Elmer Smith | Surrender? No, the papers misunderstand . . . or worse

IF YOU WERE to judge by the editorial positions of the city's two biggest newspapers, you'd think the police commissioner was turning out a horde of unarmed black men to confront gun-toting thugs.

You'd think that the commissioner has given up on police work and is, instead, substituting citizen action for police deployment.

You'd think that it makes sense to accuse the department of "defeatism" despite the fact that it has made more arrests, more confiscations of drugs and guns and more car stops in the past year than we saw from this department when there were 1,000 more cops on the street - and we had a different commissioner

Last year this Police Department locked up more than 200 people a day, confiscated $140 million in drugs and seized 600 guns, Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson told me yesterday. Does that sound like surrender?

This year, gun confiscations are up 6 percent and arrests are on a pace to exceed last year's record. Does that sound like defeatism?

An Inquirer editorial asserts that the police commissioner's "earnest plea" for 10,000 civilian men "is more pitiful than powerful."

Their conclusion: "It represents the attribute the next mayor should not seek in replacing Johnson - defeatism."

What could be more defeatist than for people who say they don't know what it's about to raise these spurious concerns while the call is still going out?

So why this premature emasculation? Are we trying to reduce the number of volunteers?

The approach of the Daily News Editorial Board, which I serve on proudly, is to raise concerns.

Well, I've got a couple of concerns. I will always be concerned when the People Paper downplays a movement of the people.

We write editorial after editorial to encourage, applaud and support citizen action. But we launch a pre-emptive strike against this one.

I'm concerned when some of this town's top journalists and best thinkers start erecting straw men to knock down before they know what's really going on.

It is a straw man to suggest that calling for volunteers is tantamount to "giving up on designing effective policing strategies" as the Inquirer asserts. When the Daily News proclaims "the call should be for 10,000 jobs not 10,000 men" it's as if we believe the two things are mutually exclusive. We know better.

The Inquirer says "there's a big question mark about how many will meet the commitment."

So what?

What if only 800 show up and they can put only 40 men in each of the 20 toughest neighborhoods? What would be wrong with that?

"If policing the streets with police won't work," the Daily News asks, "why will policing streets with citizens work?"

Talk about a straw man. The commissioner has never, ever said that policing the streets with police doesn't work. What he has said, and what we all agree with, is that it won't work by itself.

The most ridiculous "concern" is the idea that, by calling for black men, the organizers are playing some kind of race card.

Last year, an Inquirer article applauded the fact that a town watch in Chinatown had grown from 15 to 50 volunteers. They were trained by the Police Department, just as these men will be; they were given jackets and two-way radios and security devices.

No one ever suggested that they should have reached out for more non-Asian volunteers or that town watches in predominantly white neighborhoods should reach out to other people.

In the Daily News, our way of approaching this suspicion about a call from and for black men is this paternalistic, politically correct pronouncement:

"Why is the African-American community expected to do far more to police themselves?"

I'll tell you why. Because the black community has a bigger problem; they should be a bigger part of the solution. Because we have lost 2,889 men under the age of 34 to violence in the last 10 years.

If that's a racist statement, I'm the racist who made it and I'll be bold enough to stand by it.

These concerns and snide put-downs are an ad hominem argument, meaning against the man as opposed to against the principle that he espouses and we embrace.

There are more than 700 town watches that deploy some 20,000 volunteers in Philadelphia.

Volunteers are manning curfew centers like the one in Point Breeze. Police personnel in that region will tell you that they have helped reduce crime.

Our own Jill Porter and I have written columns about the increase in citizen cooperation with police and how that is helping to solve crimes.

There is, in short, a movement of citizens to fight crimes in their neighborhood. This call is just the latest aspect of that.

We can either get on board or get run over.

You know where I'll be. *

Send e-mail to smithel@ phillynews.com or call 215-854-2512. For recent columns: http:// go.philly.com/smith