Feature Article |
The Dead of Night
By Gregory Gilderman
EVERYTHING YOU NEED to know about Philadelphia's current murder wave — the out-of-control nature of it, the futility of our response to it — may be encapsulated in this fact: Within 24 hours of Mayor Street's emergency televised address last July about the city's surging homicide rate, in which he urged the city's youth to put down their guns, five murders were committed. Among the victims was 17-year-old Terrence Adams, who was gunned down near an elementary school.
It's been that kind of year for Philadelphia. Many large cities are basking in the glow of the Great American Crime Drop of the 1990s — most notably New York, where the number of murders in 2006 is likely to be about what it was when Leave It to Beaver first aired. But not here. Here, they're shooting like they haven't in a decade. Mornings and nights, weekdays and weekends, the bullets fly from cheap guns in dangerous neighborhoods for reasons so petty they boggle the mind. He looked at me. He stole my food. He called me a bitch.
There's nothing new about this, of course. One of the first things police noticed about the crime wave of the late 1980s and early 1990s was the leap in the homicide rate among inner-city males under age 25. The guns were more powerful, the killers were younger, and the number of deaths from what urban residents fear most — random attacks and stray bullets — soared as much as Death By Insignificant Drug Debt and Death By Disrespect.
Some cities have conquered this problem; some haven't. For those in the latter category, like Philadelphia, the same question becomes more and more desperate as the years of senseless killing roll on: What can we do? The answers here tend to reflect a predictable liberal/conservative fissure: liberals arguing for tighter gun-purchasing laws, conservatives for stiffer prison terms.
But apart from that debate is a body of research about gun crime of which most Philadelphians are completely unaware. Its proponents include social scientists, police commissioners, and even the National Academy of Sciences. It focuses on how the deployment of uniformed police officers at certain places and at certain times can deter potential killers from possessing firearms in the first place, and why that can lead to major reductions in impulsive shootings. The theories are based on the experimental work of a criminologist who has influenced police departments literally around the world, and who is based in Philadelphia. But except for the four years in which John Timoney was police commissioner, his ideas seem to have been completely ignored by the Philadelphia police department.
A night on patrol in one of America's deadliest neighborhoods will show you that.
"NOBODY'S ANSWERED THIS YET."
My Friday night begins at midnight in the cramped operations room of the 22nd District station house, where Lieutenant Jamill Taylor, 35, is staring at a computer screen. He has the perpetual look of worry you'd expect of a man whose life is devoted to protecting the citizens of a very violent place. The screen he watches shows a queue of 911 calls awaiting response. The list is an index of a neighborhood's misery: Theft in Progress. Vandalism in Progress. Theft in Progress. Rape in Progress. Theft in Progress. Domestic. Domestic. Theft in Progress. These calls are given a priority level from one to five — one being an officer in trouble, five being an MC, or Meet the Complainant — and officers are dispatched as available. There are only 12 to 20 officers on patrol on a given shift, which means that depending on the priority of the call, the delay can be as long as three or four hours.
It's been that kind of year for Philadelphia. Many large cities are basking in the glow of the Great American Crime Drop of the 1990s — most notably New York, where the number of murders in 2006 is likely to be about what it was when Leave It to Beaver first aired. But not here. Here, they're shooting like they haven't in a decade. Mornings and nights, weekdays and weekends, the bullets fly from cheap guns in dangerous neighborhoods for reasons so petty they boggle the mind. He looked at me. He stole my food. He called me a bitch.
There's nothing new about this, of course. One of the first things police noticed about the crime wave of the late 1980s and early 1990s was the leap in the homicide rate among inner-city males under age 25. The guns were more powerful, the killers were younger, and the number of deaths from what urban residents fear most — random attacks and stray bullets — soared as much as Death By Insignificant Drug Debt and Death By Disrespect.
Some cities have conquered this problem; some haven't. For those in the latter category, like Philadelphia, the same question becomes more and more desperate as the years of senseless killing roll on: What can we do? The answers here tend to reflect a predictable liberal/conservative fissure: liberals arguing for tighter gun-purchasing laws, conservatives for stiffer prison terms.
But apart from that debate is a body of research about gun crime of which most Philadelphians are completely unaware. Its proponents include social scientists, police commissioners, and even the National Academy of Sciences. It focuses on how the deployment of uniformed police officers at certain places and at certain times can deter potential killers from possessing firearms in the first place, and why that can lead to major reductions in impulsive shootings. The theories are based on the experimental work of a criminologist who has influenced police departments literally around the world, and who is based in Philadelphia. But except for the four years in which John Timoney was police commissioner, his ideas seem to have been completely ignored by the Philadelphia police department.
A night on patrol in one of America's deadliest neighborhoods will show you that.
"NOBODY'S ANSWERED THIS YET."
My Friday night begins at midnight in the cramped operations room of the 22nd District station house, where Lieutenant Jamill Taylor, 35, is staring at a computer screen. He has the perpetual look of worry you'd expect of a man whose life is devoted to protecting the citizens of a very violent place. The screen he watches shows a queue of 911 calls awaiting response. The list is an index of a neighborhood's misery: Theft in Progress. Vandalism in Progress. Theft in Progress. Rape in Progress. Theft in Progress. Domestic. Domestic. Theft in Progress. These calls are given a priority level from one to five — one being an officer in trouble, five being an MC, or Meet the Complainant — and officers are dispatched as available. There are only 12 to 20 officers on patrol on a given shift, which means that depending on the priority of the call, the delay can be as long as three or four hours.
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