania Senate Judiciary Committee
August 2, 2006
How should we deal with violent crime in Philadelphia?
First, we need to do more than talk about this serious problem. We need to be willing to put the collective resources of the City and the region behind this issue. For example, if we could use the talents and funding that were pledged to bring the Olympics to Philadelphia and redirect them to addressing the problem of violence, we could begin to make a real difference. Only a collective effort of that magnitude will achieve this goal.
Second, we need to recognize that violent crime is a complex problem with no simple solution. We should not look for or even hope for a single magic solution to our violent crime problem. Rather, we need to attack the problem in many different ways at the same time because only a multi-prong approach can possibly address such a complex problem. Here are 14 strategies, which, if jointly implemented, will produce substantial and sustained reductions in violent crime:
1. Increase number of police
a. More local money for police
b. More state money for police
c. More federal homeland protection money to free city resources
d. More police services for the money we do have
i. New officers instead of costly routine overtime
ii. Retain retiring officers instead of costly routine overtime while new officers are trained
2. Improve deployment of police
a. Focus the efforts of police patrols where and when they will do the most good by identifying places and times when gun violence mostly predictably occurs
b. Create an undercover Repeat Offenders’ Unit to catch individuals who are particularly likely to commit violent crime just as they begin to commit a crime—solving the witness testimony problem by having police as eyewitnesses.
c. Reduce officers’ wasted time waiting for court hearings
d. Assign civilian personnel to clerical functions
3. Get handguns off the streets by encouraging more frequent police use of their Constitutional stop & frisk powers recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court, the most effective method known for reducing gun violence (as shown in 5 separate tests in Kansas City, Pittsburgh and Indianapolis).
4. Make permanent and expand the Adult Probation and Parole Department’s Homicide Prevention Unit funded at my initiative in this year’s budget, to provide intensive treatment and surveillance to the small number of convicted felons who are statistically most likely to commit or attempt homicide.
5. Make guns harder for criminals to get
a. Aggressively enforce existing gun laws (guns carried by felons, etc.)
b. Toughen State handgun laws to prevent purchase by people with prior felony charges
c. Give Philadelphia the authority to enact handgun restrictions
6. Use security cameras for surveillance of public areas. Mayor Street has just announced two cameras, but we need many, many more.
7. Enforce youth curfews that are already on the books.
8. Reduce the number of repeat offenses, through the following:
a. Do more to help ex-offenders go straight when they leave prison
b. Keep repeat offenders under surveillance.
c. Treat the accused and the convicted with dignity and respect in the court
d. Improve treatment of convicts in jail
e. Address limited prison capacity
9. Improve access to drug rehabilitation programs and mental health services.
10. Use state-of-the art methods to track outcomes and evaluate results obtained by police, prosecutors, courts, corrections, and other agencies as suggested by Dr. Lawrence Sherman of the University of Pennsylvania, including the following:
a. Use information technology to collect and share data on encounters with likely offenders and to track processing of major crimes
b. Require inter-agency communication and review of data
c. Evaluate and manage agency performance based on results
d. Create an organizational structure to bring together the relevant crime prevention agencies in Philadelphia
11. Take better care of our children
a. Increase parental supervision of children
b. Actively discourage substance abuse
c. Teach non-violent conflict resolution in schools
d. Provide more summer and after-school recreation programs
12. Increase use of community watch programs
13. Eliminate “drug houses” and other known crime sites
14. Create more jobs – particularly for low-skilled workers
In summary, we cannot implement just a few of these strategies if we want to achieve substantial and sustained reductions in violent crime. None of these is a “silver bullet”; as noted above, there are no magic solutions. But each of them will help address the problem, and, if we implement all of them, we can expect to make Philadelphia a much safer place to live, work, and visit.
Let that be our goal.
