COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA JOINT COMMITTEES ON PUBLIC SAFETY AND STREETS & SERVICES Room 400, City Hall Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Tuesday, October 1, 2024 10:25 a.m. PRESENT: COUNCILMAN CURTIS JONES, JR., CHAIR COUNCILMAN JEFFREY YOUNG, JR., CHAIR COUNCILWOMAN NINA AHMAD COUNCILWOMAN CINDY BASS COUNCILWOMAN KENDRA BROOKS COUNCILWOMAN QUETCY M. LOZADA COUNCILWOMAN JAMIE GAUTHIER COUNCILMAN JIM HARRITY
Good morning, everyone. Sorry for the delay, but we're ready to rock and roll today. This is a Joint Committee hearing on the Committee on Public Safety as well as the Committee on Streets and Services to review Bill Nos. 240482 and 240715. Will the Clerk please read the titles of the bills.
Resolution No. 23 240715 titled, Authorizing the Joint Committees on Public Safety and Streets and Services to hold hearings to investigate the Philadelphia Police Department precinct policies and practices for approving and denying block party permits and exploring methods to increase block party permit applications. And Resolution No. 240482, titled Authorizing the Joint Committees on Public Safety and Streets and Services to hold hearings to investigate illegal street racing meetups in Philadelphia.
Thank you so much. Now, can we take roll to establish a quorum.
A quorum has been established and we will be under way. I would like to yield the mic to my Co-Chairmember Jeffrey Young who has comments on these bills.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. And good morning to everyone who has taken time out of their day to come here to testify on these bills. As the Councilmember for the 5th Council District and the Chair of the Streets and Services Committee, I felt that it was very important to hold a hearing on this topic to discuss with the public how the impact of the car meetups, the ATV rides, the illegal motorcycles have impacted your community and impacted our city. And I also wanted you to hear from the Philadelphia Police Department on what their procedures and protocols are when handling this issue. And I wanted the police to hear from you on how it has been affecting your quality of life. So I want to thank you all for being here. This is a very important topic that, as we see, we make national news for the wrong things. So we want to make sure that we nip this in the bud now so we can continue to show positive things for our city as we move forward in the future. So thank you, Chairman Jones, for allowing me to speak.
Thank you for paying attention to this issue. It is not a new issue but has become even more pronounced as we look to the future of events coming to the city of Philadelphia such as 250, as we start to look at other major activities and people are looking at Philadelphia and we want to put our best foot forward. So with that, we want to take a look at where we are and what things we can do to address it. I'm going to be leaving you to go to Rocky Day, which abuts your District and mine. And the residents in that area are very concerned about ongoing activities, spin-outs and things like that, that we have to really evaluate how we treat this problem going forward. So with that, will the Clerk please read the first panel to testify.
The first witnesses to testify are Francis Healy, Deputy Police Commissioner of the Philadelphia Police Department and Richard Montanez, Deputy Commissioner for the Department of Streets. (Witnesses approached Witness Table.)
Thank you and welcome. Please take a seat and you can state your name for the record and begin your testimony. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: So just to clarify upfront --
Is your mic working? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: We're doing the ATV car meetups first?
Yes. Can we have testimony on 240482 first before we do the block party permit resolution.
Thank you. So who's on that panel to testify? So who do we have, Caroline?
The Administration. Welcome back. Please state your name for the record and begin your testimony. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: Sure. Good morning, Councilmember -- Chairmembers Jones and Young and other members of the Committee on Public Safety and Streets and Services. My name is Deputy Commissioner Francis Healy. I'm Chief of Staff for Commissioner Bethel. Alongside with me is Deputy Commissioner Vanore from Investigations and Deputy Commissioner Cram from our Patrol Operations to answer questions regarding the car meets and ATV issues. First and foremost, on behalf of Commissioner Bethel thank you for giving us the opportunity to discuss today this issue that brings forth. As this Committee is aware, the ATV meets, the car meets have all been a high priority of Mayor Parker and Commissioner Bethel when they came into office. But out of context, the Commissioner asked me to just put out there this is our work. But in addition to our work is crime- fighting. Since the beginning of this year, homicides are down 41 percent, shooting victims are down 38 percent, burglaries are down 10 percent, robberies percent, 20 vehicle thefts are down 39 percent, thefts from vehicles are down 20 percent. I just say that in context of what I'm going to talk about and all the work and additional work we're doing for the quality-of-life efforts that are so important to the Mayor and to the citizens of the city. Since the inception of Mayor Parker's Administration, PPD has engaged in a number of initiatives and have deployed multiple resources aimed at combating ATVs and illegal car meets. Some of those measures include the deployment of a citywide task force dedicated solely to the issues of car meetups. This task force is regularly assembled during the most frequent hours of such activity, which is predominantly on Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings. An aggressive ATV seizure initiative aimed at reducing the number of these vehicles within the confines of the city, the establishment of an ATV detail consisting of a team of PPD dirt bike-trained officers that are quicker than patrol vehicles, thus better able to respond to the chaotic scenes caused by these ATVs. Additionally, this program is expanding in the near future to a number of, I believe, approximately 30 additional bikes will be included into that package. Utilization of intelligence resources and social media to identify, target and interrupt these illicit meetups, utilization of our helicopter obviously to identify large contingencies of these vehicles, and obviously the increased enforcement of the nuisance vehicle ordinance that was recently passed last year that permits the PPD to issue $2,000 fines. As a result of these efforts, in addition to citing the vehicles themselves and the operators, our officers having been encountered with numerous felonies, misdemeanor arrests and have made since March 1 of this year, hundreds of ATVs have been seized, cars have been taken, evidence and warrants have been issued. I'll allow both the Deputies to talk about the patrol aspect and their data as well as the investigative side of it and really that's how we are attacking this problem, and I'll get to that. But at this point, I really want to just comment on the men and women of the police department and the restraint that they have in these situations. These are chaotic situations and it can very easily get out of control. The officers have been very restrained in their efforts and in their uses of force. So I think these officers need to be commended because they clearly could have escalated things to a level that nobody would have liked to have seen. What we saw was unacceptable and I think people heard me say that last Sunday, but understandable it's not worth killing anybody. It's not worth hurting anybody. So the issue is we have to balance those.
But my men and women out there doing this day-in and day-out, they put up with a lot of stress dealing with these issues and I think they need to be commended. And I wanted to recognize them at this hearing. Nonetheless despite these efforts, we're not ignorant to the fact that these problems continue to plague the city. Just as we saw a week ago, many of these meetups feature reckless driving, vandalism, fires, flamethrowers as we saw. Complicating the response to this event last Sunday and the Sunday before was the sheer number, the sheer number and the prolonged, which was very uncommon. And I said in a press conference a couple weeks ago we believe this was intentional, okay, to stress our resources to a minimum. Okay. So they intentionally did what they did, went throughout the city on a very strategic and methodical process to take our resources and spread them as soon as they could so they could do as much damage as they possibly could. We know that. So what we found out after the fact is that as we noted -- I'm sorry, I got lost in my place. Additionally, this Committee noted there's a number of these participants that traveled long distances. They came here on purpose to do what they did in Philadelphia to carry out the criminal actions here from as far away as New York and Virginia, Harrisburg. In response, the PPD -- and I think you'll be rather impressed when Deputy Commissioner Vanore speaks up. The PPD has launched a vigorous investigative effort to identify and apprehend those who have organized or otherwise participated in this mayhem as well as their vehicles. In addition to criminal arrests, police are actually seizing a lot of those vehicles of evidence and we've already received several. With respect to PPD's efforts it would be misleading, and I want to be very clear with this point and the Commissioner kind of very much made this stressful, it would be misleading to have you believe that there's not challenges. Our biggest challenge in enforcing law enforcement to this type of events is the utmost regard to public safety. Simply put, police cannot disregard public safety when trying to intervene or apprehend these operators. We will not pursue them. Okay. That's very clear and the Commissioner wants to make that very clear. Police pursuits result in tragedies, so we're not chasing somebody for minor viol -- they are not minor violations to the community by any stretch, but criminally minor violations or nuisance car vehicle violations we just can't pursue, but that does not mean we can't enforce. We find alternate ways to do what we need to do. And the gentlemen to my right and left will explain how we do that. Nonetheless it does appear to a lot of people outside of police operations that these people have evaded capture. You'll see from Deputy Commissioner Vanore these folks are finding out very hard or the hard way that the long arm of the law really does exist and they'll explain why and how. But regardless of our efforts, we must continue to explore new methods to address these issues and hold people accountable. Accordingly, we will be exploring the expanded use of technology such as license plate readers, drone technology and other control and containment strategies. In sum, the PPD recognizes the dangers and stresses of illegal ATVs, car meets and nuisance vehicles. As you can see from the data, we have taken Mayor Parker's vision and have responded and we will continue to do so to improve the overall quality of life in the city. This concludes my testimony at this time, but I would like to present Deputy Commissioner Cram to discuss the actual statistics of both the ATV car meets since the beginning of the year -- I'm sorry, since March, and car meet details. And then he'll be followed by Deputy Commissioner Vanore to discuss the investigative efforts, basically how we go after these individuals.
Thank you. For the record we have been joined by Member Lozada. Oh, Member Bass, I'm sorry, and Nina Ahmad. We have a full complement. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER CRAM: Good morning, Council. I'm Deputy Commissioner Mike Cram. I'm in charge of Patrol Operations for the City. First off, I'd like to start off by thanking you because your nuisance vehicle policy has been an outstanding tool for us. We implemented it about two months ago and it has been very powerful. We've gotten really good feedback from the people that were actually issuing the citations too, so I just want to thank you. So overall we have standard operating procedures for how we run these car meet details. So every Friday, Saturday and Sunday evening we have officers in both of our regional operations command, North and South, whose only purpose is to address the car meet issues. 99 percent of the car meets are just quick gatherings. If we had them at all this past weekend, really nothing in the city. And I think a lot of that is attributed to Deputy Commissioner Vanore's team's work. That word is definitely getting out there. But generally 99 percent of the time there's nothing. There might be a small gathering of both cars, high-end cars, boom cars. The officers from the Car Meet Detail respond. Generally they leave as soon as they see even just one police officer. They break up into small groups. They drive away at high speeds which is not safe for us to pursue. They don't care about traffic rules and regulations or anything else. That's 99 percent of the time. You'll get about that 1 percent of the time where they'll mass, they'll have 50 to 100 cars. They'll take over an intersection. They won't leave as soon as an officer arrives. They'll wait a couple minutes, do their thing. They want the backdrop of the officer actually being in the picture. But then when they start seeing more officers arrive, then they disperse. The last big issue we had similar to this weekend was in the beginning of the summer and it was actually up at Bustleton and Red Lion, up there. It was late in the evening. They did a take-over there. The Car Meet Detail came together, responded as well as being supplemented by patrol officers. They came in and they were able to make some stops on the spectators, grabbed a couple of the videographers. These are very well- planned. There's always somebody that's doing videography as you can tell by seeing the videos they put out on social media. There's always professionals with them doing it. So when you see those type of videos and when you see them mass at a certain location, that is well-planned and organized. It isn't just our run-of-the-mill, hey, let's meet here and do our thing. So overall what have these details produced. We stopped over 1,400 cars involved in these meets. 22 of them are live stops. Occasionally you'll see an ATV or dirt bike in there. We confiscated two of those. Wrote 247 tickets. 261 parking tickets, usually write those to the spectators. 120 arrests. The bulk of the arrests there was a large group, they blocked 95. We were able to hit them for protesting similar to what we do with the protests. The majority of them they run the mill from gun arrests, aggravated assault, people locked up on warrants, looting, we were able to lock a few up for looting. But for the most part a lot of it is the CVN enforcement. So thanks to your policy so far we've been able to write of the nuisance 18 vehicle PVRs, and for involved in a 19 car meet is a nuisance car and for 20 boom cars as well, and that's $300 21 to $2,000 fine depending on what 22 they're involved. 23 So if they're just there, 24 we can't get them for the drifting. 25 We actually have to see them in the act which can be difficult. As far as the really deep investigation part, Deputy Vanore will get into that.
I'll move over to the ATV and dirt bike enforcement as well because these are two of our biggest complaints, right, from the community, the car meets and the ATV and dirt bikes. So dirt bikes we've really cracked down on those. So we generally run those on the weekend. That's when we see it most. We do have dirt bike officers deployed during the week. You might see them around City Hall during the week. They're generally officers that are trained dirt bike riders and then they patrol their districts, right. We have them in certain areas at the parks, 7th, 8th District, 14th, 5th, officers up there that are trained and can go in the parks. But generally if you see them during the week, it's either we know something's going on, you'll see a group of them, or it's just the general officers assigned to patrol. But for the most part we focus on the ATV dirt bike enforcement in the warmer weather and on Friday, Saturday and Sunday weather depending. So we've conducted 66 operations targeted specifically for ATVs, dirt bikes. And more recently in the last about two months based on community complaints, we started focusing on the little (inaudible) scooters that you see driving around, right. Most of them are unregistered, unlicensed so we really started doing some really good enforcement on those. We started in Center City, subsequently moved that up to East Division and then South Division as well. They're being used for robberies. They're really focusing on -- they're targeting the delivery drivers, things of that nature. So we started incorporating them in as well. It's been pretty successful. So from the ATV side, so far we have 295 live stops, right. So their vehicles, either dirt bikes, ATVs, maybe registered, maybe not stolen and the side-by- sides, the little dune buggies you see out there is the best way to describe those. So we've taken 295 of those. They have to go through the court administrative procedures to get it back. We've had good success of them not getting them back. But we've also taken 388 ATVs, dirt bikes. That's a big number. That's more than we had all of last year, so we're definitely making really good progress on those. We've written over 500 tickets, 240 parking tickets. Made 125 arrests, and I'll go into some of the arrest categories of what we've arrested them for. Recovered 49 stolen bikes or ATVs in those operations and issued CVNs for 8 code violation notices. 9 What we've incorporated a 10 new tool into our enforcement is 11 when they flee we don't pursue, but 12 when we have the aviation cover 13 it's easy to follow them until they 14 run out of gas or they just stop. 15 Then the dirt bikes will move up, 16 we'll effect the arrest. We've 17 been able to charge 42 of them with 18 fleeing and eluding. And we're 19 very confident that because we've 20 started charging people for this 21 it's a reason why you don't really 22 see the big ride-outs that you've 23 seen in the past, right, because 24 they know we're going to take their 25 bikes and they know we're eventually going to catch them and they're going to be arrested. So that's the big number there is those 42 arrested, like I said. 28 stolen autos. We also see a lot of guns so there's VUFA arrests as part 8 of these operations and a variety of other things, warrants. There's been 8 warrant arrests and then 8 for assault on police, so they do attack our police officers on the bikes. We have some really good riders so they do actively -- they'll try to surround the officer and knock them off the bike and we've seen some serious injuries from that as well. So we've also been able to issue some of the CVNs once again using that code violation notice that you guys have graced us with. So we've written 7 of those. 12 for just spectators watching the ATV dirt bikes doing their little spin-arounds, but that gives you an idea of what we have dedicated to both operations to address both issues.
