You said you hear us, now defund the police
What began as a response to the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor by police officers developed into a national protest to re-examine the nature of white supremacy in our criminal legal system. As we witnessed, Philadelphia was not immune to these protests. For months this summer, in brutalizing heat and amidst a global pandemic, Philadelphians of all ages, races and genders demanded structural change to the way Philadelphia not only polices its citizens, but also how it prioritizes its financial resources. What does this change look like? As we unequivocally heard over the summer, the people demand a long list that includes, but is not limited to – economic justice, an end to qualified immunity for police officers, and a dismantling of the Fraternal Order of Police.
These changes are complicated and ambitious, but that doesn’t grant cover for our elected officials to drag their feet. They can start with what the people were shouting the loudest—defund the police. City Council and Mayor Kenney are currently working to formulate the budget for the upcoming fiscal year 2021-2022, due by July 1st. They have a responsibility to listen to their constituents. The same constituents who were tear gassed, beaten and arrested. The same constituents who have to live under the fear of police violence every day of their lives.
However, we don’t have to look as far back to this summer to see evidence in favor of this policy. “Safety We Can Feel”, a survey of Philadelphia residents published recently by a collaboration of community organizations, shows that 58% of people believe that the “police, when called, are very or somewhat unhelpful.” 75% think that “police are bad at preventing crime in their neighborhood” and most importantly, 96% “support reallocating police funding towards community services.”
Philadelphia would not be alone in beginning to cut law enforcement funding. In 2020, over 20 major cities across the country – San Francisco, Portland, Los Angeles, Austin – have reduced police budgets to the tune of approximately $870 million. These cities surely haven’t crumbled due to the crime that supposedly follows a reduction in police funding. They should be examples of how City Council and Mayor Kenney can proceed to address the toxic relationship between the police department and Philadelphia’s Black and Brown communities.
As a response to the summer demonstrations City Council introduced various police reform legislation. Council passed a mandate for city residency for all new police officer hirers. A referendum passed on last November’s ballot established a Citizens Police Oversight Commission, the scope of its authority however, is to be determined. Following the horrific incidents of tear gassing protestors and bystanders on I-676 and the 52nd Street corridor Council quickly sought to ban the further use of tear gas and other “less-lethal” munitions on protestors expressing their First Amendment right. Councilman Isaiah Thomas introduced legislation to limit police officer’s ability to conduct traffic stops, which disproportionately targets Black Philadelphians. These are all steps in the right direction but they do not go nearly far enough to address the overarching concerns brought to light this summer.
We need structural change to what our budget prioritizes, or in other words what we as a community prioritize. Every dollar spent on police funding is a dollar subtracted from affordable housing, mental health services, workforce training and many other much needed community services. Philadelphia still stands as one of the poorest big cities in America. Reallocating funding from the police department to community resources would not only prevent police violence but would work to confront the overwhelming poverty facing thousands of Philadelphians every day. Critics of defunding the police often cite gun violence as a reason for why it is irresponsible to subtract police presence from high crime neighborhoods. What they fail to address however is that despite the continual increase in police funding, Philadelphia has seen a record number of shootings last year, and 2021 is on pace to set new highs. It is evident that an over-reliance on policing has not been an effective deterrent to gun violence.
In response to the May 29th protests in Philadelphia, City Council President Darrell Clark said, “We need a new normal in our country and in our city. Our citizens are demanding to have a meaningful voice in creating that new normal. It is our responsibility to listen.” Other council members such as Jamie Gauthier, Kendra Brooks, and Helen Gym have publicly stated their support for reimagining a budget that focuses on public services instead of police supervision. To Mayor Kenney, Councilman Clark, and the rest of City Council, the people have spoken. We hope you have been listening.
Inaugural Removal
In the beautifully renovated Met theater, a crowd of family, friends, campaign workers and an assortment of Philadelphia political leaders watched eagerly Monday morning as a cohort of city officials took their oath of office. The inauguration was heterogenous to say the least. The ceremony included the swearing in of City Commissioners, a new Sheriff, Register of Wills and Municipal and Court of Common Pleas judges. Albeit unfair, the attention of the audience was monopolized by the inauguration of City Council members and incumbent Mayor Jim Kenney.
