Shooting as Chester ends state of emergency

Just a short walk from the church where Chester City Mayor Wendell N. Butler Jr. this morning declared as a success a concluded 35-day state of emergency, gunshots sent another victim to a hospital two hours after his remarks.

The shooting happened shortly before 1 p.m., and police have found no eyewitnesses, Captain of Detectives Stephen Fox said.

"Nobody saw nothing," said Fox, "so we're waiting to hear from the victim. We hope he makes it out of surgery."

He would not give the age or identity of the man who was shot seven hours after the end of the city's state of emergency, imposed as a stern reaction to gun violence. People nearby heard four to five gunshots, Fox said.

The shooting happened on West Union Street, yards from the boundary of one of the five zones in which police imposed a universal curfew during the state of emergency.

More than 60 people were cited for violating the restrictions by a police force that had been barred from going on leave and frequently worked double shifts, Butler said.

He said the desperate measures were proven a success by the direct results for police - including 14 guns seized and an anecdotal drop in violence, though he could not provide statistics - as well as secondary results.

Residents had generally been more cooperative with police since the declaration, Butler said. He cited as an example a lower than expected number of violations for the Delaware County city, which has 37,000 residents and a yearly average of 53,000 calls to 911.

But troubles persist, as the midday shooting indicated.

'The state of emergency was not intended to be a cure-all or complete fix for the problems," Butler had said earlier the day.

He said the declaration arose when he reached "a breaking point" after four murders in eight days in June.

The measure was not universally acclaimed. Mary Catherine Roper, a Philadelphia-based staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, said her office had received a handful of complaints about police actions taken during the state of emergency.

"There was never any legal justification," Roper said, "for telling law-abiding citizens that they could not go out on the streets at night."

After Butler's speech, he ruminated on one palpable measure of accomplishment: a prominent community-center wall on Upland Street, in the heart of one of the restricted zones, was still graffiti-free two weeks after its latest cleanup.

"Ordinarily, the very next day, all the gang signs and graffiti are back up there," Butler said.

Though the official emergency declaration lapsed at 6 a.m. today, the city aims to extend elements of it. A citywide curfew for minors, enacted during the emergency period, will be in effect through August. The city's fire stations will exchange grocery gift cards for firearms in an Aug. 7 gun buyback.

And the city's attempts to coordinate government- and community-based movements against violence will continue through a task force and other mechanisms, Butler said.

That pleased Don Newton, 59, a Chester resident and community organizer who watched Butler's speech outside Calvary Baptist Church.

"The timing was good," Newton said. "Now the things that happened during this, and the things that were starting to happen before, with the community, have to continue."