Diaz releases policy ideas on public safety and ethics

Mayoral candidate Nelson Diaz wants to reform Stop & Frisk and create an ethics czar position within city government, according to his new policy platforms.

With two months left until the primary election, Diaz and the other five mayoral candidates are starting to release their policy platforms on specific issues, such as education and economic development. Diaz, a former Court of Common Pleas judge, is seeking to be the city's first Latino mayor.

Diaz's campaign website was updated Thursday to include his platforms on public safety and government ethics. (He already has education, community development and social justice platforms on the website.)

Diaz's public safety plan has an emphasis on community policing and includes reforming Stop & Frisk, bringing back the smaller police sub-stations within neighborhoods and a police advisory board.

Although Diaz calls the practice of Stop & Frisk an "ineffective" policing strategy, he wouldn't totally do away with it.

"I'll change current policy, and make sure that the stops that do occur are constitutional," he said.

Diaz also wants to reduce the crime rate and the number of guns in the city but does not specify how he will do that.

"There are too many guns on the streets of Philadelphia," Diaz says in his policy description. "I'll do everything I can to reduce the number of guns in Philadelphia."

Diaz's ethics proposal has a little more substance.

He wants to ban any elected official or appointed city employee from holding outside employment with any company that does business with the city. He also vowed to "explore charter changes" that would combine the offices of the Chief Integrity Officer and the Inspector General to one "more powerful Ethics Czar," with charter-defined authority. (Currently the Inspector General office only exists under an executive order, and not the charter.)

Diaz also suggests creating a system that would provide taxpayer money to political campaigns as a way to curb "dark money."

"Publicly matching funds combined with enforceable spending limits maximizes the impact of small donations, increases the importance of grassroots and community support, and provides a powerful antidote to the six- or seven-figure checks written to SuperPACs by mega-donors," Diaz says in his policy paper.

Diaz's economic development policy position is expected to go up Friday.

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