60th Street's struggles
The commercial corridor was plagued by gun violence even before a Philly cop was shot last week. Can new mayor and top cop make a difference?
LORICE MITCHENER was making her way around 60th and Market Streets on Jan. 6 when a nervous inner voice spoke up, reminding her - with a little urgency - to be aware of her surroundings.
Her handbag had started to droop open. Mitchener noticed a man standing nearby, in the shadow of the Market-Frankford El, eyeing the opening as an invitation.
"You always have to look over your shoulder around here," she said, sighing. "It's sad. I have three grown sons. They all work, but I still fear for them."
The area around the 60th Street corridor, which decades ago was a thriving commercial strip, is plagued by violent crime.
Between July 1 and Dec. 31, 2015, the area saw 13 shootings and 12 robberies, according to police statistics.
Last Thursday morning - the day after Mitchener, a longtime West Philadelphia resident, complained about the neighborhood's unsafe conditions - beat cops arrested a robber at 60th and Market armed with a 9mm Ruger handgun that had one hollow-point bullet in the chamber and seven more in an extended magazine.
That night, Officer Jesse Hartnett, 33, was ambushed by a self-proclaimed Islamic terrorist who sprayed him with gunfire as he drove his patrol car at 60th and Spruce Street. Hartnett survived.
The violence and poverty that loom over the neighborhood like a perpetual cloud aren't new, of course.
But will Mayor Kenney and Police Commissioner Richard Ross, both just two weeks into their tenures, offer new solutions?
That question likely will be kicked around at a community meeting that State Sen. Anthony H. Williams, City Councilwoman Jannie L. Blackwell, and State Rep. Joanna E. McClinton are expected to host Thursday night at Bryant School, at 60th and Cedar Avenue.
The pols likely will encounter a skeptical audience.
Police presence in the area naturally swelled in the aftermath of the attempted murder of Hartnett, a brazen crime that became part of the national political dialogue because the man arrested in the shooting, Edward Archer, told detectives he'd pledged allegiance to ISIS.
The case attracted breathless news coverage, most of which overlooked the fact that local residents - mothers, kids, grandparents - worry every day that something horrible will happen. Gunshots and sirens are a staple of the nighttime soundtrack.
"I don't come out at night," Bernice Toomer, 85, said while shopping on 60th in the midday sun.
"Forty or 50 years ago, it was so nice out here," she said. "But things are so different today. People are different. I think we've been forgotten by the politicians."
Kenney, who vowed after he was elected mayor in November that the city would be "a place where we not only agree that all neighborhoods matter, but where we act on it," isn't surprised by the way Toomer and others feel.
"They have reason to be doubtful - a lot of politicians have made promises to them before," Kenney said in a statement this week.
"All I can do is produce, and we intend to through expanding community schools, investing in neighborhood commercial corridors, and increasing community policing."
His use of we was intentional, he said, because improving the area will require residents, cops, politicians, nonprofits, education leaders, and corporations to pitch in.
Ross might be new to the top cop's job, but he's plenty familiar with the types of problems that are weighing the area down like enormous concrete boots.
Investigators made arrests in all 12 of the robberies reported since July, he said. The shootings, including five between Dec. 27 and Jan. 3 - one of which was fatal - have been trickier to solve.
"There's no indication that it's gang-related," Ross said.
"It's always hard to tell in Philadelphia. We don't have the gang problems that you see in some other cities, like the Bloods and Crips. Sometimes [the shootings] are along neighborhood lines."
In the short term, Ross said, neighborhood residents can expect to see an increase in patrols. Foot-beat officers cover an area from 57th to 61st Streets, and from Market to Spruce.
"We're still very much concerned about the activity in general," he said. "That's why we're trying to bring as much to bear as we can."
Area business owners are being encouraged to register their private surveillance cameras with the department's SafeCam program, he said, and to offer suggestions.
Jimmy Kim mulled the idea of possible solutions to the area's problems as he leaned against the counter of his clothing shop, Jimmy Jess USA, at 60th and Market.
"Well, the neighborhood here is a very poor neighborhood," said Kim, 55.
"A lot of people don't have jobs. A lot of the business owners are getting older and getting ready to retire, and the younger generation isn't trying to invest or make something new here."
Kim is in his second stint as a store owner. The grueling, decadelong Market-Frankford El renovation project interrupted his first attempt six years ago.
Panhandlers and shoplifters rank at the top of his list of concerns. He's grateful for police officers who checked in on his store every day during the holidays and waited outside when he closed at night.
"It's getting a little better," he said.
There are some signs of better days ahead for the neighborhood.
In the spring, a joint development project involving West Philadelphia Real Estate and Partnership CDC, a local nonprofit, wrapped up, bringing 21 new commercial properties and 60 affordable residential properties to the 60th Street corridor, stretching from Market to Catharine Street.
George Bantel, a partner at West Philadelphia Real Estate, said the company recently leased all of the new properties. The $14 million project was the kind of thing that never would have advanced beyond pipe-dream status a decade ago.
"Historically, we stayed away from the area because there was just too much crime. It was too much to overcome," Bantel said.
"But there are a lot of community groups who obviously care, and a lot of people who are trying their best to make things better around there."
Bantel has suggested that the Police Department set up a substation in one of his company's properties. In the works are a community park and an outdoor movie theater at 60th and Chancellor Street.
But for those efforts to really take root, people will have to feel safe walking outside. Stories like the one James Rowell can tell about watching a gunshot victim collapse on Spruce near 59th Street in late December must become far less common.
"Yeah, the guy got shot and was on the ground here screaming for help," Rowell, 57, said Friday, pointing to the empty street, shaking his head.
"Then he pulled out a gun of his own and tried to shoot the guy who shot him. Oh, man, that scared me so bad."
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