Wave goodbye to Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw, the latest in a long line of public officials who let Philly down

And there you have it. Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw has ended her three-and-a-half-year tenure in the city much the same way she started it, by further eroding the already strained trust between residents and the Police Department.

This is important. It’s always important when an official breaks the bond of trust that holds a city together, and it’s especially important for Philadelphia.

If these last few years have taught us anything, it should be how essential trust is. We need to trust our courts — even while factoring in that the courts are fallible. We need to trust our politicians, our teachers, our school administrators, because without that trust, nothing works.

But instead, we have this: In 2020, just months after Outlaw stepped into the position as the city’s first Black woman to lead the Police Department, she and Mayor Jim Kenney justified tear-gassing a group of peaceful protesters on the Vine Street Expressway after the murder of George Floyd.

As Kenney and Outlaw told it, protesters had trapped a state trooper in his vehicle and were pelting officers with projectiles. But after a nationally embarrassing account by the New York Times, a contrite Outlaw said she had learned that the department’s initial statements were “substantively inaccurate” — the kind of mealymouthed phrasing that should have given us a clear idea of her relationship with truth and accountability.

Just weeks before her departure to take on a new job as a deputy security chief at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, no one’s yet to fully answer for another incident of “misinformation” — as Outlaw has called the lies shared by her department after police shot and killed Eddie Irizarry in Kensington last month. Police initially said Irizarry exited his car with a knife and lunged at officers. But video footage from police body cameras and a home security system showed that Officer Mark Dial killed Irizarry in broad daylight, seconds after exiting his patrol car, as Irizarry sat in his car — with the windows rolled up — on East Willard Street.

In any other administration, there would have been loud calls for the mayor to fire the police commissioner over such egregious lies about how a fatal shooting unfolded. But no one would make such a request of Kenney, who’s been publicly fantasizing about leaving his job for years. I mean, the mayor had to be coaxed by reporters to answer questions during a news conference in which Outlaw announced Dial would be fired for insubordination.

Rest assured, Outlaw doesn’t have to worry about any of that anymore. She’ll be long gone, probably still basking in a hero’s farewell, as she retreats, leaving her old colleagues to deal with the fallout, and Irizarry’s family seeking answers and accountability from a department that always seems to come up short on both fronts.

Then, too, Outlaw may not have much of a choice but to change jobs. With just four months before Kenney is set to leave office, she either had to show herself out or be shown the door by a new leader who will appoint their own commissioner.

But don’t feel too bad for Outlaw, or any of the other mediocre leaders we spend way too much time excusing around here. She will be fine, just like every other public official who gets to come to Philly, practice their craft, and then packs up and leaves town for their next well-paying gig. It’s a strange career path, considering so many of these city leaders mostly fail to make good on their promises.

It’s the people of Philadelphia, the most vulnerable in the nation’s poorest big city, who are left behind to live with the consequences of these public officials’ actions, or inactions.

While we are indulging in retrospectives about Outlaw, we should turn our attention to people like Victoria Wylie.

Of all the conversations I had this week about the commissioner’s departure, Wylie’s words resonated most. Wylie created The Donte Wylie Foundation in her brother’s name after losing him to gun violence, and led a support group for paralyzed gunshot survivors. She shares my disgust and exhaustion with failing public officials who head off to their next opportunity while Philadelphia sinks deeper into crisis, always awaiting its next savior.

Outlaw has often been quick to point out the historic crises she encountered — COVID, civil unrest, record gun violence — and she’s doing it again on her way out. So, too, did Democratic mayoral nominee (and likely mayor) Cherelle Parker, who lavished praise on Outlaw — and why not? I’d be all sorts of complimentary about someone who saved me the trouble of seeing them out, too.

Sure, these were all difficult challenges, but also … part of the job, right? Not just for Outlaw in Philly, but for any top government official. You show up. You say the buck stops with you, and you to make it clear to residents every day in any way possible that you’re invested — no matter how ugly things get.

And spare me the line that Outlaw is somehow leaving Philadelphia in a better place because gun violence has begun to fall from its record-setting heights. We’ve still had nearly 300 people murdered in the city so far this year, and our homicide rate remains higher than almost every other year over the last two decades. That kind of hollow progress may play on a resumé, but not on our blood-soaked streets.

“The people who really feel the impact are the Philadelphians who have to live here, the ones who don’t get to get up and go when things don’t work out,” Wylie told me. “I don’t think a lot of people understand or appreciate that our lives depend on decisions leaders make so loosely because they know that in the end, they won’t have to actually live with them. They’ll be long gone while people here will still be poor, still living with gun violence, and still hoping for something different.”

That — right there — should be front and center when deciding who should be our new commissioner.

Whether it’s an outsider or not, our next commissioner must be someone who understands that Philadelphia is at a critical crossroads, with an outgoing administration that’s effectively checked out and an incoming one that will undoubtedly insist they will be different.

Our next commissioner needs to understand that nothing — not the thin blue line brotherhood, not politics, nothing — is more important than rebuilding the trust between residents and the department. And that police officers are, above all, public servants who owe their loyalty to no one else but the people of Philadelphia.