Tom Ferrick Jr.: Policing alone won't solve crime problem

Stripped to its essentials, the anticrime effort announced last week by the Nutter administration amounts to a redeployment of about 200 officers to a dozen high-crime districts.

It makes sense - putting officers where the crime is - but it's hardly rocket science.

As new Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey pretty much said, it's not Batman and Robin suddenly emerging from the Batcave, it is basic policing.

What will happen as the police fan out in these high-crime neighborhoods? They will make more arrests.

And what will happen to those who are arrested for serious crimes - also known as felonies?

They will go to the courts, first for preliminary hearings, then for a trial.

And what will happen at their preliminary hearings?

More than half of them will walk and go back out on the streets.

According to the latest data, 54 percent of the felony cases in Philadelphia are dismissed at the preliminary-hearing stage.

Some are dismissed because a judge rules there is not enough evidence to advance to a full trial. But most - nobody knows exactly how many - are dismissed because the case fails to come together: Either witnesses or the arresting officers fail to appear. Or the prosecutor is not ready. Or an important piece of evidence has not arrived.

In Philadelphia's high-volume court system, which handles more than 1,000 cases a week, preliminary hearings rarely come off as scheduled. They are postponed, and then postponed again, and then postponed again, and then dismissed by a judge who feels he must move on to other cases.

I first reported on the city's high dismissal rate eight years ago. So it is a continuing scandal, not a new one.

Federal studies have shown that Philadelphia has the highest dismissal rate of any of the nation's 75 largest counties - nearly double the national average of 24 percent. This is from data compiled by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2002, the latest year available for department researchers.

So, policing alone is not going to solve the crime problem in Philadelphia. It must involve the entire criminal-justice system.

And the first thing you need to know about the criminal-justice system is that it is not a system. It is a collection of independent duchies that do what they want, when they want, and how they want to do it.

The police and prisons are under the control of the mayor. The courts are an independent branch of government. The district attorney is elected by the people. The public defender's office works under a contract for the city and the courts, but is an independent entity.

That makes Everett Gillison a very important person - though certainly not as visible as Commissioner Ramsey or District Attorney Lynne Abraham or Mayor Nutter.

Gillison is Nutter's new deputy mayor for public safety, and he is going to head something called the Criminal Justice Advisory Board, which will consist of the players named above.

His job will be to get them to work in concert to do something about crime in the city. In other words, he is going to try to herd cats.

Gillison is a member of the defense bar. He worked for more than 20 years as a public defender, and that is going to make his job more difficult.

The appointment has already caught flak from the Fraternal Order of Police, because Gillison was the defender of some high-profile killers, including some who killed police officers.

I have no problem with the fact that killers got lawyers and that Gillison often was that lawyer. The accused have a right to legal counsel, and his job was to defend the accused. As a public defender, he didn't get to pick his clients.

But the defense bar has no problems with the high dismissal rate in Philly courts. They say it is high because the system has too many "B.S. cases." That the police are too quick to arrest people and that the D.A. is too quick to overcharge suspects. And that what the courts are doing is rectifying the actions of overzealous police and prosecutors.

Gillison is far too diplomatic to put it so bluntly, but in a conversation I had with him last week, he certainly leaned in that direction in explaining the dismissal rate.

I think there is something to what the defense bar says. Police can be too quick to arrest. Prosecutors do overcharge (that allows them leverage in a plea bargain, offering to drop a more serious charge if the defendant accepts a less serious one). But not to the tune of 54 percent - not to the tune of the highest dismissal rate in the country.

I think the rate is way too high, and it is because the process - moving a high volume of cases with maximum efficiency - has overtaken the goal of delivering justice.

Gillison urges that we not just watch the numbers.

"My goal is to make sure this system stays human-being-based and not a numbers-crunching situation," he said. "Too often, people are so worried about what their numbers are that they lose sight that there are real people with real problems in the criminal-justice system."

How true, how true.

But excuse me if I recommend that we also all keep an eye on the numbers.

This is my last column for the paper, but I cannot exit the stage without offering a bow to the audience, thanking you for your kindness and attention.

One way to meet your goals is to set modest ones. As I wrote in my first column, "Maybe together we'll advance the cause of knowledge and enlightenment. I'll settle for an inch or two. Or maybe we'll just have a couple of laughs."

Well, we've had some laughs and we've moved ahead a number of inches. So I say: mission accomplished.

Tom Ferrick - who writes his farewell column today for Currents – has won the Hal Hovey Award, presented by Governing magazine and Stateline.org for outstanding journalistic coverage of state and local government. The award cites his "insightful coverage of Philadelphia's historic 2007 mayoral election."