City Council was welcoming (some more than others) four new faces, all of whom are younger and pledge to bring a wave of progressive policies; whether they deliver on these promises we must wait and see. Once sworn in and their family members brushed off stage, the newly inaugurated Council proceeded to formally appoint a Council President. With no public debate or deliberation, council members appointed Councilman Darrell Clarke to a continuous term as Council President. Additionally, despite Mayor Kenney’s unsurprising campaign victory, audience members were eager to hear what he has in store for his final term.
Mayor Kenney spoke on achievements of his administration’s first term and illustrated a five-point plan for what he hopes to address going forward. He touted the development of his city-wide pre-k program and gaining local control of the Philadelphia School District. Although he failed to elaborate on the details, he spoke about meeting “ambitious climate goals” and pledged to work with the state legislature to increase school funding.
However, while he addressed many other important topics, Mayor Kenney failed to address the forced removal taking place throughout the city. While the Philadelphia Boys Choir sang The Star-Spangled Banner and clergy leaders addressed the audience with prayers and readings, Mayor Kenney’s Department of Parks and Recreation was forcibly removing homeless citizens from multiple encampments along or near the Vine Street Expressway. The encampments were located on what is considered park land. According to reporting by the Inquirer three sites were targeted, leading to approximately 30 people displaced, despite some legal discrepancies on if the city can legally remove people from public park land.
Residents of the camps were given prior notice about the displacement, but some choose to stay, and on Monday morning they watched as employees from the Department of Parks and Recreation, armed with trash trucks, trampled through what little dignity they still preserved. In Mayor Kenney’s defense, beds were made available for every resident being displaced in one of the city’s homeless shelters and some residents took the opportunity to move inside.
Homelessness is one of the most vital issues facing any community. Despite Philadelphia’s massive poverty rate – the highest in the nation out of the ten largest cities – it has a comparable low unsheltered homeless population. As of 2018 approximately 1,000 residents were living on the street. This is due to Philadelphia’s committed outreach efforts spurred by Project HOME, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing full circle homeless services. The city is also partnered with 25 shelter programs, all of which operate 24 hours a day. Comparably, homeless shelters in most other large cities only provide services from sundown to sunrise, making it much more difficult to transition people out of homelessness permanently.
It is unclear whether Mayor Kenney gave a direct order for this mass removal, however the Department of Parks and Recreation is a city agency under the Mayor’s office directive. Presumably, something of this magnitude, with multiple department coordination, must be subject to Mayor Kenney’s approval. I do it thinks vital that our city works together to ensure our homeless citizens have a safe place to live, especially during the winter. Yet, this does not seem like the reason for this displacement. I would ask Mayor Kenney if the goal of the displacement was to ensure the residents of these encampments were moved indoors, why send a team of Parks and Recreation employees with shovels and trash trucks? Rather, wouldn’t it be more productive to assist these residents with social workers from the Office of Homeless Services? In at least one of the camps, half of the residents had vacated because of the city’s posted notices of the eviction. Were efforts made prior to Monday’s removal of finding safe shelter for these people, or was the goal simply to have them move to a less frequented section of the city?
To clarify, I do appreciate the city’s efforts in partnering with community organizations to serve Philadelphia’s homeless population. Nevertheless, it does rub me the wrong way that while Mayor Kenney was being sworn into office, his administration was forcibly removing homeless people from multiple camps throughout the city. Mayor Kenney spoke on his agenda for homeless people one time in his inaugural address. He said “We’ll continue our historic investments in housing affordability, homeless services, and homeownership. This will help stabilize Philadelphians struggling amid poverty and grow our middle class.” Better than Council President Clarke’s complete lack of acknowledgement in his inauguration day address. Poverty has been and still is a major issue facing Philadelphia. Both Councilman Clarke and Mayor Kenney pledged to lift 100,000 people out of poverty by the end of their terms, a bold goal that would reduce the poverty rate by 25%. I hope they will both collaborate in their upcoming terms on ways to ensure our homeless population isn’t forgotten in this ambitious fight, so that when the next mayor is taking their oath of office, he or she won’t also be evicting some of our most vulnerable citizens.
