COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC SAFETY - - - Room 400, City Hall Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Wednesday, October 24, 2007 2:20 p.m. - - - PRESENT: COUNCILWOMAN DONNA REED MILLER, CHAIR COUNCILMAN WILLIAM GREENLEE COUNCILMAN BRIAN J. O'NEILL COUNCILMAN FRANK RIZZO COUNCILMAN JAMES KENNEY COUNCILMAN DARRELL CLARKE RESOLUTION 070851 - Resolution authorizing City Council's Committee on Public Safety to hold public hearings to investigate proposals for expanded use of the police tactic known as "stop, question and frisk," often referred to as "stop and frisk." - - - V A R A L L O Incorporated Litigation Support Services Eleven Penn Center 1835 Market Street, Suite 600 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19103 215.561.2220 215.567.2670 2
Good afternoon, everyone. I am Councilwoman Donna Reed Miller, Chair of the Public Safety Committee. Also in attendance with me today, members of the Committee, to my left Councilman Frank Rizzo, Councilman Bill Greenlee and to my right, Councilman Brian O'Neill. Would the Clerk please read the title of Resolution No. 070851.
Resolution 13 authorizing City Council's Committee on Public Safety to hold public hearings to investigate proposals for expanded use of the police tactic known as "stop, question and frisk," often referred to as "stop and frisk."
Before we begin, I'm going to call on Councilman O'Neill for an opening statement, and when he finishes, I also have an opening statement.
Councilwoman, thank you. And I'd like to 3 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 thank you also for co-sponsoring this resolution with me as the Chair of the Public Safety Committee, and all those colleagues of mine who signed the resolution, including the people at the table, Councilman Rizzo and Councilman Greenlee. People have asked why now, why these hearings on stop and frisk. It's an issue that came up in the primary. One candidate for mayor supported it. From what I understand, that candidate has a good chance of being the next mayor, and it will probably be his major initiative, the whole crime, violent crime, gun crime and murder issue in Philadelphia, which is, unfortunately, leading the nation in an area that we really don't want to be first. And rather than wait until a new police commissioner comes in, until the Mayor gets through his transition, the next Mayor, I believe it's important that people learn about this issue. They 4 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 learn about the constitutionality of it. They learn about the background of it. Stop and frisk can sound very scary, those two words, whether you throw "question" in the middle of it and call it stop, question and frisk, but it has been effective in a lot of areas. It is one of, I believe, the major tools that can help us get guns off the street. I know you're going to be talking about another hearing, and I support that wholeheartedly, but I believe this is a public education issue and also an education for policy leaders, like Councilmembers and other elected officials, that they learn as much about this as they can so they can decide with the best available information whether to support it or not.
Thank you. Thank you, Councilman O'Neill. As the Councilman indicated, this is not our only hearing. We will be having another hearing. 5 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 This is not civil liberties versus fighting crime. Philadelphia streets are plagued with the climate of fear and violence. A good number of citizens, young and old, law abiding and non-law abiding, feel that they need to carry guns to protect themselves. It's almost like taking your keys with you when you're leaving the home. They can't leave home without it. I cannot tell you how many people, including very young boys, have told me that they need to carry guns. One boy says that they think that if they don't carry guns, they're not going to be prepared, because they think everybody else has a gun. I'm not here today to tell you that stop and frisk is necessary or even that I support it. I want everyone to receive the appropriate information. I don't want anyone, like the young man who was facing many years for aggravated assault, to say, I wish I knew or no one 6 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 told me. I'm also here today to give you both sides of the story, and after everyone has spoken their minds, the Committee members and I can have a better understanding of the issue. Until now, I really don't know which way to go since both sides are equally convincing and since I don't see more in favor or more against. What I really want to know is that if this does get implemented, how the police will use this tool. I also want to ensure the public that it will not be used for any negative reasons. Currently, the police are permitted to pat an individual down if the officer feels that his or her life may be in danger. The stop and frisk is no different from that. I just want the public and the police to know that what the law is and make sure that everyone is following it. The real reason we are here today is because a lot of people are 7 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 carrying illegal guns with no fear that they will be stopped and/or prosecuted. For that reason, we need to educate the public, especially our young men. Last night, I was at the 10,000 Men March follow-up meeting at Germantown High School. Maybe an hour before I left the office, I heard there was a young man, a 19-year-old, that was shot and killed maybe right around Germantown and Washington Lane in Germantown and he was actually shot by a 17-year-old, and it had to do with the kid said he disrespected his sister. Now, further than that, I don't know. But we were thinking of reasons why young people have been shot, cell phones, cheese steak, you know, girls or guys, and the list can just go on and on as to why some of these killings have taken place. While I was at the meeting at Germantown High School, I got a call that another kid had been shot, not far from Germantown High School, because someone 8 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 pushed him or they bumped into each other. We went to that crime scene. There were nine bullet casings, seven of them lodged in -- I think this kid is about years old, and today he's over 8 in Einstein Hospital. He survived. I 9 know in the future we're going to be 10 talking about obesity, and one of the 11 reasons why he survived was because he 12 was kind of juicy. He had a lot of meat 13 on his bones. But we're really happy 14 that he wasn't a fatality, but he did get 15 shot seven times. So this whole issue of people carrying weapons and most of them that are carrying them are illegal is important. We believe stop and frisk can help it, help stop it, help curtail it. The tide of violence that we're having here in Philadelphia, most people are willing to try almost anything. So with that, I'd like to call our first witness, who has actually 9 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 invited himself to the table and he's there already, and welcome, welcome, welcome, Alan Butkovitz. Please identify yourself for the record.
Good afternoon, Councilmen. I'm Alan Butkovitz. I'm the City Controller. I'm sorry if it looks like I invited myself. I thought I was supposed to be here. First of all, I'd like to thank Councilman O'Neill for leading the way in this resolution and Councilwoman Miller for having these hearings. And I'd like to ask permission if we could submit our written remarks for the record, and I have some things to say extemporaneously. We're confronting a situation right now where there are a number of numbers that kind of cross in mid-air. One of the numbers is that we're at pretty historically low police staffing levels at a time of very tight City budgets, and what that means is that we 10 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 have to get, pardon the expression, the greatest bang for the buck. We have to be very proactively efficient and effective in the way we deploy our police resources. The fact of the matter is that a very large percentage of the people perpetrating the homicides and other violent incidents with guns, that the first time they get a victim is not the first time they committed that practice. In fact, it's like most other human endeavors, they upgrade a little bit at a time. And, in fact, there's been a review of looking backwards at some of the homicide arrests during the past year, and of 283 people who were charged with homicide by gun, 28 were on probation or parole at that time, three-quarters of those people on probation for committing a crime with a gun or committing homicide or committing a crime with another weapon. It is this set of facts which 11 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 has led State Representative Bill Keller and myself to develop a proposal, which Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson endorsed, providing legal authority in Pennsylvania for search of persons who are on parole for committing a crime of violence or a crime with a firearm. The inspiration for that proposed legislation was the United States Supreme Court decision in the last year, which upheld a law in California that provided the same provision. Now, there is no civil liberties issue implicated in this. People who are on parole are not in the same legal situation as other citizens. They are effectively still prisoners who have the privilege to now be -- to rejoin society, provided that they abide by certain conditions, and there are a number of conditions on parole: the need to submit to drug testing, the need to go job hunting, the need to avoid association with felons. And in 12 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 Pennsylvania, another point that really needs to be stressed is, already under Pennsylvania law and under Pennsylvania practice, parole officers have the right to stop parolees, search them without probable cause. Police officers don't have that right. The idea behind this legislation, House Bill 31, which has passed the House Judiciary Committee and is awaiting action in the State House of Representatives, is that that power should be expanded to police. So this really shouldn't be looked at as a civil liberties issue. It's really more of a union jurisdictional issue or a job classification issue. If it is constitutional for parole officers to perform those searches, but they are not the ones who are in fact coming into contact with these people on the street, the police officers are the ones who are coming in contact, why logically and legally shouldn't that right be expanded 13 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 to them? Now, what will be the effect of putting that kind of legislation into effect? As Councilwoman Miller said about as eloquently as I've heard from anyone, there is just this proliferation and explosion of guns in Philadelphia to the point that anybody for every little stupid insult, cross-eyed look or whatever, is firing at will now, and the more guns in circulation, the more people firing.
And among the community of people who are carrying the guns and firing, they're pretty much saying the same thing. They're saying that they have to carry guns because everybody else is carrying guns. When Bill Keller and I were first elected to the Legislature in the early 1990s, this strikes us as a very familiar and frustrating argument, because when we started meeting with the School District at that time, we heard 14 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 the same argument when they installed metal detectors in schools. There were kids and some kids' parents who were complaining that if my kid abides by the rules and he doesn't bring a gun to school or his gun is taken off him at the metal detector, he's going to be at a disadvantage, because going through that neighborhood or getting on the bus and going to school, he's going to be unarmed and everybody else is armed. Well, what you have to do is you have to reverse that logic, right? You have to make it a disincentive to be carrying a gun rather than to be stupid and naive to be the only guy that's not carrying a gun. So if you start with parolees and they know that there is a likelihood -- and the police say that something upwards of 80 percent of these parolees go right back to the police district that they started in. So the police know exactly who they're talking 15 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 about. If they know that when they're spotted that they will be searched for weapons and if a gun is found on them, they will be violated on parole and they will go back into jail, they're a rational lot, they won't be walking around the streets with these weapons. The fewer weapons that they're walking around with, the less chance there is that people are going to be firing them. You have to begin to create an expectation and an environment where the person caught with the weapon is the one that is the odd man out and the one that is risking penalty and that innocent kids and innocent people in neighborhoods are not going to be caught in this crossfire and that this mayhem on Philadelphia streets is going to begin to be reined in and brought under some kind of proactive control. So the specific proposal that I'm talking to is a -- it's akin to stop and frisk. It's not stop and frisk. I'm 16 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 not an expert on the intricacies of that. I think you're going to have Professor Sherman who is more familiar with that proposal, but it is of the same family of the types of legal tools that will help the police go from a posture of being overwhelmed by these incidents popping up unexpectedly everywhere into one where they are better able to control the situation.
Thank you. Councilman O'Neill and then Councilman Rizzo.
Stop and frisk -- and I appreciate not only your position and support for parolee waiver, but coming up with the idea along with Representative Keller, I think it can go a long way to being another piece in the reduction of guns on the street and gun 17 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 violence as a result of them on the street. But specifically, do you come here today in support of stop and frisk as we know it and as Professor Sherman and others hopefully will describe it?
I'd like to ask a question about parolee legislation. And I think in your testimony at the bottom of you basically describe the person that your particular legislation would target are those people that have already committed a violent crime?
Only parolees who have committed a violent crime or a crime with a gun or a weapon. So our proposal is actually less than what was 18 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 upheld in California, where it applied to all parolees.
Thank you. Mr. Butkovitz, I know we're here to talk about stop and frisk, but you discussed briefly your proposal on the parolees. Could you explain for the record what the difference is between probation and parole?
Well, probation is a sentence that allows someone not to go to jail for one day but to be under the supervision of the probation office. Parole is a -- it's an early release from prison for someone who has served a certain percentage of their time and is under the supervision of parole officers. Parole officers are all state. Probation could be state or county.
Would your proposal affect probation? 19 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851
We tried -- no. 3 We tailored it specifically to what was upheld in California, and what the U.S. Supreme Court said is that this was clearly constitutional for parolees. They did not -- I don't think they gave an opinion either way on whether it would be constitutional with probationers. And as I pointed out, there's a big difference between the legal status of probationers and parolees. Parolees are people that have already been sentenced to prison and really they've served time in prison, but there has been a decision to let them out early because of good behavior or for certain other factors. Probationers, there was an initial decision that their conduct didn't warrant any prison time, that they didn't -- they never gave up the rights that citizens give up when they entered the prison system. So probationers legally have some more protections already in the legal system than people 20 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 that are on parole or people who have been sent to prison.
Mr. Butkovitz -- thank you, Madam Chair. Just for the record, you may have said this. I'm sorry if I missed it. What is the status of this bill now?
It passed the House Judiciary Committee by an overwhelming vote. I don't think it was unanimous. And it was scheduled for debate in the House of Representatives. It's been postponed, I think, for two weeks.
It would be very helpful if Council would issue some kind of opinion, because I think this 21 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 legislation, the great controversy it's attracting is within the Philadelphia Delegation. So if there was an indication out of Philadelphia for favorable consideration of this, I think that would be important to communicate to Harrisburg. Thank you.
Are there any more questions of this witness? (No response.)
Seeing none, thank you. Thank you for your testimony and caring about crime. Mr. Barnes, you're going to just read the statement or are you going to be available for questions?
I'm not Larry 22 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 Sherman, but I'm playing him today. So I'll do my best if there are any questions.
Okay. Please identify yourself for the record and begin.
My name is Geoffrey Barnes. I am testifying today on behalf of Lawrence Sherman.
