Last Thursday morning, when Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney delivered his budget address, I listened to what he said, and didn’t say, particularly as it related to the hiring of more police officers to mitigate violent crime.
Mr. Kenney, a Democrat, offered up $100 million over five years to increase staffing levels at the Philadelphia Police Department to, in his words, “make sure our police force is at its full complement of over 6,500 officers.”
The Mayor – who’s governing a large city which in 2017 charted 317 murders, though overall crime is down – believes that boosting the staff at PPD can have a meaningful impact on reducing crime. And though the Mayor didn’t specify what the additional personnel would actually do, one could safely assume a majority of the new bodies will patrol the streets, ideally serving as crime deterrents.
But is that the optimal use for police personnel at this moment? I’d argue no.
If the city is to go on a hiring spree over the next five years, the priority should be on personnel and resources that can aid in investigating and solving murders.
Nationally, the majority of violent crime goes unsolved. In fact, in March of 2017, Vox News cited a Pew Research Center report which asserted that fewer than half of violent crimes and about a third of property crimes in the US are reported to the police each year, while less than half of violent crimes and less than one-fifth of property crimes that are reported are actually cleared by police and referred to prosecution.
Seven days after that March 2017 article was published, Philadelphia journalist Max Marin for the Philadelphia Weekly reported that less than half of 2016’s homicides went unsolved. He further wrote:
“A Philly Weekly analysis of solved and unsolved homicides between 2012 and 2016 found that the Philadelphia Police Department’s 14th District had the lowest clearance rate among the city’s 21 police districts, even those with far more violent crime. In the 14th District, which spans Germantown to Stenton, detectives have taken on 79 homicide cases in the last five years; 49 of those investigations were still active as of February. That amounts to a 38 percent clearance rate over the last half-decade, the lowest among all of the city’s police districts.”
In late February, roughly a week before Mr. Marin’s article was published, Philadelphia Homicide Unit Captain James B. Clark, Jr – who in July of 2017 was transferred to another department – announced forthcoming growth from 61 homicide detectives to an undisclosed amount; the only hint towards the number came from Mr. Clarke’s “quite a few” comment.
Most recently, as in this February, Erase the Rate founder Ms. Davida Gardner – a college student whose cousin and uncle were both murdered in the city and neither case solved – organized a 10-mile walk to bring attention to this issue, and newly-elected Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner announced that his office would no longer prosecute cases wherein the person is charge with one-count of marijuana possession; the thinking behind Mr. Krasner’s decision was the police would then stop arresting persons for marijuana possession and those resources could then be allocated to solve homicides.
Vox’s 2017 reporting cited criminal justice expert Mr. Mark Kleiman, who explained that the three levers for fighting crime is the swiftness, certainty and severity of punishment. Vox’s German Lopez argued that policymakers have paid more attention to severity of punishment rather than certainty.
“When we talk about increasing the length of prison sentences, we’re talking about the severity of punishment. This has been the lever that public policy has largely relied on over the past few decades, leading to the buildup of mass incarceration,” Lopez wrote.
The US National Institute of Justice in 2016 stated: “Research shows clearly that the chance of being caught is a vastly more effective deterrent than even draconian punishment.”
As the Philadelphia City Council prepares to analyze the Mayor’s budget proposal and engage in negotiations with him and his administration, they should request specifics on the personnel that would be hired with the requested $100 million. And if homicide detectives aren’t prioritized and don’t make up a large portion of new hires, but rookie beat cops do, then that’s a budget that flies in the face of research and needs, thus it should be retooled or denied by the city’s governing body.
Thanks for reading! Until next time, I’m Flood the Drummer® and I’m Drumming for Justice!™
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Photo courtesy of the author.