Events push Nutter into national spotlight

Flanked by eight uniformed police commanders and eight local lawmakers, Mayor Nutter faced a row of television cameras yesterday morning and hailed the capture of Eric DeShawn Floyd, wanted in the death of a police officer. "Last night," he said, "we momentarily celebrated a great thing in Philadelphia."

Momentarily, indeed.

Nutter had already finished national news interviews with ABC and CNN - and neither interviewer was too interested in Floyd. Instead, they homed in on Monday night's videotaped beating of three African American shooting suspects by at least a dozen white police officers.

"Do you have a race-relations problem in the force?" CNN anchor John Roberts asked. "No," Nutter coldly replied. "The issue on Monday night . . . [has] virtually nothing to do with race, and it has to do with crime."

Coinciding as they have, Saturday's killing of Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski and the repeated airing of the beating tape have left Nutter with the most delicate balancing act yet of his young administration.

He has had to embrace a police force mourning the loss of a third officer in two years while strongly condemning the actions of others of its members. And he has to do so under the glare of national scrutiny.

"This is what the job of mayor is all about, and it's harder than governor," said Gov. Rendell, who was Philadelphia's mayor from 1992 to 2000. "As mayor, you are the first line of defense, and you've got to be the emotional leader of the city. It's your immediate responsibility, and to that extent there's no real training."

Nutter has seemingly remained even-keeled throughout.

"I had 117 days where nothing like this happened," he said in an interview in his office yesterday, "but you knew it was going to happen at some point."

"You really do have to take a significant amount of your own personal emotion and feeling out of it. This is not the time for you to be feeling bad or sorry for yourself, other than how do you keep your head clear."

As she left Nutter's office after a meeting on the city budget, City Council President Anna C. Verna said, "Personally, I could never take that pressure." Nutter, she said, seemed "absolutely" focused.

"He has been tested," Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey said. "It is good to know that you've got somebody you are working for that thinks clearly, can make decisions, and is in control of himself and the situation, and he definitely is all that."

One measure of how well Nutter is doing is the impression he has left on Fraternal Order of Police president John McNesby, who might be circumspect, given Nutter's strong statements concerning the beating case.

"The mayor has been a true leader," McNesby said.

McNesby was particularly taken with the time Nutter spent at Temple University Hospital as Liczbinski underwent surgery, and later with the slain officer's family. He and others also were pleased with how Nutter conducted himself when Floyd was captured.

Late Wednesday, Nutter had just left dinner at a Center City restaurant with city Commerce Director Andrew Altman when he learned of Floyd's arrest.

He stopped briefly at City Hall, then went to Police Headquarters, where the police van carrying Floyd had arrived.

"I looked him dead in his eye," Nutter said later, "and said, 'I'm disappointed in you.'

"I had to look in the face of a guy who would do something like that, and, quite frankly, as one African American male to another, just tell him how disappointed I was in what he had done."

Hours earlier, Nutter had stood with Ramsey at headquarters to announce that six officers involved in the beating of Dawayne Dyches, 24, Brian Hall, 23, and Pete Hopkins, 19, had been removed from street duty while the matter is investigated.

In later interviews - including with the New York Times and USA Today - the mayor underscored the "inappropriate behavior" the officers demonstrated. "The officers will be dealt with directly and appropriately," he said.

Nutter, though, is a bit angry with the national media. "It is certainly frustrating that a Philadelphia police officer being shot down with an assault rifle doesn't generate the kind of attention that another incident did," he said.

Yes, there will be an investigation. But the question of why the officers were there in the first place has been ignored, he said. "They observed three or four people involved in a triple shooting get into a vehicle, and they chased them and eventually subdued them and arrested them. So if we are going to tell a story, let's tell a whole story," he said.