Mr. O'Neill, other members of the City Council, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for the opportunity to testify today on this major issue for our city. My name is Geoffrey Barnes and I'm testifying for Lawrence Sherman, who is the Director of the Jerry Lee Center for Criminology at the University of Pennsylvania. I offer you this testimony today from Cambridge University in England where Lawrence Sherman is at the moment, a country with one of the lowest 23 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 homicide rates in the world. By way of comparison, the 55 million people of England and Wales have had fewer than 800 homicides this year compared to over 400 among the Philadelphia population of just 1.5 million. This means that the homicide rate in Philadelphia is about 9 times higher, or 2,400 percent more -- 10
Excuse 11 me. Mr. Barnes, do we have copies of 12 your testimony? 13
I believe they 14 were e-mailed. Whether they were 15 distributed, I don't know. 16
This means that 19 the homicide rate in Philadelphia is 20 about 25 times higher, or 2,400 percent 21 more than in England. Yet even in 22 England, comparatively safe England, and 23 even this week, homicide among young men 24 has become a major issue. And so has 25 stop and frisk. 24 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 Last Sunday, the President of the National Black Police Association, Keith Jarrett, called for police to increase substantially the number of stop-and-search investigations of youths, especially those in, quote/unquote, "black areas" -- these would include Pakistani-English areas -- that have had high rates of gun and knife violence. Such stops had been discredited ever since they provoked riots during the 1980s. But in those days, the police were using them to look for drugs or for stolen goods. Now the issue is murder. Not by the hundreds, but enough young people are dying from guns and knives to cause a major hue and cry within the United Kingdom. Mr. Jarrett said that he called for more stops on behalf of many other black parents, who, in his words, want to stop these killings, and if that means that their sons and their daughters are going to be inconvenienced by being 25 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 stopped by the police, so be it. I'm hoping that we go down that road. Mr. Jarrett's sole interest, it seems, is in reducing bloodshed against young minority group members. He is well aware that English justice is already vastly skewed against members of those groups. Indeed, far more so than in the United States. In our country, African-Americans are in prison at a rate roughly three times in proportion of the population. In England, on the other hand, Afro-Caribbean people are in prison at eight times their proportion in the population. So he, Mr. Jarrett, would not make this recommendation for just any crime. Only for murder. It is important to remember that in a democracy, the people get to participate in the ongoing debate about the balance of liberty and order. England abolished police powers to arrest people on mere suspicion in the 1980s when these powers were deemed excessive 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 to their purpose. Now we hear calls to use more limited powers, but far more widely in what is seen as a proportional and commensurate response to the seriousness of the problem. All of these proposals, of course, assume that stop and frisk can actually help save lives. That assumption should not be accepted on faith alone, and, sadly, the evidence for this assumption has not been discussed at all within England, where controlled evaluations of these sorts of things were invented almost a century ago. But if that evidence were to be put on the table in the United Kingdom in the same way that Michael Nutter put it on the table in 2007 during the primary election, here is what it would show: The stop-and-frisk strategy has been formally tested in seven locations. In all seven of these tests, the number of murders or shootings went down substantially relative to a matched 27 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 comparison area. In the five tests that have been conducted within the United States, there was no evidence of public protest, litigation or even complaints against police. In the prototype test conducted in Kansas City in 1992, neighborhood residents, when polled door to door, strongly endorsed the approach. In the two areas of Pittsburgh, my home town, that have tested this strategy under Pennsylvania law, the number of shootings treated in the local hospitals went down by 75 percent. Even with that evidence on the table, nobody would claim that this strategy by itself is a panacea, least of all Mr. Nutter. Fundamental problems of concentrated poverty, education and job readiness must be tackled. But the place to begin is to make the streets safer for young men to go to and from school and work so they can help themselves and help their city.
When police fail to provide that reassurance, they lose public 28 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 support just as readily as if they had treated citizens impolitely. And stop and frisk does not have to be impolite. It can be and has been in other locations very gracious and civil, with police explaining everything they are doing and why. It can be sold as a major campaign needing public support. Most of all, it has to be focused on the very few places where gun crime is predictably likely to occur, just as Mr. Nutter has proposed. It also must be relentless in looking for illegally carried weapons in those high-risk locations and it must have special training for the police assigned to such works, on both the legal constraints and how to identify suspects, as well as tactics to ensure the officer's safety. A stop-and-frisk strategy cannot be deployed overnight, nor will it succeed in one day, but it can be the first step in the process of creating a 29 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 tipping point against murder. Getting to that tipping point is what the evidence says we can do. In a society that now pays more attention to research evidence than to mere ideology, a society that pays more attention to the enduring values of the Constitution than to the politics of recent decades, it is the evidence about this constitutional option that really matters. It was Earl Warren, the Supreme Court Chief Justice so famously accused of handcuffing the police in many other decisions, who wrote the 1968 Terry opinion empowering the police to stop and frisk. He was the first among equals on requiring counsel and limiting police searches in general. By encouraging our police to use the powers that he and the court determined the Constitution does allow, we may do more to build public trust in the police than by making the police sit on the sidelines while homicides continue unabated. 30 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Barnes. Our next witness will be Mr. Fran Healey, who is representing, I believe, Commissioner Sylvester Johnson. LIEUTENANT HEALEY: Good afternoon, Madam Chair and other members of the Committee.
Thank you. Good afternoon. LIEUTENANT HEALEY: My name is Lieutenant Francis Healey. I'm an attorney and act as a special advisor for Police Commissioner Johnson. In this capacity, I have been responsible for the development and implementation of the Police Department's Pedestrian Investigation Policy and Report. We call it our 75-48A. Let me state at the outset, though, that I truly appreciate the opportunity to finally lay to rest the misperceptions and confusions that have 31 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 surrounded the issue of stop and frisk and how it is implemented here and in other jurisdictions. This confusion is for the basis of this hearing and hopefully I'll be able to resolve that. The purpose of my testimony, therefore, today is to, once and for all, clear the confusion that exists on this topic and, number two, explain what actually New York City did in the 1990s, because there's a big misperception that's been going on. With these goals in mind, let me state that it's well settled constitutionally that police can briefly stop any person if the officer has reasonable suspicion to believe that the person may have committed a crime. During that kind of stop, police may be permitted to pat down the individual or frisk if the officer reasonably believes the person stopped is carrying a weapon or is an otherwise threat to the officer. If the officer has probable cause to 32 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 believe that the person has committed a crime, obviously it's a higher standard, he may arrest the individual. And there's an exception to the warrant requirement, we can do a search incident to an arrest. At this point, let me state real clearly that the Philadelphia Police Department will never develop or implement a policy of stopping and frisking people without reason. It's unconstitutional and it's unthinkable. The New York -- let me also say this: The New York Police Department has never implemented such a policy either. Although the Police Department practices are often contrasted with those implemented in New York, as I'll tell you very shortly, we operate under exactly the same standards. Then what is stop and frisk and why is there such a controversy? To put it simply, it's a very, very bad name, and this is the heart of the confusion. 33 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. " It's the NYPD Procedure No. 6 212-11. However, if you look at this document, which I have a copy if you'd like to, nowhere in this document does it authorize the unfettered discretion of police officers to stop and frisk individuals without reason. On the contrary, it lays out the specific constitutional requirements necessary to temporarily detain and stop a person and then the additional requirements necessary to pat down or frisk that individual. Herein lies the basis for the misperception and confusion. Based upon merely the title of the NYPD directive, people, including academics, have concluded that the NYPD has a policy allowing police to stop and frisk people at will. Nothing is further from the truth. In fact, the very report that was 34 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 cited in today's resolution, the New York Attorney General's report, titled "The New York City Police Department's Stop and Frisk Practices" issued in 1999 describes in Chapter 2 the actual legal requirements for police officers to detain, frisk and search individuals. They're identical to those in Pennsylvania. As this report states, the technique of lawfully detaining -- let me say that again -- lawfully detaining civilians for investigatory field interrogations and, where appropriate, conducting pat-down frisks must be understood as a primary method to be used by the police to prevent, detect and solve crimes. Investigating criminal activity is not something that we choose to do or not do. It's something we must do. It's basic policing. In addition, it's also what we're expected to do.
And, in fact, in Philadelphia, we do over 5,000 pedestrian and vehicle 35 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 investigations every week. So let me state again at this point, the Philadelphia Police Department will never implement a policy or plan that involves illegally stopping or frisking people. So why the confusion? " It's better known as the Broken Windows theory of policing. " Somehow and some way this 36 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. " Along with this is all the unconstitutional notions that a stop and frisk engenders. Thus, the confusion. So let's be clear. What is an Order Maintenance -- or rather a Broken Windows theory of crime fighting, which is what they did in New York and is what is being proposed everywhere? The premise of Order Maintenance is that -- there's two premises. One, that low-level disorders such a graffiti, panhandling and the like makes people fearful and weakens neighborhoods and social controls. In this atmosphere, law-abiding citizens become more fearful and withdraw from the daily life of the community, effectively ceding the streets to the forces of greater disorder and more serious crime. We see that in all the community in the high-crime areas as it 37 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 is today. Premise No. 2, as a tactical matter, Order Maintenance theory advocates a close collaboration between the police and citizens in the development of a neighborhood standard of conduct. Such standards are enforced, for the most part, through non-arrest approaches so that arrests would only be resorted to when the approaches failed. What does it all mean in a nutshell? , that means investing the time from law enforcement's perspective to investigate low-level quality-of-life violations and offenses, reduce crime, at least in part, because the process of storing order, police will have more contacts with persons who carry weapons and commit more serious crimes. Police Commissioner Bratton brought this strategy completely -- bought into this strategy completely and 38 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 implemented Police Strategy No. 5, which he entitled "Reclaiming the Public Spaces of New York" in 1994. This outlined the Department's plan to combat low-level street disorder with the overall goal of reducing crime. It's important to note that nowhere in this plan were unconstitutional stops ever envisioned. So where did this notion come from actually? It's kind of simple. As mentioned above, police can lawfully detain a person when investigating illegal behavior. Under the law, it does not matter whether the crime being investigated is minor or even trivial, for that matter. , we find the guns, we find the drugs. If the officer merely conducts an investigation based upon reasonable suspicion of this violation -- it could be the minor violation, throwing 39 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 trash on the highway, urinating on the highway. If the officer merely conducts the investigation based upon the reasonable suspicion but, nevertheless, the officer believes that the person has some type of weapon or is a threat to the officer, the officer can do a pat-down constitutionally. Now we find the guns. It was no surprise that in New York when the police began enforcing this petty quality-of-life violations, crime was reduced because more criminals were coming in contact with the police before they had the opportunity to commit more serious offenses. The ability of the NYPD to intersect criminals using petty crime investigations has somehow been twisted into this perception that they stop and frisk people at will. This has never been the case and, regrettably, this overall crime strategy which has been labeled stop and frisk, which is a misnomer, that disrespects the officers of the NYPD, as well as the researchers 40 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 who developed the Broken Windows theory. So let's move to Philadelphia.
Police Commissioner Johnson fully comprehends and supports the Broken Windows strategy of lawfully stopping petty offense violators in an effort to reduce more serious crime. Based on the theory that increased contacts produce results, between 2005 and 2006 the Police Department had increased their pedestrian investigations by 30 percent. In 2007, the number of pedestrian investigations has increased an additional three percent. This activity has and is yielding results. Between the years 2000 and 2006, FBI UCR statistics for violent and property crime indicate that overall serious crime has decreased 13 percent. We are also recognizing an impact in more recent statistics comparing 2006 and 2007. Total crime is down two percent. Violent crime is down six percent. The number of shooting incidents has 41 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 decreased percent. The number of firearms seized has increased 37 percent, and the number of drug arrests has increased percent. 6 So, therefore, the Police 7 Department, we support the Broken Windows 8 theory, and the numbers demonstrate that 9 our officers are active and making a 10 difference. But under no circumstances 11 will the Commissioner support any plan 12 that would allow stopping citizens 13 without, at the very least, reasonable suspicion. Since the PPD already uses this strategy, we should be debating how we can modify or tweak the Broken Windows theory here in Philadelphia. How can we make an excellent strategy better? These are the questions that we as a whole should be asking. These are the questions that will bring the communities, the police and our leaders together, and where we should be focused. This concludes my testimony, 42 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 and I hope I have been able to remove the confusion that surrounds stop and frisk, and I hope you understand truly what happened in New York. And I really hope in the future that the use of stop and frisk ceases. We either use Broken Windows theory or not, basically. Any questions?
Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Lieutenant. Very enlightening testimony, but I guess what I'm thinking -- what you described here, as what you're describing as stop and frisk, sounds a little different from what at least other people are describing it and maybe I'm wrong, but what I thought Mr. Sherman's statement was describing it. Now, I know somebody here from Mr. Nutter is going to testify, so I don't want to speak for what he interprets it as. But there seems to be 43 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 the perception that part of it is not just when there's suspicion that somebody might have committed a crime or is suspicious in some way, but that therein, quote/unquote, a high-crime neighborhood, maybe just walking down the street, but they get stopped, because they're in that area, which is something a little different from what you said. LIEUTENANT HEALEY: I'm very upset about -- not upset, but I've been working for eight years doing the Police Department's policy, and the fact that there's so much confusion on this simple issue is amazing. You can ask any police officer and they'll lay it right out for you. That would be an unconstitutional stop to stop someone in that area, period, no if's, and's or but's. In New York it would be unconstitutional, just as it is here. What the -- and no disrespect to Dr. Sherman. I believe there is a disconnect between why the basis for the 44 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 stops were done. We want to increase stops. Absolutely. We want to increase lawful stops. We just can't go down the street and say, You're in a high-crime area, you stand up against the wall, and pat them down. What's going to happen is two things. First and foremost, let's say we recover a gun that was used to kill an officer in Washington, DC. That gun will be suppressed and that case will be thrown out. That's the worst thing that can happen. The second thing that can happen is, the City will be sued to the nth degree, and rightfully so.
