10,000 Black Men Ain’t Enough
Police commissioner Sylvester Johnson has been (metaphorically) slaughtered for his mishandling of the police department and his seeming general apathy toward the city’s murder rate. Yesterday he offered support to a plan that, at the very least, shows slight concern. But what it doesn’t offer, again, is a real concrete solution.
Johnson’s battle cry asking for 10,000 volunteers to be “trained” to patrol city neighborhoods appears to be inviting more potential problems. (The minute the first “peacekeeper” gets shot, well, that’ll be a fun press conference.) It just seems silly to think that deploying ordinary, unarmed citizens into a battle zone won’t invite more trouble than it prevents. It’s a nice gesture, but that’s all it really is.
Johnson’s employed these tactics before — remember that whole “police chiefs pounding the pavement and driving around in squad cars idea” in early spring? That was great for the NBC10 audience. That’s what this “plan” is about, really: more half-assed headline-grabbing. A former Philadelphia Police detective recently summed up Johnson’s tenure as commissioner this way:
“Johnson is in so far over his head he needs all the help he can get. Problem is he won’t take help from any of his commanders. He’s so insecure he thinks all are out to sink him. He runs the PD by over-reacting to every single news story. He has lost the support of just about all his commanders because of this. So we have a situation where the best ideas are no longer brought up because they were always ignored. The city and the PD are sorely lacking in leadership. Johnson has always been a joke when it comes to that, but he’s gotten far worse in the past year. Don’t look for anything helpful from the PD until he’s gone.”
The fact that Mayor Street won’t openly commit to the 10,000-man plan and that mayor-to-be Michael Nutter essentially gave a lukewarm “anything that helps” quote to the Daily News about it suggests that this isn’t an idea that most of the real (or soon to be real) leaders in the city can get behind.
Hopefully, S-Five will be performing at the Liacouras Center on October 21st. Seems like his type of audience.
Commish: I need 10,000 black men [Philly.com]
10,000 Men Philly [10,000 Men]
PHOTO: Philadelphia Daily News
