Following Roxborough shooting, Philly City Council members call for a more urgent response to gun violence

Philadelphia City Council members on Thursday renewed calls for Mayor Jim Kenney to declare a state of emergency over the city’s gun violence crisis and suggested the administration has been too slow to implement programs designed to stem the tide of shootings.

Their comments came Thursday during Council’s weekly session after a shooting outside Roxborough High School Tuesday left a 14-year-old boy dead and four others injured.

A handful of lawmakers expressed outrage over the shooting, grief for the victims and their families, and frustration that the city’s gun violence crisis has not relented. Last year was the deadliest in recorded history, and more than 400 people have been killed so far in 2022 — 23 of them were children.

“If this is not an emergency,” said Councilmember Jamie Gauthier, “I’m not sure what an emergency is.”

Gauthier, of West Philadelphia, has been pushing the administration to declare a state of emergency for two years. In September 2020, Council unanimously passed a resolution — after a shooting on a basketball court that left two dead — urging the administration to declare a citywide emergency.

Kenney has resisted those calls, and did so again this week. He said last year that such a declaration would not unlock new funding for the city and “could have an unintended consequence and cause more fear in our communities.”

» READ MORE: The SUV used in the Roxborough High School shooting had been stolen, Philly Police said

The mayor has said his administration’s public-safety plan is focused on policing in hot spots, confiscating illegal guns, and scaling up programming for at-risk young people. The city has a more than $200 million anti-violence spending plan for initiatives outside the police department.

Kevin Lessard, a spokesperson for the Mayor’s Office, said the administration “continues to address this issue from every possible angle we can to make our neighborhoods safer,” including this week signing an executive order to ban guns from city parks and recreation centers.

But during a news conference Wednesday, Kenney said state laws that preclude the city from being able to pass stricter gun-control measures hinder progress.

“It’s not an excuse, it’s just a fact of life,” he said. “As long as guns are flowing into this city and this state the way they are, it’s going to be a heavy lift.”

Still, some Council members said Thursday that they are disappointed violence-prevention measures that they approved funding for have not yet been implemented by the administration.

Council President Darrell L. Clarke, for instance, said the Kenney administration is taking too long to install cameras in recreation centers after Council included funding for them in the budget.

Lessard said the city was waiting on certain fiber optics, a critical piece of the cameras, that had been held up due to supply chain issues.

Clarke said while he understands there are supply-chain holdups, “that money was in last year, and there have been numerous shootings in and around the perimeter of rec centers.”

“You’ve got to have the implementation phase,” he said.

And he said the Police Department — which has more than 500 officer vacancies — has yet to add unarmed “public safety officers” to the force to handle low-level incidents and free up sworn officers to handle violent crime. Negotiations over the proposal have been ongoing with the union that represents Philadelphia police officers.

“That money is in the budget,” Clarke said, “so it’s all about the implementation and the enactment of the appropriations that we made. … We appropriate. The administration implements.”

» READ MORE: Philly’s gun-violence spending is surging, but many funded programs lack clear goals to show progress

And Councilmember Helen Gym said the administration has also been too slow to roll out programs like READI, which provides jobs and counseling to people most likely to be involved in gun violence and has yielded promising results among participants in Chicago.

The administration announced in 2020 that it would bring a version of program to Philadelphia. A pilot phase has yet to launch.

“We have got to get to scale in some way or another,” Gym said. “We have a whole cohort of young people who are crying out for help.”

Also in response to Tuesday’s shooting, Majority Leader Curtis Jones Jr. introduced legislation that would authorize hearings on whether enough local hospitals are equipped to treat shooting victims.

Jones, whose district includes Roxborough High School, said the administration is “doing as much as they know how to do,” and said improving conditions will take efforts at the police, courts, and even family levels.

» READ MORE: Here is an overview of gun violence in Philadelphia

He said Council will study hospital preparedness in response to the shooting and consider if the city, state, or federal government should augment hospital budgets to construct more trauma centers.

The victim, Nicolas Elizalde, was transported more than seven miles from the scene of the shooting to Einstein Medical Center in North Philadelphia, where he was pronounced dead. At least two other hospitals are closer to the scene but don’t have trauma centers equipped to treat shooting victims.

“We may be able to save lives,” Jones said. “Because we’re losing our brightest, our young people, and that is genocide.”

Inquirer staff writer Sean Collins Walsh contributed to this article.