Regardless of who’s elected mayor, Philadelphians will be stopped, questioned and frisked if deemed suspicious by police.
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Mr. Kenneth Lipp, co-editor of The Declaration, an alternative, online Philadelphia news source, sat directly next to me on the panel at #TransparencyNow as we interviewed the mayoral candidates one-by-one on their platform for police and criminal justice reform.
For the most part, Mr. Lipp’s facial expression at #TransparencyNow: The Philadelphia Mayoral Forum on Police and Criminal Justice Reform, stayed in the mode of inquisitive, though, after my exclusive interview with him today, it should’ve rendered at least a hint if skepticism, if not full blown cynicism.
You see, Mr. Lipp doesn’t believe any candidate will be able to prevent Philadelphia police officers from stopping and frisking people they deemed suspicious, anymore than they will be able to stop officers from arresting citizens for possessing small amounts of marijuana, despite the fact that it’s been decriminalized.
“It’s an empty promise; it’s completely in vain… it’s practically impossible,” he told me by phone.
Mr. Jim Kenney, a former Philadelphia City Councilman who’s responsible for the bill that decriminalized marijuana, and State Senator, Mr. Anthony Hardy Williams have both held up repealing stop-and-frisk as the pillar of their community policing plan.
When asked why they would do that if, as he believes, it’s “practically impossible,” Mr. Lipp responded candidly: “they’re saying whatever the voters want to hear.”
Equally unclear as to what the candidates are referring to when they say “I’ll end stop and frisk” is Philadelphia Police Commissioner, Mr. Charles Ramsey, who appeared yesterday evening on an edition of Power 99’s #StreetTalk.
If they’re talking about the illegal stop-and-frisk, I want that to end, too, said Commissioner Ramsey, before defending the practice of stop-question-and-frisk as an effective “tool that needs to be used.”
Stop-and-frisk is essentially another name for a practice deemed legal via Terry V. Ohio.
Mr. Kenney conceded this point early in his campaign, when he said to me “officers already have the right to stop you,” they don’t need to be empowered by stop-and-frisk.
But even the legal stops can leave a bad taste in Philadelphian’s mouths, says Philadelphia Police Advisory Commission Executive Director, Mr. Kelvyn Anderson.
“If an officer has a legitimate reason to stop a citizen, they’re going to it. But how it’s done, what the results are and how people feel they’re being treated during all of this is important,” said Mr. Anderson, speaking exclusively to Techbook Online.
Stop-and-frisk, like community policing, “means different things to different people,” said Mr. Anderson, who did acknowledge that whatever the practice is called, “the results certainly aren’t what they should be.”
According to Mr. Anderson, the tactic is to be employed in neighborhoods where a large number of guns are known to be housed. But the reports show that the stops aren’t turning up enough weapons to justify whatever resources it costs the city to maintain the program.
“Five years later, the reports are still terrible, said Mr. Lipp, referring to communications released by the ALCU that reveals black and brown people are still disproportionately on the receiving ends of stops, regardless of whether or not they were initiated with reasonable suspicion. “The only thing the Mayor can do is hold officers who are performing illegal stops accountable,” added Mr. Lipp, who struggled to identify one preventive measure that could actually be implemented to mitigate illegal stops.”
I wasn’t able to squeeze the same level of candor out of Mr. Anderson, who argued that “the problem is over policing and not the technique itself.”
Mr. Anderson says stop-question-and-frisk should be tailored to meet the circumstances of each community, but that would require massive input from community members.
He said Philadelphians should articulate how they want to be policed/protected and become familiar with the officers in their Police District.
And though I reminded Mr. Anderson that the #BlackLivesMatter movement has been articulating remedies to improving police and community relations and ways to mitigate police misconduct, he push backed by calling it the demands “generalized statements” and said each Police District should have an individual vision, based on their circumstances.
How to live in harmony with a stop-question-and-frisk policy is a conundrum, but what does seem to be a common theme from Mr. Lipp and Mr. Anderson is that it will be practically impossible to end stop and frisk in Philadelphia, regardless of who becomes mayor.
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