Using his street smarts to help reduce crime

A WOMAN STOPS Greg Bucceroni at 11th and Filbert, asking for change to get something to eat.

The encounter, about 4 p.m. yesterday, comes during one of his weekly strolls through Center City to keep tabs on crime and aggressive panhandling. He tells the woman about Project HOME in Spring Garden, where she can get food, take a shower or make a phone call. She turns it down and walks off.

Bucceroni himself once rummaged for food through garbage cans on the streets of New York and his native Philadelphia as a delinquent teen, and because of his background, he doubts whether the woman is hungry.

"I'm married to the streets," he says. "If you're hungry, you don't ever turn down food."

Bucceroni, 49, of Kensington, coordinates an effort started by former Mayor Frank Rizzo called Youth Anti-Violence and Crime Reduction Partnership. He also works as a victim-services advocate.

He wasn't always so upstanding. In the 1970s, he would sneak onto SEPTA trains, sometimes riding to Upper Darby with his crew of misfits on rumors that the girls there were easy, he says.

These days, he works with cops and community groups doing curfew checks on El trains to try to stop trouble before it starts.

His Sunday stroll begins near the Reading Terminal Market, where he says police have had trouble with pickpockets and panhandlers targeting tourists. A police squad car rolls by.

Bucceroni, an imposing figure, stands about 6 feet tall, and wears a black Under Armour hoodie over his bald head, a matching whistle dangling from his neck.

He walks past the Greyhound station nearby. In his thick Philly accent, he quips about the Police Department's at-times tenuous bond with citizens.

"It's a love-hate relationship," he says, gesturing with one hand and clutching a cup of Dunkin' Donuts coffee in the other.

"Times change, mayors change, police commissioners change," he says. "But the bulls--- remains the same."

- Phillip Lucas