Like I said, there are frequent complaints from the community for us and these are the actions we've taken so far to address them on the patrol end. And with that, I'll turn it over to Deputy Commissioner Vanore, and he can talk about the great work they did in response to the issue two weekends ago. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER VANORE: Good morning. I'm Frank Vanore, the Deputy Commissioner of Investigations. So as Commissioner Cram had mentioned we have been responding to these for a long period of time, not all of them are at the magnitude you've seen a couple of weekends ago, but we've had several that have amounted to destruction, reckless driving, assaults, vandalism both to City property, police property. Going back to September of 2021, we made a lot of arrests based on investigations, investigations using a lot of different techniques that we became better and better at as we moved forward. If you remember, there was one right outside this building in September '21, and we were able through social media, video and witnesses cooperating arrest the promoter of that event and charge him with conspiracy to commit all those acts. During the course of this though, we have become better at identifying people that are involved in them and confiscating vehicles. Now that we have the nuisance legislation, we first will take the vehicle for evidence, and that's what we're doing in the cases that occurred last weekend. We have identified over 40 vehicles that were involved in the activity both driving recklessly, blocking traffic. Some of them involved assaults, lighting fires. We've placed those vehicles of wanted status and we are incrementally throughout the area, not just Philadelphia, collecting those vehicles as we get called by other jurisdictions. Once we become in possession of them, we're conducting an investigation to figure out who was driving. And I can just say we're using a lot of different investigative techniques to do that, all right. We're using the vehicles technology, we're using social media, we're using video and we're using other detective techniques similar to what I do when we investigate homicides. And we are finding people all -- you're going to see that we're going to make a lot more arrests based on a few weeks ago. We already took a woman back from North Jersey, charged her with several felonies and misdemeanors in reference to the case. There was an individual from Pittsburgh who we served search warrants on his house, recovered the fire starting equipment, recovered the clothing he was wearing which was very prominent. He had a mask looked like the sun, but he was prominent in all the videos and we also recovered his vehicle along with the woman's vehicle. There are vehicles being recovered every day. There were a few last night. And as we get them, we're going forward to go backwards and invite these people back to Philadelphia to face consequences for what they've done. What's important is though as we collect these vehicles and we process them for evidence, we still like them to go through the nuisance process. They should have to face some consequences to get these vehicles back. So that's going to be something that'll be in your hands as we move forward to finish what we're doing with them and move them over. But there's over 40 vehicles that we're looking for and we're going to find during the course of this investigation. So that's what we're doing. I have not only Philadelphia and local people helping us with this, there's state officials helping us with this and we have federal agencies that are also helping us with this. As Deputy Cram said, a lot of these vehicles are stolen and we know that. And you'll hear about more of that as time goes on. We're doing investigations into stolen vehicles that may have been a part of this. They re-VIN them, they put different plates on them and they get them out there so they could just wreak havoc on the streets.
So we're connecting investigations with stolen vehicles to see if they're connected with these and make sure people are facing the consequences for that too.
Thank you so much for your testimony. I have just a few quick questions. Then I'll turn it over to my colleagues. In my District along the Parkway aside from the ATVs, there are a lot of motorcycle meetups. Are you able to use the same ATV Unit to enforce laws along the Parkway for the motorcycle meetups? Particularly, these are folks who are not -- we all know most folks with ATVs are probably folks that live in Philly. Those motorcycle meetups are a lot of folks from outside the city who just ride on the expressway to get down to the Parkway area. So are we utilizing the same tools to go after those motorcycles as we are the ATVs? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER CRAM: We do occasionally. The bulk of the ATV Detail's focus is on ATVs and dirt bikes citywide. As they come upon the motorcycle meetups, generally they're a little bit easier because they're cars, they're vehicles -- the motorcycles are registered. They're licensed drivers. Generally they're compliant. We don't really have any issues because for the most part working-class people don't want to do anything to have their bike taken away. So generally if we do have minor issues with those, they'll move as soon as the officer tells them to move along. So we don't see a big problem with that. When the Dirt Bike Detail is out there, they're really focused on getting the dirt bikes and the scooters, but that's something we can add to their list to start focusing on that as well. Generally as part as their patrol when they do go out is that Art Museum area. They understand that people want to get that photo op around the Art Museum, so that's generally one of the spots that they do conduct multiple checks on.
Yeah. I can say as the Councilmember for that area who represents the constituents, the calls that we get are more often for motorcycles than ATVs in that area. So if that's something that you could focus on, we would, you know, I think the community would really appreciate that, particularly with the motorcycles adjusting their mufflers and having the loud noises just riding around on the Parkway all night. So if we can focus some of the resources to motorcycles as well, I think that would kind of help some of the issues that the folks along the Parkway in our Center City area are experiencing as well. What's the maximum fines for some of these CVNs that are issued during these car meetups and when these ATVs are confiscated? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER CRAM: For the nuisance policy, it's $2,000.
2,000. And are there any other tools that we can help you as a body to allow you to utilize more technology, information to go after some of the these folks that are conducting some of these illegal meetups, these races, things like that? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: The answer to the question we're not 100 percent sure, but I don't know if that's for a public meeting so everyone else knows how we're doing things. So we'd be happy to discuss that afterwards, but we are using all the technology that we have and it's not a secret that we've got drones. The drones will be a big help on identifying -- like I said, we're not looking to chase individuals, but identifying where they stop, where they think they've eluded us. They all pull over, they stop. Knowing without chasing and where that's at allows us to do a control and containment strategy and there is a way that we can actually make the enforcement without compromising public safety.
Thank you. So drones help with your containment strategy rather than deploying officers to kind of like box them in. You would just use the drones to kind of follow them around? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: Well, that's our plan. We haven't actually used them yet. We're still in the testing phase, but the notion would be, yes, we can identify officers to a location but they kind of won't see it coming. Basically that's the bottom line. That way there we can control and contain them before they flee. And like I said, we're not chasing people because all that does is create a hazard to the community. But this way here we can control, we can get them, we know where they're at and then we can muster the forces and surround them.
Thank you. And, Deputy Commissioner Healy, you mentioned that during some of these meetups they kind of want the police resources to be stretched thin. Is there another number or another way the public can communicate to you in realtime that these issues are happening to capture that information so we're not necessarily stretching the police force? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: Well, the incident that happened two weeks ago was a coordinated effort by the individuals that were perpetrating these crimes. The best way for the community is to call us 911. That's the best way to call us and get the information to us as quick as possible. That's not going to stretch our resources. That was an intended -- they actually structured their events like 35, 40 minutes apart from each other all throughout the city, so they went from one place to the next. We had intelligence but we didn't have the scope of the intelligence so that's what stretched our resources. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER CRAM: And the community does call. We have over 1,900 calls specific to just the department. So the community does a really good job of letting us know. And it becomes a priority, especially on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday evening because our radio knows that we have a detail setup just for those. They have their own band. So it actually works out well. So the community does do a really good job of calling and notifying us that they're popping up.
Good morning. And again thank you, Mr. Chairman, for this important conversation. This is something that I think that the public should hear -- oh, I'm sorry. Can you hear me, better? Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for this important conversation. I think that this is something that a lot of us have had issues with as it relates to communication from the public. Thank you to the department for being here. We appreciate the dialogue. I know there's a lot of questions. I'm going to be brief. First question is the Chairman mentioned fines and you talked about a $2,000 fine. From the perspective that you have, how effective is that $2,000 fine in deterring behavior and should we look at the possibility of increasing that fine specifically when looking at some of these incidents that you're actually dealing with? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: Well, I believe the $2,000 fine is the maximum authorized by state law so we are tapped out I believe at $2,000. But I think you also should understand we also hit them with the state code violations, so you may get a $2,000 fine for the City code violation. But if you're reckless driving, you're doing anything else, you're getting those tickets under the state code as well, which could -- off the top of my head I'm not familiar with what the costs are, but they get steep very quickly because they have fees and court costs included. So we'll be hitting them with the normal tickets in addition to the CVN.
Okay. That's good information to know. And so, for the most part when a situation takes place and you end up meeting up with somebody and confiscate their car, most of the time they're not criminal charges. They're just fines, fees and things of that capacity? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: For the most part the cars we have been taking has been for evidence. They've been involved in either some type of criminal activity or illegal motor vehicle code activity and the vehicles are seized as evidence. We also take the vehicle as evidence for motor vehicle code violation as well if it's observed. So we'll take the cars. It's not permanent. It's not a permanent forfeiture, but we will take them as evidence so we can prove who was driving the car.
Last question: So I just want to again echo the Chairman as it relates specifically to motorcycles and motorcycle meetups around the Art Museum. That's been something that's been communicated to us since I've been on City Council. I'm wondering what have been some of the best tools as it relates to addressing the motorcycle meetups specifically, because I hear you talk about the fact that a lot of people who own the motorcycles are people who don't want to lose their vehicle, but I think somehow some way there's a disconnect because similar to what you talked about with the ATVs, are people not using stolen motorcycles? Are they not replacing or flipping their license plate? How are people on the motorcycles able to kind of create some of the havoc that they're able to create and us have some type of disconnect as it relates to maybe what their purpose is and intentionality? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: I don't know if there -- there's different classes of people that -- I mean, the ones that are legitimate, it's a lawful motorcycle. They all get together. They have license tags, they all licenses. A lot of the issues we have with those bikes is they're loud. And they're in that Art Museum area and with all the high- rises around there it reverberates off the building so I understand how frustrating that has to be for those individuals. I mean, we could discuss other legislative amendments we have. There are certain amendments as it comes to noise. The boom car which is part of the nuisance car bill talks about amplified sound, but it doesn't talk about illegal muffler sound. It may be something to consider to add that, that way there we could give a much larger fine at the City level much quicker, because it's harder for us to actually measure sound without sound meters. The way the ordinance was written for the nuisance vehicle we don't need noise meters. We just need distance. If I can hear something beyond a certain distance, it's therefore a violation. And actually in our policy we even added another 50 feet to that just to add a buffer. But maybe potentially I'm happy to discuss that, if you want later, to see how we could possibly use muffler noise. If I can hear muffler noise farther than a certain distance, that could essentially be a violation, and I'm happy to discuss something like that.
So I'll follow the lead of the Chairman as well as Councilmember Squilla because I remember that was his legislation that essentially looked at that particular issue. But just listen to what you're saying. So if I'm a constituent, I'm here, I'm listening to some of the concerns that you said, you know, Friday comes, it's nice outside. Motorcycle meetup happens. The Commissioner said call 911. What can they expect to happen when they call 911 based on the information that you're testifying right now? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: Well, we're going to respond, number one. That's the most important thing. The thing is to keep these individuals moving and not congregating. The issue is when they're congregating in one place that's when a lot of the bad things start to happen. If we can get on top of that and keep them moving, and that's kind of our strategy, keep them moving. When they're moving, they're not connected and they're constantly all over the place, that way they're not in a uniform fashion going up and down the Parkway.
So have you ever thought about putting a car out there if the goal is to keep them moving? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: Well, we do. That's part of the ATV and Car Meet Detail. They don't ignore those motorcycles coming up and down. Quality of life is their core mantra so they're looking for the quality-of- life ATVs. I mean, the dirt bikes aren't so much into the car meets. But, yes, they go up and down Center City. And there's been a noticeable difference in the number of ATVs circling City Hall and stuff like that, but we still have a lot of work to do and we're not going to say we don't.
Thank you. Just one comment or question rather. You said that the motorcycles are a different class of people, right, so we're separating, I guess, the vehicle with the person. And for me it seems like if it's all issues that affect the quality of life, it's like why are we treating those people differently than we're treating those folks that have ATVs or the car meetups? (Applause.) DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: We're not treating them differently. What I said is the vehicles are easier to identify. I mean, they have tags, they have driver's licenses, that's the classification I was talking about, versus some people are driving illegally with the ATVs and the dirt bikes. A lot of them don't have licenses and the bikes are obviously illegal. The issue is that the enforcement aspect for the legal bikes we will do that. That's not an issue whatsoever. It's just a different type of violator. I mean, I don't think they're out there intentionally trying to create mayhem as other people are. But nonetheless, it's still inconvenient for the community so we will take those actions and that's also for the dirt bikes. And actually, we're looking in the very near future to add another 30 dirt bikes to our fleet for this very purpose.
Yeah. I think if you stick around and listen to the testimony of folks in the public, you'll hear that they are actually intentionally trying to create mayhem down there as well. (Applause.) DEPUTY COMMISSIONER CRAM: Sir, I just want to clarify, you're talking about real motorcycles, Harley's and crotch rockets? You're not --
Yes. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER CRAM: -- talking about dirt bikes?
Yes. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER CRAM: Okay. So they are a part -- we've definitely -- one thing we haven't done over the last couple years, among a few things, has been traffic enforcement. So because of the community complaints, we've definitely focused on traffic enforcement through this year. That has been a consistent complaint in all the community meetings we've gone to this year. And traditionally it's just something we haven't done, and that's reflected in a number of our vehicle investigations. We're up almost 25,000 number of tickets we've written which is up 11,000. That's not including the enforcement for the car meets and ATVs, right. So we're definitely taking a more proactive approach. As you see we publicize when we're doing the track enforcement. At the end of the summer we just did one on Island Avenue and Aramingo Avenue. We're going to be starting one on Lincoln Drive soon because we get so many complaints about Lincoln Drive. So we've definitely taken a a bigger focus on traffic enforcement with the goal of just reducing the 48,000 traffic accidents we average about a year so we've definitely taken that. So we'll just add that to -- they're doing traffic enforcement against the legit motorcycle riders. I mean, that is being done. They're a little different in the way they behave. ATVs and dirt bikes are going to run. For the most part it's no 7 different than stopping a car. They're going to stay. So they are loud. We do hear them going up and down Broad Street. It's the mufflers and things like that. So we will definitely focus on when they mass down around the Art Museum on the weekends. We have cars dedicated to Market Street, Broad Street and the Parkway. That's all they do just to ensure -- kind of like our nightlife deployment, so we do have them. So we'll add that as part of it. What the Car Meet Detail will do, when you have downtime and nothing's going on, we'll focus on traffic enforcement in those areas.
Thank you. Thank you so much. Chair recognizes Councilmember Gauthier.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. First, I wanted to commend PPD for the hard work that you're doing around this issue. It's a difficult problem. It's a dangerous problem and you all are working very hard on it. But I am also wondering about sort of it seems like a huge use of police resources to approach the issue, so I was wondering as my colleague questioned earlier about ways that we can be using technology or infrastructure or other means that wouldn't draw on our human capital as much. My first question is has PPD ever talked to Streets about ways that we can use infrastructure to cut down on this behavior? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER CRAM: Yes, ma'am. Streets Department has always been a great partner to us. Anything we need we pretty much get from them. So when we do the traffic coordination, we always check to see if you got any road work, what's your plans for the future, are you going to put speed bumps in. So they're good for our general traffic behavior and for just vehicle safety, pedestrian safety. They're good for that. Some of the things that they use for traffic-calming devices, when it comes to ATVs, dirt bikes and the car meets, they would actually make things less safe. So you won't see --
Okay. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER CRAM: They won't go -- the ATVs and dirt bikes, they're just ramps, right. They'll use them for ramps. But the car meets, you don't see them go anywhere where there's traffic control devices. That's pretty constant because of the way their cars are built and they're often low. So they don't want to do anything where they -- I mean, they'll use it to get away if they have to get away. But for the most part they tend to stay away from those areas where they're putting the traffic-calming devices. Like when we did the traffic enforcement at Island Avenue I was talking to Commissioner Montanez, and that was one thing he said, hey, we're going to put some bumps and all to calm the traffic down on the lower end of Island Avenue. I'm like, that's good, that'll keep them out of there, right. So it does help us in that aspect. But if we were to look at putting them around City Hall and all, they would find a way around it. I just don't -- for the way it curves, it might be some danger around that as well. So it really helps us for traffic enforcement for lowering the auto accidents, pedestrian safety on that end, not so much with the dirt bikes, ATVs and the car meets. They'll just find somewhere else to go.