I was going to get into that. LIEUTENANT HEALEY: Maybe it would be my time to leave and start suing the City if that starts to happen, but nonetheless. This thing is -- what people are disconnecting and the fact is -- and all these other jurisdictions, you were 45 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 talking about an Order Maintenance strategy, not a stop and frisk strategy, and the difference being, and as Dr. Sherman indicated, the community is all on board. Well, that was the second premise of George Kelling's Broken Windows theory. Get the community on board so we set what the standards are for this community. The community is, We will not accept graffiti, we will not accept public urination, public intoxication. So that community is on board. We agree. We don't want that behavior in our community. So what happens then, the police would then go into that community and aggressively enforce it. The problem is, you got to be prepared, and the community needs to be on board, because when grandpa is coming home from the bar after one or two beers because he's celebrating something and he's walking down the street not bothering anybody but he's staggering and he gets stopped, he 46 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 gets caught up in the net just like the criminal down the street. So the community needs to be on board and be a part of the plan. So it's not a question of let's target an area and just because of crime stats and do a -- we're going to send the troops in and start throwing people up against the wall. You will get guns. I am not going to tell you you're not, but we have constitutional guidelines and laws to abide by. We can work within those parameters. New York did it, and the basis the way they did it was the Broken Windows theory. That's why we have adopted it here. Now, have we adopted absolutely zero tolerance in certain areas? No. 20 But we have -- I mean, the Commissioner's SITE Unit uses these tactics all the time to make the more contacts. The lawful contacts they have gives them the opportunity to make minor arrests. Once I make an arrest for somebody, the 47 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 handcuffs go on, I go through their pockets, I find the guns. So that's a really, really important difference that I hope I'm getting it across. Stop and frisk is just a very bad name. We should title this policy Broken Windows Theory, a hundred percent, modified percent. That's what we should be debating.
Okay. No. I appreciate that. I appreciate what you're saying, and certainly I've had some concern, as did others that communicated with me, about that constitutional aspect that you were talking about. But you're saying what New York did and what Philadelphia is, just at the same place, is not what some people are fearful of. LIEUTENANT HEALEY: It's not what you're being sold. The bottom line is, we need to find as many ways to come in contact with criminals as possible. The best way to do that is through the 48 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 low-level crimes. Case in point, I'll use the one example. In New York City, they had a problem with gunpoint robberies on the trains. So what they did is, they -- turnstile jumping in New York was not a big -- it was beneath the officers to investigate that type of stuff, but what they did under Bratton and under Jack Maples, they assigned undercover and plain-clothes officers in the train station and started pinching people for doing that violation, but once they made those arrests, lo and behold, the robbers weren't the ones paying the tolls. But in that net, did they catch some executives that were late for work? Yeah, they did. They got tickets and they got fines, but in the end, gunpoint robberies dropped dramatically on the train station. But what did not happen was, they did not pat down everybody that walked down the train station. They could have got the same accomplished goals, but the one would have been 49 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 unconstitutional and illegal, the other one was completely legal and a very good strategy to use.
And they didn't go in high-crime areas and just pat down everybody either, right? LIEUTENANT HEALEY: No, not at all. New York would have been bankrupt by now a long time ago. What they did is, they premised their stops on minor petty behavior. The mind set of the police -- and when you come out of the academies, you go out there and you get the big pinch. You get the robberies, the rapes, the murders. Those are the big jobs. And what happened is, in our mind sets, we somehow lost track. Well, that guy is urinating on the highway, he's drinking on the highway. That's minor stuff. I got to go to the busy stuff. And our cops are running constantly left and right, so I don't have time to stop and deal with that. Well, what New York did is, they put the 50 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 brakes on. They said, Listen, the people that are violating the serious crimes are drinking the beer at o'clock in the 5 evening and then going shooting people at 6 12 o'clock. So let's intersect with them 7 first, because they're carrying the gun 8 at 8 o'clock as well, and now we get to stop them lawfully, arrest them, search them incident to arrest, or even if we don't arrest them, we investigate them based on reasonable suspicion. And if they do something specific -- like most people that carry a gun and the police stop them get a little nervous. They start doing a lot of goofy things. They won't listen to the police officer. They won't take their hands out of their pockets. You see a bulge. You see the jacket hanging down. Our officers are trained to identify all those type of factors and they put them on our reports that they do. Now that gives the officer the opportunity, Yo, buddy, put your hands on the wall. I stopped you for -- 51 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 best case example, you see a guy coming out of the alleyway and he's zipping up his zipper. You know what he did back there, but you don't really know, so you're going to stop and investigate. You have reasonable suspicion to stop, but are you going to cite him? You don't know. During the course of talking to him, all the sudden he gets real hinky, he starts grabbing his coat, turning away from you, he won't take his hands out of his pockets, and you see what looks to be a bulge in the pocket. At that point in time -- and it can happen in a split second -- the officer throws the guy on the wall appropriately so for his own safety, which is the only reason to pat someone down, pats him down, finds a gun. There's one more gun off the street and we got a gun pinch based on intersecting with the minor crime of drinking a 40 on the highway. And so those are the tactics that were used in New York.
Just so 52 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 I'm clear, what difference or is there a difference right now from New York and Philadelphia in how we're approaching this? LIEUTENANT HEALEY: Absolutely none. And, actually, might I say, the report that's cited in 1999, as a result of that, it was determined that certain units -- well, it's not absolute connection, but ironically enough, some units in the Police Department were found to have a high proportion of unjustified stops. That unit was disbanded shortly after the 1999 report.
If I may, Madam Chair, just one quick sort of aside. You heard Mr. Butkovitz's testimony. If I could ask, what's your opinion on that, the issue of sort of wholesale stopping of -- of searching of parolees? LIEUTENANT HEALEY: Well, you have to understand, I'm a police officer. 53 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 They're convicts, and they're still convicts when they're out on parole. According to me, in lieu of their being released, they release or acquiesce certain rights. If they want their absolute rights to be withheld, they can stay in prison.
Thank you. But once they get out, how do you determine who is a parolee that can be stopped? I mean, they're not going to wear a special bracelet. LIEUTENANT HEALEY: Exactly. From the Police Department's perspective, the way the law is now, I need to know immediately when I stop someone my reasonable suspicion. Now, I can stop and talk to anybody on the street. I do it all the time. But I can't stop and detain someone and then say, Are you a 54 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 parolee? There would have to be -- if that law was ever passed, there would have to be some type of pictures and documentation of all the parolees in a certain geographical area, and that would be given to maybe the police officers. Now, I'm not really sure whether or not the Police Commissioner would support or not support that notion. I don't really know. Personally, if it's legal and as long as it's argued among the legislative bodies and it's determined to be reasonable, then I'm sure we would enforce every tool we can use. But when the officer makes that initial stop, he would have to know that this individual is a parolee or at least have a reasonable suspicion that he's a parolee. He can make a mistake. He looks like his brother or something like that. Honest mistakes are made, but if we're going to use that as a tool, as it stands right now, the officer would have 55 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 to know -- from my legal experience, that he would have to know that he's a parolee prior to making the stop.
I know that there is some software that does facial detection. I don't believe the Police Department has that in their cars. LIEUTENANT HEALEY: Correct.
But I have one more question. When you say that the community has to decide to become a part of this Broken Windows strategy, or whatever we're calling it, so once the community lays out the standards and behaviors that they don't want in their neighborhood, would that mean that the probable cause is developed per neighborhood? LIEUTENANT HEALEY: No, absolutely not.
Or per police district or citywide? LIEUTENANT HEALEY: No. The Police Department can enforce any and all 56 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 City code ordinances, the motor vehicle code, the state law. Now, we have a lot of discretion of what we enforce. We may stop someone for urinating on the highway, but we don't give them a ticket. We say, Listen, knock it off. Don't do it again. If I catch you next time, I'm going to give you the ticket. We do a lot of discretion, and the last thing I would want to do is take away that discretion from the police officers. But if we're going to have a targeted plan, it needs to be debated amongst the Police Department, the legislature here to see how aggressive do we want to be in a certain area. We can say, Listen, we're going to pick on one or two offenses. Case in point was the New York train station. They only focused on turnstile jumping. They didn't focus on any other minor offenses. So in a specific area, you would want to work with the commanders in that area and the Police Department and 57 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 say, What are some of the major problems and how is it the best way to come across the criminals. Now, we may realize that a lot of them are juveniles smoking -- juveniles, period. Number one, we would use curfew, the curfew laws and regulations. Now, we'd also use minors in possession of tobacco, would be a good way to get involved to get us legally in front of the kids to stop them. I need something lawful to interject, I should say, but it doesn't have to be the serious offense. It can be jaywalking. I mean, that is an offense. That's written on the books. Or not jaywalking. That's a bad example. But any summary offense, minor, trivial offense, if it's written in the code, it allows the police officer to temporarily stop and detain the individual. That's what we look at. We say, Listen, the police want to come to your area. You got a problem. Is it okay with you -- now, the only reason I 58 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 say this, you don't need to include the community, but this is the premise under the Broken Windows theory so as that you don't have the complaints that will come out of the community saying, I can't believe you're busting our chops for graffiti when we got four homicides down the street. What happens is, if you don't include the community, the community becomes kind of the problem. They'll start complaining, like what are the cops doing? They're busting everybody's chops for graffiti? Are you serious? We got a shooting down the corner. The reality is, we're trying to prevent the next shooting by interceding with the petty crimes, but the community needs to be aware of that. Now, in some communities in New York, they weren't included in the mix. So they went out and sued the Department. And a lot of times you will hear people say stop and frisk has been held to be 59 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 constitutional. On reality, you have to understand what they're saying. The stops that were made in New York based in this area that they picked, the community was not included, but nevertheless, the police chose this aggressive pattern of panhandling and everything else. They forgot to include everybody in the community, like the community leaders, and explain to them what they were doing. So they got a little ticked off, quite frankly, and what they did is, they sued and said, Listen, you're only doing this super aggressive enforcement in the black communities. Why? It's discriminatory. Well, the reality was, it was based on the crime stats and that's where it was needed. But what happened, the community wasn't brought into the mix, so some wasted lawsuits went back and forth and the City was upheld, because it wasn't discrimination. So you need to remember, when 60 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 somebody says stop and frisk has been supported by caselaw, it's not the stop and frisk.
It was whether or not they could use the data to target certain areas for aggressive enforcement of this Order Maintenance. And the answer is absolutely yes, but if you're going to go 100 percent in, let's say, a ten-block area, a district, an area, those people in that area need to know. They need to know, Listen, don't complain to Council when Johnny gets caught out at curfew. Because you guys are the ones that are going to get all the phone calls from all legitimate sons and daughters that get caught up in the net. And what happened is, that's why it's important that we're all on the same page. We need you to tell the community to say, Listen, we told you we were going to do this and we told you why we were going to do it. Make sure Johnny, who is 15, is in at the right time. 61 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 So that's the important part to make sure that this plan works. We do this already. The SITE Unit is excellent at doing it, and that's what the Police Commissioner put together. These are excellent officers that use every little piece of statute or crime law that they can use to make a lawful stop. Based on that, they're making some incredible statistics. So the strategy works, and what we should really be debating is here, do we want to go zero tolerance, do we want to pick certain types of offenses, but we just need the community to be on board. And we're all separated right now. Stop and frisk, yes or no. The reality is, the police officers are stopping and frisking people based on reasonable suspicion every day. Our officers are doing a tremendous job every day. They're putting their lives on the line doing this stuff. To say that we're not applying the tools that we have available 62 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 is actually -- it's an insult to our police officers. Those officers are out there doing it every day. They're stopping people based on reasonable suspicion. They have a 48A now that they have to fill out, which I created. They don't like me for it, but they need to document why they stopped someone, if they frisked them; and if they frisked them, what caused them to frisk them; if they searched them, why. So we document each and every one of the stops that our officers do on the street to, number one, protect the officer from allegations, but also to intercede with this criminal activity. They do a great job, and they're doing a lot of it, and it really annoys me when you hear people say, Well, why don't the police do this. It's a slap in the face to all the police officers that are out there every day doing this type of stuff. And what it is, it's all focused because 63 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 it's a bad name. Stop and frisk is a bad, bad name. It is an Order Maintenance. And actually, I would just use we want to adopt Broken Windows theory and that we should be debating to what extent do we want to do that.
Okay. I have more questions, but I'm going to call on Councilman Brian O'Neill. Thank you.
Lieutenant, thank you for your testimony. Near the end of your testimony I thought I heard you say that we don't go as far as New York goes, and in response to Councilman Greenlee, you said we do exactly what New York does. I just want you, if you could, clarify. LIEUTENANT HEALEY: If I had said that, I must have misspoke. No. 22 The New York standards for stopping someone, it's based on federal constitutional law. We apply the same standards as New York. In fact, New York 64 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 and Pennsylvania --
No, no. I don't mean -- we better be applying the same standards all across the country. But is it your testimony that we're doing exactly what New York is doing in this area of trying to confiscate guns and deter people from leaving the house with guns? LIEUTENANT HEALEY: Absolutely. Yes.
