Why Johnson is so anti-police I can't get. Even his own force, well placed African Americans, scratch their heads.

Also, I'm surprised every time Street or Johnson indicate that they have little idea what goes on in the Philly Prison System to benefit inmates. Only NYC exceeds us, and that's because of the tax base.

PPS has an acute inpatient psych hospital, inmates get a level of health care that in many ways exceeds the HMO/PPO on the outside, because there's not a three week wait to see a doctor, nor are there co-pays for anything.

Yet inmates get high quality detox treatment, addictions protocols, mental health care using the most up-to-date medication, have round the clock nursing, have very well versed social workers, get treatment for all chronic diseases.

Many inmates finally get control of their hypertension or diabetes on the "inside." Many inmates find out their HIV status on the inside and get immediate treatment with the best ARVs.

Certainly, one of the most critical functions of the PPS is that inmates are not killing each other off. They get GED training, anger management, therapy, counseling, narcotics anonymous and alcoholics anonymous meetings, and if they get released, they get referrals on the outside to continue, often as a condition of release. They get a week's worth of medication so they have time to make appointments with docs on the outside.

So why does Johnson claim "we can't arrest our way out of this problem" when getting people in the
system saves lives, while the street is taking them away at a record rate?

I can only conclude that Street and Johnson are ideologues who overidentify without assessing the real needs of the people they claim to want to protect. It's an odd sort of permissiveness without boundaries, just the sort of thing that gets a law breaker killed. You can't give a toddler a matchbook, and you can't let addicts and abusers carry guns around.

You have to take them away. Believe me, after the inmate gets a little clean and sober, gets his thought process back together, gets treatment, and makes a plan for the future, they will be the first ones to admit that they needed to be where they were -- locked up.

Johnson and Street have this mythical idea. It's really a kind of magical thinking. They really assume that since they are black men, you just have to "let black men be free" and they will somehow have the same middle class values Street and Johnson were raised with.

These younger men they are trying to help were not raised with a father, often not raised where parents were ever at any time married, often not raised in a household where the adults worked, and these kids are spoiled rotten. There's no deprivation they expect to suffer, and their mothers try to overcompensate with material things.

What do you get? A brat. You get a brat if you are Andy Reid and this is how the kids get raised, you get a brat if it's Paris Hilton. You get a brat if moms is on TANF and living in public housing, working under the table sometimes. If kids are spoiled and think they are entitled, they truly believe that honest work is for suckahs.

Street and Johnson both need to closely observe their badly behaved young men in their families -- Street his crack house nephew, and Johnson his police-bashing, anti-snitch rapping wannabe gangsta grandson who so wants to have been raised in the Richard Allen projects instead of his comfy
middle class home. Eminem has more elusive black badness.

These kids grow up where badness is the ideal. Criminals are still jesse james in the Philly urban scene. Working to your skills and education is for the "weak" as one gangsta explained to me.

The crime in Philly mirrors the crime and antisocial behavior in their own families. These kids don't need the Gamble plan of urban islam coupled with housing, benefits, and education in how much of a victim they are.

That's what got a lot of these juvy shooters where they are now. They are convinced that they are victims, that they are not responsible, that they got a raw deal even though they live in the greatest country in the world that people are clamoring to get into.

I just hope that Street and Johnson bother to read outside their comfort zone -- "Come On, People" by Bill Cosby, John McWhorter's "Losing the Race," and Juan Williams' "Enough" so that they can see the truth of this quote from the trailer for the latter:

"Many African-American leaders have lost touch with a hallmark of the civil rights movement -- the tradition of self-empowerment, Juan Williams says in his new book. Instead, they've embraced the notion of "victimhood," the NPR senior correspondent says.

His book is called "Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America -- and What We Can Do About It." [see how the 10,000 man/million man more movement/Gamble/Universal/Nation of Islam and other dated movements are doomed to fail].