But if infrastructure could help with the car meetups and sort of the racing that happens with cars, how seriously are we looking at the hotspots and looking at the use of infrastructure so we don't have to have as many actual officers on the ground? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER CRAM: Yeah. I mean, the cameras are always helpful and we're throwing a lot more cameras out there as part of the technology upgrades and our modernization plan so that's definitely helpful. We do hit those hotspots, you know what I mean. They're so mobile and it's hard to -- there could be 50 of them in a blink of an eye and I'll use Red Lion. They just disappear, right, especially with the traffic volume on our 2500-plus miles of streets. It's amazing how quickly they can disperse and then reform. That always becomes our challenge. And I'll use the one I was out at Red Lion and Bustleton at the beginning of summer. Man, they split up and were gone. They were on Verree. They were down Red Lion. They went around us trying to block them on Bustleton Avenue. They dispersed, and then they picked up over by Cottman and Bustleton like in a blink of an eye. So it becomes a chall -- I think we're just so big. Listen, we're not the only city that has this problem, right. This is an actual nationwide problem. So we do a really good job of kind of seeing what those best practices are. Oakland did a big hit in the beginning of the summer. We kind of took a few of the things that they did. Jacksonville, Florida did one about two months ago. Got some really good results from it. So we take a little bit of everything. I think it's one of them whole government approaches, Councilwoman, where every little bit helps. So I think that's going to be the challenge. I can't give you a definite answer saying if we do this, we're going to need less manpower. Everything helps, but ultimately when we were able -- in order to contain them as big as some of them are, we definitely need the staffing. The only way we can do that is with staffing. So it is a challenge. Every little thing helps.
Okay. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER VANORE: Just a quick example of the structure of moving them to another location. I know in South Philadelphia they put up like a concrete circle at 20th and Pennrose right in front of the diner because it was happening there constantly. So this time they moved to 20th and Patterson and did the same thing. So they'll move. That's the problem. We could keep them from an area but they're going to find another one. So that's our biggest problem.
But even if we only put them up on the weekends or something? There has to be a way if we know where it's happening and when it's happening. I would just encourage us to think more about ways to use infrastructure to cut down on the problem so that it's not always officers who maybe could be addressing other problems and -- DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: And then very quickly to address exactly your point, the license plate readers are being expanded in the city and the drone. The drone technology being able to identify vehicles without having to be there is where Deputy Vanore's folks can just move into the investigation side. Getting that information is also very difficult from a police perspective trying to get close enough, but with a drone we're going to be able to get more information and use the investigative tools we have so we use less officers on the street, because that risks the officers as well as the public. So we're finding alternate ways to keep people safe but still the enforcement. Like I said, I said jokingly a couple weeks ago, we know who you are, we're going to come find you and when that pounding on the door happens -- well, it's Deputy Vanore's people that do the pounding on door, so we are coming.
Yeah. Thank you. And then my next question is just about the nature of these groups. Are these mostly like ad hoc sort of gatherings or are these organized groups that consistently meet? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER CRAM: It's a mix of both. So from the intelligence side, I mean you can say that it could be local or you can have a nationwide group, but they are organized. So it just depends on the scope and how big. It could be a quicker one. But I mean, we see them come from Delaware and Maryland and Baltimore. They use the I-95 corridor, so it's a little bit of both. When you have the smaller ones that tend to be local, occasionally you get some group that meets down in South Philly right next to Lincoln Financial Field and they tend to be an older crowd. They'll have some boom cars. They move the minute that we tell them to move, very orderly fashion. We tend to don't see them again. That's more of an older crowd. But for the most part, they are organized. It's just a matter of the scope and the depth. Those car groups, those car meet groups, they're pretty powerful and widespread. And if you notice on the videos, there's a definite pattern to the videos. When you notice, there's fireworks, there's fire, there's a ring of fire. There's people standing in a fire. There's consistencies with those videos and how they set them up. They had a drone around City Hall that wasn't our drone. That was their drone, right. So I mean, they have a professional organization, et cetera, around them, especially with the high-end cars, so they are an organized entity.
And that leads me to my last question. I mean, these don't seem like the most law-abiding people, but the fact that they are somewhat organized and consistent, is there any opportunity for negotiation and communication with these groups to get them to behave differently even if PPD is not the messenger or is there an opportunity to focus on the leaders of these groups in order to cut down on the behavior? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER VANORE: So that's what our intel people are doing. We're going to figure out -- this all started somewhere. Someone started this. This was called Project X. So somebody started it. It became a social media kind of connection between all these people. They hid their communications so we go after -- and we've done it in the past months. We figure out who the promoter was and then we try to get after that promoter. We've also discussed with the District Attorney, but it's a little bit hard to do, if they're making money on these Instagram videos and all, well, we could be into a RICO. So that's something that we're going to explore if we can. But it takes a lot of work, a lot of investigative time, but we're certainly going to see if we could prove that and we're going to give our evidence to the DA.
Thank you, Councilwoman. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Ahmad.
Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you all for being here. Sort of piggybacking on my colleagues' questions, do we have the data to see the age groups involved in these from the arrests that you have made? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER VANORE: Most of the people that we are making contact with because of arrests are late teens, early 20s. I mean, several arrests were people in their 20s. We had a 17-year-old girl that attended one of these that was actually injured and we found her because she went to the hospital in Delaware and we were able to make contact with her. So there are teens involved, but many of them are in their 20s. These vehicles, some of them are worth $100,000 that they're driving so --
-- so we can't message their parents to do anything. Second thing is have we had a public media campaign of any sort that would help you to detract from people coming from elsewhere or even from within our city to say this is what is going to happen if you come to our city, if you do these things, these are the consequences and we mean business? Have we done anything like that or it has been reactive rather than proactive? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER VANORE: So we've done a lot of proactive. You don't always hear about it. When our criminal intelligence and our social media teams see an upcoming event, we do our best to locate the promoter of that. Now, we've knocked at some doors. Some of them were far outside the city. Mom and Dad answer the door. We say, hey, listen, who's this? That's my son. Let's go have a chat, and then they took it all down and the event was canceled. So we win some of these battles in the pre, but they're very hard to do. It takes a lot of sophisticated --
So I meant not -- I mean, that's great that you're doing such a targeted sort of devil-in-the-detail approach. But we also need a larger approach to say the City of Philadelphia is sending a message loud and clear that this is going to be an inhospitable area for you to do this in addition to all this disaggregated way that you're handling it. I haven't seen that. This also will reassure our constituents, those who are not involved in it, that you are paying attention to this and you are trying to get ahead of this. But we need every tool because then you can have our residents be part of your team to alert you if they know that this is a citywide issue and we don't need our police to be involved in wasting their time on this and how can we as residents in Philadelphia be part of this solution. And I think it would be great to have some kind of a media campaign to tell us that. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: There isn't as of now. But the discussions we had as of after last week we have great video of a lot of people that were participating. So a lot of people that were involved, they may not have been in the car spinning, but they were part of the problem. We are looking to put a rogues gallery together and put an advertising campaign of some sort. Let their mothers and fathers know what they're doing on the weekends in the city of Philadelphia, and a lot of them aren't from Philadelphia. So we're looking to try to coordinate with our public affairs individuals to put that together. Because now unlike what we've had in the past, we get good video. We have good, clear shots of people's faces because they think this is okay to come here and do.
That's right. That's exactly what I meant, to send the message. The second part, talking about traffic- calming methods. I know they sort of change where they're going to target, but more or less they have an area, right. You need wide roads, you need an open space to be able to do this. We are shutting down streets on weekends and sort of blocking off streets. Have you ever thought about having this road block? I know it'll probably disrupt other traffic but this is usually at night, right. So can we set up blocks? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: Are you asking to set up blocks so they could actually do this?
No, set up blocks so they can't come in here to do it or to ward them off so you have -- saying that you know how we set Sunday, this street is closed, everybody's pedestrian on that. So having that kind of traffic-calming based on intelligence you might have? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER CRAM: Yeah. I mean, the problem with that is they can go somewhere else. So just from running all the special events for the last couple years for the City as the Chief of Special Operations, I mean just for us to block down the Parkway just for a major event, you're looking at over 200 cars and when I say that, 200 vehicles, and that's with Streets giving us trash trucks. So it's just very resource-intensive to do that. And the problem is they'll just go somewhere else. So if we put something somewhere, then they're going to go somewhere else. It's kind of like through your fingers.
Whack-a-mole, yeah. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER CRAM: Right, that's why I said whack-a-mole. It is like playing whack-a-mole.
But I think what it does is it's symbolic. It sends a message. I know that it's not going to be the way to do this. But if you can show for three meetups you were on top of them, you shut this down, the message is going to go this is not a place, let's find some other place to do this, right. So I'm just looking at a campaign, not just a one-off to say how do we send the message, one, publicly, two, actually act on that public campaign to say we're going to disrupt the spaces you do and then the residents of Philadelphia who are inconvenienced will know why you're doing it, that we're trying to make your life safer by doing it so you got to work with us. These are just ideas off the top of my head. I'm just thinking of how we disrupt and send the message loud and clear, this is not a hospitable place for you to do this, go somewhere else. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER CRAM: From like a public media perspective, like if you want to look at that information, operations-type campaign, this is a good start what D.C. Vanore's team is doing. And then for that message though, that needs to come from the whole government approach --
Yes. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER CRAM: -- from that, not just us because it just can't be us --
Absolutely. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER CRAM: -- and the DA saying, hey, this is what we're going to do to you. If that's something from the Administration where the Mayor and the Council, the City leaders, are like, hey, you see what the police are doing, we're supporting them and these are the tools we're giving them and we're just not going to tolerate this in the city, that would be very powerful, right.
Yes, that's what I mean. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER CRAM: Because I mean, you see the difference and the changes have been made in the city already. So I mean that's really powerful because the stuff that his crew is doing right now is some really good stuff, right. And that's kind of where we really start getting into it. The tool that you gave us with the nuisance, I'm a big fan of the nuisance policy, trust me. Ask anybody under me, they know. I'm like beating them with that every weekend. That is a great tool for us. So when you come on the information side too and we show that, yeah, this is not just PPD, this is the City, this is the City leadership saying that, I think that'd be a great help for us right there. That really would.
Happy to participate. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER CRAM: And to your point with the kids and the moms, we do that. And we're also trying to work with the insurance industry to see how we can do that as well, but we had an incident in mid-summer July where they grabbed a lot of young people. We issued them CVNs, and then the lieutenant called their moms. They were all from Jersey. It was like of them from Jersey. So they 19 didn't get good -- it probably 20 wasn't good based on the conversation she had with them on the phone when they got home. But, yeah, it's like those little things that we try to do. But I like the public messaging campaign. I think that'd be really helpful.
Thank you, Councilmember. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Bass.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER CRAM: Good morning.
How's everybody doing. Thank you for being here, and I also always want to take a moment to acknowledge the support and work that we get out of the 14th, 35th and 39th Police Districts which are all located within the 8th Council District and Inspector Nick Smith under their leadership. So I just wanted to say thank you so much for your service. I did want to just ask a couple of questions around the CVNs that are issued. And I think you mentioned earlier that one of the fines was $2,000 on what was that? Which violation is that? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: That's under the City Code, City nuisance vehicle code. There's several things. Drifting would be one of the violations.
Right. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: A boom car violation where if you can hear I think over 100 feet, those are the definitions of nuisance vehicles in the City ordinance.
Okay. So it can be any vehicle? It can be a car, it can be an ATV, it could be anything in between pretty much? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: There's a separate ATV ordinance in the City Code for ATVs for illegal operation, but this basically covered the spinning around, the donuts they do and also for the people that stand by and observe it. That as well as -- a lot of times what we'll see is we can't get to a location because other people block it while they're doing their thing in the intersections. The City ordinance also covers for that. That's a violation as well, to block an intersection so we can't get there. For people to present and be spectators and the actual individuals involved in the drifting itself are all covered by the nuisance ordinance.
So I guess my question around the fines that are issued is how many are being issued, what's the amount that's issued and what's the amount or percentage of those fines that are actually paid? One of my concerns is that we as a city we issue a lot of these violations and people don't pay them, take them seriously. And what is our ability to further enforce on the CVNs? So I don't know if you have that data with you, but just food for thought in terms of the effectiveness. Is it worth it to issue the CVN or should there be something else? So that's the first question. I don't know if you want to respond to it. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: Well, the CVN and I think the important thing about it is it allows us to stop the vehicle legally. We have legal justification to make the stop. And as the Deputy had mentioned, once we make those stops we're also finding people wanted, we're finding illegal guns, we're finding other things. So CVN is a great tool but it's not the only tool. But it gives us the legal authority to actually intervene and stop these vehicles that we didn't otherwise have before other than motor vehicle code violations. But like I said, somebody blocking the highway so something can occur doesn't really fall into a set violation at the state level and standing by and watching this type of behavior which actually fuels it was also not necessarily identified in the ordinance -- I'm sorry, in the state law. There is similar language in the drag racing under the Pennsylvania statute, observers of a drag racing. But this doesn't technically fall into that definition. That's why the ordinance is so useful because we have the state law we use. We use a City ordinance. We use everything in tandem to make sure we have the maximum impact that we can with the laws that we have already on the books.
Okay. All right. Very good. So the percentage that's paid do you have an idea of -- DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: I don't have that. I'd have to reach out to -- I'd have to find out. I'm not sure.
And I don't know that I necessarily need the answer, but I think to me it's more important that you all have the answer so that you know if it's an effective tool or not. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: Yeah.
That's just my thought on that. Yeah, so that's what I'm thinking there. The other thought that I had was around speed calming because as some of my colleagues mentioned earlier, just in terms of the use of police resources, even though it needs to be dealt with, I'm wondering like speed bumps in areas where we know these meetups occur on a regular basis, what about speed bumps or other things that could deter this kind of activity in the city of Philadelphia? Is that something that's being considered or do you guys work with the Streets Department to -- DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: Our enforcement tactics evolve as they evolve. So how and where they go, we're using -- like I said, we'll be using drone technology, license plate reader technology to use less officers in the field so there's less injury to individuals or there's no injuries hopefully, but we're looking for anything and we're constantly evolving. So, yes, we'll explore. Streets have been amazing with us working with coming up with different -- there's different strategies out there, some things, you know. You have to look at them and say that sounds good but what could happen. So we have to figure out what's the negative that could happen if we deployed this device versus another device. So we're always constantly evolving and looking. Like I said, our goal is to find the most effective way to control and contain. Once we control and contain they won't be here. Once they get caught in that net, then we have them. We have the car. We have the individuals. Right now they can't get caught in the net. So as the Deputy mentioned they flee. The goal here is to control and contain them, so we are looking at strategies that we can maximize that and get more people held accountable without injuring anybody. That's the number one answer here, really to have the safest way that we can do this.
Yeah. I think that particularly in the areas where these kinds of things happen like, for example, here around City Hall we know it's happened a few times and this would be an area I think that maybe if we put some sort of traffic-calming measures in place that maybe we could alleviate some of the concerns around it happening here. And the real sense of sort of like lawlessness or disrespect of it happening right here in front of City Hall, to me it sends a message a little bit. And I know we have Rich Montanez over there who's the king of speed bumps who wants to put speed bumps down right here. I know he's -- right, Rich? Yeah, but anything we can do around combating those issues working with the Streets Department we just want to be in support of that effort. So thank you very much. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: Thank you.
Thank you, Councilmember. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Harrity.
