Philadelphia’s mayoral candidates outline their plans to improve public safety in the city

In case anyone somehow needed it, the last few months have provided ample reminders of just how challenging ensuring public safety in Philadelphia can be.

From Memorial Day to Labor Day, our city averaged a shooting every three hours. Gun violence continued to rage across neighborhoods, and shots also rang out in well-traveled tourist spots, including South Street and the Ben Franklin Parkway.

Gun violence visited nearly every corner of our city, and there were seemingly few places where residents could find refuge. A 7-year-old boy, sitting at home playing video games, was shot in August. On one night earlier this month, a 17-year-old girl was killed while walking her dog, hours before a 37-year-old man was gunned down on his front lawn.

The tumult reached its latest crescendo on Tuesday when a 14-year-old high school football player was killed after a scrimmage in Roxborough — on the same day that Mayor Jim Kenney announced a ban on guns at the city’s recreation centers and playgrounds.

Following yet another summer of mayhem, finding a way to stem the violence is a paramount concern in Philadelphia. With that in mind, I asked each of the four candidates who have formally explored entering the 2023 mayor’s race so far — Allan Domb, Derek Green, Cherelle L. Parker, and Maria Quiñones-Sánchez — how they would heal our wounded city.

Philadelphia is spending over $200 million on anti-violence programs this year. Yet critics say that most of this money goes to programs that lack clear goals, often lack accountability, and aren’t designed to reduce violence in the short term. What changes would you make to how this money is disbursed?

We need accountability in the implementation of these programs and in evaluating them. And right now I don’t think the city is doing that. It’s frustrating. Lives are at stake.

What frustrates me the most about this is that while I was on Council back in December, I was concerned about what we’re talking about today.

This is a lot of money. I don’t want to wake up a year from now and say we just wasted $50 million or $100 million of the city’s money in an area that we can’t afford to waste money, because we’re dealing with people’s lives and families that are getting crushed by this public safety issue. I’m all about accountability.

As a former prosecutor, I know that we need to coordinate these programs in a way that’s transparent and ensures they work together collectively. This administration has tried to model some of the anti-violence efforts on Chicago’s READI program. It’s been some time since that was announced and we still don’t have it launched. A recent Inquirer story mentioned Philadelphia Ceasefire, it is a shame that they are not getting funded. I announced my campaign at a barbershop in West Philadelphia, the ESPM Hair Zone. They have a program called Shape Up where they worked with the University of Pennsylvania to track the work that they’re doing. I tried unsuccessfully to get funding for both of those programs from this administration.

“This has to be both a bottom-up and top-down approach.”

This has to be both a bottom-up and top-down approach. We need to provide the infrastructure and the resources so that these organizations can do what they do best.

I understand some of the criticism that you just described. In Philadelphia, we’re funding intervention work at $6,000 per shooting. If you compare that to New York and Los Angeles, they are funding it at about $24,000 per shooting. I know we need and we can do more. We must.

Under the previous administration, we decimated the infrastructure — particularly in North Philadelphia and in the African American community — and the organizational capacity that was out in the community. We’re reestablishing what we took away.

I’m going to debate this very strongly with the city controller and others who say we’re putting money out there without a goal or purpose. We have to build out that infrastructure. We’re doing a lot of things. Some are going to work and be scalable, some are not.

The Kenney administration and the police department often say that they are doing everything in their power and utilizing every available resource in order to solve and deter crime. Do you agree with this assessment? If not, what more can the Police Department do?

I don’t agree with the assessment. I don’t feel that when crime has almost doubled in the last eight to 10 years that that answer is acceptable.

It’s about leadership in the city. After the recent shooting up by the Art Museum, the mayor had a response telling the city he doesn’t want his job anymore. You can’t do that. The public can’t hear that. The Police Department or Fire Department and public safety people — they work for the city. They put their lives on the line every day. You can’t have a leader making that statement.