"I think it's a terrible signal to our young people about who black people are to have us constantly wrapped in the cloak of victimhood, and to have black leadership that in a knee-jerk fashion defends negative, dysfunctional behavior."

Sound like any police commish we know? Johnson defends the idea that these brats lack civil rights, when what they lack are boundaries that tell them STOP before you DIE.

Johnson -- civil rights -- not threatened. Lives -- threatened, esp. black lives.

The threat is not to civil rights here, or your own dept. would not be doing S&F right now as G points out. There seems to be some extreme reluctance not to do the most effective thing to reduce crime on the part of this administration.

I hope it is just addiction to the big fed dollars that made housing and poverty programs come to such primacy in Philly politics so much so that education and crime are ignored.

Could it be because the drug trade still has that much of an influence on politics as in the day of the bug?

Imam Shamsud-din Ali was giving Street's exec sec Connie Little street dealer drug money that Ali extorted from crack dealers while piloting his Jeremiah Shebazz founded mosque. Is Johnson that kind of black muslim too?

So does Johnson's religion seem to be preaching more than just the Koran? It seems like there is an extreme tolerance by both Street and Johnson for the "crack house vote."

Is it an extreme tolerance for the street drug money? Given that the probe resulted in some 50 arrests (and counting) I think that is a fair question. Fair for the press to follow up on.

Is that why every drug dealer to Street and Johnson are not bad men but frustrated entrepreneurs? Police on the street have a different take on why one guy works for min wage and doesn't commit a crime his whole life, while another guy SELLS HEROIN. Not because min wage guy has no "vision."

Selling drugs to one's own home is sentencing the place to addiction and misery. These guys are not folk heroes or potential get out the vote organizers if only "channeled" into the black nationalism program. It's scary that Street and Johnson are so naive about crime.

In their tragic bid to seem hip to the rappahs, Street and Johnson are ranting on the moors like King Lear.

To sell misery to your own community is the act of a sociopath. That is how you identify a criminal. Someone who can't feel empathy for those he victimizes.

Why does Johnson feel so much sympathy for criminals enacting a form of genocide?

Johnson takes exception to the use of the word genocide to describe crack 90s-level homicides of black men and boys. What fuzzy black hippie incense burning rasta land does this man inhabit?

He's as deliberately blind as any Willie Loman.

Action Steps for Building Black, African, Reparationist, African-American, Muslim, HipHoppas, Christian, Hebrew, Kemetic, Pan-Afrikanist, Nationalist, Moor, Nubian, Rastafarian, Afro-Descendant Unity blahblahblah?

Johnson has got to evolve. Having expectations is normal, and enforcing them -- even better.

Go Nutter and the new normal.

Did Clarence Fowler aka Scamsud-din Ali reform? Did Faridah Ali aka Rita Spicer turn over a new leaf?

How many people suffered at the hands of Eugene Hearn before he became Fareed Ahmed? You can't count his victims. The reverend that Fowler was convicted of killing -- he's still dead, and all that energy died with him, killing a neighborhood.

Yeah, I think you really can arrest your way out of what afflicts Philly -- corruption and crime are excused and courted. Any corrupt pol wants a weak police commissioner. Needs weakness. Makes it a philosophy, a religion. A political platform. A vision.

Philly has bought this load of bs for far too long.

"We can't arresth our way out of thith pwoblem."

Then why do you carry handcuths?

Actually Johnson says in the article that he built this special relationship with the community.

I'm not really sure he's built as much as he thinks he has. I don't get the impression that because a black man shows up at the community meetings where Street preaches, Johnson mumbles inaudibly, and no questions are taken, that this builds anything.

Johnson was afraid to get too close to critics. So was Street. They don't like criticism, and don't have the intellectually thorough commitment that Nutter has.

That's why Street hates what Ferrick calls Street's view of Nutter as "Mr. Nahnahsmartypants." Love that Ferrick. But it's true that both men have this juvenile inability to broach the most well intentioned criticism no matter for any greater good.