Thank you, Councilman. First, I just want to start off by saying thank you for your service. As a son of a police officer, I know it takes a special person to run towards danger when everybody else is running the opposite direction. But that being said, I did like the comment about going after these guys that are actually making money off of this and charging them with RICO. I think it'll send a big message if you got somebody that's looking at years to shake 5 them up a little bit, you know. I 6 believe you only have to catch one 7 or two of them like that to send a 8 message to reverberate. 9 But I'd actually like to 10 hear more about the drones we're 11 talking about, because I know 12 during the budget hearings when we 13 were going over it we found out 14 that we had like one drone with one 15 operator. A, how many drones do we 16 now have? Is the drone program 17 already set up or is this something 18 that they're going to have to be 19 trained for? In other words, what 20 is the time frame to be able to utilize this tactic? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: Yeah. The actual number off the top of my head I'm not sure. I can get back to you. But the process, we've engaged in the process of getting the proper FAA licensing to do the drones so we don't have to have direct line sight. We're in the process of that and I believe we have that approval, so that's the first hurdle. Our policy was already implemented -- I'm sorry, not implemented, already drafted. The Commissioner was adamant that we also want to reach out to the community so the community is aware of how we're going to use drones. We're just not using them without their knowledge. We had preliminary meetings with individuals from the ACLU, with the District Attorney's Office, the Public Defender's Office on how we're going to use the drones, so we're very close to deploying. The actual timeline I could actually get back to you. I'm talking within a couple months at best. But we're in the testing phase right now, so we've tested them at certain major events and they've been incredibly effective. But they're right now in the testing phase, but they should be ready for implementation I'll say probably within the next month or so. But I'll follow up directly with exact dates.
Okay. Thank you. Yeah, I'm just curious of how many actual operators and machines we're going to have out there because the fact that -- I mean, in 2024 almost 2025 I think we have to utilize all the tools we have for law enforcement and I believe drones are a big part of that. I've always said that I'd like to see the drones attached to the gunshot monitors. That way when a gun goes off we know there's a shooting. Sometimes there's a lack in being able to get there and by the time you guys get there, the suspect has already fled. But if there was a drone attached to that, the drone could then fly in. We're not going to stop the shootings, but we're going to catch more people which will stop the shootings. So I'd like to see us going towards that direction where things are linked. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: Well, the drone policy will be mission-driven. So it'll be either responding to 911 as a co-responder or mission-driven deal. So they're not just going to fly around looking for stuff. They'll be actually dedicated to going to a 911 call. If they get there sooner, they can actually determine what's going on out there so the officers can readjust. If they think they're going into a robbery, it's not a robbery. It's just a --
Catch a license plate, catch a picture of a guy as he's running, you know, all kinds of different things. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: And that's exactly the testing that we're doing now.
Thank you, Councilmember. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Lozada.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I also want to say thank you to you all for your work, for being here and to the Chairmen of both Committees for bringing us together to have this important conversation. I know that this activity also creates havoc in the 7th Council District, especially in open spaces like the National Liquidator, the supermarkets and those kinds of spaces. Yes, technology is important. Yes, enforcement is important, and holding drivers accountable is extremely important. I think that we need to do better at that. Holding the drivers of these vehicles accountable and CVNs are not the answer, right, because we know that these folks many times are not going to pay these CVNs. We need to figure out a better way to hold them accountable. But what are we also doing with the locations, the spaces where these car meetups are happening? We have as a community met with owners of the ShopRites, the owners of the National Liquidators, the owners of some of the community-based organizations in the neighborhood to say, you need to figure out how you secure your lots, your open spaces in order to prevent these car meetups from happening and creating havoc in the community. What are we doing to engage them and hold them accountable for not securing their spaces and allowing for these meetups to happen in their parking lots? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: Well, I'm not necessarily sure that we are engaging the business owners of the lots as much as we possibly could, but it's a great idea. A lot of them do that on their own. It's a good idea. I'm just trying to think outside the box here. But you raise a very good idea. Part of our outreach effort with the community relations is to include the business owners to see how they can actually harden their location to avoid these things from happening with either bollards or poles or whatever it may be or decorative stones or rocks. I mean, that's a good idea that we can actually -- I'll reach out to Community Relations and coordinate with Patrol to see if we can -- we already know a lot of the locations from our intelligence, but that's a very good idea. I'll take that back and we'll look into that.
We need to have that conversation because ultimately we believe -- the Juniata, Frankford, Northwood community we really believe that the National Liquidator owners are a part of this problem, right. They have to be getting paid or they have to be a part of this activity in order to continue to allow it, right. They tried to install some gates on their property but they fail to close the gates at night. And so, they have to be a part of the process. They can't -- they have to be getting paid. I'm going to leave it there, right. We need to make sure that we hold them accountable for what happens on their private property. And as it relates to the conversation of speed bumps, Deputy Commissioner Montanez is here and we've talked a lot about speed- calming measures and speed bumps in the 7th Council District, and there is a waiting list of folks who want speed bumps. What are we doing to work with our partners at the federal and state level to identify funding to allow us to be able to respond to some of our more larger blocks where this happens? If it's not happening in a private lot, it's happening on some of our larger streets. So what are we doing to work with our counterparts to identify funding to be able to add some of those street-calming measures that could help us address the issue? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: We're continuously looking at grant opportunities when they come out. Whatever they may be we try to tap into as many resources as we possibly can. I haven't seen any such grant opportunities yet, but we can reach out and see whether or not some of our partners, whether or not they'd be willing to fund some of those ideas, but I haven't seen any. Because when the grant app opportunities come out, we all see how we can look at them, see how we can apply for them, whether or not we're eligible. But I haven't seen any directly on point, but there's no reason why I can't raise it to other people's attention that we could use money for those type of calming measures. Absolutely.
Okay. So I'm going to commit to working with my counterparts in the 7th. I think that we should figure out how we talk to the Philadelphia Delegation to help us identify additional dollars, especially for streets like the Aramingo Avenues, the Girard Avenues, the Lehigh Avenues of the world to figure out how we identify additional funding to be able to respond to this stuff in a way that improves quality of life but is also safe for everyday pedestrians crossing these streets. And then -- I'm going to leave it there for right now. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Councilmember. Are there any other questions for these witnesses by members of the Committee? (No response.)
Seeing none, thank you so much for your testimony. I really appreciate you being here today. Will the Clerk please call the next witnesses to testify on this resolution.
The next witness to testify is Herb Lottier, Interim Director of Protection Services of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. (Witness approached Witness Table.)
Good morning. Could you please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.
Yes. It's Herbert J. Lottier, and I'm currently serving as the Interim Director of Philadelphia Museum of Art. I served there previously from 1996 to 2015, then happily retired. I've been called back because the current Director of Security retired, so I've been back for seven weeks now on an interim basis. So that being said, I've been invited to speak here about the museum's experience with motorcycles and ATV vehicles on the museum terrace. ATVs and dirt bikes arrive in droves during the overnight hours weather-permitting. Up to 10 vehicles at a time once or twice a week is commonplace. Speeding is routine. We do not experience any motorcycle or ATV activity during daylight hours. While concerning, it's rare these recreational vehicles will drive down the east steps, the Rocky steps, basically confine their activity to the terrace. They typically enter by way of the West Terrace, passing unimpeded -- these are the motorcycles, not the ATVs. The ATVs pass unimpeded through a system of bollards we have set up preventing vehicles from accessing the southwest and northwest lots. The officer assigned to our marked patrol vehicle meets with mixed success when dispersing operators as necessary. Most individuals comply with the request to disperse while some others will resist. Approximately percent become 14 verbally confrontational. We 15 summon Philadelphia police when the 16 activity becomes loud and rowdy and 17 they typically respond. Bikers are 18 known to line up above the top step 19 along the terrace wall. They'll 20 converse for a while. They'll take in the view and they'll depart. We don't discourage or approach these individuals. It wouldn't accomplish anything. My shift supervisors have reported finding tire marks upon the grounds on only a couple of occasions. We witnessed one motorcycle accident along the North Terrace, resulting in a fatality. On June 28, 2019 at 8:45 p.m. a motorcycle was observed proceeding around the northeast corner of the building, that would be with the city to his right, of the PMA Terrace. As he rode along the north wall, he accelerated quickly to a very high rate of speed. He then lost control of his bike sliding into pallets of limestone. He passed instantly. And I'm happy to answer any questions. That's just the type of thing we're hoping to prevent.
Wow. Thank you for that testimony. Could you tell us is there a -- what damages have been done to the Art Museum based on these particular activities and how much do it cost our museum?
An expense, you're talking about the presence of the ATVs and motorcycles, Councilman?
I couldn't say there's an additional expense because we have a patrol person out there and this is one of his responsibilities to maintain the safety of pedestrians, visitors, that sort of thing. So it's not like we're expending any additional resources.
Okay. You mentioned tire marks and tire treads. Is there a cost to kind of cleaning those marks up as well?
We do clean those up occasionally, yes. The way I believe the Charter is set up is the Philadelphia Museum of Art controls all the maintenance of the skin of the building inside. The City of Philadelphia and the Fairmount Park Commission maintain the exterior of the building and that would include the Museum Terrace.
Thank you. Are there any questions for this witness from any of my colleagues? (No response.)
Seeing none, thank you so much for your patience and testifying today.
I appreciate your time. And I appreciate your father's service, Mr. Harrity. I did the same.
Will the Clerk please read the names of the next witnesses.
The next witnesses to testify are Nick Anderson, Executive Director of the Parkway Council; Harriet Williams of the Safe Streets Committee at the Philadelphian; and Tom Ferrick, also of the Safe Streets Committee at the Philadelphian. (Witnesses approached Witness Table.)
Thank you. We're going to ask you to please proceed with your testimony. We want to hear from all the witnesses and then we're going to ask questions of the panel.
Very good. Thank you, Chairman and members of the Joint Committee. My name is Nick Anderson and I have the honor of serving as the Executive Director of the Parkway Council, a not-for-profit organization championing the Benjamin Franklin Parkway's transformation into a great urban park for all. On behalf of the Parkway Council and the cultural institutions, community organizations, businesses and other Parkway stakeholders that we convene, thank you for calling today's hearing on illegal street racing. We encourage City Council to remain focused on this issue and devote additional resources for increased enforcement and enhanced traffic safety measures. As we've heard throughout the morning, the Benjamin Franklin Parkway is a frequent location of this illegal activity, activity that ranges from large scale meetups to motorcycles that daily race and weave in and out of traffic. Its expansive roadways and iconic profile are immensely attractive to the individuals who choose to engage in this dangerous and selfish behavior. These activities make the Parkway unsafe for other drivers, cyclists and pedestrians and cause significant quality-of-life issues for nearby residents. I know some of these residents are here today. A few are sitting next to me, and I will let them speak to these specific concerns. But I wanted to flag one issue in particular that might be underrecognized, and that is the way in which these activities foster an environment that feels unsafe and lawless, which in effect then robs Philadelphians of the ability to enjoy the public realm. If I might give one example, the Parkway Council is Philadelphia Parks & Recreation's main partner on the summer Oval popup. Over seven weekends we transform Eakins Oval into a safe and inviting park with games, food and drink, cultural events and family-friendly programming. Free outdoor movie nights are among the most popular events attracting hundreds of families and others. On one of those evenings I was speaking with a grandmother from Brewerytown who had brought her two young grandchildren to the Oval to run around and play in a safe environment, enjoy a balmy summer evening and watch a movie for free. On that same evening a small group of motorcyclists decided to aggressively and loudly race, ignoring all traffic signals around Eakins Oval literally encircling hundreds of Philadelphians. I couldn't help but think how that grandmother must have felt, is this still safe, how do I now navigate getting my grandchildren safely home with motorcycles zooming past the crosswalks, is this worth doing again. We see in the Parkway and other locations across the city a huge amount of public space that can serve residents if we can make these spaces safer, more vibrant, better connected and more accessible. We are working closely with Parks & Recreation, OTIS and Streets and others on this vision. Yet even if we make progress on improved infrastructure, enhanced landscaping or increased and more inclusive programming, without enforcement this reckless and lawless behavior will continue. It will not only make people less safe but diminish our public spaces, preventing Philadelphians from enjoying their city, enjoying each other and celebrating all that makes Philadelphia so great. Thank you again for shining a spotlight on this issue today and for this opportunity to testify.
Thank you so much, Ms. Harriet. Please proceed with your testimony.
Hi. First of all, I want to start by saying this is my colleague Dennis Boylan. I'm the Chair of the Safe Streets group. We're based both in the Philadelphian and Dennis is from Logan Square Neighborhood Association. We want to thank Councilman Young for holding this hearing. We appreciate your attention to this issue, which is a major problem in your District and in the city. We want to talk both about illegal street racing, including the horrendous car meetups which happened in our neighborhood, and nightly problems because of illegal speeding motorcycles. Our neighborhood is the number one tourist site in the city because of Rocky. It's also the site of car meetups as you know, which you saw a week ago where it was just awful. And by the way, directly across the street from a hotel because we're in a tourist neighborhood. So the Maj Hotel guests got a front row seat to the car meetup. We have nightly issues with speeding dangerous motorcycles both around Eakins Oval, up and down the Parkway and frankly on Fairmount Avenue. It's not just reverberating from buildings as the police said. It's the neighborhood. It's filled with these vehicles and the noise is horrendous. They're dangerous. They do at least 60 miles an hour. They do not stop for lights, and collisions with pedestrians are inevitable. At the same time, we have an endless series of tourists visiting Rocky right where these motorcycles are doing 60 miles an hour. We're asking -- we know that the police have made a tremendous effort against ATVs and dirt bikes. We are delighted with that. We're asking that they finish the problem of illegal vehicles on the streets and take the same initiative with car meetups and with illegal motorcycles. We believe the action needs to include ticketing for altered mufflers as well as strategies to block these vehicles as they careen through our streets. They're predictable. Where they'll be and when they will be we can tell you. It doesn't take serious police effort to figure out. They'll be going around the Parkway, going around Eakins Oval at 11 o'clock at night. They will be going up and down Fairmount Avenue through dinner hour disturbing all the businesses and residents. They can be stopped. For enforcing, we're asking for enforcement of existing federal, state and local laws about altered mufflers on both cars and on motorcycles. Other cities do this with no problem. Altered mufflers can be identified easily. Frankly, I could tell the difference and I'm certainly not a car expert. If you ticket illegal mufflers, it means that they are less likely to come around here because it makes it a less safe place. Noise meters are not needed because visual interpretation, is the muffler altered is perfectly adequate for federal, state and local laws against mufflers. I want to point out the motorcycles gather on the apron of the Art Museum on a nightly basis. Many of us have gone over to talk to them. In case anybody thinks they're teenagers, they're not. They're adults. They are a combination of African American, White adults. Clearly not poor people. They would not like tickets. They own expensive vehicles and many of them are also not from Philadelphia. I've asked where are you from. They come because you can do it safely here rather than in the counties. Ticketing them and stopping them is quite possible. We understand that the noise issue is secondary to safety, but it's an issue that drives taxpayers to leave Philadelphia. It's really hard to live here. As I was writing this a few nights ago, the noise was blasting. It is really hard to live in the city if you live on any of the paths. I hope you will pay attention to this. And thank you. I believe we can do better. Thank you again for being responsive to the issue.
