City commits $200,000 to fight witness intimidation

In a significant step, Mayor Nutter said Thursday that he would commit $200,000 to fight witness intimidation, often cited as a reason many criminals walk free in Philadelphia.

Nutter offered the funds as Councilman Curtis Jones Jr. was preparing legislation that would have raised money for that purpose by fining people convicted of threatening witnesses or victims.

Jones held his bill after Everett Gillison, the deputy mayor for public safety, informed him that the city would dedicate the $200,000 even as it was struggling with a budget crisis.

It is the first time the city has allocated money to tackle this crime.

Gillison said the city wanted to make sure the program had stable funding.

Many criminals are poor and unlikely to pay fines, and even if they did, it would have taken years to build a substantial sum that way.

"The mayor felt that if you're going to try to help people," Gillison said, "let's help them now."

The money will come from his office, and Gillison said he was reviewing his budget to identify funding sources.

The city said it would give the money to District Attorney Seth Williams.

Williams said he would use the money to help relocate witnesses facing threats.

"Witness intimidation is a serious thing," Williams said. "There are people being threatened every day by cowards and thugs who want to stop the criminal justice system by stopping witnesses from testifying."

Jones said he wanted to make fighting the problem a top priority for government officials.

"More important than the money . . . it's elevating the issue that's the most important thing," said Jones, citing State Rep. Brendan Boyle's new bill that would create a statewide witness-relocation program, along with a witness-protection bill introduced in the U.S. Senate by Sen. Arlen Specter, (D., Pa.)

In a series published in December, The Inquirer reported that Philadelphia had one of the nation's lowest felony-conviction rates and that a key reason was that witnesses were often terrified.

Williams, working with top police commanders, has revamped investigative procedures and launched a crackdown on perpetrators. Judges also have been working to eliminate witness intimidation in their courtrooms.

Lawmakers in Congress, the statehouse, and City Council have introduced proposals to provide more money for relocating witnesses and to make witness intimidation in state court cases a federal crime.

Even so, the crime is rarely prosecuted. Police have arrested only about 400 defendants for witness intimidation yearly, a tiny percentage of the more than 60,000 criminal cases filed annually in Philadelphia.

Budget cuts have whacked funding for prosecution of and protection from witness intimidation. At its peak in 2007, the state provided Philadelphia with almost $1.1 million in assistance. By last year, that aid had fallen to $695,000, a drop of more than a third. The proposed state budget for the next fiscal year would cut it again.

When she was district attorney, Lynne M. Abraham repeatedly asked the city to budget money to crack down on witness intimidation, but she never got it.

On Thursday, she praised Nutter's decision.

"There is no greater affirmative step that the city can take than to demonstrate in a real, substantive, and positive way that the mayor means it when he says he wants to relieve the people of this city of a tremendous disincentive to their testifying truthfully in court, or providing information to the police," Abraham said.

In April, Williams unsuccessfully sought $400,000 from City Council for his office's witness-relocation program.