I think we need to look at all of the people who are working within police administration and look at those who are in a more civilian position. We need to look at the workforce, and think: How can we get more uniformed officers on the street? But also I think we just need to provide more visible support for our Police Department. I did a ride-along a couple of weeks ago with the 24th Police District. A concern I hear from our officers is that they don’t necessarily feel supported by the administration. I want to push being visible, out in the city, out with our police. I think people look for and need to see leadership, and that’s something I would bring to my administration.

In my administration, we will have a clear line of communication between the mayor’s office, the police commissioner, and the DA’s Office.

Putting people who don’t always agree together to work on a solution, that’s what I’ve done my entire career. I didn’t have the luxury of being able to sit in a room with a group of just people who agree with me.

We also have to empower police, I’m talking about those who are doing their jobs the right way. We also need to work to ensure ADAs have the resources they need to close cases.

“We need to professionalize the recruitment and training of the Police Department.”

Under the Nutter administration, the Justice Department came in and wrote a report about the challenges surrounding the Police Department. I was part of the board that was looking at its implementation.

During that process, we had a lot of discussion around community policing, de-escalation, training, and recruitment. That report gave us a blueprint of what needs to happen. We need to professionalize the recruitment and training of the Police Department.

What are the functions of the police department that civilians can do? City Council has been very supportive of the new transportation officer position, but I would go further. We don’t need police babysitting construction sites. We have police officers serving as receptionists in administrative buildings … we can have a civilian do that! We need everybody out. If you put on a uniform, this is the time we need you to be out in the community.

While few Philadelphia neighborhoods have been untouched by this current gun violence crisis, the situation in Kensington is uniquely difficult. What is your plan to provide the clean and safe neighborhood that residents in this long-neglected community deserve?

There are over 860 people living on the street in Kensington who are addicted to some sort of drug. I go there one or two times a week. One Saturday, I took the subway from City Hall up to K&A, and I walked to Somerset Station, and I talked to every business that was open. It is horrible what’s going on there. I still believe this should be declared an emergency in Kensington. The problems of Kensington shouldn’t rest on the shoulders of Philadelphia — 50-60% of the people who are on the street in Kensington right now are not from Philadelphia. We need federal and state help. It has to be a multi-jurisdictional approach that starts with getting people the treatment they need, and taking the drug dealers out of Philadelphia.

I’ve had the opportunity to walk the streets of Kensington with community leaders. One of the things that I’ve seen and what they have said to me is that we need a real, coordinated public-private partnership. As opposed to constantly bringing different ideas and starting new movements and saying now we’re going to do this program and now we’re going to do that program, let’s work collectively to address these issues

Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who are coming from around the region to Kensington and that’s put a real burden on our residents who are trying to do all that they can to have a better quality of life.

We need an all-hands-on-deck approach to this issue so that the residents in Kensington won’t have to continue to live what they’ve been going through.

For generations, children in Kensington have had the daily trauma of dealing with people suffering from addiction, and others engaging in prostitution, while walking through needles just to get to school. They haven’t been served by our city.

We need law enforcement at every level, not to come as a warrior, but as a guardian for residents.

We have somewhat of a blueprint for a solution. In the late 1990s, there was an operation called Operation Sunrise, which showed that a strong, proactive police presence can help to make these communities more livable.

We also need to address this from a regional nature. If you are coming to Philadelphia to buy drugs or commit a crime, we will find you, we will arrest you, we will take your car, and we will make it as painful as possible to participate in the illegal economy.

One of the reasons I’m running for mayor is that it is clear that I can’t fix Kensington as a council person. The executive establishes the policy. What is going on in Kensington is a citywide problem that we’ve contained in a poor Black and brown community. We’ve allowed things to happen there that we would never let happen anywhere else. As a councilperson, I have not been able to convince the mayor to change his strategy.

I remind people that when there was a shooting on South Street, there was a curfew, South Street was closed. We have three shootings every day in Kensington. Why doesn’t Kensington deserve the same reaction to its challenges? No one in this race can speak to the layered challenges in Kensington, and no one can be a better champion for how we fix Kensington.

After a summer that included shootings on South Street, in subway stations, and at the Fashion District Mall, many will be calling for additional investment in ensuring safety in our city’s economic hub. How can we balance the need for a safe Center City while not leaving neighborhoods behind?