Councilman Young, thank you very much for conducting this hearing. Dennis Boylan, again part of the Safe Streets Committee at the Philadelphian and past President of Logan Square Neighborhood Association. I'll amend my remarks because a lot of what has been said previously is in my testimony. But it really comes back to the simplicity of some of the enforcement. Something as simple as a valid inspection sticker on a vehicle, and the inspecting agency doesn't have to be the only enforcement part of that effort. It can be done by District police officers. It doesn't have to be special squads. If we train our officers to be able to visually recognize an altered muffler, they can write the ticket right there, and that can be on a car or a motorcycle. Key to this is what you're doing, which is legislation that assists the police because our police clearly need that backup. They need to understand that there is a command emphasis starting at the very top from the Mayor to the District Attorney to the City Council backing them up and providing them with the resources, and that's where I think this hearing is headed and we greatly appreciate it because we know coming back from the bottom up, that's from the residents of the city, that we really need this, and it's a citywide problem. It's not just -- and I live off the Benjamin Franklin Parkway so I hear it every night. But I know from other communities, Queen Village, out in Wynnefield, West Philadelphia along the 52nd Street corridor, up on Aramingo Avenue, down on Delaware Avenue, this is a neighborhood issue that goes throughout our city. And so, the political will needs to be there on your end to make this happen. Getting back to the behavior from two weekends ago, the press reported that this was a series of retaliatory events, a statement to show the city. Think about that, that our city has now had that reputation that we're attracting outsiders. And we heard from the police one of the arrested gentlemen was from Pittsburgh. What do we have, tourism mayhem? I don't know what you want to call it. The images from that event went national, maybe global. And they were repeatedly played upon in the news. I have a video attached that I sent in my written statement that shows the mayhem out at 23rd and Pennsylvania Avenue right off the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Unlike the City Hall event this one seemed to garner a large and significant police response, but the cars -- and we heard about the police exercising caution. They were present. They sounded their sirens, but that would seem to be about it from what people could see. Again, the perception is what are we doing, are we doing more. Now, we heard about the more, but a campaign in the public notifying people that this behavior won't be accepted and we go out on social media, we don't have to spend a lot of money doing it. That would be very, very effective. But the Philadelphia police, they witness it, we witness this behavior. And again, it seems to show we permit this behavior by not taking visible action. And what are we talking about, racing, reckless behavior, altered mufflers, unregistered, uninsured vehicles and unregistered drivers, concealed license plates, fake or expired temporary tags. All this, then we add that in with the mix of when you're driving on our streets, people not following street signs, they're ignoring them. Vehicles parked in or using bike lanes, running red lights and disregarding stop signs. Illegal racing is part of a larger issue of public vehicular safety in our city. And the lack of enforcement only exacerbates it. As an addendum, we know that the residents here in Philadelphia we pay much larger car insurance rates, those of us who are the law-abiding registered ones. So there's an economic impact back at the regular resident. The obvious risks are to our pedestrians, bicyclists, other vehicles. Even the witnesses to these car meetups are at risk.
Also at risk is the well-being of our residents and their ability to live in our city. If the noise generated by motorcycles and cars is so loud that thousands of law-abiding taxpaying residents can't get a good night's rest, well, there's a public health impact there too, and that really needs to be brought out. Because I mean, along the Benjamin Franklin Parkway you have condos and apartment buildings that have literally thousands of residents and they can't sleep at night, night after night. And if it impacts their health, some of them have left our city and we don't want that. If the vehicle behavior is so reckless that people become fearful, they won't want to live, work or visit here. If the images of car meetups and motorcycle swarms generate social media income, then those same images can and are being used by competitor convention cities. We've lost conventions. That impacts our hospitality industry. That industry employs a lot of Philadelphians. It also impacts our museums. What do we know? We know that post-pandemic our museum attendance, for Philadelphians it's back up. For tourists it's back up, but for the suburbanites they're not coming back yet. We're sending an image out to the counties that Philadelphia is not safe. It's not a good place to be. We don't want that. We've got big international events in the horizon in the next two years. We've got to be ready and we've got to address this. So in the end, I'd just say to you that what you're doing, pursuing this with legislation and with the support of the residents, we're with you and we thank you very much for all that you've done. )
Thank you all for your testimony. Just a general question. So I know that I've been to functions and cookouts at Lemon Hill where the police were across the street monitoring with video cameras, right. Have you seen something similar at the Parkway when these meetups are happening?
No, absolutely not. We're still back at call 911, which is amusing about a vehicle going 60 miles an hour. Because by the time I call, he's many blocks away. The answer is no.
Along the Parkway, and I guess this is a question for the Parkway Council, how have these incidents affected the visitorship of some of the museums and things like that on the Parkway?
Well, as 9 Dennis mentioned it definitely is 10 an issue and there's a reality and 11 there's a perception and both hurt 12 folks feeling comfortable to come 13 to these places, particularly in 14 the evenings or when some of this 15 activity happens more often. 16 And I think, as we've all 17 kind of mentioned, making sure that 18 these places feel safe as such an 19 important economic driver of our 20 city and such a hugely iconic spot 21 of our city signals so much of what 22 Philadelphia is. So if there is 23 this sort of a general sense of 24 lawlessness beyond the actual 25 immediate safety concerns, that creates a huge negative impact on attendance, on then folks going to local restaurants, then folks going home and saying, hey, I just went to Rocky and I had to run for my life, their friend from Ohio might not then come if that's the feel. I think none of us here wants that.
And in your opinion, how have the response times when the police have been called to come to these locations, in your opinion what have the response times been?
Part of the issue is the staffing, the manning of our district. The 9th Police District I don't think is at full staff so we don't have the resources. And I know they're recruiting. The recruiting classes I think this year have been substantial, but we've got to rebuild the Philadelphia police force and we've got to have a trained, experienced force and that doesn't happen overnight.
Can I just add we've been at this for 5 years. It is a long and somewhat 6 depressing activity. We've been 7 told for 10 years to call 911, it 8 will build a record. I suspect 9 there are tens of thousands of 10 calls about this. We're still talking about it. The motorcycles are still speeding. I think police try to respond to some of them. But given what we're saying, what do you do -- they're not chasing them for obvious reasons. And it's all day Sunday, it is at least both weekend nights and most weekday nights. They're still out there. Fewer ATVs and dirt bikes, that's really different, and at least as many motorcycles.
And the video's there for the 23rd and Pennsylvania Avenue event and was concurrent with the City Hall event and six other places around the city. (Video playing.)
That's taken from a balcony in the Philadelphian, so it's a block or so away from the actual intersection.
So essentially there's police presence but it's just being heavily ignored, to say the least.
Well, I will give the police credit for, I mean, exercising restraint. It's a diffi -- I mean, if you've ever been in a large crowd that's unruly, there's a real fear factor there. So that's why we need a professional, well-trained, experienced, well-led police force.
What are some things within that restraint that you think that we can do as a city, as a police force, to still monitor these situations to provide information to prevent these from happening to collect that data?
I'd like to say that most of the time we have three and four and five and six motorcycles speeding around. The meetups are occasional. The problem is the rest of the time we are nonstop. If we started enforcing with the smaller numbers, it would be a less welcoming place for the bigger ones. And I'm talking about something as enforcing muffler laws. It's a way of saying we're not going to allow illegal behavior in the city. The meetups, luckily they're not common. The other things are nightly. By the way, Broad Street is a disaster end to end. Talk to people who live along Broad Street. It is not just the Parkway. It's Broad Street as well.
One of the other things that's helpful is to make it a two-way communication line of -- after the event there, we had City Hall, six or seven other locations around the city. To get a message back out to the residents on what happened and what was going on, because in the neighborhoods we were all getting pinged by neighbors, what was that, because people were mistaking the fireworks for gunshots and it was building a fear factor. So a public information campaign coming back to us from the City would be very helpful, like here's substantially what happened with a unique event like that.
Thank you so much. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Lozada.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think campaigns could be of assistance, right. I think that they would be a great idea. However, I think that we need to understand that it doesn't matter the campaign if drivers don't assume responsibility for their actions, right. We need to -- if you all in this area, in this community, are calling 911 and the response is not as quick as the residents in this community would like it to be, I want to put on the record that it's triple the amount of wait time in communities like mine, right, because the 9th District when you compare it to other police districts across the city, the 9th District has the highest staffing, right. And so, we need to figure out together how we respond to this issue, but it really needs to -- we really need to hold drivers accountable. At the end of the day it's about accountability for oneself, right. And I think that some folks, at least in the 24th, 25th, 26th, 15th and the 2nd, which are the police districts that I represent, when we're in community meetings and we talk to our law enforcement partners and they tell us we're stopping some of these guys that are participating, they're not even the owners of the vehicle, right. So how do we hold people accountable, drivers accountable, right, without creating a space for folks to be profiled or to feel like they're being violated? Unfortunately, we are going to have to begin with very strict enforcement efforts and the optics of it are not going to be appealing, right. And so, as a legislative body we're going to have to figure out and accept that some of our own folks who are participating in this are going to get caught up in this. And if you are from other states and you're coming into our city, then we're going to hold you even more accountable, right, for these activities. But again, I'm going to go back to these locations because this doesn't just happen on large streets. This happens in some very concentrated spaces where those individuals are not being held accountable. I made the comment earlier. Someone in my contacts is watching the hearing and they're like, well, Councilwoman, one of your colleagues tried to hold these spaces accountable in the past and apparently some good actors or some people that really weren't involved got caught up. And I understand that. However, that means that we need to make sure that if you have a large parking lot space where you know that in the past these meetups are happening, what are you doing to close up your space to prevent these cars from getting in, right. Because if not, then you're opening yourself up to this opportunity. And so, I just wanted to put on the record that if the 9th District and Center City is having a problem responding to issues like this, imagine smaller districts in communities like mine. So we're going to have to figure out it can't just be about a safety campaign. There has to be some type of accountability and enforcement campaign behind all of this. That includes the driver, the owner of vehicles and the spaces where these activities are happening in.
Thank you, Councilmember. That to me brings up a bill that the police love, which is the critical nuisance or the chronic nuisance business bill, right. And so, I think that if some of these businesses are allowing these types of activities, then maybe we can enforce using that chronic responsible business law that we have on our books here. Are there any other questions for these witnesses? (No response.)
Seeing none, thank you so much for your testimony today. I appreciate you being here. (Applause.)
The next witnesses to testify are Tim Butters, President of the Fairmount Civic Association and Shaun Cerborino, resident of Fairmount. (Witnesses approached Witness Table.)
Thank you so much. Please state your name and begin with your testimony.
Sure. My name is Tim Butters. I'm the President of the Fairmount Civic Association. Thank you for having this testimony today. Thank you for holding this hearing on the prevalence of illegal street racing in Philadelphia. The illegal street races held in our neighborhood cause significant disruption for our residents. Most recently on September 22nd at approximately 3:00 a.m. at least 50 cars were engaged in illegal street racing at the intersection of Spring Garden and Pennsylvania. The races were extremely loud. They included fireworks waking up neighbors many blocks away, including myself, and showing general disregard for safety and law enforcement. These large incidents are a common occurrence at the intersection along with areas surrounding Eakins Oval in our community. Along with the noise and safety issues, the illegal street racing strains police resources in our district. We hope and support the Committee that they will consider additional penalties for street racing, additional resources for our police department to prevent and stop the street racing and street improvements to make the intersections with issues less enticing for illegal street racing. Thank you.
Hi. My name is Shaun Cerborino. I'm a resident of Philadelphia of over 16 years. And for the last eight-plus years I've been an active community organizer with Lemon Hill Neighbors, which is part of the Park Friends Group network among other local organizing and advocacy efforts in Brewerytown. My testimony today stands not only simply in solidarity with residents but also as a pedestrian, a cyclist and most relatedly, an organizer who understands how our built environment plays a defining role in shaping behavior. Fairmount Park and its adjacent thoroughfares have been seen as ideal locations for car meetups and racing not simply because at night they're fairly devoid of traffic, but because the built environment provides the opportune spaces for these occurrences. These spaces can absolutely be mitigated to decrease the opportunity to do these activities without the need to spend frivolously and with poor results in police response. Police cannot chase away something faster than good infrastructure can act as a deterrent. For those unfamiliar, Lemon Hill is the first incorporated area of Fairmount Park situated between the converging intersections of Kelly Drive and Sedgley Drive, Poplar Drive and Poplar Street, Poplar Drive and Girard Avenue. Within Lemon Hill itself, there are three intersections that are incredibly inviting and used often for street racing. Sometimes not even just in the late hours of the night. Lemon Hill is not an outlier though, because all throughout our park system this is an occurrence. These three intersections are wide streets with three to four traffic convergences that can and must be redesigned as either traffic circles or have islands put in them. Traffic circles dramatically decrease the wide open surface area needed for these races to occur. Concrete and parking- protected bike lanes also reduce the width of streets, providing more infrastructural barriers to the space needed to perform these stunts. Park roads must be narrowed where possible to one-way traffic flow, which is especially doable in Lemon Hill, and speed bumps are kind of like the lowest form of infrastructure that we can actually put in. So as many wide intersections, we're talking about they'll move to another location. Identify all the wide intersections that we possibly can and redesign the infrastructure, particularly those in the park which should not be serving as vehicular thoroughfares in the first place. Most recently the four-way convergence as we've heard, Spring Garden, 23rd Street, the Parkway and Pennsylvania Ave, those are four streets that converge that is a giant intersection that's wide open and has been an ideal location for many times over the years, and it's a pretty viable contender for some kind of traffic circle or island or anything like that. And I happened to be biking on my way home at 3:00 in the morning on the 22nd. And as I was biking home, police cars were racing down the streets to respond to this issue. That's not really the most safe way to respond to this issue either, by having other vehicles speeding through the streets and nobody's looking out for me on a bike or a person crossing the street. And then once the cops arrive, the drivers are speeding off and they're swerving through the streets too, so that's not really safety. And if these intersections were traffic circles or anything like that, this would eradicate the ability to do this in the first place because it serves as a playground for these types of behaviors and it also just encourages on a daily basis speeding, increases to pedestrian crossing times which result in drivers intimidating people to I'm going to run you over, you know, drivers who are impatient, and it also contributes to our heat island effect by having so much wide open, unused, unnecessary asphalt. So I'm going to kind of cut this short.
But I just wanted to say that we need, not we should look into, not we should consider, we need to implement infrastructural changes that are lower in cost and long-term investment than more just simply police response. There are studies after studies. There are countless throughout the world in our country right here of these types of infrastructural changes. It's not radical. It's not new. It's not untested. It's time that we need the Streets Department and Council to take Philadelphia into just the 20th century of street safety. )
Thank you for your testimony. As folks who live closer to the parks, can you just describe to us how often in your experience that these types of activities occur in your communities and your neighborhood?
I would say it's definitely consistent on the weekends and it does seem to happen like late into the night, definitely after midnight. Maybe even at like 2:00, between 2:00 and 6:00 in the morning. And a lot of times I can hear it. I keep my bedroom window open at night and I can hear it often. You can't really tell which direction it's coming from. Maybe it's at Lemon Hill. Maybe it's somewhere up 33rd Street in other parts of East Park which also experience this issue. So the sound really does, you know, I live on 29th Street. The park is two to three blocks from my house. Everybody can hear this, especially at night when there's no other noise going on. That's the only thing that you hear. So it's a pretty consistent problem, and there's the tire treads to prove it. I've also seen it happen in the daytime where they will speed up through Lemon Hill and go to the intersection and go around and around, and then they just go off and I don't know where they go, but they go to the next spot.
I would say I live about a quarter mile from the intersection at 23rd and Pennsylvania and Spring Garden. I would say it probably happens at least monthly during the better weather months at that specific intersection that I walk through. I walk through it every day and I can see the tire tracks, yeah.
Thank you. And, Tim, as the head of a civic association, how often do you hear these complaints from the residents in the community?
I would say pretty constantly. 2601 building is a part of our civic association and we constantly hear that they're having issues. And from Lemon Hill, up that way as well. These bigger issues, the ones that we're focused on kind of today, when it happens everybody in the neighborhood knows it. Everybody heard it. Everybody woke up. So that's kind of how I hear it.
Thank you. Are there any questions of the panel, of these witnesses? (No response.)
Seeing none, thank you so much for your testimony today. I really appreciate you coming down here. (Applause.)
Will the Clerk please call the next witnesses to testify on this resolution.
The next witness to testify is Jane Green of the Center City Coalition.
Could Sara Napoli and Matt Esserman also come up to the panel if they're here to testify as well. (Witnesses approached Witness Table.)
