Nutter to call for more reward money in crimes

Faced with a violent start to 2012, Mayor Nutter will unveil a crime plan Thursday that calls for a broader use of reward money to solve crimes.

In addition to posting substantial rewards for information in more homicide cases, police sources said the plan proposes making $500 cash available to anyone who provides police with the location of an illegal gun.

Rewards of up to $20,000 are being considered for homicide cases, according to law enforcement sources. Police have credited a $20,000 reward for a tip that led to three arrests last week in the Old City beating death of a 23-year-old Temple University graduate.

More officers also are expected to hit the streets in the coming months. About 120 will have graduated from the police academy by July, and another class of about 100 will begin the eight months of training in May or June, officials said. The last previous class graduated in October 2010.

In an interview Wednesday, Nutter's top aides would not divulge many details of the new strategy, but said planning had been ongoing for months with a host of partners, including the District Attorney's Office and state and federal authorities.

"I don't want to call this a plan, because this isn't a plan. ... I have a plan for how to evacuate City Hall," said chief of staff Everett Gillison, who also serves as deputy mayor for public safety. "I need a cultural change. This is a process that has to be adopted and worked on."

As of Wednesday, the city's homicide count for 2012 was 31. In January 2011, the total count for the month was 25, significantly higher than the 15 or 16 that had been considered typical for that month in previous years.

Enhanced technology will also play into the new strategy, sources said. The city is planning to create a program that would track all the guns seized, fired, and used in crimes in some neighborhoods. That information would be shared with law enforcement partners.

Nutter in recent weeks has spoken of the need to aggressively attack the problem of illegal guns, often highlighting the fact that young African American men make up a disproportionate number of the victims and perpetrators of the city's violent crimes. Nearly 75 percent of homicide victims in 2011 were black men.

At his inauguration for a second term this month, Nutter called this "a local and national epidemic not sufficiently talked about, much less tackled."

Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey and Nutter have also emphasized the importance of community policing in previous crime plans. Last year Nutter announced the Philly Rising program, which connects beat-walking officers with community leaders in an effort to solve crime problems.

Education and good schools are also parts of the antidote for crime, Nutter has said. On Thursday, Nutter is to unveil his strategy at Strawberry Mansion High School, in one of the city's more troubled neighborhoods.

Managing Director Richard Negrin cautioned that the mayor's strategy was not meant to be a "top-down, heavy approach."

"This is about being smarter, not hitting the community harder," he said.