The next question I have is just two cities that have been mentioned in Dr. Sherman's testimony, and I've read them in other places, possibly from his testimony as well at other times, and, that is, Pittsburgh -- those two areas that were concentrated in Pittsburgh and had a 75 percent reduction in hospital cases for gunshots and in Kansas City where they took two areas of the city and had, I think, a 50 percent reduction in gun-related crimes or gun offenses. 65 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 Are we aware of them? Have we looked at them? Is there something they did? Because we're not getting the reduction. I mean, you're for this, you're for that. I think everybody is after the same result. We don't seem to be getting the results that other people seem to have gotten, whether it's because of stop and frisk. I'm not interested in nomenclature, but I think what's driving this train from my end is we don't seem to be getting our arm's around this and other people, at least we've had testimony, are or have. LIEUTENANT HEALEY: Number one, I would like to read each one of those reports, and the focus of those reports, I guarantee you, were probably not on stop and frisk. The Kansas City study was whether or not patrol officers present had an impact on crime or not. I mean, there's different issues, so you need to be careful of what you're being sold. If somebody is 66 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 telling you a study, I would personally read the study to see what its purpose was and what its ultimate goals were.
So you're not aware of the Kansas City situation? LIEUTENANT HEALEY: I'm aware of the Kansas City program of what happened. I would suspect -- if anybody is saying that somebody implemented a stop and frisk, they are more than likely telling you that it was an Order Maintenance strategy or policy that was implemented there; whereas, they probably did the same exact thing that New York did.
But you know about the Kansas City report? LIEUTENANT HEALEY: Yes.
Is that what they did? LIEUTENANT HEALEY: I'm not sure whether it was stop and frisk. That was not an issue that I know of.
Or Order 67 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 Maintenance. I'm not concerned about the nomenclature, but it is basically the same thing they were doing in Kansas City as New York? LIEUTENANT HEALEY: Number one, I think the study was not based on this subject matter. I think it was based for something completely different. It was my reading of the report --
But whatever it was, it seems to have been successful. Really, again, I care less about what it was. LIEUTENANT HEALEY: What I'm saying is, I really don't know what it was successful at.
Have we tried to copy anybody else's best practices? Maybe that's a better way to phrase it. LIEUTENANT HEALEY: Well, we are, and the best practices that we found were the ones from New York. And when Police Commissioner Timoney came to town, 68 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 those were the strategies and practices he brought with us. CompStat brought us the geographical coding of where crime is. Now, we were working on it before that a little bit, but pretty much we nailed it when he came here. The objective of that strategy was so that we could target enforcement in those areas. Now, when we target enforcement, what do we mean by that? That doesn't mean we stop and frisk. Now, what it does mean is, we go down there and we do legitimate car stops and pet stops. That's what we're talking here, stopping people for good reason or good cause, spitting on the sidewalk, all these type of minor stuff, and that's what we want to do. Now, what happened is, sometimes our direct parole officers in divisions and districts get overwhelmed with 9-1-1 calls. Without a doubt, they're running constantly. It's very hard for the actual sector car who is 69 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 actually more than -- he's probably four or five sector cars -- to handle or to actually focus on minor petty offenses. And recognizing that is why Commissioner Johnson, I believe, initiated the SITE Unit. The SITE Unit is not 9-1-1 responsive. They help and assist with 9-1-1, but their job is, they go and focus and they have the time and resources to focus on the petty offenses, and those petty offenses, as well as the major ones, are how they're able to intercede. That is exactly what New York does, and I believe that's the policy or the strategy that's being used in other cities rather successfully. We are using it successfully here too as well.
You mentioned in New York that where they did have problems, even though it was upheld in court, it was because they didn't bring the community in. If we're doing the same thing New York has been doing in 70 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 terms of our policing, have we brought the community in to where we're doing it? LIEUTENANT HEALEY: Regrettably, this whole topic, this hearing today, has separated people. The people in the community --
No, no, no, no. 10 LIEUTENANT HEALEY: But let me finish. Let me explain.
Pre this topic. This topic only goes back six months in the City. LIEUTENANT HEALEY: Yes. Commissioner Johnson has been probably the best unifier of the City of a police commissioner that we ever had. He goes into the community. The community knows him. They reach out to him personally. His chief of staff is instrumental in reaching out back and forth to the community. That's primarily her full-time job. I mean, so he is excellent with the community. 71 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 Now, what happens is, regrettably, we're working together. Now, Broken Windows theory, we're doing it. We do every day. Cops across the country are doing the strategy day in and day out, like I said.
Do you do it in certain areas? LIEUTENANT HEALEY: We do this everywhere. Every cop in every district --
You do Broken Windows theory in the Northeast? LIEUTENANT HEALEY: Yes.
You lost me now. I'm sorry. You've lost all credibility with me. I am absolutely sorry, because if you guys are doing Broken Windows theory -- LIEUTENANT HEALEY: Let me explain.
-- I don't trust you to be fighting violent crime in high gun areas, because you don't have 72 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 enough police officers in the street to answer a patrol -- a call for patrol on a Friday night for eight hours sometimes even with a gang fight. I think we're better off just ending at least my questioning now, because if we're doing it and we're doing it in Northeast Philadelphia, which I'm a little more familiar with than some of the areas where we're talking about these statistics -- LIEUTENANT HEALEY: Let me explain.
-- you're failing miserably. LIEUTENANT HEALEY: I as a police officer -- and I will speak for myself -- routinely use petty offenses to stop people all the time. I made thousands of pet stops based on petty offenses and made lots of gun pinches. I like making gun pinches. Okay? Yes, a theory does not have to be applied in a whole. Are there officers in the 73 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 Northeast that use it? Probably not.
Thank you. LIEUTENANT HEALEY: Are there officers in the Northwest that don't do it as well? Probably not. It's a tool the police officers use.
But I think that contradicts what you just said to me -- LIEUTENANT HEALEY: I don't think it does.
-- was that we are doing it citywide. LIEUTENANT HEALEY: Officers are applying this strategy. They are. Now, whether or not we want to uniformly -- now, here's the key: That's a strategy officers use. They do every day. Now, if we want to target certain areas, that is not being done as maybe we should or could. Like I said, we need to debate that issue. In certain areas of the City maybe we should, maybe we shouldn't, but the community needs to be 74 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 involved in it. That's what I'm saying. The individual officer uses this tactic, and that's this tactic for making a lot of car stops and pet stops. A lot of officers out there want to make pinches. Our cops are hungry to make pinches. So they will use the vehicle code, they'll use the City ordinance code as a basis for stopping. That is the Broken Windows theory. Maybe we are just misinterpreting it.
Do you also have enough police to respond to Broken Windows type crimes when they're called in on 9-1-1, which we can't do right now in certain areas of the City? LIEUTENANT HEALEY: Listen, it's our objective to answer all 9-1-1 calls, but when they're prioritized and they're running all over the district -- and this is what I had said. Trying to do this policy or trying to do this strategy when you're running all over the city or all over the district is 75 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 impossible, and that's why Commissioner Johnson has a SITE Unit that are not being driven by 9-1-1 and have the opportunity to focus on those things. But the poor cops in the districts are running ragged. So, yes, there will be quality-of-life violations in the Northeast that last for hours. I'm not going to say there's not. I wish we could address it. But nonetheless --
Because they live on the wrong side of the boarder with Bucks County and Montgomery County. Because they don't have the same problem right over the border. They have enough police officers to handle citizens' calls. Calls for service is the basis for their staffing, not violent crime in the district, which there's very little of. We decided to go the old route. Everyone else is going in a different direction. I don't want to get into 76 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 quality-of-life crimes, because it's a totally different issue. I think we're failing at it miserably. I'm concerned about this issue and how our Police Department at the very top seems to think we're doing what New York does and no one else seems to think we are. And I'm not just talking about New York. I'm talking about other examples. And I appreciate you coming in, but I think that if you went out and asked people that apparently have been contacted by the Commissioner that they've been brought into the process, they don't think we're doing this either. But I appreciate your testimony, because it's been enlightening. Thank you.
Lieutenant, I've been thinking about this and trying to think of other situations that possibly need to be addressed. How many 77 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 gun permits do you think we have in the City of Philadelphia right now? I know it's really increased in the last decade or so. LIEUTENANT HEALEY: Approximately 38,000, I believe.
Thirty-eight thousand. In the training or the information that's provided a person that has a legal gun, if they were -- if a person that carries a legal gun would be stopped by police for doing one of these quality-of-life ordinance violations, spitting on the sidewalk or whatever, are they trained to immediately tell the officer that they have a legal gun in their possession? LIEUTENANT HEALEY: In the instruction packet that they get when they get their permit, they are instructed that they should notify the police officer. It's not legally required, but we put it in our instructions that you should notify any 78 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 police officer when immediately stopped.
So if a person would be encountered that had a legal gun, how would the officer deal with that? Would they ask to see his permit? How would an officer deal with a person he'd come across, one of these 38,000 people, that have permits to carry? LIEUTENANT HEALEY: The first thing is the officer safety issue. The officer would take possession of the gun, temporarily at least. If the person is going to be investigated and released, the gun will be returned to the individual as long as it's a valid permit and it's confirmed to be a valid permit. Now, if it's not valid or there's something that's not right, it comes back as not being valid, the gun will be confiscated and the individual will be arrested. But in a normal routine stop, the gun will be at least withheld by the police officer until the 79 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 end -- like a car stop. The individual says, I'm a licensed -- I am a permit holder. I got a gun. Okay. Please step out of the car. I'll take the gun off you temporarily. I'll give it back to you when we're done. I give him his tickets or I give him his warning and he's on his way and I hand him his gun back as he's leaving, and that's the end of the show. But if, let's say, now I lock him up for DUI, I stop the same individual and he's DUI. Now, obviously I would confiscate that firearm. The firearm would be confiscated not as evidence of a crime, but for safe keeping, and it would be put into our inventory.
That's interesting you mention that. That's kind of hypocritical that you can actually go in a bar with a gun, drink and have two, three drinks and you're 80 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 allowed to carry a weapon. I've always kind of thought about that. LIEUTENANT HEALEY: Let me say one caveat. We revoke more people in Philadelphia than probably any other county in the state. We revoke people for good cause, which is the standard. We have a unit specifically dedicated. If I stop someone and they're drunk and I don't think they have the faculties about them, I instruct officers to seize the weapon and we'll revoke the gun permit. We've done that routinely.
Walking down the street, not driving. LIEUTENANT HEALEY: Walking down the street, yes.
But it is legal for a person that has -- one of these 38,000 could go out on a Friday night, have three or four drinks and be able to carry the gun, right? LIEUTENANT HEALEY: There's nothing that says you can't carry a gun 81 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 drunk, like driving, no. 3
Okay. Now, when an officer stops someone for a motor vehicle violation, is it standard policy that the officer asks if the person has a gun in the car? LIEUTENANT HEALEY: It's up to the officer. I mean, like I said, when I stop -- and I speak for myself. When I stop somebody, it was kind of joking, but serious. I say, Are there any guns, knives or bombs in the car? Well, I got a gun in the back seat. Well, why do you got it here? Well, I'm coming back from the range. All right. I have always asked the question any guns, knives or bombs, kind of in joking, but often times you'd get, Well, there's a knife under the front seat, and you find a butcher knife. I've gotten more gun pinches that way than 82 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 not. But, yeah. The officers are out there for their own safety. That's their paramount concern. Yeah, they can ask anybody in the car, You got any weapons in this car. I mean, with 38,000 permits, I'm hoping my officers are asking those questions.
Good. Thank you very much, sir. Thanks. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Yes. Thank you, Councilman Rizzo. What's the difference between Terry stop and -- I don't want to call it stop and frisk anymore. LIEUTENANT HEALEY: Thank you.
Whatever you called it, the Window something. LIEUTENANT HEALEY: Broken Windows theory. A Terry stop is -- let's not confuse apples and oranges. That strategy allows us to intervene people that are doing low-level crimes. We stop 83 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 them. That's probable cause and reasonable suspicion. The Terry stop was a decision sent down by the Supreme Court that gave permission to the police officers to stop people based on reasonable suspicion of criminal activity. That gave me the opportunity to actually physically stop you. Now, that's a big difference in saying, Yo, buddy, come here, I want to talk to you, and the guy says, See you, officer, I'm out of here. I have the legal authority to stop and detain you. That means I can stop, I can put handcuffs on you, if necessary. I can put you in the back of my police car. I can detain you on that location temporarily to investigate criminal activity. But it must be based on reasonable suspicion. That's the premise of the Terry stop. Now, when you get into the pat-down, that's part also of the Terry stop decision. I stopped you. I got you 84 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 stopped for whatever the violation. I can't legally then frisk you automatically. Just because I stopped you for going through a red light does not mean that I can frisk you, pat you down for a weapon. What happened according to the law, what needs to be done is -- step one is the reasonable suspicion for the stop. Step two is specific and articulable reasons or evidence -- not evidence so much, but reasons or belief that the officer thinks this individual is a risk to him. Now, it could be a lot of different things. He's combative towards police, he's got his hands in his pocket, he's got a bulge, his jacket is hanging down to the side, which we know is usually a firearm. These things the officers are trained to observe, and based upon that and only that can the officer do a pat-down of the outer exterior of the clothes. Now, the pat-down is for 85 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 nothing other than weapons. That's it. I do a quick cursory pat-down and make sure that you don't pull a pipe out on me, a gun, a knife. That way, I can continue my investigation and you can go on your happy way. That's the Terry stop. Now, that is not part of -- see, this is where everybody gets confused. That we have always had since the '60s. The police officers are allowed to use that technique and tool, and it's been given to us by the Supreme Court, and we use it every day. The police officers in all parts of the City use it every day. This Broken Windows theory, it's a theory -- I guess it's not a policing theory, but it's an urban studies theory based upon that if you intercede with low-level crimes, you will reduce larger crimes, and it's proven to be true. Now, the way we do that is, we stop people for reasonable suspicion or 86 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 probable cause for the low-lying offenses, graffiti, jaywalking and those type of things. Based upon that stop, which is reasonable, then we can pat down individuals if we think we're in danger.