Thank you. Please state your name for the record and begin with your testimony.
I'm Jane Green. I'm President of the Homeowners Association at the Residences at Two Liberty and founder of the Center City Coalition. Councilmember Young, members of the Public Safety and Streets Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify to the dangerous threat to public safety from the proliferation of illegal vehicles, which include boom cars, ATVs, motorcycles and other noise- enhanced vehicles. These groups of lawless vehicle riders descend on residential and commercial neighborhoods throughout the city late at night and in early morning hours, as you've heard from others. They have one goal and that is to terrify people. They use fear and intimidation to threaten lives. They disrupt and destabilize individuals and families. They inhibit the social, economic and cultural activities that build and sustain communities throughout the city. They damage both private and public property. Most acutely, they destroy public trust in social and political institutions, as you heard from the representatives from the police department. I live at the intersection of 16th and Chestnut Streets, a major residential and business corridor that is routinely targeted by these vehicles. These riders know that enforcement is underresourced and ineffectively deployed and there is no 3 prosecution for their criminal behavior. They feel entitled to drive recklessly using amped-up sound systems, including those that simulate gunshots as they cruise neighborhoods, intimidate the public and dominate the streets. Several years ago I founded an advocacy group called the Center City Coalition comprised of residences, businesses, civic associations, cultural and hospitality venues and professional organizations. We work with City officials and the police department to find solutions to enhance public safety, security and quality of life in our community. We know very well the limitations on police and other enforcement agencies. We have long had a very productive conversation with the 9th Police District and they have been extremely accessible and candid with us. We also know that there has been a failure of will by elected and appointed officials over the years that has allowed these threats to public safety to intensify. This Committee deserves enormous credit for focusing on this threat. You cannot undo the damage of past government neglect that has ignored and underresourced public safety. You can legislate solutions that strengthen current ordinances and create new ones that punish harmful behaviors that affect every neighborhood in this city. These solutions must include intelligence technology, human resources, direct engagement with all affected communities, collaboration with other law enforcement resources such as our own Pennsylvania State Police and police forces in the tristate region, from which it is well-known that these riders come as well as direct targeting of known violators. Equally important, you must leverage your roles as elected representatives to force cooperation from all of City government, especially from the District Attorney's Office. Collectively, you have the opportunity to send a strong message of committed enforcement and prosecution to those who seek to create fear and insecurity, do harm and control others' lives. That strong message must also go to those who freely disrupt lives and commerce in other ways through loud music, marching through City streets all night banging on drums, and those who ride scooters and e-bikes on sidewalks and who threaten pedestrians. They do this in our city because they can. For too long City government has shown the public safety and the deplorable physical conditions of our streets and sidewalks. Its damaged national reputation for filth and violence are not top priorities. It is time to change that message. Thank you again. My group, my residents look forward to working with you on this very serious threat to public safety. (Applause.)
Thank you, Ms. Green. Please proceed with your testimony.
Please proceed with your testimony. State your name for the record.
Sure. My name is Sara Napoli. I live by City Hall, actually right across the street. What should be a great experience being in the very center of the city has been quite the opposite. In my time living here, I've encountered numerous terrifying experiences, among them witnessing criminals throw a Molotov cocktail into City Hall and set police cars on fire, along with finding dirty needles all around City Hall, including one that my dog ingested. Today we are here to address the specific criminal activity that has happened in the early morning of September 22nd, which is termed as drifting. In addressing this truly disturbing criminal activity, it is crucial to state that this is not the first time this crime of illegal drifting has occurred. In actuality, there have been numerous times in which this exact same crime has occurred at the very same intersection of 15th and Market. m. How do I know this? Because my family and I were woken up yet again by the same mayhem and madness. I also have pictures of it. Despite these crimes occurring directly in front of City Hall over and over and over again, to my knowledge a hearing of this kind between City officials and Philadelphia residents has not occurred until now. Besides the actual criminal activity, what I find most disturbing is that this hearing is primarily happening because of the national and international social media coverage that this most recent incident received and less because of the outcry of Philadelphians who are subjected to this insanity. As of September 22nd, the world is seeing on full display how absolutely inept our City government is. It is not like this is the first, second, third or even tenth time this has happened. This crime is a grossly regular occurrence. I am here to attest to this, as our 911 records. In order to solve this reoccurring crime it's essential to ask, why is it that the powers that be permit illegal actions to continue in perpetuity? The fact that only one police vehicle attempted to correct this most recent incident, and I'm specifying at 15th and Market, albeit 20 minutes after the start is woefully 21 insufficient and massively 22 dangerous to the life of the police 23 officer. This raises really 24 serious legitimate concern about 25 the confidence of the Public Safety Director, Public Commissioner and the Mayor's Council. The latest news that has been shared with the public is that a few arrests have been made. As much as that could be helpful, it is not enough, not even close. We are wasting City, state and federal resources by picking up pieces after the crime occurs. This is the most dysfunctional and backwards way to operate a city. You are never going to halt crime this way. We have laws preventing this crime, specific ones about disturbing the peace and noise ordinances among others. It is the literal job of our elected officials to ensure the City adheres to these very laws and ordinances, and yet elected officials refuse to hold those who engage in unlawful activities accountable. It is common knowledge that criminals are arrested and released the same day. So here we are. We, the taxpayers, are being abused by the deliberate inaction of our elected representatives. At what point do the citizens have to withstand this abuse? Why would any sane, rational person want to remain in the city continuing to be repeatedly subjected to crime. The quality of life as a Philadelphian is absolutely abhorrent. We are under duress at all hours. What occurred in the early morning of September 22nd directly in front of City Hall is clear visual proof of this. Let's call this what it is, a major public safety failure. Let's talk about the cars that jump the sidewalk that can easily run people over. Let's talk about the first responders en route to other emergencies but are prohibited from getting to their destinations at a life-saving speed. None of this is acceptable.
The clock has run out on overlooking the negligence by our public officials. I, along with my Philadelphians, hold our elected officials and their team of subordinates accountable. I am here for real solutions and numerous solutions exist. In closing my question is this, what solutions are you proposing to prevent this continuing crime from being repeated?
Thank you for your testimony. And just to provide a point -- (Applause.)
Just to provide a point of clarification, this resolution to hold this hearing was passed on May 16th. So this is an issue that City Council has been looking at and we just had to find the time to hold this hearing, but this is a matter that we've been looking at since I've been elected in January for this term. So I just want to put that on the record, we have been monitoring this issue very closely. Are there any questions of the witnesses? (No response.)
Seeing none, thank you so much for your testimony. I appreciate you coming down here to provide that information to us. Will the Clerk please call the names of the next witnesses.
The next witnesses to testify are Jim Kenkelen, P. Kenneth Brownstein and Ron Bair, residents of Center City.
Thank you. And if there are any other members of the public who wish to testify on this, please make your way up as well. (Witnesses approached Witness Table.)
Please state your name for the record and begin with your testimony.
Hi. I'm Ron Bair. I live on South Penn Square and I witnessed everything that happened the other night. From my residence I can fully see everything at Dilworth Park and City Hall, and I walk around City Hall and Dilworth Park almost daily. I'm going to make this short and sweet. I just have two rhetorical questions for the Councilmembers. My big concern deals with respect, respect for the police. And I see disrespect every day. I don't see it just that night. And it amazed me that night. As I watched what was going on how did disrespectful these people are. And I know as I grew up I was told to respect the police. If you get pulled over, put your hands on the steering wheel. Officer asks you to roll down the window, you roll down the window. See your driver's license, you hand him the driver's license. You say, yes, sir; no, sir. And my questions to you is, one, what causes all this disrespect among the teenagers and young adults in this community? And second of all, can you think in your mind ever seeing, witnessing where a suspect was pulled over and he showed the officer respect and he rolled down the window when the officer said roll down the window and he handed the officer any information the officer requested, and then the officer used excessive physical force. Has that ever happened? I've never seen it happen. I think -- this may sound a little crazy, but I think cell phones are a problem. I think -- I've seen witnesses -- I've witnessed where officers should have been ready to remove somebody and they're afraid to remove them because they don't want something to happen like that happened in St. Louis or these instances that we see where a suspect has been disrespectful, has not obeyed the officer and then a tussle happens and then it becomes on live news all around the country and the police get a bad rap for it. It's insane. I think if we didn't have cell phones I think we'd get a lot more done because everybody's afraid of what's going to be on the news that night. And so, like I said my question to you is, and this is rhetorical, you don't have to answer it here today, just think about why is all this disrespect with these young people. The parents I guess aren't doing a good job with it and maybe law enforcement needs to be incorporated in the schools a little bit and educate the kids in the schools what's going on. You know, you won't have a problem if you just obey the law. You won't have a problem if you just respect our law officers and it'll be a whole lot better going on. That's the bottom -- that's where the seeds are for the future. It's not going to remedy the problem today, but down the road we need to work together. And that's all I have to say.
Thank you so much for your testimony. Anyone else would like to testify? UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: First, thank you for the opportunity to provide testimony on a related issue to street racing noise pollution. I live in Fairmount and we are grateful to have access to Fairmount Park, Kelly Drive, Lemon Hill, Boathouse Row and Fairmount Waterworks. We know living in such a place comes with sharing the space with our fellow residents. We have many races with cowbells, parades, regattas, July 4th fireworks, Parkway events and we are about to host Fan Fest for the World Cup in 2026. However, all of those events despite the noise and disruption are community events, Philadelphia citizens and visitors using Philadelphia public lands. I am here to voice my quality-of-life complaint about private sector use of public land causing noise, disruption, trash and in some cases preventing access to a national historic landmark, the Fairmount Waterworks, all for private gain at public expense. I am speaking of Cescaphe at Waterworks. They were allowed by the Philadelphia Parks & Recreation Department to not only use the previous restaurant space, the Engine House and the Grand Pavilion, but they have allowed Cescaphe to erect a plastic tent to hold events. The plastic tent holds weddings, several hundred people with DJs and bands that blast music and noise into our homes. The amplified music and base thumping can also be felt in several homes several hundred yards away. We, the residents of Fairmount, have tried for three seasons to get the Philadelphia City Council's noise ordinance enforced. This ordinance includes requirements that sound should not be heard 100 feet past the property line for a property designated with a special occupancy code. Despite Cescaphe fitting this description, we have not been able to have any City agency, the Air Management Service of the Department of Public Health, Parks and Recreation or L&I explain why Cescaphe is not held to the regulation as outlined in the code. In addition, Fairmount Park rules require everyone else to not use amplified music and to exit by 10:00 p.m. But Cescaphe has events blasting music until past midnight and recently at least until midnight. And finally, the City's concession agreement with Cescaphe stipulates the tent should not be in place for more than 180 days. That rule has not been enforced. For example, in 2024 the 180-day limit was September 6th and the tent, the blasting music, loud DJs, amplified bass continues and given our past experience, we believe it will be in place through mid-November. I'm asking City Council to revisit the noise ordinance, require AMS to issue penalties for the noise past the property line and increase the financial penalties for failure to comply. If Cescaphe charges $80,000 for a Saturday night wedding for several hundred people, then a fine of $300 or $700 is not sufficient to change their behavior. Ultimately we would request City Council to require Parks & Rec to void the concession agreement with Cescaphe for operation of the plastic tent on the grounds of Waterworks. The plastic tent is an eyesore, a magnet for trash, parking on the grounds and at times has caused the Fairmount Waterworks Interpretive Center to close because of the influx of trucks and equipment. Your help in addressing this issue and this quality of life for Fairmount residents is appreciated and I'm very grateful for the hearing and the opportunity. Thank you.
Thank you so much for your testimony. Could you please proceed with your testimony.
Yes. Hello, everyone. For those of you that don't know me, my name is Sister Taleah Taylor. I'm President of the City of Dreams Coalition and also Chair of the Social Music Movement. And if you don't know, we do have the proven track record of dealing with the demographics that cause a lot of mayhem in these streets and a lot of chaos. And just for the record, I do want to let you guys know, I want to start by letting everyone know that I do not condone the street racing. And, in fact, I believe that the penalties should rise because they take it for a joke. They're really costing -- like a lot of different lives could be at stake and it's just a bunch of nonsense. And the fact that most of it is coming from kids from suburbs, kids from New Jersey coming into our city and messing with our city. Now, what I am here -- and I know they're not going to want to pay a $5,000 fine or do 30 days in jail if we really up the penalties. They'll think about it twice, and that's where we could be proactive instead of just being reactive every time these situations happen. They'll even think twice before even doing it. But I do want to speak on behalf because whatever does come out of City Council today, whatever legislation, as you know I have a plethora of car clubs that I call on for our Block-by-Blocks when we're knocking on doors when there's a murder, when it's holiday season. Especially during the holiday season they're out with me at every event. There's a plethora of car clubs that do nothing but community work, so I want to make sure and I'm here on behalf of Wolfpack, Save Me Please and a few others that gave me their statements as well that I will be submitting to everyone. But I want to make sure that it does not interfere with all the great work of our car clubs. It's the car clubs -- not the illegal street racers, but make sure that it does not interfere with the great work and amazing work that our car clubs provide here in Philadelphia. Yes, and then as far as the ATVs I have spoken with Councilman Kenyatta and Councilman David Oh before he left, before when we had problems with the ATVs, the crackdowns, things of that sort because we used to have the races out in West Philly. Now, we did come up with a plan back when we're working with Penn Environment with the FDR Park to find them some space. Now, it is a sport. It might not be our sport, but it's a sport to our kids. It's a sport to anyone that wants to go buy an ATV that owns a business, and that's what I see. I have friends that own different businesses, restaurants, Longhorn on City Line Avenue. They all have ATVs. But this is where we have to come together and support each other here in Philadelphia. So I propose that some type of way that we continue looking for land that will be designated for the ATVs, so they have a plan to go there. Now, if they continue in the streets, take them and increase the penalties since they don't want to follow the law. But at least give them a chance. ATV is a sport as well as the car clubs, things of that sort. So even if we were to make a racing track for them. But if they do it, increase it, let them start going to jail. These are lives. People could get killed, ran over and the rest of the testimony that's here. And so, I want to think of an out-the-box situation, you know. I'm always called a radical. That's because I come up with innovative programs, innovative ideas. You know, if you guys take the lead, but find some type of land to get them off these streets because they are annoying, they are very annoying and very destructive in our streets. But give them somewhere to go, because some people go play basketball as a way of therapy for their downtime. And that's just what they choose to do. And as far as for the phones, I'm glad that people are able to record on phones because one thing we would have more in our city back at an all-time rate is police brutality.
So to hear that from people from protected classes, you know, the phones, yes, it does capture stuff like this, but then it also captures the police and other people doing wrong as well as the many great things they do. So I'm thankful that we have phones and cameras today because a lot of my people are more safe because of it. Thank you. )
Thank you for your testimony. Ms. Farrell, please begin with your testimony.
Hello, panel. I'm Regina Farrell, community liaison, block captain for 43 years. I just wanted to reiterate I'm actually at 13th and Spring Garden. I've been there for 43 years so it may not affect me directly, but I get the end of it, a lot of people like during Welcome America and events like that, people park in my area and walk down. We get the helicopters. We hear all of that, so I sympathize with all of you all. But one thing, when the Deputy Commissioners were here they did not explain when they were talking about confiscating the bikes and everything, when they rolled out this initiative for the delivery bike guys, and these are things that I've seen myself, they will have people food because they did not send out any announcement that they were going to start enforcing this. So these dealerships that are selling these bikes, they're not saying if you're motor size is a certain size you need to have a license plate on it. So a lot of them are immigrants so they don't know. And the dealerships are just selling these bikes. They're not telling them that you need to register this, and these people are trying to make a living and they're just taking their bikes. So if it's some way we can let these restaurant owners know that if you are using these bikes, you have to register them or your employees have to have these bikes registered. I have seen it several times where these guys are just having their bikes taken from them. Also, as far as I've heard people saying the response time for the police officers. And I heard you say that the 9th District is the largest district. That is true but that's because they're combined now with the 6th District. The 9th District goes from the Schuylkill River to the Delaware River from Lombard to Poplar. And calls are taken --
I understand that. I get it. I get it. But again I -- I'm going to let you finish your testimony.
