To improve policing, Philly’s next chief executive needs to value community input and innovation.
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With roughly less than 10 months in the Mayor’s office, Mr. Michael A. Nutter, who during his tenure as the city’s chief executive significantly raised his profile by appearing regularly on cable news programs and chairing a national network of mayors, will lead only the beginning process of implementing the reforms that will satisfy the recommendations provided by the Department of Justice as it relates to the poor use of force training Philadelphia police officers receive.
The timeline for reforms to be implemented, 18 months, surpasses Mr. Nutter’s remaining moments in City Hall, thus the new mayor will both have to continue what his predecessor puts forth, and embark upon a journey driven by his/her own vision.
“We will hand off a road map, a blueprint and a game plan to whoever the new mayor will be,” quotes the New York Times of Mr. Nutter.
So far, the candidates running for mayor have been relatively silent on the issue of police reform, except, of course, the few who vowed to repeal stop-and-frisk, which includes State Senator, Mr. Anthony Hardy Williams, who released an editorial last week calling on all mayoral candidates to adopt the recommendations of the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing.
However, a strong, measured and, more importantly, personal vision for police and criminal justice reform hasn’t been communicated broadly by the candidates to the public, which is why I, along with my colleagues at The Declaration, an online, alternative Philadelphia news source, have collaborated to produce Transparency Now: The Philadelphia Mayoral Forum on Police and Criminal Justice Reform,which will be hosted from 6-7:30pm on April 29th at Catalyst for Change Church, the site of #PhillyAfterFerguson.
The next mayor, at this critical point in history, will have to do more than repeal stop-and-frisk to mitigate the tensions between police and community; he/she will have to work intentionally on establishing trust on both sides of the line, which needs to happen sooner rather than later.
The surname of the upcoming mayoral forum, Transparency Now, speaks to one of the challenges the next occupant of City Hall’s second floor office will face.
The public increasingly wants access to information around fatal officer-involved shootings, and one needs to look no further than the supporters of Mr. Brandon Tate-Brown as an example.
However, there’s certain information at a point in time, said Mr. Nutter, “that can’t be released.”
The outgoing mayor was referring on-going investigations, criminal investigations and grand jury investigations.
But even with those conditions, the Department of Justice’s report recommended that more details be given when an officer kills a citizen, a press conference should be held within 72 hours of the incident and more data needs to be published to the police department’s website, a critique expressed frequently by Mr. Kelvyn Anderson, Executive Director, Philadelphia Police Advisory Commission.
“It’s refreshing to see our call(s) being validated,” Mr. Anderson tells Techbook Online exclusively.
Since the release of the recommendations by the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing and the DOJ’s Collaborative Review Initiative – which called on the Philadelphia Police Department to “fully cooperate” with the Police Advisory Commission – Mr. Anderson says he’s spoken to Commissioner Ramsey twice and is under the impression that these action items will be put into play immediately.
However, Mr. Anderson says he’s watching the political scene to see what the “legislative will” is regarding his agency.
The next slate of politicos coming into City Hall –city council members, the mayor and his administration –will need to understand what the Police Advisory Commission is; what is was; and what it wants to be in order for it to function smoothly and exceed the expectations of Philadelphians.
What was the PAC? According to Mr. Anderson, it was “primarily a complaint driven organization” when it was established by executive order two decades ago. Now, he says, “we’ve matured,” and gradually increased our interest, particularly around the use-of-force policies.
Mr. Anderson continued:
“We’ve moved beyond the complaint to look at trends in complaints.We’re now considering what our role should be around fatal incidents.”
One “game-changing” idea Mr. Anderson discussed during our interview was enabling PAC to be present at crime scenes, taking their own notes and presumably conducting their own investigations. When asked whether he thinks this will happen under the Nutter Administration or if he’ll have to wait until January to lobby the next mayor for those rights, Mr. Anderson repeated his earlier assumption, stating he believes the recommendations from the report are being put into play immediately.
What Mr. Anderson is more concerned with, though, is his capacity to handle the new responsibilities and access. In other words, just as the police department could benefit from better training, so could Mr. Anderson and his staff, which he hopes will grow as a result of a potential charter change that would make his agency a permanent fixture of local government.
“I think it’s important that oversight agencies always be open to the training that police officers go through,” said Mr. Anderson.
Another concern of both Mr. Anderson, and members of the public who viewed the report yesterday, is where will the dollars come from to back the report’s recommendations?
As Deputy Commissioner, Mr. Kevin Bethel, has mentioned to me several times, the full scale body camera roll-out alone will cost millions of dollars, a large bulk of the cost is attributed to the servers and storage for video.
Retraining police officers and members of PAC will cost, too. Our only real option, in my opinion, and the same maybe true for other cities that don’t have the capital to rollout all the reforms seamlessly, is utilizing a social impact bond, a financial instrument that other cities and countries call a “pay-for-success” bond.
According to Wikipedia:
“This form of financing allows the government to partner with innovative and effective service providers and, if necessary, private foundations or other investors willing to cover the upfront costs and assume performance risk to expand promising programs, while assuring that taxpayers will not pay for the programs unless they demonstrate success in achieving the desired outcomes.”
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Mr. Anderson called it a “good idea” because of the “sheer scale” of reforms needed.
“It would be interesting to see if we could leverage it across departments,” he said.
The next mayor of Philadelphia will need to spend a considerable amount of time evaluating the risk and rewards as it relates to using social impact bonds to overhaul the equipment, practices, policies, procedures, learning modules, and training programs of the Philadelphia Police Departments and its byproduct agencies.
The next mayor of Philadelphia will have to do more than think out of the box, they’ll need to think and act like there is no box, only an open canvass on which to draw the outlines of a greater city, one where, as Mr. Nutter put its, the us versus them mentality doesn’t exist. The next mayor, however, can’t be a solo act in his/her performance of profess, instead, he/she must truly be apart of the community, and seek the inspiration and expertise of those that elect him/her regularly.
The idea of community inclusion in problem solving and/or new, mass policy roll-outs, was clearly expressed in the recommendations by the President’s task force and vocally praised by Mr. Anderson, who informs me he still pressing for community input in the body camera pilot.
“You can’t implement new policy without community input,” he said.
The next mayor, whoever it is, has a lot of work ahead of them, but they can rest easy knowing that activism and awareness in Philadelphia is growing, so they’re not alone in carrying the burden of progress.
Thanks for reading. Until next time, I’m Flood the Drummer® & I’m Drumming for JUSTICE!™
Perhaps this is less about race, in the long run, and more about community leaders becoming more in touch with their constituents than they have been. And i certainly mean this from the top pf the federal government to the local counties and small city boards. They have been so far out of the normal folk for so long that perhaps all of this tragedy may be the catalyst for them to realize who put them there and what they’re real job is.