Thank you. Are there any other questions of this witness? For the record, Councilman Jim Kenney has joined us.
Thank you. I was listening to the dialogue in my office. Isn't it more about deployment than it is anything else? LIEUTENANT HEALEY: I'm sorry?
Isn't it more about deployment than it is anything else? Isn't it more about police uniform visibility, bike teams, cars in neighborhoods that are experiencing this difficulty, as opposed to special units? I mean, Highway Patrol is terrific, but 87 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 unless they're deployed in the neighborhood on a regular basis, all the tools you have won't be used, because in some circumstances -- and you're not going to give me the numbers, but you know how many people are in a district at any given time. And it's kind of appalling that we have that few people on patrol in a district in a regular car at any given time of the day at any shift. And it's dangerous for the officers, because they have to respond to difficult situations and need back-up. I mean, roll calls are sparse. I know it's nice to want to put people into narcotics and into plain clothes and they're more glamorous kind of jobs and they develop overtime and all that kind of stuff, but you can have all the stop and frisk and all the tools at your disposal. If I don't have officers on these streets interacting with the public, both the good guys and the bad guys, I don't think we're going to ever 88 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 accomplish anything. LIEUTENANT HEALEY: Well, I mean, I know you were busy, but that's basically what we had talked about. The Order Maintenance theory is the ability to interact with more people more often.
But you need -- LIEUTENANT HEALEY: And you need police officers to do it.
That's my point. I don't disagree with Broken Windows. I don't disagree necessarily with being more aggressive in trying to get guns out of kids' waistbands, but unless there are enough people in those districts doing it in uniform and visible, we could have all the narcotics guys we need or all the special units. LIEUTENANT HEALEY: I will say the uniform is an excellent -- what happens is, it's very good for the community. It deters crime, without a doubt. If I could have a cop on every 89 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 corner throughout the City, there would be very little crime, because there would be nothing going on. That's just not feasible. But what is important to also know is --
I'm saying how about like twice as many as we have. LIEUTENANT HEALEY: Apart from that -- but let me just disagree with you on one thing. The plain clothes element can work very well --
I understand. LIEUTENANT HEALEY: -- in combination with the visible presence. Yes, I agree.
Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. 90 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 LIEUTENANT HEALEY: Thank you.
John Nesby and Gene Blagmond. I'm sorry; McNesby. Hi. Just identify yourself for the record and proceed with your testimony. MR. McNESBY: John McNesby, recently elected President of Fraternal Order of Police, Lodge No. 5.
Eugene Blagmond, Director of Public Relations of FOP, Lodge 5. MR. McNESBY: Thank you for the opportunity.
On behalf of my colleagues, I also would like to congratulate you, John, on your recent election to the top post, President of the FOP. MR. McNESBY: Thank you, Councilman O'Neill. And also for the Councilmembers present, you received all unanimous endorsement of the Board of 91 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 Directors last night from the Fraternal Order of Police.
Thank you. MR. McNESBY: I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to address the panel today. I don't have a prepared statement. I had a format which I was going to go by, and recently listening to Lieutenant Healey, who I believe is very good at what he does, he expressed something, that the officers on the street are doing an excellent job, but as Councilman Kenney just stated, they're doing an excellent job, but there's only a few of them out there. You can have all the Broken Windows theories that you want. You're not going to have a police officer in the 25th District on a Friday night stopping somebody for a curfew violation. It's just not happening. Six, seven years ago, we had 6,900 police officers on the street. As 92 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 of yesterday afternoon, we had 6,426 officers on the street. So it's simple math. It's simple math. I don't believe that we have a lot of people in the City of Philadelphia creating a lot of crime. I believe we have a small amount of people in the City of Philadelphia creating a lot of crime. It's an epidemic. It's an epidemic. And I'm not an expert on the statistics, but what I see out there is -- and I've had discussions with some of the Councilmembers. I recently had the opportunity to visit every district in every unit in the City of Philadelphia over a two-month period, and as Councilman Kenney had stated, there's only three or four people at a roll call. I was going to roll calls on the 11:00 to 7:00 shift at night, where I wouldn't take my entire board that was running with me because I didn't want to -- their first question to me was, Hey, you want to jump in the car and come out with us? 93 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 Because there's only three or four of them in the car. I had a conversation a couple months back with Councilman O'Neill where I visited one unit where we had 7 people, 17 police officers, sitting 8 inside a police station because they had 9 no police cars to use. That's an extra 10 eight cars that could have been on on a 11 Friday night in a high-crime area. 12 I believe that the theory is 13 good, the Broken Windows theory that 14 they're bringing up, but we don't have 15 the police officers out there now to stop 16 people for curfews, for drinking a 40. 17 They're running from police 9-1-1 call to 9-1-1 call. And as I said yesterday, the cameras are a great tool, especially in the climate today, but if we don't have somebody to answer the person on the other line calling for the help for the police officer on the street, you can have all the cameras you want, we need the police officers on the street, we 94 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 need the vehicles on the street. Deployment is an issue. Councilman Kenney brought up deployment. Deployment is a big issue. They brought up CompStat. We have three or four officers assigned to CompStat statistics in the district; whereas, five years ago, you had one. I mean, it's growing and growing. And in one district they even joked that they should build an addition to the district because of the fact that there's so many people working inside. We have to be able to pull -- deployment is an issue -- be able to pull the officers, better scheduling. We have certain officers that need to work a certain shift, a daywork shift that's accommodating to them. They brought up the SITE Unit. The SITE Unit was a tool where they rob Peter to pay Paul. They pulled those officers for the SITE Unit from the patrol districts and took vehicles with them. So there's less people answering 95 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 calls in the district to the community. The community is calling. They're not getting a response for an hour, an hour and a half, two hours, depending on deployment. And then when the officer finally gets there, he gets the flack. I called two hours ago. They create a unit, a SITE Unit, which is more reactive than proactive.
We're going out and we're responding to incidents that happened 13 and 48 hours prior. What's the sense of 14 putting a police officer on a corner a 15 day after a shooting? Why don't we use 16 that police officer around the 17 neighborhood to prevent a future 18 shooting, a possible future shooting? I 19 mean, there's no sense sitting on a 20 corner and being able to do that, but the 21 whole thing comes down to manpower. 22 If we had an extra 300, 400 23 police officers on the street, we would 24 be able to deploy that Broken Windows theory and be able to be more aggressive 96 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 with the curfews, with the underage drinking, with the prostitution along Kensington Avenue. I mean, there was a day in 1990, '91 where I was a police officer in the 24th District, we had one wagon crew that went up and down Kensington Avenue from Lehigh all the way up to North Catholic just to pick up the hookers. What you would take off of those girls and guys would be unbelievable. You would get guns. You would get everything else. So it's not a matter of applying. It's a matter of applying the theory, but it's also a matter of having the people and the equipment out there, too. Seventeen people on a street on a Friday night sitting in a district with no vehicle, that's an extra eight two-man cars that you could have on the street. And, as I said, we visited every unit. And the SITE Unit is a great tool, but they rob Peter to pay Paul. 97 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 They took those 80 to 100 officers and they're reacting. They're reacting. They're going from crimes from yesterday. If there was a shooting in -- as Councilman Miller said, they'll be out by Germantown High tonight. And you could check the statistics tomorrow. They'll be around that area tonight, hoping to prevent another one, when they should be out there -- they need to turn the officers in the areas to be able to do the job that they have to do and be able to stand up if they were going to employ this theory to be able to indemnify the officers to protect them against the Civilian Review Board. As Lieutenant Healey said, we have a great working relationship, great working relationship with the community. Police shootings this year are at an all-time high, but also officers are being shot at at an alarming rate. But you don't see the community. You don't see the community getting in an uproar 98 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 because they know that they're being held hostage. They're being held hostage in their own homes. Kids can't go out to get an ice cream. I mean, we got people being shot left and right out there. But overall crime is basically down. It's the guns. It's the guns and the murders. And what we need to do is put more police officers on the street and have the equipment to be able to deploy those officers. I mean, we're looking at -- we talked to the one commander and he was saying that there was one car in the 23rd District that was a mandatory car, but when they inquired as to why it was a mandatory car, the mandatory car was there to cover Connie Mack Stadium, which was knocked down 40 years ago. So, I mean, it's a matter of looking at the different redeployment, redistricting of the districts. I mean, do we really need to have 22 or 23 different police districts? 99 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 Could we do it with five or six and give the commanders more control, and inside them districts or divisions have L&I, have representatives from Council in there to answer complaints one or two days a week, to have the different opportunities available? I look at the 2nd and 15th District in Councilman O'Neill's district where the guys and girls can't even go downstairs at night to get changed because there's water two feet high in the basement because of the flooding and the toilets, because it's tied up in red tape.
Somebody went out on the DROP program and there's nobody there to answer the request for repair, the 2nd and 15th District. They're down there, there's no cars. That's a prime piece of real estate. I mean, why couldn't we sell off that 2nd and 15th District, move down the street to the Catholic school that just closed down? It would be minimal price. It would be better 100 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 working conditions. We have a homicide epidemic where we have a Homicide Unit that can't respond to the homicides because they have no vehicles to get there. They have no vehicles to get there. That was the main complaint when we went to the Homicide Unit three weeks ago. We have witnesses being brought in, witnesses being brought in for these homicides when the doers are being walked right past the witnesses in the same room. There's no place to separate the witnesses and there's no place to separate the doers. So I'm going to be reluctant to testify against Gene Blagmond if I know he just committed a crime but he sees me sitting in the Homicide Division at 8th and Race. I'm shutting up. So with that, I mean, I'd hate to -- I know I'm getting a little bit off topic, but I believe the problem is that we need to put police officers on the 101 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 street with the equipment, be able to give them the backing, the indemnification to be able to do that. Because guess what? The community is not in an uproar. The community is backing the police officer on the street. We don't, as I said, see an outcry from the community on the rise in police shootings, but also police officers are being shot at an alarming rate. So thank you.
Wow. Thank you. Mr. Blagmond, are you going to testify?
Well, just to continue what John said about Connie Mack Stadium, I'm sure it was only a few months ago that we read in the paper that this Police Department discontinued a move detail at 62nd and Osage. Twenty years, hours a day, we had two cops 24 sitting on a house for no reason at all, because nobody could make a command 102 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 decision to end. And until the newspapers got a hold of it, it would still be going on. Pretty much that says what the problem is.
My next question was about the vehicles. They are not being repaired? They haven't purchased enough? What is the status? MR. McNESBY: We have vehicles with two and three hundred thousand miles on the street from '02, '03. They're being used hours a day, seven days a 18 week. They're purchasing smaller 19 vehicles now where some officers aren't 20 able to fit in. We have one sergeant in 21 the 2nd District who is over 6'10". He 22 can't get into a Chevy Impala. And if he 23 can, he doesn't have the ability to get 24 to his gun right away, God forbid, in an emergency in case he needs to because he 103 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 can't move with the computer right next to him. We have vehicles that are being put down at an alarming rate. We have no 6 unmarked cars. The commanders in the divisions have no ability to be able to command -- at least when Commissioner Timoney was here, we had a program where it was leasing, where they would lease vehicles and have a program set up where they were equally deployed throughout the numbered districts, and each week or two, they would be swapped off with -- the 24th would swap with the 26th. So that way, you don't see a guy on the corner saying, Here comes the police again in his unmarked car, because they know the unmarked car. There was a program in place where they had the leasing there and the police were on the street at that time. And the one division that I was in with the 17 officers was a high-crime unit out to fight crime on a Friday night in the middle of the summer with no 104 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 vehicles.
And they just don't have vehicles at all? MR. McNESBY: They're beg, borrowing and stealing. Like I said, they created the SITE Unit. The SITE Unit, it's a really good idea if we had 7,000 officers on the street. We have 6,400, and they drained patrol to create another unit and took police vehicles with them. Now, that's just one or two less vehicles per division that these officers aren't available to have.