Okay. So calls are still taken by priority. So even though that's an emergency because the noise is bothering you, it's still by priority. And policies by City Council nuisance calls have now, you know, police can only answer and do so much with nuisance calls, right. Remember, we changed that. So those are policies that maybe we want to revisit. Even with car stops, because maybe if we revisit the car stop issues, we can do a little more with these car meetups also. Because a lot of times the registrations aren't right and issues, you know. We can start then to get some of these cars off the street. When they were talking about the motorcycle cops, the dirt bike riders, at least two or three of them get hurt a weekend trying to pursue these cars, I mean these bikes, and these dirt bikes and things like that. So definitely we need to get on board with that. And I heard the young lady talking about land for the dirt bikes. That's been addressed before and it's a liability, because we get that land, someone gets hurt, you can have all the disclaimers signed whatsoever. If somebody gets hurt, somebody's going to come after the City. They're illegal. They're not supposed to be in the city. So we're going to have to find -- we need more recreation centers. We need things for kids to do. I'm 59. When I went to school, I didn't get home until like 6 o'clock. I had afterschool programs. We need to bring the arts back. We need things constructive for kids to do. Leave it to me phones will still be on the wall really. You know, we survived without having to know everything that's going on. People say, well, suppose somebody died or something. You calling me is not going to bring them back. They're still going to be dead when I get home and you call me. So certain things, we have to get kids back active again. They don't have any social skills. They don't know how to look people in the face when they talk to them, so we have to find other ways and means for people to do things. Just because it's an outlet, it's still illegal. So keep in mind the safety of the police officers, but we still have to find a way around it. Also, it would have been a good idea to have Larry Krasner in here. Because what happens is the police can make all the arrests they want, we can impose all these fines. Just like Parking Authority, they issue tickets all day. How many of them are paid. So them issuing CVNs, if they're not paying them, what's the point. Like somebody had brought that up, like how many of them are being paid. So how effective is it. So we're going to have to figure out effective ways. Saying that we're doing these things, but what's happening. At the crux of it, what's really happening. You know, are they being paid, is it effective and we have to get back to accountability and consequences. That's what we don't have anymore. We used to have fines for parents, community service and we don't do that anymore. So I thank you. I thank you all for your time. I thank you for what you do. (Applause.)
Thank you, Ms. Farrell. Just one comment that I have on the ATV riding. The city of Baltimore has a non-profit called B-360 where they're helping teach ATV riding correctly, right. To change a culture it starts with the youth. And so, I think that's some things that we can start looking into as a city to ensure that the youth understand what proper riding is. Because as you mentioned, it is a sport, right. And people make millions of dollars riding ATVs all throughout the world. We just want to make sure the outlet is there correctly and not on our city streets. Are there any questions of these witnesses by the members of the panel? Councilmember Bass.
I just wanted to say that I know Sister Taleah. I think most of us know Sister Taleah personally. And I just wanted to thank you for being boots on the ground on a regular, not just around this issue but around so many issues. Because often times we want people to be a certain place, we want them to gravitate from where they are to where we want them to be. And you do the hard work of being the boots on the ground and meeting them right where they are, and that's so important. So I just really wanted to say thank you for your work and reaching out to that demographic because it's challenging. There's a lot of challenges there, so I just want to acknowledge your work. Thank you.
I just have a really quick comment. And I just, you know, I understand that the 9th covers a large geographical area. My point was that if the 9th is having a difficult time to respond, imagine the smaller districts that are trying to manage the same size of issue in a smaller space, in a smaller district. They have less capacity to be able to respond. So I understand exactly where you're coming from. I also want to put on the record that I'm elected to represent the residents of the 7th Councilmanic District. I am going to watch very closely at how we operationalize this type of legislation, because in the 7th we have public spaces, green spaces, libraries, recreation centers, all of which cannot be used because quality of life is so deplorable. And so, I want to make sure, and with all due respect to every resident in every neighborhood, I want to make sure that when we are creating policies like this that also impact in a large way the residents of the 7th Council District's quality of life on top of all of the other issues that impact quality of life in the 7th, I want to make sure that other neighborhoods because of where they are and who they're represented by are not prioritized over those residents in the 7th who on top of this type of legislation, on top of this type of issue have to deal with other quality-of-life issues. And so, I'm going to be watching very closely at how we are addressing quality-of-life issues in other neighborhoods compared to the 7th.
Thank you, Councilmember. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Thomas.
I'm sorry. Mr. Chairman, I have to go handle other Council business. But I did just want to state on the record, and I see Commissioner Healy here who does a phenomenal job. I just think it's important that we state on the record that hopefully moving forward what we heard today as it relates to how police treat people is how we conduct business. But in the past it hasn't always necessarily been the case whereas though if you do everything that a police officer asks you to, that that situation doesn't necessarily go south. So I heard that communicated today. I've been wrestling with that for the last couple minutes, and I think it's important that we put that on the record because there are so many people, including myself, who have lived experiences that tell a completely different story than what we're hoping to move towards moving forward. So I do want to commend the police department because I personally have worked with them on this particular issue and this particular problem, but I have to put that on the record before I leave here today. And again, Mr. Chairman, I do want to thank you for your due diligence because this is an important conversation, these are important issues and we have to make sure that we're doing our due diligence to serve the city of Philadelphia. So thank you, Mr. Chairman. (Applause.)
Thank you, Councilmember. Are there any other questions of these witnesses or comments? (No response.)
Seeing none, thank you so much for your testimony here today. Ms. Stack, are there any other witnesses to testify on this resolution?
There are no 2 other speakers on the public comment list, Chairman.
Thank you. Ms. Stack, would you please read the title of the next resolution and call the witnesses please.
Resolution No. 11 240715 titled, Authorizing the Joint Committees on Public Safety and Streets and Services to hold hearings to investigate the Philadelphia Police Department precinct policies and practices for approving and denying block party permits and exploring the methods to increase block party permit applications. The first witnesses to testify are Francis Healy, Deputy Police Commissioner and the Philadelphia Police -- oh, of the Philadelphia Police Department and Richard Montanez, Deputy Commissioner for the Department of Streets. (Witnesses approached Witness Table.)
Deputy Commissioner Healy, welcome back. I hope from that conversation we can work together toward finding some other solutions to the issues that we just heard. But can you please proceed with your testimony on this resolution. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: Sure. Actually if I could make a comment on the --
Sure, please. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: Hearing everything -- I'm sorry. Having conversation with the Police Commissioner, we had mentioned our strategy. Our strategy is control and containment of vehicles. I just want to make it very clear we are using everything possible that we can. One of the tools that we will be using will be spike strips, but let me explain how. We're not going to be throwing them under moving vehicles, but we are going to use them in a very controlled environment to contain and control these vehicles from leaving. So that's something radical -- not radical, but it's radical for the police department. We've never had this equipment so we are in the process of developing that policy, and we'll be using it with the officers to actually control -- once the individuals that I mentioned are contained, we'll be able to block them in. So the only way they would actually have to leave would be to drive over the strips. So we're not actively using it on a moving vehicle at all. It'll be their choice to drive over if they want to elude and evade the police. So that'll be another tool in our arsenal as we move forward. And I just want to make sure before I said that publicly I communicated with the Commissioner and confirmed.
Thank you. I think that's good to know so those who are listening, the listening public can hear that if you participate in some of these activities, your vehicle is subject to damage. I think that's something that the community and the residents would like to see done. So thank you so much. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: Okay. I'll begin. Thank you. Good afternoon -- good afternoon, Chairmember Young and Vice- Chairmember Lozada and other members of the Committees on Public Safety and Streets and Services. My name is Deputy Commissioner Francis Healy. As I mentioned before, I'm Chief of Staff for the Police Commissioner and I'm here with Deputy Commissioner Cram from Patrol. With that said, on behalf of the Commissioner, again the department appreciates the opportunity to offer testimony on Resolution 240715 and the work that the department is currently undertaking to revamp the block party process or the application process. First, the PPD acknowledges the civic and public good that arises from strong, vibrant communities which is underscored by neighborhood activities such as block parties. However, the PPD recognizes that public safety is also a fundamental element of a healthy vibrant community. For this reason, the department takes its responsibility of assessing block party applications seriously and reserves its denial recommendations only for the event that poses most serious risk to public safety. By way of brief overview, the department's role on the block party application process is to provide a recommendation to the Streets Department as to whether the department supports or opposes the issuance of a particular block party permit. The recommendation is offered after a careful analysis by the commanding officer of the police district wherein the party is proposed, if the department believes the district can -- or I'm sorry, if the PPD believes that the district commander due to their close proximity and ties to the community is in the best position to assess the risk and potential impact of a particular event occurring within their district. Currently, the analysis consists of numerous factors, including the nature and scope of the criminal activity in and around the particular block, history of locations and gang activity, number and types of police calls for service, the logistical features of a particular block such as a major thoroughfare or cul-de-sac, other block parties in the immediate area or other events in close proximity which would impact the logistics of the neighborhood. In addition to personal knowledge of the area, our commanders rely on input by trained intelligence analysts, community leaders such as our block captains and community leaders and clergy and experiences of past events. Moreover, it should be noted that different factors weigh differently upon the commander's analysis. A history of violent crime weighs heavier than a mere nuisance behavior. Despite this process, the PPD well recognizes that there may be times when members of the community feel the process is arbitrary or lacking in transparency. It's for this reason that the police department has proactively taken a review of its existing block party process approvals along with Streets with the goal of providing a maximum for consistency and impartiality in its evaluation of block party applications. Of the current efforts, the department has formed an internal working group to review the current practices associated with such reviews and to offer substantive amendments to its written policy on how the application should be considered.
The additional measures being considered include the following: A requirement for captains to produce a written rationale documenting specific articulable facts underpinning any recommendation for denial; an automatic second level review for denial recommendations to a divisional inspector which would review all cases where denials are recommended; modifications to the electronic application portal to allow the PPD to articulate its reasons for denial. The current program only allows for a very limited drop-down selection of either criminal activity or other safety concerns, the establishment of baseline mandatory analysis factors ensuring all commanders are considering similar factors. In conclusion, the PPD desires to foster the highest sense of community within the neighborhoods of Philadelphia while simultaneously ensuring the maximum degree of safety and well-being for its residents. Moreover, the department is fully committed to the process of improvement and maximizing efficiency and transparency in this operation. I have Deputy Commissioner Cram along with me. Deputy Commissioner Cram oversees all of patrol operations and it's the district captains that are involved in this process. The Deputy and his staff have been directly involved with the Streets Department and other members of City government to overhaul this entire process because we recognize the issues in this resolution as being problematic and we've actually been proactive and we're looking at the same issues that you have concerns of and are trying to proactively address those issues. At this point I'll let Deputy Commissioner Cram just give some of the statistics that we've had regarding the block party process. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER CRAM: Good afternoon again. Deputy Commissioner Mike Cram, Patrol Operations. So this has been a really good process as far as kind of that whole government approach once again. We've got some really good data from the partners at Streets Department, which we really haven't had besides doing the review of the internal process that we have which was very bare bones. It was a couple sentences, so that process is gone. We're also part of working a project with our partners at Streets and Better Philly Services to actually improve the block party procedures throughout the city, so it makes it a little more easier for community members to use and easier for us to actually capture the data because we spent a lot of time trying to go through the data that Streets had, because quite frankly on the accounting side we didn't really have too much data. So just based on the last three years, it was a little over 12,000 applications. So in three years, nine months it was about 12,109 total applications that we looked at. About 6,400 of those were approved. Over all of those 12,000; 1,700 denied. But there was 3900 in a category that were not reviewed, denied or declined. So that's like an administrative thing where we're not really sure. It's just a category that we got to build on and kind of eliminate because it is a big number. When we just looked at the 8,159 that were reviewed, that's 6,463 of those were approved so that works out to about 80 percent. And once again, the 1700 denied was about percent. So overall, and 4 it varies by district, we can't get 5 into the specific reasons. Just 6 don't have that data right now. 7 We're still, like I said, improving 8 the accounting on this. 9 And I think that's the best 10 part about this process is it'll be 11 the internal policy, but it'll also 12 be in line with the City's policy 13 on how to improve the service to 14 our constituents. 15
Thank 16 you so much. 17 Mr. Montanez, proceed with 18 your testimony. 19 DEPUTY COMMISSIONER 20 MONTANEZ: Good afternoon, Chairman 21 John -- Young, Chairman Jones and members of the Public Safety and Streets and Services Committee. My name is Richard Montanez. I am the First Deputy Commissioner for Department of Streets. I'm here to testify on Resolution No. 240715, introduced by Councilmember Young. This resolution authorizes the Joint Committee on Public Safety and Streets and Services to hold hearings to investigate Philadelphia Police Department's precinct policy and practices for approving and denying block party permits and exploring methods to increase block party applications. The Department of Streets is responsible for receiving and processing applications for street events, including block parties. When reviewing the application, the Department of Streets is looking at the following: The date of the event, if the request location is permissible, require signatures from residents of the block and receive a payment. Once all these requirements have been satisfied, the Department of Streets submits the application to the Philadelphia Police Department for review. After the Philadelphia Police Department has made an approval or denial determination, the application moves on so the permit is issued or a denial. Denial permits may be appealed. This concludes my testimony and I'm here to answer any questions you have. Thank you.
Thank you so much. Mr. Montanez, how is the community informed that the denial of a block party permit may be appealed and who was it appealed to? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER MONTANEZ: So they request the appeal to the Streets Department. We then send that appeal back to the police department.
So ultimately, it's the police who then will have to override themselves of -- DEPUTY COMMISSIONER MONTANEZ: If it is a permissible location, yes. If it's, for example, a trolley line, Girard Avenue, those are automatically denied because we do not reroute trolleys.
Right. In any case when the police has said no to a permit, have Streets issued the permit? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER MONTANEZ: We follow the police recommendation.
So ultimately it's the police who are determining which blocks are able to have block parties? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER MONTANEZ: We work together but we follow police recommendations when they tell us to not approve this one.
So I live in the 22nd District, right, that's North Philly, and folks walk up to me all the time and just say, hey, we can't -- our block party permit was denied, why, right. And they say, well, it was because of criminal activity. But some of those blocks have not had criminal activity at all, right. I think it's just the nature of we live in North Philly. And so, because we live in North Philly we're all stereotyped to say we're just bound to have criminal activity. And so, can you guys discuss what some of the criteria that's really used, the specific criteria that's used to determine if a block party permit is able to be granted or not? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER CRAM: Yeah. It really comes down to -- as you guys know, you deal with your individual district commanders all the time. It really comes down to the district commander. Just being the Captain of the 26th, 25th, Inspector of East Division as I moved up the ranks, it would really depend on what is going on now in that block, the people that were involved on the block, things of that nature. I tried getting some of that data out to really dig down to it. I really couldn't see -- I saw about 1300 that said denied for criminal reasons. I have no idea where that was or why, so we need to do a little more data dive. But it really comes down to -- because the way our policy is, it really comes down to that individual commander. Once again a lot of times if there was some type of dispute, maybe I denied it. Then the Councilperson would get involved, at the time it was Councilwoman Sanchez, Councilwoman Lozada when she worked for, you know, we'd get in and we'd work to some type of resolution. And then a lot of times I would say a good 50, 60 percent of times we've resolved the issue, let them have the permit, put some restrictions on it, just get people to the table. So a lot of it really is kind of the weakness of the current policy and the current system. It really depends on the individual commander. That's why as we're going through this process with Streets and through Better Philly Services we've built extra layers on there where the captain denies it first so he's got to justify it, it goes to the inspector. Now, it's at the division commander level. If he agrees with the captain, the final determination goes to the chief. So we've added those extra layers in there. We've talked about some type of resolution process that brings you into the process as well more officially. I think that would be helpful, but I don't know where that is. We're kind of new into that process with the working group.
