In Philadelphia, many drug corners are run by different crews, which keeps competition levels high and allows would-be dealers from outside the neighborhood to try to seek a foothold in the area.
This year, the Police Department for the first time trained new officers to patrol by bicycle and assigned a group of young cops to Kensington. Although rookies in recent years worked foot patrols to spur interaction with residents while learning the beat, officials believe putting police on bicycles retains those benefits while giving officers more mobility.
It’s difficult to isolate what impact, if any, the bicycle strategy had, but the department plans to unveil it in districts beyond Kensington next year.
Resource questions
Although Kensington represents an especially violent slice of Philadelphia, police statistics show that homicides and shootings affect neighborhoods all across the city — complicating deployment decisions and crime-fighting strategies for police commanders.
“There are literally corners in this city where if we don’t have a police presence, there is going to be a shooting,” Ross said. “We don’t have a city where we have the luxury of concentrating in two regions.”
Outside of the 25th District, which had a 23 percent spike in homicides in 2017, four other police districts saw sharp increases in homicides last year — covering territory in South Philadelphia, Southwest Philadelphia, neighborhoods in Northwest Philadelphia including Mount Airy and Germantown, and river wards including Frankford and Mayfair.
Ross also said that for part of 2017, the department had been about 400 officers short of what he would have preferred. Following a recruiting push, the commissioner said, he anticipates about 370 new cops will hit the streets by next September, allowing the department to spread about 6,500 officers throughout the city.
“[We’ll] be able to benefit from their presence,” he said.
Access to guns
About 4 out of 5 homicides each year are committed with guns, according to police statistics, and city officials have long lamented the ease with which people can acquire firearms.
It can cost as little as $50 to buy an illegal gun on the street, and they are so widely available that even teens can acquire them. During last week’s preliminary hearing for accused killer Brandon Olivieri, for example, prosecutors showed three photos allegedly pulled from Instagram — each of which appeared to show the 16-year-old proudly holding a different type of gun.
Officers made 8 percent more gun arrests in 2017 than a year earlier, and Ross said he is exploring the idea of having some detectives in each region of the city concentrate solely on investigating gun crimes, rather than juggling the traditional mix of shootings, robberies, assaults, and other offenses.
Ross, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, and Philadelphia District Attorney-elect Larry Krasner all have spoken out in recent weeks against federal legislation that would expand the ability for people to carry concealed weapons.
No foolproof answers
Still, few of those factors are unique to 2017, and Ross noted other longtime challenges for police, such as widespread poverty and a mentality that guns can be used to solve arguments.
Grawert, of the Brennan Center, noted that Philadelphia’s homicide totals are still on the lower end of recent decades — but that a one-year spike approaching 15 percent appeared outside the normal ebb and flow of annual crime levels.
Earlier this year, the city established the Office of Violence Prevention partly to analyze the effectiveness of the dozens of antiviolence programs that receive a combined $60 million in public funding. City Council also established a special committee on gun-violence prevention in June.
Bilal Qayyum, a longtime antiviolence activist, said those efforts need to focus on providing street-level intervention for young men who for years have been conditioned to pick up a gun when they have a problem. Without combating that issue, Qayyum said, policing strategies will only get so far.
“How do we get these young men to understand that that’s not the way to resolve conflict?” Qayyum said. “We have to, as a city, address that.”