The constant shootings that we’ve seen were just devastating. They are tearing families and communities apart, and extending fear so that people are afraid to go out at night and people from outside the city are afraid to come into the city. Whether it’s in Center City or anywhere else, the level of violence must end. A lot of this violence is occurring over drugs. That’s why I think it’s important for us to focus and try to eliminate the drug traffic in the city. We need a problem solver. Philadelphians have the right to feel safe in every corner of the city.

“We can reduce gun violence without violating the rights of our citizens.”

I proved that we can do this through this last budget process where I offered The Green Plan to reduce taxes for small businesses and residents while still providing additional dollars to hire police officers and increase public safety. From my experience, it is not an either/or. I think that Philadelphians have been told that they have to choose between these different types of initiatives, between public safety or criminal justice reform. I believe that, with me as mayor, we can reduce gun violence without violating the rights of our citizens. I come from the perspective of a former district attorney who was once racially profiled while leaving the DA’s Office. I think we can address these issues and find a way to provide the services that citizens need while making sure that we are providing public safety for our communities.

Calling for additional investment in safety may be new for other people, but it is not new for Cherelle L. Parker. Philadelphians must ask, particularly for those of us who were elected to Council, what did you do when you had a seat at the table? I spent the political capital necessary and introduced a comprehensive neighborhood safety and policing plan. It called for 300 more foot and bike patrol officers that would proactively cover every neighborhood in the city of Philadelphia. This plan will get at the heart of something that a lot of people have been in denial about, which is that Philadelphians, our business owners, our visitors, and those who work here don’t feel safe, whether we like it or not. It is a reality. If I am mayor of this city, community policing and a tangible presence of law enforcement — foot patrol and bike patrol officers — will be an essential part of my public safety plan. It won’t be 300 officers, it’ll be much more.

We have to invest in an infrastructure that is for the entire city. I will be proposing a robust camera program, similar to London’s CCTV. You can’t get in a cab in London without being recorded. We have to build out an infrastructure around public safety, and a lot of it isn’t necessarily police-related. It is a camera program, lighting, infrastructure investments, those types of things are what we need to do to make people feel safe.

When you talk to people in the criminal justice world, we know the next shooter and we know the next victim. Why? Because we’ve failed them already.

Philadelphia is missing its recruitment goals for police by about 1,300 officers. How would you change this, as mayor?

This is a problem not just in Philadelphia, but nationwide. I saw a poll that said 80% of officers would not recommend policing to their own children. It is really unfair to those police officers who are on the street every day keeping us safe, not giving them enough resources to help them do their job. We lifted the residency requirement, that should help with recruiting, but we need to do a lot more.

We need to change the way we recruit and market. We need to take recruitment to a higher level. We need to professionalize.

“It is really unfair to those police officers who are on the street every day keeping us safe, not giving them enough resources.”

As a member of council, I introduced a public safety agenda that removed the residency requirements for officers. I’m glad that the administration made that change. The other bill I introduced was for hiring bonuses for police cadets. I think that’s something we need to do.

There’s a short-term and long-term solution. The short-term solution is to allow retired police officers to come back on a temporary basis to fill the roles that we need to fill immediately without suspending their pensions. The long-term solution is increasing recruiting, increasing pay, and making the job of being a police officer desirable again.

I remember talking to some folks who said, “Cherelle, you can’t call for 300 additional police officers in the city of Philadelphia, that’s not good for you, it’s not a popular thing politically.” I didn’t care.

We need to bring in an HR professional to the department. We are still reactive. One of the things I said to the administration is that we are so short-staffed, why not hire security guards for our Parks and Recreation centers? If we think — given the deployment challenges — we’re going to have police officers babysitting Parks and Rec, we’re wrong.

Where was the first shooting at a rec center this summer? McVeigh in Kensington. Where was the first pool that got shut down? McVeigh in Kensington. There was no security there. We knew that was gonna happen! We set it up that way. As city government, we have to be as proactive as we possibly can. This is an example of a lost opportunity to make the summer better for residents and our communities. We spent all summer going to shootings at Parks and Rec centers, all because the department resisted our call for security and support.