Nutter is the real deal. Street and Johnson, they're just phoning it in without thinking it through. Stick a fork in both of them; they're just proving that they're done.

Johnson seems convinced that any gun taken off the street is by SHEER ACCIDENT.

Uh, aren't some of the cops rapidly going to use of force, not that I'm complaining? That's a bit of an infringement of civil rights.

Could that explain this madcap opera?

Yeah, if stop and frisk is so awful, it's a tad more sensitive than shooting them dead.

I'm not sure what choir Johnson is preaching to. I don't think there is one.

Why is Johnson sliding into buffoonery so close to the end of his term?

The man is a Dave Chappelle character. How can we kickback contributions if we don't have lawless black neighborhoods to sell drugs in and waste federal block grants?

No brutha is going to kick back a percentage to the Mos' if we be stoppin and friskin' em. That Nutterman ain't got no since.

I can so easily see Street and Johnson hanging out in retirement like Sanford and Grady.

Street: "You were loyal to me, even when it made no sense at all, since my prospects are so limited by the untidy fact that all my constituents are rapidly dying off but for a brief moment, we were a SHININ' city on a HILL."

Johnson: "Preeth it, brutha."

Street: "And for your loyalty, I raise a TOAST."

Johnson: "Bithasth Nutter." (swigs fortified wine).

Does anybody care what the incompetant fool has to say about anything? He is perhaps the worst PC the city has ever suffered, he has no credibility.
I am baffled why the media gives him any coverage at all.

Let's recap: 3 cops shot in the last 4 days. Johnson, when asked why, responds "we have a gun problem in the city of Philadelphia." Then he talks about gun control legislation.

So how about using STOP and FRISK while we wait for gun control legislation to percolate thru Harrisburg for the next 10 years?

Seriously, Johnson is endangering his own people by trying to berate stop and frisk when it's obviously needed now.

Civil rights? Let's try to remind the cop with a bullet in his head swollen up five times larger than normal that you, as police commish, are terribly concerned about ill will and the rights of people who are stopped and frisked.

You can't bring back Skerski, or the victims of Mustafa Ali. But the shooters could have been stopped and frisked before they shot and killed three cops.

Now we have, help me here, I'm loosing count, three more cops shot?

This is not politics anymore.

Are

Can Johnson retire now? Why wait for January?

This country is so focused on "fixing" things after the fact with a "pill" Nothing is ever a problem in AMerica until non-urban america feels threatened in some way and fears that all the violence they thought they left in the city may end up in their backyards. Simply put, this country never wants to correct something from the beginning or find out the real errors to fix, they would rather just come up with a temporary fix that ultimately solves nothing. But a man in jail for a year, where he learns to become a more ruthless criminal instead of attempting to make some changes in the community like education quality or housing conditions. IT has been proven a person will not have respect for the area they live in if that area is already in shambles, like most of the neighborhoods young black men have been raised in. People always attempt to just make a bullshit fix, how about we get to the deeper issues. Also, the police are some of the most afraid people out there, and give a scared man a gun, it wont be a good situation, whether they draw too early, feel that they are invincible because of their gun and badge. I was pushed by two police MOTORCYCLES for attempting to get in my car and not moving fast enough. But if I were to even touch one of these officers, that would give them the right to beat my ass to a pulp and possibly use deadly force for "being out of hand" as i get my ass beat. Is that proper police technique??

I live in south philly. I live in an urban area.

Can I recommend a few books? "Enough" by Juan Williams. "Losing the Race" by John McWhorter. And "Come On, People," by Bill Cosby.

All of the books debunk the ideas that environment is the best determinant of crime. Instead, studies better illustrate that 1. kids need dads full time in their lives 2. kids do better in marriages and the focus of many social programs doesn't bear fruit upon close examination.

It also sounds a bit like you have an attitude with police. Don't recommend having that in Philly.

The issue is that cops are getting shot right and left, and it's a little late for head start.