Thank you. I hear all of what you're saying about all the equipment issues and all the other stuff, but one of the issues that is going through the government as a whole is the DROP program. Although it was a very sought-after program and very popular with employees, we are decimated when it 105 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 comes to middle-level management and people who are going to make the repairs to the toilet or order the cars. I mean, we're just basically emptying out all of the people who actually run this government on a day-to-day basis, not just the bosses, but the people who work in Public Property and Recreation, and they're not being replaced or they're not replaced with people as experienced as the people we were losing. So that's one issue, too. I want to know your opinion on a potential idea dealing with retired officers. My understanding is you cannot get your pension and also work another City job. So you either have to go find employment in another place, another police department, private sector, whatever. Would there be any interest at all in people who decide -- and a lot of officers retire at not a really old age. I mean, they're not old guys. I mean, they're not retiring when they're 65. 106 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 They're probably retiring a little earlier. If the City could make arrangements to legally bring on retired officers who are collecting their pensions on part time to work in areas like business strips where you have a beat officer, which would be the beat officer assigned to that particular business avenue or around playgrounds and areas around schools where there's these kind of problems that affect innocent bystanders, would there be an interest in making extra money that way while getting your pension? Because you're still licensed. You're still under the act. MR. McNESBY: That's a great idea. And as we said, like I had brought up earlier about the cameras, they're going to put 60 new cameras in the City of Philadelphia. What better person to have behind the lens of that camera than a retired police officer being able to know what they're looking through, being 107 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 able to dispatch that car properly and giving an accurate description, because, like I said, the training is there.
You don't have to comment on this, because I don't know whether or not it would put you in an awkward position, but I understand that that unit has been a bit of a disaster as far as it's kind of where they put people when they're either being disciplined or they're getting ready to be fired, and there's not always a lot of interest in paying attention to what's going on on those cameras. Now, I'm sure there are officers there that are right on it and paying attention and are excited and enthused about it, but is it kind of a place that people get put for punishment? MR. McNESBY: Well, yes and no. 22 It's a Catch 22.
Is that Differential Response? MR. McNESBY: Differential 108 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 Response and Police Radio. What they're doing is, some officers that are pregnant, some officers that are on restricted duty, some officers that are under investigation are there. So it's a mix. But I'd hate to think that there's any police officer up there that's not giving it their all every day, because I don't champion bad police officers. And another thing would be the --
But you do believe that a newly retired officer who wants to stay in the profession, who wants to collect his or her pension but still is motivated to do police work would do so for a part-time salary to supplement their income? Because you know as well as anybody else how difficult it is to retire on a police pension in the City. MR. McNESBY: Absolutely. I would. I also believe that -- when I said I took the test in 1989, 20,000 109 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 people took the test. The last police test that was given, 1,700 people took the test. We're not getting the core group of people that want to be police officers from the City.
Does the FOP support the waiver of the pre-employment residency requirement, not the post-employment, but the pre-employment so that we can recruit -- MR. McNESBY: Absolutely.
-- on college campuses, military institutions? MR. McNESBY: Absolutely.
So that's something you guys would support? MR. McNESBY: Yes. We also looked at the cost-effective thing with both the police and the City would be to be able to extend the DROP that extra year. It would be beneficial to the community, beneficial to the City and be beneficial to the officers.
All right. 110 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 Good. Thank you. MR. McNESBY: Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you for testifying. We're going to bring three folks up at this time, and, that is, Wendell Pritchett, University of Penn Law School representing Michael Nutter; Dr. Jerry Ratcliffe, Temple University; Eugene O'Donnell, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York. And, Mr. Pritchett, will you please go first. Just identify yourself, pull the mike up so that we can hear you. PROFESSOR O'DONNELL: Madam Chair, would you mind, I have to catch a train back to New York.
I'm sorry? PROFESSOR O'DONNELL: Yes. My name is O'Donnell, Professor O'Donnell. I have to catch a train back to New York, if you wouldn't mind.
Okay. 111 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 Do you mind, Mr. Pritchett? PROFESSOR PRITCHETT: No, I don't. PROFESSOR O'DONNELL: Thank you, sir.
Thank you. PROFESSOR O'DONNELL: You have my written testimony, so I'll just try to briefly summarize the testimony. My name is Eugene O'Donnell. I'm a Professor of Law and Police Studies and John Jay College. I'm a former --
Can you pull the mike closer. Thank you. PROFESSOR O'DONNELL: Sure. Former member of the New York City Police Department and also a former prosecutor up in the city. And as I say, you have my written testimony. I'll try to quickly summarize it. With respect to stop and frisk, you may know that New York City has been touted as a model for crime reduction. I 112 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 think it's important, though, that as I'm sure the members of the Committee know, that you really have to be careful in comparing cities, because there's very different dynamics in every city. A particular concern I think also is, the tone that's set at City Hall is a very important issue that's often overlooked. And indeed, in New York City even though we had dramatic crime drops, history will record the then Mayor had an extraordinarily combative, provocative relationship with the minority community in the city, and, fortunately, five years ago, a republican mayor, also a republican mayor, Michael Bloomberg, was elected and appointed Ray Kelly, the Police Commissioner. And that mayor and that police commissioner have an outstanding record among the minority community. Their opinion poll numbers are terrific. Crime continues to be reduced to record levels and we don't see the 113 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 scenes that we saw under the first Administration. So even though we sometimes spend a lot of time talking about the police, it's important to understand this is a political issue and people have to look at City Hall and people have to see themselves represented there. And there has to be sensitivity to particularly the minority community, because that is where policing is done, no matter how we dress it up disproportionately, and this kind of stop and frisk is going to be done there, and we need the assent and the consent of the people in that community. To summarize the New York City experience -- and, again, I think you got to be careful oversimplifying. There's a thousand different people stepping out of the woodwork to say it was my plan that made New York City safer and sort of disaggregate all the people that claim they were the father of this or mother of this reduction. 114 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 Of course, in New York City in 1990, we had 2,200 people killed. We had 40 people murdered a week. And we had a conversation that I think I heard for about the last hour and a half. I heard a police department that sounded sort of underfunded and sort of paralyzed. And you'd go to community meetings and the Police Department in those days took the position in New York that there wasn't a whole lot we could do, which, of course, understandably frustrated people. One important thing that's often not reported is the Mayor, who actually started the crime reduction in New York City, was not the Mayor who is currently running for national office. It was David Dinkins, the City's first African-American mayor. It was he who actually worked to pass the important Safe Streets, Safe Cities plan. And really as I heard the FOP talk, again, it harkens back to the days in New York City. Thanks to Safe Streets, Safe City, 115 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 it's fair to say the New York City Police Department really has a blank check at this point. They have 36,000 officers. It's a multi-billion dollar agency, and police, they have whatever they need in New York City, and that was not what we had for many, many years, and it was David Dinkins. He's sort of being airbrushed out of the picture now. Under Mayor Dinkins, it was he, it was his Administration that crime started to drop under. Today, we all know it's widely reported the murder rate in New York City. The number of murders in New York City is less than 500. It's 400 something murders.
That means in that 17-year period, 30,000 lives were spared in the City of New York, and it also means, of course, the thousands fewer gunshot wounds, people at emergency rooms, and the collateral consequences of that, of course, would be enormous. And it sounds a little tripe, but it's 116 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 absolutely true -- and I put it in my testimony -- that old people in New York today don't have to time -- as they used to when I was a police officer, they had to time their visits onto the street. They had to make sure they got home before the shootings started. Parents of teenagers and young children had to keep their kids sequestered, and worried themselves sick if the kids didn't come home at a certain hour. We have to also be careful in this conversation. We have to not be insensitive to people's civil rights and not pretend that those are not going to be an issue, and also it should be fact based, this conversation. And as we've all learned the hard way, programs that work in New York or other cities don't always replicate well in other cities. So CompStat is one good example of that. CompStat was hauled out as a great experience. It has not, I don't think, been a great experience here as much as 117 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 it has been in New York and certainly has not worked, I think, in Baltimore, according to a reporter I talked to down there. They're having lots of problems with the whole concept of CompStat. I will quickly fast forward here. It did come up. I think the Lieutenant from PPD spoke about this. It was Bill Bratton and the Chief of the Transit Police who undertook, I think, something worth looking at for the Committee, and that was the subway initiative. The subway initiative really -- and the subways are unique, so you can't get carried away with this either, because the New York City transit has a right to exclude people pretty much at will. But the theory there was a couple of theories. One, if you stop people from coming into the subway -- and, of course, the people doing bad stuff weren't paying their fare. They 118 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 were hopping the turnstile. So they were not. So if you stopped them at the gate, if you ejected them aggressively, that was a good start. And then, of course -- because you're sending a signal that lawlessness and disorder was not going to be tolerated. And that's more than just kind of a slogan. That's absolutely correct. And I think the academics in the room might have disagreements. I certainly must say as somebody who was both a police officer and a prosecutor, I don't have any doubt -- the one thing that I don't have any doubt is when the cops are out in the street and they're engaged and they're stopping people and they're questioning people and the lights are on and the sirens are on and people that are doing things they shouldn't be doing are being stopped, that that has a tremendous multiplying effect and the word is out. And when the police are on the playing field, people know it. And in the subway, that was particularly 119 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 true. The cops worked in plain clothes. And, in fact, in New York City -- fair warning. Anybody coming to New York City to visit, don't put your feet on the seat in the subway. Don't smoke a cigarette. Don't have an open container. Lots of tourists get burned because they're in the subway car and they run into three plain clothes officers. There's a constant effort to keep that message forward. If I could just -- and, again, I want to -- and I appreciate my colleagues here deferring. Just a couple of things and I'll try to wrap it up here. The stop and frisk shouldn't be done in a vacuum. There shouldn't be a conversation that says it should be just stop and frisk. And indeed I think there's an argument before you expand stop and frisk you ask a question, sort of like we do in the intelligence world, 120 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES.
070851 what are you doing with the powers you already have and what are you doing to coordinate better and what are you doing to prosecute those you're already apprehending. Because sometimes the failures are not necessarily an apprehension. There's failures that take place. One illustration of that is, for many, many years in New York City, particularly in the subway but even out of the subway, the police would stop people, they would summons people and they would warrant and nobody would do anything about it. And we had thousands and thousands and thousands of unpursued warrants. The net result was, you were having the worst kind of breakdown, because people knew the system wasn't serious. People knew it was a joke. And, again, if you come to New York tomorrow morning, you'll see a very aggressive warrant squad that comes right out and picks people up. They don't wait 121 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 a week or two or a month. They come right out. There's still a backlog, but it's one of the things that is a strategy. And that was with the Bratton approach, was not to just have all your eggs in one basket, to have a series of strategies along the lines in terms of the police issues. And obviously -- and I personally wouldn't assist New York. The Police Department really did undergo a seat change. Crime was not relevant when I worked there. It was not particularly counted, and there was a "can't do" approach, and there really was a dramatic transformation. Just a couple words on stop and frisk as some things came up. There may be some misunderstanding. In New York state, stop and frisk is codified in the New York state criminal procedure law, Article 140, and that is the starting point for this conversation. The state Legislature has 122 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 endorsed stop and frisk, police officer stop and frisk, pursuant to that statute. There's lots and lots of caselaw in New York on what stops and frisks -- what the parameters are. I won't bore you. It actually gets quite tricky. One argument you can make, actually New York's law is so tricky that the cops don't even understand it. Judges don't even understand it to create four levels of intrusion. To really summarize in a very quick nutshell, police officers -- there's a right to inquire. There's a right to stop. There's a right to question. There may be a right to frisk and there may be a right to search, and it's a calibrated approach. It's not just a one size fits all. Somebody referred to England. I think England they just -- because I was there last year at Police College. I think they just go right in. They stop somebody and search. In the New York 123 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 approach, the stop and frisk approach, it's very -- there's gradations and it's an evolving kind of interaction with the citizen, and it is not appropriate for the cops to simply just throw somebody up on the wall. And there are very adequate legal protections, and there are lots of caselaw -- there is lots of caselaw that actually leads to suppression of things that are seized. The final part of this conversation, I just made some recommendations in here that I hope the Committee can take a look at, to the extent that the Committee and the Mayor, the mayor-to-be, whoever that mayor may be, should take into account the following procedures: There should be proper training of officers about the law, specifically, again, the calibrations and the gradations and the fact that police-citizen street encounters are very, very tricky. That will be my first 124 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 suggestion. The second thing is good, clear written guidelines for carrying out stop, question and frisk and search activities. A lot of police guidelines aren't good or clear and nobody knows what they really say, and, of course, lots of times we spend a lot of time in police departments telling the cops what they can't do.