A scandalous 2019 for the Philadelphia Police Department
If you mention the Philadelphia Police Department the first thing that may come to mind is the mid-August police stand-off in the Nicetown-Tioga neighborhood of North Philadelphia. A stand-off that resulted in six officers wounded and chaos at the doorsteps of worried neighborhood bystanders. While this was an unfortunate situation for both the officers involved and the residents of Nicetown-Tioga, it has seemed in some way to overshadowed the many worrisome stories involving the Department and its officers. Since June 2019, as if on cue, a new scandal involving Philadelphia police officers has surfaced almost monthly. Some involving Department practices, others involving varying inappropriate behavior by officers.
The recent string of scandals began in early June with the publication of the Plain View Project, a report that collected the Facebook accounts of approximately 3,500 active and retired officers, spanning eight police jurisdictions, who had authored offensive and disturbing messages. There are roughly 6,500 officers on the police force in Philadelphia, making it the fourth largest police department in the country. The Plain View Project was able to identify 1,073 Facebook accounts for Philadelphia police officers, of which 327 made “troubling posts or comments”. If you believe these numbers are an accurate sample size for the entire department, it shows that one in three officers walking the streets, patrolling neighborhoods and writing police reports has bigoted, offensive or disturbing feelings towards a large portion of Philadelphians. An investigation by the Philadelphia Police Department has led to the firing of 15 officers and a 30-day suspension for 7 more.
On August 20th, then Police Commissioner Richard Ross, resigned after female officers Audra McCowan and Jennifer Allen filed a federal lawsuit against Commissioner Ross and many of other high-ranking officials in the Department (including interim police commissioner Christine M. Coulter). This lawsuit had two major consequences. It detailed an alleged (which I believe) abundant culture of sexual and racial harassment in the Department. Additionally, McCowan – who has since resigned from the police force due to increased harassment from her fellow officers – claims Commissioner Ross “Ignored” her accusation of another officer that was sexual harassing her, because Ross was “seeking retribution” against her for ending an affair the two had between 2009 -2011. Ross resigned shortly after the lawsuit was filed. The tabloid drama of an affair doesn’t bother me, but an alleged culture of sexual and racial harassment by police officers is very troublesome, along with a commissioner’s alleged reluctance to mitigate that culture.
Ross was replaced by Deputy Commissioner Christine M. Coulter, who currently serves as interim Commissioner until Mayor Jim Kenney is scheduled to appoint a formal Commissioner by the end of 2019. The city had just appointed its first female Police Commissioner, following the development of a sexual harassment scandal within its department. This should have been a joyous occasion. Unfortunately, the honeymoon was cut short. Ten days after Coulter was promoted an article was released that shows a 1990’s picture of Coulter sporting a t-shirt that reads “L.A.P.D. We Treat You Like a King”. Set aside the fact that the shirt is blatantly offensive and disrespectful to any Black person, or someone who believes in justice, Coulter responded by not apologizing for ten days.
Council Woman Cindy Bass called for her resignation, which I agree with. I’m not saying Coulter is racist, I don’t know the woman, I didn’t know of her role in the police department until her promotion. But I do know that a Police Commissioner who presides over a city that is 44% Black should have never in her past reckoned that it was ok to wear such a shirt, nor should it have taken her more than fifteen minutes to apologize for her behavior.
Fast forward a couple weeks, the Philadelphia Inquirer published an article detailing the arbitration process for dismissed or punished officers. The arbitration process is a product of the contract reached between the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge No. 5, the officer’s local police union, and the Police Department itself. Any officer fired or disciplined by the Department, through an investigation by its internal affairs division or Department officials, is given the blessing of a final review by a third-party mediator.