Your assumptions are just that -- assumptions that don't soak in how people in the city feel right now of all races, classes, and neighborhoods.

Officer Cassidy might die, because we have arguably an open air prison system here in Philly.

Compare that to how Montgomery Co. deals with the Reid brothers - prompt drug testing, court ordered reporting follow through, picked right up for violations, not on some 100 person long bench warrant list that police are often too taxed to get through.

We need to do what works.

Sounds like motorcycle bump guy was in the street and wouldn't move. Were you protesting, because police are allowed do crowd control.

Meanwhile, we've got four cops shot in the space of a month, so yeah, if you're protesting against the "pill" of stop and frisk, then I'm ready to take it.

If you have a problem with stop and frisk, then you probably need to be stopped and frisked.

Oh yeah, I live in the city.

I can understand the outrage. However, I didn't see such disapprobation, when a naked Black woman with a knife was gunned down by four cops, a few summers ago. Nor did I see such outrage, earlier this year, when a Black female officer blew her fifteen years-old son's brains out. Nor did I see such outrage, when just last month, a cowardly Phiily cop murdered a fifteen years-old boy who came at him with a clothing iron. I could go on and on, including one night in July of 1984, when four off-duty Philly cops were going to murder me, over one of them claiming that I sexually assaulted her, after a consensual sexual rendezvous (and she had a 38 caliber pistol in her wallet, wehn all of this happened).

Let's be fair. The Philly newspapers need to stop picking sides against murdered Black folks, no matter who does it.

It took years of hard work to get Philly to where everyone talked about the 'renaissance' of the city, where optimism and civic pride were on a continuing upswing.
Then the current administration came to power.
What a change a few years make. The incompentence and cowardice of the mayor and the police commissioner to do what has to be done to make Philly a liveable city again, is incomprehensible.

Enough of this sorry excuse for a police officer already. Sylvester Johnson never had what it takes to be PC and yet he has held on to his job because of the other PC - political correctness. How many more Philadelphians have to die because he has no clue or desire to do what is necessary to protect the citizens of Philadelphia? Do the right thing Sylvester, resign now and go back to the mosque. Maybe Allah will give you some insight.

Unless the new mayor and police commissioner have the equivalent passion, energy and moral base that Rendell/Timoney brought to their tenure, it will take years, maybe decades for Philladelphia to regain the status it lost during the last years. People all over the country know that you can (literally) get away with murder, that thug culture is worshipped here; the drain of talented people looking for a civilized place to live and start a family will look elsewhere.

I hear alot of the comments. But, the brat one I completely agree with. There does seems to be some sort of moral and ethical breakdown in due to the dissolution of families, communities, and long held institutions. I think that the family breakdown is a gargantuan problem that America is suffering from. Coupled with institutionalized poverty, and hand-outs that expect nothing in return; We are setting ourselves up for these kinds of crises. This problem will not resolve itself for generations to come. But, major shifts have to be made in our focus as a community, state, and country. America will continue to pain until we accept, and see the dysfunctions we have.

One: Racism, and reverse racism is killing our local government. Black, White, Female, Male: we have to stop wanting or disregarding potential officials based on race or gender. I love it when I hear that positions are filled based on race or gender. Does that really matter when it comes to a job? No.

Two: Rural, and Suburban folks have to stop thinking that they've escaped these problems. These are regional problems and will only spill over into their communities. And, continued neglect will only make things worse for everyone.

Three: The sue-job mentality. Steps need to be taken to prevent everyone and everything from being sued. Lawyers are leeches, and produce nothing for this country. They argue and argue, and just redistribute wealth towards their own bank accounts. And, the citizens of this country has to stop running to lawyers for ever broken fingernail.

I think that Police Commissioner Johnson should resign. He has not offered any real insight or any sense of resolve to even dent the crime problem in the city. Most of the violence is committed by young people and people that have already been tagged by the criminal justice system. So the city knows who the criminals are. So why hasn't the commissioner tired to pull what law enforcement resources there are availble together (i.e. probation & parole, sherrifs) in attempts to get this crime problem under control.