One of the things we need to spend some time doing is telling the cops what they can do. Adequate tactical training of officers, and I think somebody brought this up. Clearly, officers that are tactically aware and feel safe make better judgements. They can diagnose things better. They can protect themselves and you don't have an escalation that can lead to catastrophic and sad consequences. Officers should be trained about ensuring their personal safety. Nobody should be shy about saying the 125 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 cop's safety is paramount here. That's absolutely necessary. There needs to be adequate oversight of police efforts by prosecutors' offices. Sometimes they take a pass on this. Sometimes they aren't aggressively involved. They should be reviewing cases. They should be telling the cops -- giving them feedback about cases and problems. Check and balance, if you will. There should be directions against racial profiling of offenders, and that is an easy enough thing to do. It's one of Ray Kelly's signature issues in New York. He did it when he was Customs Commissioner. They follow it in New York. No need to racially profile. Again, there has to be a sensible conversation, because obviously because of the nature of where we're at. I left out a whole bunch of stuff about obviously the condition of the country, but obviously a lot of the crime is going 126 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 to disproportionately affect minority people and, therefore, nobody should be shocked that minority people may be on the receiving end of some of the frisks. But, again, that has to be done on extreme sensitivity, and the City Hall at the very top has to hear that. A few final just suggestions here. Teaching officers to explain, where practicable, the reasons for a stop and search and, whenever possible, apologizing to those who are unnecessarily detained or searched. The New York City cops did this routinely. I mean, they may not follow it always and they can't always do it. There's nothing wrong with saying sorry. Some of you know that often sorry eviscerates further bad things from happening. Proper documentation of stops with forms that do not lead officers to make boilerplate conclusions. Some agencies think they're going to simplify this by having eight different things 127 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 that cops can check off, and actually you got to be careful there, because you can actually then start looking at patterns that are improper. The cop starts checking off the same boxes. Constant analysis of the fruits of the stops and an effort to discern patterns of weapons possession, including geographical patterns. If you're looking for a starting point, where in the City of Philadelphia do you have a real serious gun and homicide problem, and then a full-court press there with the possibility you're going to displace some of those people. But certainly that's a good starting point. Rules of respect that officers should follow in conducting the stops. Again, in the same vein. They should be respectful. You can be firm and respectful most of the time. Sometimes you can't because it's just not practical to do that. Training about the value of 128 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 police interventions. You really need to get the cops to buy into this. And it seems to me as an observer -- I live down the street. I'm far enough away that I follow Philadelphia, but it seems to me there's a demoralization issue in the police force, and if the cops don't buy in, if they're not on board, it's a huge problem. And then I would say, finally, explicit instructions to officers that good-faith efforts to follow the law would be rewarded and not punished. That has to be explicitly said, and the Council has to say it.
And if you don't mind me saying, it might require some courage on the part of Councilmembers, but if you want the cops to go out there, they're literally going to be willing here to put themselves on the line, put their lives literally on the line, they have to be told explicitly that if they're making those good-faith efforts, they will be rewarded and they won't be 129 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 punished. If I could just finally say -- and this is the last thing I want to say, because I was in the City on Monday and I saw the Philadelphia papers on Monday, and that to me was an extremely impressive picture of the 10,000 African-American initiative. One of the things obviously as a criminal justice professor I hope is -- obviously I hope that initiative is successful, but beyond that initiative being successful, I saw some of those people in that picture were awfully young people. I hope those young people will in the future consider the police service. Maybe this is a good way to get them in the police service, so that we can finally bridge a divide. There's this crazy divide sometimes. The police really should be the people and the people should really be the police. We teach that in criminal justice. If we didn't have the police, the police would have to do the job. Here in Philadelphia 130 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 the people are stepping up, but perhaps some of those young people will also become part of the PPD in the future. I really appreciate the opportunity to speak and my colleague's forbearance.
We want to thank you and thank you for coming down from New York. We may call you again, because we are going to have a second hearing. PROFESSOR O'DONNELL: I'd be honored, Madam Chair.
You're welcome. Mr. Pritchett, Wendell Pritchett. PROFESSOR PRITCHETT: Thank you, Madam Chairwoman and members of Council. My name is Wendell Pritchett 131 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 and I'm the Policy Director for the Nutter for Mayor campaign. I'm also Professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Councilman Nutter is very sorry that he could not be here to participate in this important discussion and he thanks Councilman O'Neill and Councilwoman Miller for their leadership in this area. Councilman Nutter had a longstanding engagement in Washington, DC and so he can't be here with us today. I've submitted formal testimony, but I'd like to just make the following brief comments about this issue. In poll after poll, Philadelphians have stated that violent crime is the most pressing issue facing the City. Last year, the City had 406 murders. We are on track to match or exceed that number in 2007. Violent crime affects everyone in the City. It creates a fear that 132 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 obstructs investment and it taxes our resources, preventing us from using this money to improve our schools, parks and other facilities. Violent crime has the biggest impact on the City's poor population, particularly poor African-American youth. Violent crime prevents our citizens from enjoying their neighborhoods, makes it difficult for our children to learn and play, and limits the opportunities of hundreds of thousands of residents. During the primary, the Councilman issued the Nutter Plan for Safety Now. The plan proposed several initiatives. I just want to briefly go through them. An increase in the number of police officers, as we've heard from many people, including the President of the FOP. This is a very important issue. The increased use of surveillance cameras in high-crime areas; greater targeting of fugitives and others who make up the 133 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 small percentage of criminals committing the most violent crime; the creation of a public safety cabinet to enhance coordination of the City's public safety agencies; support for the Youth Violence Reduction Program and other efforts to target youth at risk for a life of crime; an increased support for programs such as the recently introduced PREP bill by Councilman W. Wilson Goode to aid the training and employment of ex-offenders who want to take a more productive path in life. Now, just one important part of this strategy is the enhanced use of what has been called stop, question and frisk policing policies. And I'd just like to say right now the interpretation of the stop, question and frisk policing policies in the Nutter for Mayor plan is exactly the same as that laid out by Lieutenant Healey. There is no difference between the interpretation of the standard laid 134 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 out in the campaign policy and what Lieutenant Healey laid out for us today. No difference. Such tactics, when implemented correctly, have been shown to have a significant impact in reducing violent crime. As Mayor, Councilman Nutter will direct the Police Commissioner to initiate a program to target people carrying handguns and other lethal weapons. The goal of this initiative is to create a disincentive to those thinking about carrying an illegal handgun. It is not to undertake wholesale detainment or arrests of innocent people. The goal is to get illegal guns off the streets. If you are not carrying an illegal gun, you will not have a problem. If you are, the police are coming after you. Stop, question and frisk tactics have been found constitutional by the United States Supreme Court. The law 135 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 requires, as Lieutenant Healey told us, for a police officer to have a reasonable suspicion to make a stop. Before initiating such a program, Councilman Nutter will undertake a public education effort to increase public understanding of the tactic.
Before initiating the program, Councilman Nutter will also direct the Police Commissioner to conduct a comprehensive training program for our officers in the appropriate methods for implementing the initiative. The Police Department will work closely with community members to implement this initiative in a careful, considered manner. Any complaints about inappropriate use of the tactic will be fully investigated, and the Police Department will provide regular reports on the strategy. There is no more important challenge facing the City, and Councilman Nutter has pledged to make this a priority in his Administration should he 136 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 be elected. This tactic is one part of a larger program to decrease violent crime in the City. It is an important one, but let me conclude that by stating that equally important are improvements to the educational system and the creation of jobs, because these are the foundation of a healthy city. As Mayor, Councilman Nutter will make public safety, education and economic development his main priorities. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Pritchett. I also know that you have a time restraint, and we want to thank you for coming in and giving us this testimony. PROFESSOR PRITCHETT: Thank you.
We'll probably call on you again. PROFESSOR PRITCHETT: Thank you.
137 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 Councilman Clarke has joined us and he actually has a question, Mr. Pritchett. Can you just wait one second? PROFESSOR PRITCHETT: Yes. I'm happy to stay for a few minutes. I'm happy to stay for the Councilman particularly.
He will be coming back. We're going to have a second hearing.
Your response might cause me to ask additional questions, so go ahead.
Councilman Clarke, you weren't here in the beginning, but we established that we're going to have a second hearing.
Good afternoon and thank you for being here. Dr. Ratcliffe, good to see you.
My name is Dr. Jerry Ratcliffe. I'm a Professor of Criminal Justice at Temple University. As you can probably tell from my accent, Madam Chairwoman, I'm not from around here.
But I don't have a time constraint either. Just to give a little bit of a background, I was a police officer with the Metropolitan Police for 11 years until I had a mountaineering accident. In my academic career, I've published about four books and about 45 articles in the area of policing, crime reduction and intelligence-led policing. I'd like to thank Councilman 139 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 O'Neill and your good self for the invitation to be here. I'm aware of the time of the day, and I've got four pages of testimony, which I've submitted to you. I will try and summarize these as briefly and as on topic as possible.
Basically, there are no easy answers. Any program that you're thinking of using at the moment that doesn't impact -- basically, if there was any program that was around that didn't impact on the quality of life or the inconvenience of local residents, we'd have done that already. In the end, most of the other speakers have mentioned that jobs and education in the long term are necessary, but what we're talking about here is some sort of short-term respite. So there are three questions which I think need to be addressed here regarding this policy. Will it work? Are there any negative 140 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 consequences that might destroy any of the positive crime-reduction benefits that we have? And are there any other objections? I'll keep it to the first two questions, because everybody is busy. In terms of will this work, the basic mechanism that we're trying to make happen here is the offenders will think that the risk of capture outweighs the benefits and the efforts to carry and use guns. That's the basic mechanism that we're trying to make work here. Now, in terms of trying to figure that out, that's kind of difficult and it depends what constituency you're looking at. For the drug gangs in the City, using firearms and having access to firearms is pretty much a way of life and is a requirement for running business. Therefore, while they may change their behavior, I'm not entirely convinced that an increased policy of stop and frisk or something related to that will necessarily tackle those areas as well as 141 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 we might hope. But a lot of violence in the City, as the Councilwoman referred to in her opening comments, doesn't relate to drug crime, but just relates to the day-to-day minutia of people having arguments in and around the City. So for people who carry guns because they think erroneously that it helps them for their protection, it's just not true. People who carry guns tend to have an increased level of involvement in gun violence. And for the people, especially the young people that carry guns because they perceive it increases their status, then increasing police powers or certainly increasing the police approach to stop and frisk within the confines of what's legal is possibly a plan that might work. So there is a mechanism here that can work, which it will increase the risks of capture to the level where people make a decision that they're not going to carry firearms. 142 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 As for the negative consequences, we ought to be realistic about where this is going to take place. My studies in the Department of Criminal Justice at Temple University have found that just over 50 percent of the people who are shot in Philadelphia are shot within 800 feet -- that's about two blocks -- of their home address. And contrary to what the gentleman for the FOP said, but I got the gist of where he was going with that, is that actually we do now know from our recent studies that if there's a shooting on a street corner in Philadelphia, the risk of there being another shooting within the same block or so for the next two weeks increases by a third. So the idea of putting police officers on corners where there has just been a shooting is actually a policy that can help to prevent the next shooting that takes place. But in the end, just standing police officers on the street corner may not be sufficient, and more 143 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. " I think it's the wrong use of the term and I think more proactive policing is something that we can certainly think about addressing. But in the end, we have to decide whether this is going to work, because as we know from our looking at shootings information -- we get access to the shooting data from the Police Department and we analyze it in my department.
In the end, the shootings that take place in the City are going to be concentrated in the poorest neighborhoods, and in much the case of Philadelphia, poor is synonymous with black. So we're going to concentrate much of this work in the poorest black neighborhoods of the City. And because the nature of what it involves, the question is, are some residents prepared to accept that some inconvenience is necessary on their liberty or at least 144 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 some restrictions on their liberties in return for a safer neighborhood. So there are some potential negative consequences. That being said, most research finds and our most recent poll at Temple University finds that generally people in Philadelphia think very positively of the Police Department. So we start from a good starting position. That being said, about a fifth think the police don't protect their basic rights and about one-third of the people interviewed think that the police stop people for no 16 reason. Therefore, why this may be a policy that could work, the question we have to consider is, are we prepared to put some risk to the relationship, the police-community relationship, in some of the neighborhoods where they actually need policing the most. If I can just clarify a couple of the points that came up a little earlier. There was some confusion with 145 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 Councilman O'Neill and Lieutenant Healey. I believe you were both talking at cross purposes with the Kansas City experiment. I think that Lieutenant Healey was talking about the Kansas City Preventative Patrol Experiment that took place in the city, but, Councilman O'Neill, you were talking about the Kansas City Gun Experiment. Now, for that gun experiment there, the police officers -- and there are only pretty much four officers used, two cars, two police officer cars. So it was a very small experiment. But they did find one gun for every 28 stops, which from having been an ex-police officer, that's actually a very good hit rate. But we have to be realistic -- and "hit rate" is probably not the right term. But we have to be realistic, but there are 27 non-guns found for every gun found. So these are the considerations. If you ask me on balance whether we should do this, I think we 146 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 should, but I think it should be considered within the framework of we should monitor this to see if it's in the right neighborhoods and keep an eye on it as we go along. We should certainly target the neighborhoods that need it the most, and we can do that sort of work. We know there are spacial and temporal patterns to gun violence. And the training that's been talked about basically for two reasons. We know that when a police officer -- when somebody has a negative interaction with a police officer, the implications for the opinion of the police are anything like four to 14 times worse than if they have a good interaction. Therefore, some training for police officers conducting this would certainly be a sensible idea, and secondly purely for issues of officer safety. I could go on. I'm going to try not to. I'm happy to answer questions that you might have. 147 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 Just to finish up, I would say I would support it, but with the caveat that political support for the Police Department is essential. In other words, if we start this policy in media cameras, the first thing they'll do is drive up to a rough neighborhood in North Philly or West Philly, find somebody who says that their good lad cannot come out of the house without being stopped and harassed by the police, we then need to think about the political support. If we're going to go and ask the Police Department to do that, then we need some robust support for them if we're actually going to ask them to do that, when the inevitable media attention falls on the policy. I hope this comes as some assistance to you.
