Philly just dropped its residency requirement for police. Is this a mistake? | Pro/Con

Since 2020, the Philadelphia Police Department has required that new recruits have to live within city limits for at least one year before they can apply. The goal of the residency requirement — one of the strictest among large cities — was to diversify the police force.

Last month, the city lifted its residency requirement to make it easier to hire and retain officers and address ongoing staffing shortages. Philadelphia is not the first city to forgo a residency requirement for police officers — in 2017, Pittsburgh did the same.

We asked a Pittsburgh law professor and a Philly resident (and opinion staff writer) to debate: Should Philadelphia police officers be required to live in the city?

By David A. Harris

What matters is not where police officers lay their heads at night; it’s where their commitments and concerns are when they are on the job.

Residency requirements for police (and other municipal employees) usually come from understandable impulses. We want to know that those we hire understand the place we live, share its values, and “look like us.”

But residency does not guarantee a diverse pool of recruits. And given the size of the Philadelphia Police Department and the many neighborhoods in the city, there is no way to know how often (if at all) a recruit who grew up in Kensington or Frankford or Grays Ferry will end up working in those neighborhoods.

“Residency does not guarantee a diverse pool of recruits.”

Instead, Philadelphia should make the pool of possible candidates as large as possible by looking in and beyond the city, and selecting candidates who will help advance the goals of the Police Department.

Those goals must go beyond finding warm bodies and must instead reflect what the people of the city want to see in their police officers and Police Department. And to find out what people want, just ask them.

Roughly 20 years ago, residents in St. Paul, Minn., listed which qualities they valued in police officers. They didn’t call for toughness, or physical strength, or shooting skills. Instead, they wanted officers who could display good judgment, respect for others, creativity, tolerance, compassion, and honesty.

The traits one would want in a police officer in Philadelphia might differ some, but by and large, those are the things most people want, regardless of where they live. It’s also easy to imagine that some people might add cultural competency, being able to work with other community members, and the courage not just to clear people off a corner, but to get out of a squad car and talk with people standing there.

» READ MORE: Philadelphia lifts residency requirement for police and correctional officers amid staffing shortages

So let’s develop a new recruitment strategy that looks for officers with these attributes and ignores their home addresses. Does the potential recruit speak a language other than English that will help serve a city as diverse as Philadelphia? Push-ups and bench presses don’t matter; instead, ask about how the candidate has and is now serving in a community, wherever the candidate now lives. Are they coaching youth sports, serving in a mentorship program, or volunteering in schools or their community? And what kind of communication abilities does the recruit have? As we require de-escalation tactics over confrontation, these skills have emerged as the key to cultural change in the department.

With diversity as a key goal, the department can also widen the pool further through recruitment at historically Black colleges and universities and through Black fraternities at other universities that lie outside the city limits.

Living in the city won’t make someone a better officer. According to the leader of Pittsburgh’s civilian review board, police officers who moved outside the city after its residency requirement ended in 2017 didn’t appear to be any more likely to show up as the subjects of citizen complaints than those who stayed in the city.

Moving beyond a residency requirement does not mean sacrificing diversity in the department, or giving up on any overall goals for the Police Department that residents and leaders want. Instead, it increases the opportunity to achieve objectives the city has for its police organization and the service the department provides, as long as the goals the people and their leaders set remain front and center.

David A. Harris is a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh and author of “A City Divided: Race, Fear and the Law in Police Confrontations” (Anthem Press, 2020).

By Daniel Pearson

Most of us behave differently as guests than we do in our own homes. While at home, we know where things are and how they work. While visiting, we don’t.

This dynamic of familiarity extends to the communities we live in. For those of us who are proud to be Philadelphians, we know that life in the city is quite different than life in the suburbs. For instance, we are often more likely to walk, ride bikes, or use transit to get around than our suburban neighbors. These distinctions give city life a different rhythm than life in the suburbs. When police departments are made up of nonresidents, it is clear that they don’t feel at home.

“When police departments are made up of nonresidents, it is clear that they don’t feel at home.”

In Baltimore, for example, where the vast majority of officers live outside the city, there is a documented pattern of hostile police tactics against those who officers are meant to serve. A 2016 report from the federal Department of Justice found that Baltimore cops engaged in “overly aggressive street enforcement” resulting in routine violations of the constitutional rights of pedestrians and Black residents. According to the report, one Black man was stopped 34 times within a four-year period, just in two city districts, and several hundred residents were stopped at least 10 times. Yet pedestrian stops rarely produced anything actionable — only 3.7% from a sample of 7,200 pedestrian stops reviewed by the DOJ resulted in an arrest or citation. For too many Baltimore cops who live in largely white, car-heavy suburbs, being Black and on foot was, by definition, reasonable suspicion for a search.

In New York, another city without residency requirements for officers, the NYPD behaves with systemic disrespect for city residents. In Manhattan, where space is a premium, the vast majority of New Yorkers take the subway or walk to work, while only 15% drive. Most Manhattan workers understand the Big Apple can’t function if everyone decides to drive. Except, of course, for city police officers, who drive cars.

NYPD officers take over sidewalks, bike lanes, and bus lanes with their cars, using makeshift placards to declare themselves on official business. Because New York’s police officers move around the city in a different way than most residents (and like Baltimore, most of them aren’t residents themselves), they end up ignoring complaints about reckless driving that is killing record numbers of New Yorkers while prioritizing tickets for “Los Deliveristas,” the mostly immigrant delivery cyclists.

» READ MORE: Black and Blue: Philadelphia's history of police brutality

Many Philadelphians already distrust the police; a recent Pew Charitable Trusts poll found that only 42% of city residents had “a great deal” or “a fair amount” of confidence that the police will treat Black and white residents equally, down from two years ago. If more nonresidents join the police force — even if they didn’t become the majority, like in Baltimore and NYC — that distrust would likely grow.

City officials say that they only lifted residency requirements because of the department’s dire need. There’s some truth to this claim. But rather than expand applicants to nonresidents, the Kenney administration and the Police Department should invest in better recruiting, create more pipelines into the force, and reexamine the subjective psychological examinations that have stymied applicants in the past.

The route to the community-oriented, empathetic, and effective Police Department that Philadelphia needs ultimately begins with building a department that looks like, acts like, and understands Philadelphians.

Daniel Pearson is an opinion staff writer at The Inquirer. dpearson@inquirer.com