I’m all in favor of strong unions that can provide helpful protections for its workers, however this arbitration has the effect of possibly over protecting, and in many cases putting bad cops back on the street at the expense of the public’s trust, or even safety. In many cases cops who have committed domestic violence, sexual assault or various other crimes have been reinstated or had their punishment reduced thanks to the arbitration system. The arbitration process requires testimony from victims or witnesses of the behavior in question by the officers. Often, these officers are successful in their grievance because witnesses are unable to appear, either because the hearing is months or years after the event took place, they fear retribution from the officer or the simple can’t be reached.
According to the article, the last four Philadelphia Police Commissioners are critical of the arbitration system. They believe, as do I, that this system is detrimental to securing trust between the Department and the people it’s sworn to protect. If an officer is suspended/fired for falsifying a testimony, making an illegal arrest or being a danger to the community while off duty, but is sent back on street with a gun and a badge and the authority to beat, detain and even kill other people, all while receiving back pay, you’re damn right a community and its people would be cynical with the system its entrusting with its safety.
Jump ahead a month to October 14th, and Philadelphians are looking over their shoulders seeing if it’s safe to take a big deep sigh of relief from the constant embarrassment of its Police Department. Collectively, the city opens the Philadelphia Inquirer, and to their woe must hold that sigh of relief for a brighter day. This time, it appears that Philadelphia police were drastically increasing the number of traffic stops they were conducting, an overwhelming majority of which were falling on Black and Latino drivers. Attorney Michael Mellon of the Defenders Association of Philadelphia discovered that as of the first half of 2019 police were making on average 10,000 more stops a month compared to years prior. While only combining for approximately 57% of Philadelphia’s population, Blacks and Latino’s composed 74% of all vehicle stops and 80% of all vehicle searches during this time.
A 2011 lawsuit over the racial disparities in stop and frisk violations in Philadelphia included, but did not focus on, vehicle stops. This lawsuit resulted in a consent decree between the city and local civil rights attorneys, giving the attorneys inspector privileges of future pedestrian and vehicle stops. These attorneys have previously prioritized pedestrian stops, but have signaled that they will be adjusting their focus to vehicle stops and searches. What’s most alarming about these findings is that although Black and Latino drivers have their vehicles searched four times more often than white drivers, white drivers are found with contraband at a higher rate.
What does this mean for Philadelphia, a city who isn’t foreign to conflicts between its citizens and its police department? These recent incidents are not the first examples of indecent behavior by Philadelphia cops. Other examples include the 2011 lawsuit against the city for its harassing use of stop and frisk, a list uncovered by the District Attorney’s office detailing names of officers too tainted and untrustworthy to put on the stand in court proceedings and the infamous 1985 MOVE bombing that left 11 people dead and an entire city block of homes burned to the ground. The recent string of events simply adds to the long history of an unsettling relationship between the police and the people it’s sworn to protect. Unfortunately, the last many months has only made it more difficult to rebuild this relationship.
However, there are opportunities Philadelphia can employ to work towards gaining its citizens trust back. Mayor Jim Kenney has announced that he hopes to have a choice for a new police commissioner by the end of 2019. Eagles safety Malcom Jenkins, who since 2017 has been very vocal around criminal justice reform and police brutality, has put Mayor Kenney on the hot seat by publicly stressing the need for Kenney to nominate a commissioner who is dedicated to reforms within the department. Jenkins also demanded that the public have an input on the search for a new commissioner and that the process be transparent. In a recent op-ed in the Inquirer, Jenkins said “If the commissioner avoids us when just a candidate, how will that person respond when he or she’s already in office and things get hard”. Jenkins also advocated for a commissioner who has the courage to stand up to the police union, a remark that issued an unsurprising rebuttal by union president John McNesby.
I’m very much in support of citizens becoming active in holding elected official responsible, however, it’s unfortunate that these demands haven’t come from our City Council representatives directly, the people we empower to make these decisions for us. Hopefully, with the election of four freshman City Council members, who ran on agendas that included progressive (some more than others) criminal justice reform, we will see a change in this regard.
HOLD -UP 