Thank you very much. Thank you for coming. Next witness? Any questions? William? 148 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851
Sir, you talk about risk to the community relations, and it's something that certainly has been discussed since this issue, whatever you want to call it, has been brought up. In the studies you've shown or you've seen -- and I wanted to ask the gentleman from New York this, but he had to leave -- what have you seen to those risks? I mean, I guess one of the things that is a concern for me and others is that the respect for the police, I think you mention, is pretty high, that that's going to go down because certain communities are going to think they're being --
Targeted, yes. Have you seen that in some of these other cities? 149 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851
Generally, the perception is that people actually want more police activity in their neighborhoods. The question is what is the nature of that activity. Councilman, let me give you an example from one study. In the Brightwood area of Indianapolis -- which you have to bear with me. I'm new to this country. It's apparently somewhere out west -- the police at the behest of the community spent a lot of money doing a long-term surveillance operation to tackle drug dealers, and the community was adamant the police weren't doing enough and there was lots of demands for the police to do something. Well, the police did. They got some wiretaps. They did some surveillance. What they discovered was that the community activists who were so adamant that the police should be doing something about crime were also the ones that they caught on wiretaps advising some of the drug dealers that the police 150 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 were active in the area. So what happens is, the general sense is we want the police to do more in our neighborhood, but as long as it's not my nephew or my grandson. And that's the factor that we're up against here. If we wanted to do this properly -- not properly. That's not the right term. If we wanted to do this in a slightly different way, we would use more intelligence-led resources and we would start to target the activities that we're thinking about more specifically to people in the neighborhoods. But that's hard to do in Philadelphia, because people generally don't talk to the police, and the Police Department is not set up for that. Intelligence resources and the street police officers generally don't speak to each other very well.
Well, certainly communication within the Police Department, as you say, but certainly with the community is important. 151 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 In any of these cities, again, or in your opinion, obviously a lot of the people or a lot of the individuals that may be stopped could be still in school, school-age children. Has there been dialogue like right into schools in these other cities where there was interaction with the -- go right in the school and say, Here's what we're trying to do, kind of thing?
The unfortunate side is -- and you have to bear in mind, I was a police officer long before I ever got stuck with being an academic -- is that most academic studies tend to be longwinded about the statistics and very short on exactly what took place.
The general approach seems to be -- and when we ran a similar type of policy when I was a police officer in London, it's the demeanor of the police officers and how they deal with people. Keith Jarrett in 152 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 the testimony that was read on behalf of Professor Sherman, Keith Jarrett called for more police use of essentially stop and frisk, for want of a term. I actually worked with his predecessor, George Rodin. And a lot of the case was that -- and that the Black Police Officers Association was supportive of this, but recognized that it was the demeanor of the police officer that dictated the outcome. In other words, the individual relationship as much as anything else just with young black kids in London just wanted to be spoken to courteously and called "sir." They understood the need for searching. They understood that they were likely to be on the downside of generally knives and not guns in the UK. But it's that level of work. And working through the schools might be able to help, but that's a dynamic that's also very different and it's not necessarily the easiest thing for police officers to 153 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 be the people to go and explain that.
I understand, but I guess, again, just getting into "we're not your enemy" kind of thing.
No, and it comes back to this issue. If we don't provide training for police officers, then what you'll end up with is pretty much something that reflects the general perception of how people feel about the police in Philadelphia, which is not necessarily bad. The police are quite well thought of in this town compared to many other places.
Right. And it's certainly, I think -- I'm getting old, but it seems like it's a lot better now than it was before, and I guess there is some concern that we don't want to go in any way backwards. While we still have to fight this terrible problem we have, we don't want to get that relationship hurt again, because 154 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 there was a time where there was not that feeling. I can tell you as a life-long Philadelphian there was a time where there was not that feeling certainly in some communities.
No. And I agree with you, and this should be a concern to think about. Which means I don't necessarily think this is a bad idea to pursue, but the broader issue is how do we go about doing it while minimizing the damage to police-community relations.
And I guess the last thing -- and this is something that both Lieutenant Healey and the representative for Councilman Nutter said, kind of agreed on, but the perception seems to be different out there in the community, that still we're just talking about stopping and frisking people who reasonably -- they have reason to stop and not just stopping people in high-crime areas that just happen to be 155 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 there. Again, Dr. Sherman's statement seemed to be slightly different than that. It seemed to -- I might not use the word "advocate," but talked about a different level, that next level, which I think is what concerns people, that the guy just walking down the street in a high-crime area is going to get stopped. But it seems like the Philadelphia Police Department, Councilman Nutter and I think the New York representative said that -- I'm not sure about that. I couldn't get a chance to ask him -- said that that might --
My English is -- it was coming at me far too fast for me to have an idea of what the cop from New York was telling you.
Right. But I guess you would agree that, first of all, there are constitutional problems, right?
Sure. This has to stay within the Constitution. How it 156 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 worked quite well in London -- and it's something that might be worth thinking about -- the Police Department here fill out a form and that form articulates the reasons why they stopped somebody. Now, how it worked in London is that police filled out a form, but it was carbonated and the person who was stopped and searched actually got to keep a copy. So where that worked nicely is that the training then fell to the officers for the officers to more clearly -- and that's a good use of training resources -- to more clearly articulate the reason why they stopped and searched somebody.
It's almost like when you get a traffic ticket, know what you're being charged with.
Sure. And you can stop people, as Lieutenant Healey quite clearly pointed out, about using the officer for gun reduction, and that's 157 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 not a bad use of it at all, and there's nothing unconstitutional with that as long as it's done within the original reasons for the stop. So I think there are good reasons to approach that, and it might be worth thinking about, actually thinking about some sort of policy where people actually get some indication of why they were stopped.
Okay. And, again, the last thing, if I could, Madam Chair, I understand in the Attorney General's report in New York, there was some concern raised about a higher level of minorities being stopped than non-minorities. Now, I don't know if that was an opinion or what exactly that was based on, but I'm just looking through it real quick and I picked that up.
The phrase "bang for the buck" came up earlier, and the reality I think is that if you want 158 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 to maximize the benefits, if you perceive there are also some potential negative consequences, the best way to use such a policy is to use it in the smallest area at the best times so that the negative consequences are minimized and you get the best bang for the buck, the best return from that. In the end -- because I've stared at the crime data. There's no 12 getting away from it. I don't think these are high-crime areas because they're black. They're high-crime areas because they've got a lot of poverty, and poverty and lack of education and lack of jobs drives crime. Unfortunately, here in Philadelphia it ends up being synonymous, and that's an impression that's going to have to be managed. But if you want to use the best areas, you end up minimizing the areas, and that's going to be predominately black parts of the City.
So 159 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 proceed carefully, I guess, is how we could wrap it up. Is that how you would say it?
Yeah. I mean, that's a good way of summarizing it. We have to be careful, but then we also have to respond to the fact that people are concerned about gun violence.
If I had the easy solution that didn't have any impact on the community, I'd have come and given it to you a long time ago.
Well, we would have done it before you, so you wouldn't have had to come here today. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Madam Chair.
I want to thank you for coming in, but you know, the reality is, there is a correlation between race and stopping, and I don't know how we deal with that. 160 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851
No, and I'm afraid I have no real suggestion for you. You'll have to bear with me. I've only been in the country and in the City about five years. So I'm just getting that sense of -- race relations in this country and in the City are very different than the United Kingdom, and I was in Australia before that. So I'm probably not the person best qualified to deal with that. A sense is that when we look at -- when I have graduate students in our doctoral program and we look at crime in the City and we look at demographic factors, a lot of the high-crime areas are not always black. There are some Hispanic areas in the 15th District that have got some real problems as well. But once you start looking at socioeconomics and once you start looking at poverty and lack of education, lack of jobs, the race factor tends to parry out. It's so difficult in the City to separate those 161 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 things. And, of course, one could articulate in an environment like this that would be targeted here, is that a high crime because of the poverty? But in the end, the people here are going to sit there and say it has a race factor to it, and I'm afraid I can't offer any immediate suggestions for that. I'm really not the person qualified for that.
And we understand that. And we are also very much aware of the data, the demographics, the victims and all of that. So we just have to figure out how we do this.
I should just add something to Professor Sherman's. It did kind of -- his testimony did kind of suggest that the claim for stop and frisk helped keep the murder rate in the United Kingdom sort of 125th. It's pretty much because about ten years ago there was a school shooting in a school in Dunblane in Scotland and the United Kingdom completely bans handguns. Nobody is 162 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 allowed to buy, own, operate, have handguns at all. Even the Olympic shooting team have to go overseas to train.
Madam Chair, if only that was here. If only that was here.
That's right. Thank you. Thank you, Professor, for coming in.
We will now have everybody who is left. Wayne Jacobs, Bruce Harris and Adam Kremis. Is there anyone else in this room to testify on this resolution other than the two folks at the table? (No response.)
Great. You can identify yourself and please proceed.
My name is Bruce 163 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 Harris and I've been a Computer Engineer for 37 years. I'm retired now. I just have a brief statement. I lived all my life at 52nd and Market, a high-crime area, and something has to be done, and stop and frisk is the thing. Because we've got to stop the killing.
That's basically all I have to say. One other thing. I do have one other thing to say. I know the policies and procedures. You have to just make sure that there's no loopholes in there where non-Caucasians can be discriminated against.
Thank you, Mr. Harris. Good afternoon, Wayne Jacobs. 164 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851
Yes. Councilwoman, as the co-founder of X-offenders for Community Empowerment, we support some type of mechanism in reference to the stop and frisk. We recognize that the killing have to stop and we recognize that where the killing is taking place at. It takes place in our neighborhoods. It's committed on us by us. And to try to find a way to not do racial profiling would be almost impossible, because nine out of ten homicides is in our neighborhoods. However, I feel that if you look at doing this, they should look at doing a possible pilot program so that you can monitor. And what I mean by monitoring, the officer talked about the Terry stop. Now, the Terry stop is mainly for finding weapons. It's not a search. It's not a frisk. It's a pat-down. Now, I don't know the difference between a frisk and a search. To me they both the same. A frisk and a 165 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 search is the same. A pat-down is totally different. Now, if this program is implemented and they are using the Terry stop as a mode to pat people down, then a police officer should not be arresting nobody when they commit a Terry stop for a bag of cocaine that's this size. Okay? In order to find a bag of cocaine this size in somebody's pocket, you have to search them. You know what I mean? If you are searching or patting a person down and they got illegal lotteries in they pocket, that's not a pat-down. That's a search. So this is the reason why we're proposing that ya'll have a pilot program. So that after those six months to a year you can look at it and you can see was the program used actually to get guns or was the program actually used just to increase the prison population of non-violent offenders or, what you will say, the Broken Glass crimes or 166 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 quality-of-life crime. You know what I mean? That is our position, is that you need to put together a pilot program so that you can monitor and see was the training that the officer received correct and was the officer using the correct procedures to do this. Because a lot of times you give them the red flag or the go-ahead to do certain things and they go overboard. And when you look around, it will still be the same volume of guns on the street, but it will be a whole lot of other people being arrested. I'm not saying that the other people shouldn't be arrested for committing crime, but I'm saying the intent of this Committee is to only focus on guns and nothing else.
Okay. So you're saying that you are for, we'll call it, stop and frisk --
-- if 167 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 there is proper officer training and the officers use certain types of procedures, and it should happen in a pilot area?
Right. Right. And it should be a pilot. At the beginning this should not be something that's locked -- that's etched in stone. I think you should look at doing it as a pilot project first so you can see what's good, what's bad, so you can make adjustments and make changes. That's my whole position, is that -- and that the Terry stop should be fully explained and showed to folks, simply because of the fact that, you know, we're targeting guns, we're not targeting nothing else, and we should keep that focus there. It's about guns. So if a person got a gun in their waist pant and you do a Terry stop, you will find the gun. If a person got illegal lotteries in they pocket and the police officer do a Terry stop, they shouldn't find no lotteries, you know. That's what 168 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 I'm saying. If they're doing that procedure correctly.
Okay. Well, one thing that became very clear to me today is that we would have to do a real education. We did question the Police Department earlier around the difference between the Terry stop and a stop and frisk, and we'd have to really educate people.
And all of us. All of us. We're not experts on this. We've learned a lot today.
And we are going to have a second hearing. You were not here when we did announce that.
We believe we need to have a second hearing. But I do want to thank you, Wayne. 169 10/24/07 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 070851 Do you have any questions?
I want to thank you for coming in. Is there anyone else in this Chamber that wants to testify on this resolution? (No response.)
Seeing none, this hearing is recessed until the call of the Chair. Thank you. (Committee on Public Safety adjourned at 4:30 p.m.) - - - 170 CERTIFICATE I HEREBY CERTIFY that the proceedings, evidence and objections are contained fully and accurately in the stenographic notes taken by me upon the foregoing matter on October 24, 2007, and that this is a true and correct transcript of same. ______________________________ MICHELE L. MURPHY RPR-Notary Public (The foregoing certification of this transcript does not apply to any reproduction of the same by any means, unless under the direct control and/or supervision of the certifying reporter.)