Alphecca

Tough Policing

There's an editorial today in the Philadelphia Daily News slamming President Bush and Philadelphia Mayor John Street as incompetent. I'm not necessarily in disagreement with that assessment of the former and I don't know enough about the latter to have an opinion but the writer, Robert Maranto makes one good point:

Rhetorically, the mayor asks Philadelphians not to shoot each other, declaring that "we need to raise the level of civility." Oddly, murderers seem unmoved by calls for good manners.

Street asked state legislators to tighten gun laws. Scholars debate whether gun control slightly cuts crime, or slightly increases it by disarming potential victims. Statistically, gun control doesn't do much either way, but griping about state laws and out-of-town gun dealers lets the mayor off the hook. He gets to blame folks in Altoona for Philadelphia's killings.

More important, Street appointed Police Chief Sylvester Johnson, the Donald Rumsfeld of the Schuylkill.

To understand this calamity, a little history: In the early 1990s, New York suffered horrendous murder rates. Then, NYPD Chief William Bratton used crime stats to target hot spots and humiliate precinct commanders who failed to fight crime. Bratton also pioneered "broken windows" policing, targeting minor crime to stop disorder. From 1994 to 1998, New York's homicides tumbled from 1,661 to 633, with further declines under Bratton's successors.

Knowing a good thing when he saw it, Ed Rendell chose Bratton aide John Timoney as the city's police chief. Without new gun laws, expanded anti-violence programs or "Kumbaya" speeches, in two years homicides dropped by a quarter (418 to 292).

Timoney's combativeness angered police captains, so when he left in 2002, Mayor Street replaced him with a genial insider, Sylvester Johnson. He refused to bully captains the way Timoney did, and Mayor Street cut the number of cops. Like President Bush, he figured a small force could do the job. The result: Philadelphia's murder rate approaches pre-Timoney highs.

Most of us, regardless of our vocation, are required to perform and meet certain goals at our jobs. If we do a lousy job, we're history at the company. Policing should be no different.

Let me give you an example of a much smaller scale here in Vermont (where everything is of a lesser scale). I'm against "ticket quotas" in general. Having said that, several towns in Vermont are known for their cops enthusiastically enforcing traffic laws. Mendon, Island Pond, Norwich are all known for writing a LOT of tickets. In the artsy-fartsy non-Vermonter town of Woodstock, the town budget is partially based on cops writing a 1/4 million dollars of tickets a year. They will pull you over and ticket you for going 5 mph over the posted limits, failure to signal, etc.

All of us who live here know that by now and we either avoid those towns or we behave ourselves when behind the wheel as we travel through them. Break the law and you will be ticketed. Certain punishment.

Back to the real world and real crime problems...

Policing in large cities such as Philadelphia requires tough cops -- and prosecutors -- who will come down like a ton of bricks on miscreants. If the bad-guys KNOW they will be arrested and prosecuted they will usually move elsewhere. So we have two early requirements to start with. Tough policing with a proper-sized force and the resources to support it, and tough -no plea bargaining- prosecution.

That brings us to the third element needed (but not mentioned in the article); judges who will send these mutants to prison for as long as the law allows.

It does no good to have active and tough policing if judges are going to slap wrists and turn the thugs back out to the street. Punishment must be certain. Nothing is more demoralizing to a police force than to have their enforcement efforts go to waste in the courthouse.

I suppose this also means there is a fourth element to reducing crime; enough jail space to hold the mutants. Judges can't send mutants to jail if there is no space for them. Or, if they do, then most prisons wind-up releasing other (often violent) prisoners on early parole to make space. So... Taxpayers need to be willing to spend the money to build more jail space.

As an example, New York City has always had tough gun control laws. Why did their crime go down so much in the past two decades? It wasn't more gun control, it was tougher policing and prosecution and sentencing.

The four factors I've outlined will work in any city. More gun control won't. Thugs will get their guns one way or another -- unless they're stuck in prison for a good long time.