Philadelphia Weekly

By now everyone has seen the tape. The cadre of officers investigated in the videotaped beating of three shooting suspects at Second and Lippincott streets on May 5 has led to the firing of four 35th District officers, the demotion of one sergeant and a mile-wide breakdown in trust between police and citizens. And unfortunately, it wasn't an isolated incident.

On May 27 two police officers (from the 25th District) were charged in the assault of graffiti artist David Vernitsky. Reports say detectives Sheldon Fitzgerald and Howard Hill III caught Vernitsky spraypainting the wall of a beauty supply store in Feltonville. When Vernitsky ran, the officers caught him, beat him, cuffed him and threw him in a squad car headfirst.

When a search for outstanding warrants turned up nothing, Vernitsky was released. Friends took him to a hospital where he was treated for a broken jaw and sustained the loss of three teeth.

Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey came down just as hard on the officers involved in this incident, saying the pair would be suspended without pay and fired. But there are some Philadelphians who believe Ramsey's actions, while commendable, weren't enough to make people feel safe.

Robert S. Nix chairs the Police Advisory Commission (PAC), a citizens' group selected by the mayor to examine the activities of the Philadelphia Police Department in certain high-profile cases. Nix thinks the PAC's actions are helping restore trust between the police and members of minority communities across the city.

"As a hard fact, it saves the city money when there are fewer civil judgments against the police force," Nix says. "But also it helps police work in a safer environment if they can work in a community where there's a relationship of trust."

The May 5 incident is exactly the type of investigation the PAC hopes to assist in auditing on a permanent basis. Attorney D. Scott Perrine, who represents shooting suspect Pete Hopkins, has claimed it was a case of mistaken identity in which police mistook one of the three suspects for Eric DeShawn Floyd, the suspect connected with the murder of officer Stephen Liczbinski in a bank robbery on May 3.

Examining this accusation, the PAC worked with Ramsey to file a report recommending that officers close to Liczbinski or other officers killed in the line of duty be removed from investigations and provided counseling if it's determined they're too close to the situation to police effectively.

"There is a need to rethink who is being deployed, for how long and whether or not certain officers should even be responding to these kinds of situations at this time," Nix said in a press release. But while Nix and co. say they've received complete cooperation from Ramsey and the mayor's office, the PAC is currently underfunded, with several positions on the board vacant due to a lack of available resources.

Repeated attempts to comply with the executive order requiring the commission to be composed of 20 percent former law enforcement members, and their efforts to make the PAC a permanent governmental agency, have come up short. Nix believes strong resistance from the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) has played a role in the delay.

"The FOP believes the police can police themselves up a chain of command," Nix says bluntly. "I think that's an outmoded way of thinking. Modern community policing involves a level of transparency, accountability and oversight from civilians."

The Fraternal Order of Police in Philadelphia has been staunchly opposed to civilian oversight in any form since its inception. "Right now police officers are one headline away from being on the unemployment line," FOP Lodge No. 5 president John McNesby says. "The PAC can second-guess and triple-guess all they want. They're not police officers."

McNesby also points out that the officers involved in the May 5 beating haven't yet had their day in court. "You don't see on Page One that they found a gun at the scene that was thrown from the car that matched the shooting," McNesby says, referring to the Glock 9 mm that was found in a wooded area along North Second Street. The weapon, recovered on May 30, capped a weeks-long search that ended with ballistics tests confirming a match with shell casings found at the scene of the original shooting.

In a June 5 Daily News article, defense attorney Perrine called the recovery of the gun 25 days after the incident "highly suspicious," saying "in a case like this, they couldn't have more of a motive to manufacture evidence."

While incidents like these still weigh heavily on the public consciousness, Nix says his office has been flooded with incident reports. "As of today, there are 115 complaints we're investigating so far. Last year at this time, 55," Nix says. "It's very hard to attribute it to one cause. But I will say people are much more aware that we're there, and instead of allowing these feelings to fester and not cooperating with police, they have a place to let it out."

"I don't see an outcry in the community," McNesby says. "I believe the police we have are underequipped, and the community is just as much under fire as the police are. Working together, we can get through this."

For his part, Nix says he's attempting to work with the police to make the city safer. And while no sitting commissioner has ever officially upheld a PAC recommendation, their audits have allowed for transparency into Internal Affairs investigations and provided concerned citizens an ally in challenging police action. And Nix believes the current administration will be more open to the type of oversight and accountability he says Philadelphians want.