City lawmen: Restore state funding for gun task force
State Sen. Anthony Hardy Williams, joined with top Philadelphia law enforcement officials, Tuesday called for restoring $2 million in state funding for the Philadelphia Gun Violence Task Force.
State Sen. Anthony Hardy Williams, joined with top Philadelphia law enforcement officials, Tuesday called for restoring $2 million in state funding for the Philadelphia Gun Violence Task Force.
"This program doesn't need to be cut," Williams said. "It needs to be replicated. It needs to replicated in Allentown, Erie, Harrisburg and other communities" plagued by gun violence.
At a news conference at the Philadelphia Police Administration Building, Williams (D., Phila.) noted that in 2005 he secured, with the help of then-state Sen. Vince Fumo, a $800,000 state grant for the pilot program for the gun violence task force.
In 2006, that grant became a $5 million line item in the state's general fund budget and the funding remained until the 2009-2010 fiscal year.
Kevin Harley, a spokesman for the Attorney General's Office, said the $2 million cut was made by the governor's office and approved by the legislature. He said an additional $30,000 cut to the program has been proposed for the next fiscal year.
"This has been an extremely effective law enforcement program in getting guns off the street," Harley said.
Williams, who has declared his candidacy for governor, was joined by Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey, District Attorney R. Seth Williams and Brian Grady, head of the special operations unit of the District Attorney's Office.
The senator said the group's work has resulted in 1,207 investigations, the seizure of 743 firearms, the arrest of more than 400 people, and 157 convictions for gun various crimes. Those convictions included straw purchasers, someone who buys a firearm for a person prohibited by law from possessing a gun.
The task force is composed of special investigators and veteran prosecutors from the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office, working with Philadelphia police.
Ramsey said he strongly supported the effort to restore the funding.
"When I came we had more than 6,000 items of ballistic evidence that was part of our backlog. Now we have less than 1,000," Ramsey said, crediting a large part of the reduction to the work of the task force.
"Now is not the time to reduce funding the gun violence task force," Seth Williams said. "This is a program that works. This is something in our criminal justice system that is beneficial."
"There are too many street corners in Philadelphia that are littered with teddy bears and balloons for the young lives that have been lost and cut short," the district attorney added.