Hey David............

My thought would be "Kifaya"...........translated to "Enough".

Which is a mindset that must be reached before real change can be attempted.

I see a real good start to "Kifaya" here.

Best of luck to those involved.......and to Sylvester Johnson who seems to be on the path that I thought he would go down.

You know, Mike, I thought you might enjoy this post. Sly stopped in at West Philly High last night for a few minutes. He was beaming the whole time.

LOL.

You know me too well then David.

As you know, I have sort of a soft spot for the guy.........but he deserves every bit of it.

That is an amazing man, and one who I say is the most "misunderestimated" man in Philadelphia.

His road ahead will be much happier for him then one one in the rear view mirror, as he seems to be in his element and can do what he was meant to do.

Sometimes all it takes is for someone to be the example and to give a damn.......and when was the last time you heard that about Sylvester Johnson?

He will do well.

What assurance does the public have that this "million more" muslim movement isn't troubled with a cadre of organized black crime as has been well documented by the Daily News in the past?

Neighbors need to be able to defend themselves from the abuse of their trust. Police need to ask questions, get to know people, and not just "phone in" their responses. Too many police are so overwhelmed that they "let the judges sort it out."

There has to be enough police of a high enough quality so that the public can expect the best of them on every encounter. Until that happens, some guy from Doylestown who used to live here back in the day really won't be able to know people like your average beat cop who's been on the job.

Philly cops have high turnover, low pay, bad benefits (picture having to work after retirement for health care), and little incentive for criminal justice or further legal training or continuing education.

Those that do are exceptional, and not well rewarded for their efforts. Those are the people we need to address crime.

It seems the whole 10,000 man endeavor is predicated on race. Why not be colorblind? When color and its bias enters the fray, we quickly go down the wrong path. Whether that means holding one group to a lower standard, or one group to a higher standard, race-based interventions seem doomed to fail if only because it's too vague a starting point.

People in the 'hood that cause trouble are brats, spoiled rotten, given more opportunity than any predecessor, have more money in their families on average than any time previous, yet are often out of control, unsupervised, parents have given up on them.

This all has nothing to do with their race. I think you'll find that brats who are headed down the criminal mindset path are from all creeds and colors. What they have in common is a conviction that life for them should be easy.

Can we really babysit these kids, and child-men, back to right thinking and manhood? Can strangers on the corner be a father that a kid never knew?

Can shuffling the trade from corner to corner take the place of responsive, adequate courts, probation, parole, halfway and CEC style placements, and yes, more high quality prison space?

Does this create momentum that can be captured, measured? Did the million man or million woman march produce measurable results?

When is it going to be PC to ask these questions, instead of avoiding them?

What writer or police officer has yet had the stones to ask how are you going to measure your results? How are you going to document your success? What are your benchmarks?

Crime is like any illness in that the cure is no good if you can't measure it.

This seems strange that people are coming in to areas from the suburbs. I welcome it, but it still seems odd.

I mean there are any number of people such as town watchers and community activists, religious people and churches, etc. who will gladly stand on a corner if invited to by police or the neighborhood groups.

I find that some people in the PPD are inclined to try to stamp out the normal neighborhood controls without realizing that this destroys an adult's ability to reign in bad behavior.

For example, if someone throws down trash, or is sitting on a stoop not their own, you don't know them, they don't know you, and they seem to be up to no good in your community, adults are afraid to address the kids for fear the police will hassle them for it.

I've seen this happen.

Kids will be high, hanging out looking for their dealer, sitting on someone else's steps they live no where near or hanging on the corner where they don't live, and if you try to say, hey, kid, what are you up to, and the kid takes "offense" then the police will hold you responsible for the outcome.

Philly needs proper self-defense legislation if they want the communities to not have to have PPD babysitters parenting, mediating, and educating kids who are on the edge or over it.

Adults don't want to get assaulted or arrested because police will take the side of the young hooligan. So saying something to kids about how you expect them to act is out of the question in the city. The police make that clear. If you scold a kid for their bad behavior in public, the police will hold what the kid says as true as what you say. Of course the kid thinks it's unjust for an adult to tell them not to throw litter, not to sit around where they don't belong high out of their mind. If these 10,000 men are going to interact with these kids, they have to know that they could be volatile, agitated, triggered by seemingly nothing due to drugs, stress, prior violence.

How is that going to be any different from someone from the 'burbs?

What happens when the 10,000 man volunteer is forced to defend himself from an agitated young man who is not interested in hearing a few good words? Will the volunteer be arrested if he hurts the young man? Of course he will if he hurts them.

Do you think Joe Average Cop will care that this is a 10,000 man volunteer? Not really. These volunteers are not going to get special dispensation for defending themselves. If there's a fight, no matter how it starts, everyone gets arrested. Or, the person who has the more arrestable infraction gets arrested. There usually aren't enough cops to arrest both parties if one side seems to have defended himself a little too well.

How long do you think it will take for these nice people to become disillusioned with the police treating adults like children, and children like adults in their effort to do "outreach?" How long do you think it's going to be before the city gets sued, specifically the PPD under Sylvester Johnson for "enouraging" people to be "put in harm's way?"

Yeah, this 10,000 man thing is part of the Millions More Movement, home of the original Million Man March?

So, OK, that is sponsored by the Nation of Islam, with Lois Farrakhan?

OK, the NOI, in Philly? Temple 12.? Home of Sam Christian, Ron Harvey, Roosevelt Spooks Fitzgerald, as a subgroup of insiders who shielded their activities with religion?

The NOI, the folks who made people confused about the difference between black Muslims, and the black Mafia? Not all black muslims are black mafia and vice versa, yet, like two overlapping circles, you could find plenty of people in both -- those people?

