Council airs 'stop and frisk' views

The first official hearing on Michael Nutter's signature crime-fighting proposal - "stop, question and frisk" - ended yesterday with more questions raised than answered.

Lt. Francis Healy, a special adviser to Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson, insisted that what Nutter, the Democratic mayoral nominee, wanted to do was hardly new.

City Councilman Jim Kenney said the real issue was "about deployment, not 'stop and frisk.' "

John McNesby, the newly elected leader of the Fraternal Order of Police, pointed the finger at a shortage of manpower and equipment as basic as police cars.

And so the two-hour-plus hearing before the City Council Committee on Public Safety meandered from one topic to another. The hearing was to gather information, not take a vote.

Councilman Brian O'Neill, in his opening remarks to a virtually empty chamber, said that "people have asked why now" - before a new mayor is elected - was Council discussing the proposal?

He answered by saying it was preferable to waiting "until the new police commissioner comes in and until the mayor finishes with his transition."

"I believe this is a public-education issue and an education for policy leaders so they can decide with the best information whether to support it or not," O'Neill said.

Nutter's proposal to allow police to stop, question and frisk people suspected of carrying illegal weapons is a chief part of his anticrime strategy. It was among the most controversial ideas to flow from the five-way Democratic primary in the spring, and it remains divisive, as evident in yesterday's hearing.

"I'm not here today to say that 'stop and frisk' is good or bad, or even that I support it," said Councilwoman Donna Reed Miller, the committee chairwoman. The goal, she said, was to learn more about it. She also said additional hearings would follow.

Several chief players in the debate, including Nutter, did not attend yesterday. Nutter, widely presumed to be the city's next mayor, spent the day in Washington in meetings with businesspeople and the Washington Post and at a campaign fund-raiser, his spokeswoman said. His policy director, Wendell Pritchett, a University of Pennsylvania law professor, spoke to Council on the candidate's behalf.

Also absent was Penn criminologist Lawrence Sherman, who helped create the program, and whom Nutter often cites in support of his proposal. Sherman, who was in England, sent a representative to read a statement on his behalf.

Johnson also was not there. His adviser, Healy, said it was incorrect to represent "stop and frisk" as a new strategy for the police department. The program, an outgrowth of a New York City-developed practice known as the "broken windows" strategy, already exists, he said.

The aim is for officers to focus intensely on low-level offenses, such as public urination or graffiti, with the notion that doing so will consequently lead officers to come into more frequent contact with people who carry weapons and commit more serious crimes.

After the hearing, Pritchett acknowledged that "stop and frisk" was an outgrowth of the New York program, but added: "There are lots of aspects we could be doing better, even if we are already doing it."