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DAVID MAIALETTI / Daily News
Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey at Police Headquarters yesterday. Ramsey has urged Philadelphians and citizens nationwide not to rush to judgment about the police beatings.
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Elmer Smith: Philly's no L.A.
THE PHONE CALLS started coming in within hours of the by-now nationally televised beating of three suspects by Philadelphia police.
Half the columnists or commentators in this market can expect a call from a network or news service in the aftermath of one of these police stompings.
Is the city going to blow? Will this touch off a riot or insurrection or whatever we call it these days when the pent-up frustrations of the black community erupt in some kind of civil disorder?
I respect the efforts of the national media, because I know how difficult it is for hard-working reporters to assess the mood of a community they don't cover every day. I've been in that position in Los Angeles during the riots in May of '92, and again 11 months later when I spent four days in L.A. awaiting the verdict in the civil trial of the cops who brutally beat Rodney King.
A couple of hundred reporters from all over the world were there, and we weren't there to write about the verdict. We were there in case the enraged locals set the town ablaze, as they had a year earlier.
But this city is not about to go up in flames, despite what I think is a clear instance of police brutality. A Fox 29 videotape shows more than a dozen police officers repeatedly kicking, stomping and hitting three suspects with fists and clubs after the suspects were spread-eagled on the ground.
It was a sickening spectacle reminiscent of scores of similar incidents here and elsewhere.
I've heard the cautious responses of people who say that aerial photos don't show what happened on the ground. But I saw enough to know that what happened on the ground violates police procedure and human rights.
We know that police are under stress after the fatal shooting of Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski, the third fatal shooting of a cop in two years.
But as Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey and Mayor Nutter were quick to point out, stress does not excuse an abuse of police power.
Their unequivocating response is one of the reasons why the national media won't have to cover a potential riot here this week. The people in charge seem as committed to addressing police abuse as they are about the arrests and convictions of cop-killers.
Civil disorder is the tool of the impotent. People who think their elected officials are hearing them don't burn their neighborhoods down around them.
But the mayor and the top cop need to do more than talk a good game. Since 2006, police have fatally shot 35 people in Philadelphia. There were more citizens shot by police in 2006 than in any year since 1980.
So, when this year started off with three questionable shootings by police, including one in which an unarmed bystander was killed by a policeman who fired 11 shots into a crowded house, you might have thought tensions would rise to the snapping point.
But the mayor and the top cop responded quickly and appropriately.
"It's clear," the mayor said, "that our entire use-of-force policy needs to be reviewed."
Within days, his new police commissioner went before the public in a series of town-hall meetings and sounded a similar theme.
But it's not enough to sound the right themes in public statements. This administration has to act decisively and quickly to maintain order in the ranks.
Nutter ran on a pledge to declare a state of emergency and institute a stop-and-frisk policy. Both measures raise serious concerns about civil liberties in a town with a history of tension between police and communities of color.
But then he hired a police commissioner who managed to reduce the number of shootings by police in Washington, D.C., by 71 percent in three years.
This is still a town where people overturn the old order with ballot boxes, not matchboxes.
At least it is for now. *
Send e-mail to smithel@phillynews.com or call 215-854-2512. For recent columns: http://go.philly.com/smith