Even Chicago came here to chastise Philly for it's criminal element -- those folks? The Shamsud-din and Faridah Ali scam-o-rama, FBI probe of drug dealers leads to Imam leads to Ron White and the mayor -- those people?

OK, ok, ok, sure, there are black muslims doing right and doing good. But isn't Philly still kind of raw from the last debacle where Brady, Fattah, and every democrat locally fell over themselves to call the bug a plot by Ashcroft when it turns out there was more than enough evidence to bury about 50 people (so far)?

Do the police not ever read? Does the Ink never read its own archives, folks?

Are we just going to be PC and wait for the next press release from more organized, more educated law enforcement agencies to come in again and do what we should be doing ourselves?

We can't blame people for the past who had nothing to do with it, but we can't ignore the past either.

I get the impression that the Ink and the police commish have decided to completely ignore the (recent) past.

Who would have been in charge of this 10,000 man movement except that he's in federal prison? Hizzoner Clarence Fowler, who did five years for killing a reverend that he was allegedly shaking down for moolah for Jeremy Shabazz's Temple 12.

Yep. Shamsud-Ali would have had no impediment to being head honcho of this initiative. Kenny Gamble had to take his place, after Gamble finished testifying for Ali's defense.

None of this provokes a word of public comment from any cop, from any daily news writer.

Meanwhile, if this was the 10,000 Italian man march for peace, headed up by the people who testified for the defense of Big Billy D'Elia or Joey Merlino, hello.

Then the ability to parse history whether immediately relevant to the news itself or not would be no problem.

Isn't it fundamentally racist to report on the history of organized crime when a suspected or known organization involves crime UNLESS it's black organized crime?

Isn't it racist to say that black crime can never be considered organized? When is the Ink going to give the black mafia, and the black muslims that were in it, the same consideration and respect that they give La Cosa Nostra?

When will the new leadership be speculated upon as is Ligambi, or is it merely as Street and Johnson allege, a lack of civility and not a black organized crime mob war that is a big reason for the turf wars and "arguments?"

I don't think black folk need to learn to get along better any more than the WOPs, Spics, or Micks. They just need a broker.

It would seem that Ali provided extortion/brokerage services for drug turf, and that the mayor and police commish appreciated the theoretical damper this should have provided on the drug turf war in Philly.

Who's performing that function now? Isn't it at least fair to wonder?

This is like having the Knights of Columbus and the Sons of Italy police the Saloon and the mob hangouts in South Philly.

They're just going to do outreach, reach out the troubled souls who are goombas, sure, but misunderstood goombas. And we'll get the folks who've made it to come in from Jersey, and to bang some sense in their head with their folksy ways.

We're going to teach them GOOD catholic values, respect for the man in the tall white phallic hat, and how to be men. We're going to teach them pride in their race. Even if they're Sicilians, since you know, Sicilians have a blood lust and pride like no other, and no man suffers a slight on their honor.

We're going to listen to their concerns, these Merlino Scarfo wannabes, and teach them that Joey was a mook, his daddy a lush, and his wife a 'ho with his own best bud under her bed, but that with Jesus and love, all things are possible.

Jesus and love and the red white and green flag, right beside the red white and blue.

We'll show them that Scarfo, like Scarface, dies in the end.

Just substitute the black green and red flag for the above, and poof, like magic, men step out of the misty heights of Kilamanjaro, able to speak Swahili and French, knowing law, and the business arts, never needing to go back and learn what they blew off. Because in magic man land, you never really need to make up for lost time.

No wonder the press is too timid to try to say anything devil's advocate-ish, or remotely an iota critical of the 10,000 men organized by local black Muslims in need of some good spin.

It's just too easy.

And it's too hard to take a stand for the evidence-based stuff that works.

Here's how we broke the Italian mob, and it's how we'll break the little mobs in all the little 'hoods around the city -- arrest the higher ups and get them to turn like a Previte.

All the high up guys who turned in the leadership turned the Philly mafia into a small subsidiary of NYC leadership.

That's breaking something.

Sylvester Johnson knows who they are. The FBI probe proves that he knew most of them, and can go to them in prison to get info. Why doesn't he?

Why do we need the FBI to be the local police force?

A member of the Guardian Angels program attended a 10,000 men kick off event, and wrote a letter to the DN editor wondering why the national anthem was not played, but something called the "black national anthem" was.

What the heck is the "black national anthem"?

Is there a nation or country that is "black" so it has its own anthem?

Isn't it more to the point that we're a multicultural city where we succeed best?

All this whacky seventies era rapping and consciousness raising is as dated as Street's afro.

Black national anthem? What gives with these guys? The "solution" to crime is not to create a segregated "nation" of disenfranchised people, but to integrate economically and educationally into the surrounding marketplace.

Didn't we try that whole segregation thing once before? If anything, the segregation of these communities from options, safety, and education is killing them. Is the concept of a "black nation" a metaphor?

What are these guys selling?

What's gotten into Sylvester Johnson? He's calling out stop and frisk, while his own police say it's already done per reasonable cause.

His cranky criticism came out just a few minutes ago. Odd that he's suddenly bursting out with this a week before the election.

Since he's virtually retired, (he's said he's leaving in Jan., when the mayor leaves) why try and smack down the hands down next mayor?

Johnson seems to be all about making sure that the "nation" can carry weapons and get out of jail free, to my view. What police officer would ever try to make a case for not stopping, not frisking, obviously with reasonable cause?

That's Police Academy 101 stuff -- how to stop and frisk for cause. It's obviously not only going to save civilians, it's going to likely decrease the incidence of cops getting shot.

Stopping and frisking at Koko Bongo would have found a gun before it was used on a police officer and used to wildly shoot passers-by.

Johnson is smoking too much of the happy Uhuru.