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Karen Heller: Want to cut Philadelphia crime? Work with the criminals

This year began bloody and deadly, 20 murders by Martin Luther King Day, only 16 days into 2012. Along with improving education, crime reduction is one of Mayor Nutter's core missions for his second term.

Mayor Nutter and his point man on crime, Deputy Mayor Everett Gillison, who is an advocate of community policing. (David Maialetti / Staff Photographer)
Mayor Nutter and his point man on crime, Deputy Mayor Everett Gillison, who is an advocate of community policing. (David Maialetti / Staff Photographer)Read more

This year began bloody and deadly, 20 murders by Martin Luther King Day, only 16 days into 2012.

Along with improving education, crime reduction is one of Mayor Nutter's core missions for his second term.

"When those spikes hit, we're going to acknowledge, 'Yep, we have a problem.' We're not going to walk away from the people. We can't be dissuaded that when crime spikes it will remain that way," said Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Everett Gillison, Nutter's point man on crime. "When we have a triple homicide" - which occurred last week in Juniata Park - "and people go and say, 'Oh, well, here we go again,' and the hope dies. That's where the mayor has said we're going to provide consistent leadership."

Gillison, the mayor's chief of staff and a former public defender, emphasizes that "the New York Miracle," radically suppressing violent crime, didn't happen over four years or eight. "It took 10 or 15 years. Everybody took the same approach. There was this consistency."

Philadelphia is relying heavily on community policing. "We have to put police in the position of really being partners in the community with a skeptical - and I say justifyingly so - populace," he said, to get residents to trust the cops. "The right way to do this is to have the community understand that unless you stand up and help us, we can't get any further with what we're doing."

In community policing, cops patrol the same area repeatedly, often on foot or bike, becoming a familiar, reliable presence in the area. They help report broken streetlights and nuisance buildings, listen to the neighborhood's concerns. "Guess what? The cops get some credibility," Gillison said. "What we have to do is talk to each other and respect the fact that communities know how to heal themselves if we give them the opportunity and we support them." Gillison, a lay minister and man of abundant faith, sensed my skepticism. "I know, that sounds too simple. That can't be what we're going to do. But we've had amazing results."

David Kennedy, director of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice's Center for Crime Prevention and Control, adopts a markedly different approach: Identify the city's most violent and consistent offenders, then work with them directly to reduce crime. Kennedy has used his program, often called Operation CeaseFire, with mayors and police in more than 50 American cities, though not Philadelphia.

"People try fixing the neighborhoods. That doesn't work," he said Tuesday en route to Chicago, where he works with officials and the community. "They try fixing the criminal justice system. That doesn't work." It's nibbling around the edges, the wreckage, rather than addressing the source.

"In any city, crime is driven by a very focused group," said Kennedy, author of Don't Shoot: One Man, a Street Fellowship, and the End of Violence in Inner-City America. "In the most dangerous neighborhood in Chicago, West Garfield Park, with a population of 90,000, it's 1,500 people that are overwhelmingly producing most of the homicides."

Cops can easily identify the most violent offenders. The problem, Kennedy said, "is the information is never formalized and used to drive planning and policy."

Crime is often propelled by a group dynamic - Kennedy doesn't use the word gang - so it's critical to address men in a large gathering, 40 at a time. Meetings are attended by social workers and community members, especially parents of murder victims, "to have an open conversation about crime. We say, 'We see you. We care a lot about you, but you absolutely have to stop hurting people. And if you don't stop, the consequences will be real.' " The mothers of murder victims frequently evoke tears among offenders. Social workers offer to help, letting the men know they are not isolated or condemned to their current lot.

The message, Kennedy said, is "we want you alive. We want you out of prisons. If we have to lock you up, this is a failure." The program has produced notable homicide-rate reductions in several cities. "But unless this partnership is consistently driven," Kennedy said, "you don't get the changes you want."

Working with citizens affected by crime is fine. So is trying to produce more effective policing and sentencing. Gillison wants a mandatory one-year sentence for anyone arrested with an illegal firearm, confronting the gun epidemic in Philadelphia.

But if we don't deal directly with the small group of men primarily responsible for the violence bloodying our city, our problem is not going to go away. The numbers will continue to spiral in the wrong direction, the corpses outnumbering the days.

So why doesn't someone in Philadelphia hire David Kennedy to try his effective program here?