Why We Put a Gun on Our Cover

After weeks of immersing ourselves in the epidemic that threatens to stall our region's considerable momentum, I had a "eureka" moment. I figured out how to turn around our skyrocketing murder rate.

We need a tourist to be killed in Rittenhouse Square.

This epiphany came after a recent conversation with former police commissioner John Timoney, who is now making significant inroads in Miami's crime rate, as he did here from 1998 until 2001. I asked him how he, William Bratton and Rudy Giuliani turned New York from a crime- and murder-infested laughingstock to one of America's safest cities. "We didn't turn it around," he said. "The media did. A tourist was killed, and the Post and Daily News grabbed hold of that and made crime and murder a front-page story every day. That made the public officials act."

Timoney was referring to the 1990 murder of 22-year-old Brian Watkins. The Utah native was visiting the Big Apple with his parents to take in the U.S. Open tennis tournament. A bunch of dirtballs mugged the Watkins family at a subway stop; when Brian tried to defend his mother, he was knifed to death. The murder happened in midtown; suddenly, reality hit home for New Yorkers. Violent crime was no longer something that happened to "them" — some vague other in some other New York. The political will for change was born.

Clearly, Philadelphia is still in need of that type of catalyzing event, something to jump-start a populist demand for action. Last week, when our cover story on Philadelphia's murder epidemic came out, it was met with some eye-opening examples of civic denial. The Greater Philadelphia Hotel Association accused us of sensationalizing because we didn't say on our cover that "the murder problem exists primarily in North Philadelphia." I responded by pointing out that we're one city, one Philadelphia, and great cities tackle their problems head-on. Moreover, history has proven that you can't flourish in the long run by perpetuating your own tale-of-two-cities narrative; you can't maintain your soul while pretending that five-year-olds getting caught in the crossfire a mile to the north are not your problem. You do that and you can say goodbye to our upsurge in tourism, dining and the arts. You do that and you become Detroit. (Note to the hotels, like Loews and Four Seasons, that have removed our issue from their rooms: Every night, the local TV news chronicles the day's carnage with images of chalk outlines and body bags. Are you removing the TVs, too?)

We also heard another typical instance of Philadelphia denial: Yes, things are bad, but they're bad all over. That's what U.S. Rep. Bob Brady announced after his recent summit on gun violence, and that's what our stunningly ineffectual police commissioner, Sylvester Johnson, keeps maintaining: "This is a national problem." Well, not quite. Yes, there are other cities, like Milwaukee, witnessing an increase in gun violence. But let's look at the cities we're most comparable to — and the ones that have turned things around. New York's murder rate was 8.36 per every 100,000 people in 2001; it's now 6.64. Los Angeles was at 15.62 in 2001; under Bratton, the police chief who engineered the New York miracle in the early ’90s, it's down to 12.63. Chicago was losing 22.88 of every 100,000 citizens to murder in 2001; under superintendent of police Philip J. Cline, Chicago is down to 15.59. Under Timoney, Miami is now at 13.91, down from 19.93 before his arrival in 2002. Here in Philadelphia, we're trending the wrong way. When Timoney left, our murder rate was 18.89. It now stands at 25.6 and is rapidly rising.

Timoney, Bratton and Cline have shown what works: proactive techniques such as the sophisticated use of Compstat (computer-generated crime data used to deploy manpower), "broken windows" policing (prosecuting quality-of-life crimes, both as deterrent and because, lo and behold, the same creeps jumping turnstiles are wanted on gun charges), and aggressive pursuit of concealed weapons in "hot spots." In our cover story, writer Gregory Gilderman documents all this, while showing a Philadelphia police force still wedded to chasing 911 calls — despite the fact that only 2.9 percent end in arrest.

Timoney, Bratton and Cline also represent one other thing we don't have: inspirational leadership. Gilderman paints a picture of a reactive, leaderless police force — one that, as he says, "seems frozen in time, circa 1975." When Sylvester Johnson says, as he has so often, that "law enforcement is not going to change anything," it is a dispiriting, shoulder-shrugging message. Imagine the outrage if, after a string of losses, Eagles coach Andy Reid said, "There's really nothing I can do." The sports-talk phone lines would light up with calls berating him for his lack of leadership. Shouldn't we be at least as outraged about such a lackadaisical response to people dying?

That's why we've called for Johnson's dismissal and why we endorse mayoral candidate Michael Nutter's call for the mayor to declare a state of emergency. Someone has to step up and treat this as the crisis it is. If we continue to simply go along with outdated modes of policing, denial and equivocation, the body bags and chalk outlines on our evening news will be Mayor John Street's tragic legacy, and Philadelphia will be right back where it was before the Center City renaissance of the 1990s.