Yeah. I mean, I think with all the issues that we face, particularly as a District Councilmember, trying to decide getting into the weeds of block party permits I think is not one that I think that we should be wasting our time on. I think if we come up with a better procedure that's clear, right, and it's not discretionary where folks understand what the rules and protocols are, I think, we can be a lot more efficient. Because having constituents call me and then I personally have to get involved with a block party permit is not the best use of our time as City Councilmembers. When we see that their block party permits are being denied for things that say criminal activity or crime-related issues, that can be a multitude of things, right. A crime-related issue could be a break-in or it could be a fistfight, right. And so, for our communities to be -- one thing we want to do during the summertime is to build a sense of community, and block parties help us build that community. And with the denial of these permits which seem to be so arbitrarily, it kind of puts a damper on that community's spirit and doesn't make that particular block feel like the City is supportive of their efforts to build that community. I really think we have to come up with a standard to show that these are the reasons why your block cannot have a party and these are the reasons why the permit is denied. I mean, it's too subjective in my opinion and too arbitrary. And to leave it up to some of those district commanders, I know they're on the ground every single day understanding the issues that are in the communities, but for some of those commanders who may not be from that community, right, may just want to just blanket that entire neighborhood and just say, you know what, we don't feel like dealing with this so let's just deny it all so that's one thing we don't have to worry about at all. And that's something that I've seen over and over again in North Philadelphia and in West Philadelphia. And what can we -- and I'm happy to hear that you guys are working toward that solution. I don't think that putting Councilmembers in the middle of block party disputes is that solution. But I will be happy to continue to work with you to figure out what that could be. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: Can I just add onto that?
Sure. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: I spoke to the Commissioner this morning. We are doing the best -- exactly everything you just said we had already internally discussed. There needs to be an objective unbiased mechanism so these things can be issued or denied and then people can actually have a legitimate reason as to why. Crime in and of itself is not, because in a lot of our crime- ridden neighborhoods are good, honest, decent people. But a handful of people shouldn't compromise their ability to have a good time. Understanding that the district captains are concerned about the big picture of crime, but what you're talking about we're on the same percent. The issue is we want to also include our ultimate regulation -- not regulation, directive. We want to include the community input into it. So we just don't write a document and then say this is it. So the Commissioner said, make it very clear that our final document will actually have community input. And what you just mentioned, I'd be happy to share with you and have your input into the final product as to what the standard should be. That way you're aware of it, the community's aware of it and it's not a surprise. We want to be very transparent in this process.
Thank you so much. So I echo the sentiments of my colleague. My one question, I want to kind of go in the weeds a little bit around the implementation of a safety plan which is like here and there. Some folks were asked to create a safety plan. Some folks it's not even a thing. There's no description as to what a safety plan should look like, what are the recommendations for a safety plan. So to my colleague's point these arbitrary rules are put out to everyday citizens, that people want to make this thing happen but who should be on my safety plan, like what would be approved? So you're sending people down this weird rabbit hole and then they turn it in and was like, oh, that's not what we meant. Then what did you mean? So I mean, I think that we need to have some level of structure around the expectations and the responsibility on the community to having a block party. So if it's that in order to have a block party you have to have a safety plan which does not 100 percent include the police department that we have to submit, just say that and explain it to communities, and then folks can make it happen. Because to my colleagues, most people that want to make this happen, they don't want problems either. No one wants their block party to be interrupted. So if you're telling me that I need to make sure all the men on the block have a plan around if something happens, or do we need to go around the community and inform everyone that this is going to happen. There's so many steps that we can take. But I feel just a blanket this particular community is shut down because of crime, that means half of Philadelphia. Primarily Black and Brown communities will be excluded from being able to have block parties. And a lot of block parties are successful. And my Part 2 is if a community or a block has a history of having good block parties with no problem, why is their application subject to being denied year-after-year based on change in leadership? So I would think that the police department should have some level of documentation that someone has hosted an event on a block for five years with no 21 incident, why would an application be denied and then somebody has to step in and intervene. I think there needs to be better systems in place. Like I said, if we want real community policing and want communities to be in touch with the police department, it has to be a give-and-take, and we want to work together with you guys. And I'm like my colleague, we shouldn't have to step in on a block party permit where it was not a clear expectation as to what the community needs to do to get a yes. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: I agree on both points. The safety plan issue, part of the process that we're reviewing is how to make it more user-friendly for the individuals who are getting it. One of the biggest problems we as police have when we have a block party is we don't know really who's running the block party. I mean, so the issue is if I do have a problem or have an issue or a 911 call comes in, I don't know who to talk to. So that's part of the process we're looking at. So being able to have a community contact is incredibly important.
Well, isn't there someone's name on the permit who signs off? Isn't there a contact person that someone has to submit the actual permit to the department? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: No, that doesn't radiate down to the officers on the street. That's the problem. So we're working on that. That is an issue. And like I said, we're trying to figure out where the hiccups are. But with the safety plan, we're also trying to figure out what is a safety plan. Okay. So the issue is -- and putting that out here, here's a recommendation or an idea. And we're working through it with our Streets partners and everybody else to see what we can give the community because can't ask too much either. I mean, what is a basic safety plan. If a fire happened, who's going to move the parked cars that are blocking the street. Very simple, but nonetheless these are things that need to be thought of. So we're working on putting something together as an attachment or addendum to whatever applications or we can post it on our website. We're looking to make it much more user-friendly. And the second issue you had was? It escaped me.
What's the process of blocks that have had continuous block parties? They shouldn't be subject to cancellation because two blocks behind them, you know, someone wanted to do something. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: Right. Thank you for reminding me. The process of the appellate process that was put in is internal, being what happened. These have historically rested with the district captain, so the divisional inspectors really wouldn't have a clue whether I disapproved one or I approved it. Using that process, we'll make sure that it's more centralized so we'll have a uniformity so there will be consistency as saying who had what, who didn't have what under the supervision of the divisional inspector, not just with each individual captain. That was our thought process including the divisional inspector as part of this overall process.
I would think that, you know, as an attorney, right, we don't want to appeal. Filing an appeal to the person that made the decision it's not going to do anything, because why would they overturn themselves, right. That rarely happens. And so, I think we need to develop a real process of who they can appeal to. Maybe it has to be a board. I don't even think it has to be someone that is in the police brass or just the police brass. Someone from the Streets Department, someone from somewhere else that can make a determination that, you know what, this is risk- averted, right, because that's the issue, right. The police are looking at particular blocks and says, there's a risk of something happening on this block if the street's blocked off or a danger of access for emergency situations or something like that. We need to figure out how we can really determine that and make that clear to a community and make sure that the community is provided with real opportunity to be heard, because that appeal process to the captain that just denied you is no opportunity at all to be heard. And the Chair recognizes Councilmember Bass.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to add my two cents on this matter. And as a District Councilmember, I get those calls frequently, my block was denied a permit, how come we can't have one, we've never had an incident on this block. And so, I do tell folks upfront that I never even think about overriding what the police department is suggesting because you all have information that I don't have and heaven forbid if somebody got hurt. I know I've been places and I've been told, somebody's here looking for so-and-so, and these things happen. We can't pretend that these things don't actually happen in our neighborhood. But at the same time as a Philadelphian all of my life, I know the importance of a block party. I grew up born and raised in North Philly and we had a block party every year, several times during the year. We had one for Memorial Day. We had one for Fourth of July. We had one for Labor Day. And for those of us who were from the neighborhood, we didn't -- I didn't go to the shore. We didn't go on vacation. This was something that was special to us. This was really what we had. And for a lot of communities recognizing that this is something really special, it's a Philadelphia tradition and it's something that is really important to the folks in the neighborhood. Particularly if you don't have the option to travel or go somewhere else or do other things, it's a really big deal. And so, preserving that as best we can figuring out ways that we can be helpful to the community and finding ways -- I was glad to hear you say that you were working on the safety plan. You were trying to figure out what does an effective safety plan look like. And so, I'm excited to see what's going to come out of your efforts and working with the community so that maybe in 2025 we cannot have as many of these calls. I don't think that they're going to go away overnight, but maybe not have as many folks who are calling us saying our block was denied a permit. I was just with somebody on Saturday who told me the exact same thing, we haven't had a block party in 10 years, our block was banned because of something that happened around the corner 10 years ago, we've never been able to have another block party. And it's a really important thing for some neighborhoods, so we're looking forward to what comes out of your work. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: Thank you.
Yeah. I think the block party is a cultural identity of Philly, right. That's something that we all grew up with. And to have that kind of arbitrarily taken away, I think it kind of -- again, our constituents feel like their city does not care about their identity, care about their culture, and that's something that we just want to look to change a little bit to uplift our city because we have so many things going on in our city. And as the Councilmember said, that is our outlet. That's our fun. That's our activities. A lot of folks don't go to the shore. A lot of folks don't have the ability to go on vacations, but they can pull a grill out in the middle of the street and let their kid just run up and down the block. My son loves block parties because he gets to be a kid at block parties. And that's what we need to do. We have to encourage those types of environments to allow children to really be children. If you take that away from them, that encourages the other behaviors that we're trying to get them away from. So I would like if you could provide us with information or the data on where these denials occur and for what reason so we can really take a look at if what type of -- to me honestly I think it's a disparate impact that happens on certain communities. If you can share that information with us so we can come up with certain policies and procedures with you all again to ensure that all communities in Philadelphia have the opportunity to experience some of the things we did when we were growing up.
I'm sorry. Real quick I was just going to say in Center City now we close the streets for Safe Street Philly. And so, obviously there's crime in Center City. But maybe we go from calling them block parties to calling them safe streets. Maybe that'll make a difference.
I agree. I was down here on Walnut Street every Sunday during September. Walnut Street is blocked off and folks are enjoying that activity. And I think in our communities we can enjoy that same type of activity, that same freedom we have in our streets to really participate in the community. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Harrity.
Everybody knows I live in Kensington so I'm always calling asking for a re-evaluation of some place and I do have to say that a lot of times if I call, I can persuade to an order to be allowed to have that block party, but a lot of people don't have a Councilperson living on their block or in that neighborhood. And we all come from, especially the three of us sitting here, we all come from areas that are high-crime areas, low-income, high-crime areas. And as my colleague said, sometimes these block parties are events that the kids actually look forward to. And I get it, we have to make sure, especially in neighborhoods like mine, where we get a bunch of knuckleheads on the corner -- because a lot of times that I see in my neighborhood it's not the residents that end up causing the trouble. It's people from out of the neighborhood who end up there for whatever reason, whether they're visiting somebody or just the drug dealers on the corner not knowing how to act when they got a bunch of kids playing and decide to have a beef at that time. But I agree with my colleagues that we have to find a better way of allowing these things to happen because they do build community, you know, a sense of community and we need to get back to that. But I do get the safety aspect of it, like I said, especially in areas like mine. The other thing, it's not just block parties, like the lunch program, you know. If you have drug dealers on your corner or if there's been a bunch of violence around your area, they deny you for the lunch program. And I just think that taking things away from the kids that they need because of a bunch of knuckleheads that don't know how to act, I think we need to figure out how do we combat that. We know who the bad actors are in neighborhoods. We need to figure out how we get those bad actors out of that neighborhood. So whatever resources that we have to give to get that done is where I'm prepared to go. I mean, we definitely need to get into technology more. We need to do a lot of things that other big cities are doing that we're not. I mean, there was a study a few years back that says we should be more like New York, you can't go anywhere without being on camera. And that's not to violate anybody's civil rights or anything like that. They're not sitting there looking at it waiting for you to commit a crime, but the videos are there so that when a crime is committed you can go back over that video and see what happened. So I'm glad that we're finally starting to get into that modernized policing, but I think we need to speed it up a little bit. So whatever help I can give I'm sure my colleagues are in too, so let us know. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: Thank you, sir.
And I do know when on some blocks, right, when the permits are denied, they still have a party anyway. They still block the street off anyway, right. So what are I guess the consequences for blocks who decide to block the street off when they are denied the permit? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: There's really no technical consequence other than the police just saying, oh, keep the street open. Other than that, I mean there is no technical consequence.
So if there's no technical consequence for it, then I just see no reason to just deny it arbitrarily anyway. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: Well, some of the things we've been debating with these gentlemen are going to make sure the policy is rock solid. But the issue from my perspective as an attorney is coming up with a standard. And this is outside the box and this is still something we're thinking about, but the right to know law by way of analogy. Everything's right to know unless it is specifically exempted. Something along those standards is basically all things will be approved unless there's a specific set of circumstances so it's clear, objective and it can be reviewed by anybody at any time and see why. That's the kind of mindset we're trying -- I'm trying to figure out how to come up with a standard when I say what's a standard. We evaluate all the different facts and circumstances, but that's not a standard. I mean, the standard is the assumption is all will be approved unless X, Y and Z are present and then we have to establish that and then we can articulate it, and then maybe it can be mediated or mitigated. But that's kind of where we're going as to coming up with a clear standard that's objective, transparent. And so, much like the right to know, you'd be able to look at it, read it and see it and you can figure out whether or not you're going to be exempt, like a major thoroughfare it just can't happen. So there's going to be a list of things. So that's kind of the mindset. We're taking arbitrariness out of the process and making it more objective. So that's where we're going. That's where we all came together proactively to try to deal with this problem.
Thank you. I mean, I recall that the 35th District just said their entire district is exempt so no 19 permits, right. So something like that, what can -- I want to put some guidelines in place that kind of takes that kind of discretion out. Because that can happen in my district, the 22nd district, right, because that's probably one of the most violent districts in the country. And so, arbitrarily we should just say no one in the entire 22nd District can have a block party and I think that's unfair to a lot of the good citizens that are in our city. Is there a timeline on when these new sets of protocols or directives will be in place? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: Right now the season is coming to an end for block parties, but by next season we're planning to have set guidelines in place, at least from the police department's perspective with the help of Streets. I don't know if they'll be able to modify programs, but most important is for us to have the protocol in place, which I think we'll have that long before the applications start coming in for next year. That's why we're working on it so early this year.
Okay. Are there any other questions of these witnesses? (No response.)
Seeing none, thank you so much for your testimony on this today. Is there anyone else in the chambers wishing to testify on this matter? (No response.)
Seeing none, I am actually going to recess this hearing, because again the protocols or directives are going to be ready by the spring. I would like to come back to this to discuss what those protocols are so our citizens know exactly how to proceed during the next season. And with that, I think that's going to conclude this hearing. Ms. Stack, is there anyone that provided written testimony for any of the resolutions heard today?
Only the testimony submitted by Francis Healy and Richard Montanez.
Thank you. All right. Are there any final remarks of the members of this Committee before we close out? (No response.)
Seeing none, this concludes the business before the Joint Committee on Public Safety and Streets and Services today. Thank you very much for your attendance. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: Thank you. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER CRAM: Thank you. (Joint Committees on Public Safety and Streets and Services concluded at 1:33 p.m.) C E R T I F I C A T I O N I, hereby certify that the proceedings and evidence noted are contained fully and accurately in the stenographic notes taken by me in the foregoing matter, and that this is a correct transcript of the same. __________________________________ TANEHA CARROLL