Johnson says that there is already a stop and frisk policy being utilized by officers, however this policy is undermined by the law on the books that allow people to gather on streets & corners, in small groups as long as no one is complaining or a business district (for examples travel down York st. & Cumberland streets). So cops really can't say much to guys that are huddled in a group that aren't observably causing problems. however, that group of guys could be responsible for getting the weapons, holding the drugs, assaulting people that have to regularly use the street to get to where they have to go, or force people to completely alter the way they walk in there community to avoid assault or orther forms of harrasment. If a citizen complains too loudly, there safety could be compromised, because the the neighborhood thugs want to intimidate the person that is complaining or harm them just to send a message. Police can not protect citizens that well b/c they don't have the budget. That's why police are not getting the much needed assistance from the community because the witnesses are exposed to the fools that are still on the street terrorizing the community.

Only if the City leadership would open both eyes, and coordinate between what law enforcement agencies they have, i believe they would be able to dent the violent crime problem, at least from a law enforcement stand point. Obviously componetes of our social structure have to improve, like employment and income, and education...but at least over public safety entities have a tact. There's no tact and that's because politics in this town have ruined, tarnished, displaced or outright dogged good leadership.

I think that Police Commissioner Johnson should resign. He has not offered any real insight or any sense of resolve to even dent the crime problem in the city. Most of the violence is committed by young people and people that have already been tagged by the criminal justice system. So the city knows who the criminals are. So why hasn't the commissioner tired to pull what law enforcement resources there are availble together (i.e. probation & parole, sherrifs) in attempts to get this crime problem under control.

Johnson says that there is already a stop and frisk policy being utilized by officers, however this policy is undermined by the law on the books that allow people to gather on streets & corners, in small groups as long as no one is complaining or a business district (for examples travel down York st. & Cumberland streets). So cops really can't say much to guys that are huddled in a group that aren't observably causing problems. however, that group of guys could be responsible for getting the weapons, holding the drugs, assaulting people that have to regularly use the street to get to where they have to go, or force people to completely alter the way they walk in there community to avoid assault or orther forms of harrasment. If a citizen complains too loudly, there safety could be compromised, because the the neighborhood thugs want to intimidate the person that is complaining or harm them just to send a message. Police can not protect citizens that well b/c they don't have the budget. That's why police are not getting the much needed assistance from the community because the witnesses are exposed to the fools that are still on the street terrorizing the community.

Only if the City leadership would open both eyes, and coordinate between what law enforcement agencies they have, i believe they would be able to dent the violent crime problem, at least from a law enforcement stand point. Obviously componetes of our social structure have to improve, like employment and income, and education...but at least over public safety entities have a tact. There's no tact and that's because politics in this town have ruined, tarnished, displaced or outright dogged good leadership.

I feel like STOP and FRISK is gonna cause more problems in the community. As you can see people aren't afraid of the cops anymore!! Everybody's pointing the fingers at the POLICE COMMISSIONER and the MAYOR two man can only do so much. So much pressure from everybody can make you distracted and frustrated!! THEY NEED TO RETRAIN AND EXPLAIN TO THE POLICE THEIR JOB DESCRIPTION!!
Because they think whatever they want to do is fine,but does anybody complain about that.

Get off the Police Commissioner and the Mayor backs. Two men can only do so much. NUTTER is gonna cause more problems than it is. NUTTER think he's gonna come up with a plan to control the problems of the city. They already shotting cops,they not scared. So what difference is NUTTER gonna make. I see it getting far more worse than better but you know thats just one opinion from me. ALL I CAN SAY ABOUT NUTTER IS I HEARD IT ALL BEFORE, SHOW ME AND I'LL BELIEVE UNTIL THEN NUTTER IS A F*CKIN BIG MOUTH!!!!!!!!!!

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