Fatal flaw: The commish's pessimism about curing the city's violence epidemic isn't doing much to curb the crime rate.

Call the Police

It's a crime Sylvester Johnson's still in office.

by Kia Gregory

>> Click here to listen to Kia Gregory discuss Philly's crime epidemic on WHYY's Radio Times

Baltimore's police commissioner recently resigned amid rising homicides and dreary department morale.

Sound familiar?

According to the Baltimore Sun, Baltimore has experienced 178 homicides this year, up from 149 the same time last year. And the city is on pace to top 300 murders for the first time in seven years.

After Mayor Sheila Dixon's challengers in the city's hotly contested primary election demanded change in the police department's leadership, police commissioner Leonard Hamm quit—or in other words, was fired.

With Philadelphia experiencing its own violence epidemic at a rate of more than one murder a day, with five shot and killed just this past Sunday, police commissioner Sylvester Johnson, who'll retire at the end of the mayor's term this year, finds his own crime-fighting legacy in jeopardy.

It's hard to say whether Johnson is a hopeless leader or the victim of Mayor John Street's tightfisted management. Regardless, Johnson's retirement/resignation/firing should've happened yesterday.

“If you were to hold the police commissioner to the standards of performance held to other jobs,” says Patrick Carr, a Rutgers sociology professor who studies violence in Philadelphia, “then yes, he should've resigned.”

Some of those standards are based on numbers: 2005, 377 murders; 2006, 406 murders; 2007, 233 so far, on pace to be the highest body count in a decade.

But as Carr points out, in many ways Johnson's hands are tied. He's managed by the mayor, his budget is controlled by City Council, and his efforts to keep criminals off the street ultimately fall to the district attorney.

Still, it's tragic that the politics of fighting crime has wrought nothing but Band-Aid initiatives, catchy slogans and incessant finger-pointing.

At community meetings I've heard Johnson tell residents—angry, sad and fearful—that “we can't arrest our way out of the problem” and that “police can only do what police can do.”

I've heard him say that more cops aren't the answer, then go on to promise a bullet-riddled community the more cops they were begging for.

I've heard him describe the nature of murder: rooted in petty arguments, happening indoors, victim-specific, and therefore beyond his control.

And when it comes to the stop-snitching mentality that keeps witnesses silent, Johnson once told me, with anger and frustration weighing heavily in his voice, that reluctant witnesses have a moral obligation to come forward.

But they don't come forward. And Johnson knows the fear and frustration behind it. He just refuses to accept it, and thereby effectively address it.

Ironically, the more people who get shot, the less likely witnesses are to come forward. Instead of pleading to people's morality, Johnson needs to say how he'll protect them if they come forward.

If anything, Johnson should resign for his disconnect between morality and reality. He should also resign because of his abiding pessimism.

Listen to Johnson long enough and you'll believe crime is winning, and resistance is futile.

And that's a difficult realization for a good cop, a cop who's served on the police force for more than 40 years. Before Johnson was named police commissioner in 2002, he was deputy commissioner of operations, the second-highest-ranking officer in the Police Department. In 1998 he created Operation Sunrise, which shut down the city's flourishing open-air drug markets. During his career Johnson's been awarded more than 30 departmental commendations, including the Award of Valor.

But somewhere along the way Johnson lost his belief in the power of good over evil. Maybe he lost it at the gate of T.M. Pierce Elementary School, where Faheem Thomas-Childs was fatally shot in the head while walking to school. Actually, it was probably in the courtroom where the six prosecution witnesses recanted and refused to testify against the alleged killers. It's a moment he often recalls when his frustration over the city's gun violence boils over.

In those moments he blames everyone from scared neighbors to pitiless state legislators for the city's gun violence. And he's right. They're all to blame.

Despite Johnson's defeatist attitude, there are some things within his control. One is the deployment of his police officers.

“Redeployment, we definitely need redeployment,” says Fraternal Order of Police spokesperson Gene Blagmond, criticizing the department's myriad specialized units. “Not slamming the current commissioner, but there's definitely a need for a change. We need somebody who understands that patrol is the lifeblood of the Police Department.”

Another is targeting bullet-riddled neighborhoods. “The next police commissioner will want to take a very close look at the geographic patterns of shootings over a multiyear period,” says Lawrence Sherman, director of Jerry Lee Center of Criminology at the University of Pennsylvania, “and then focus on constitutional ways to get the guns off the streets in those places where gun violence is most predictably occurring.”

Another is developing a community-based solution beyond simply shaming residents.

“I've been disappointed in the lack of imagination he's shown with respect to violent crime,” says Carr. “I've seen very little in terms of community-based solutions that other cities have tried and that have gone a long way in stemming the tide. Pressing issues I'd be particularly worried about are the lack of cooperation from the public, the lack of trust in the police, and the lack of confidence by people who live in the worst-affected neighborhoods. These are issues that are directly addressable by the police commissioner.”

Instead Johnson will likely spend his last five months as police commissioner accepting his legacy without urgency or change—just excuses. It's clear that he can't stop the city's body count from rising. The sad part is no one believes that more than him.

>> The issue: Baltimore police commissioner Leonard Hamm recently resigned amid the city's escalating homicides.

>> The question: With Philadelphia experiencing a similar crisis of violence, should police commissioner Sylvester Johnson have done the same?

>> What's next: Johnson retires at the end of the year, leaving the job up for grabs.