I send my thoughts and prayers to the Cassidy family at this terrible loss. No one should have to go through this type of pain especially a police officers family. The piece of crap of a so called human being when he's caught and he will be, there should no trial or anything. He should be put to death immediately. No life without parole where we have to pay for him for the rest of his life. I am not an unholy person. I'm just the opposite. But in this case, he definetely deserves to be put to death. When the police do catch him maybe they'll do it for all the men and women in blue that put their lives on the line everyday and no one will have worry about this sorry piece of crap ever again. Again, my sincere thoughts and prayers go to all of the Cassidy family. He will always be in your hearts and in the hearts of his commrades in the 35th district as well as the entire police force. We have lost a very well respected man.
Sincerely,
Debbie Judge
Folcroft, PA 19032

Faulkner, Skerski, Cassidy...just a few of the brave men and woman who have died to protect us. Their names come to mind so easily because they are the true hero's in this city. I would encourage everyone to make whatever contribution they can to his memorial fund and remember him and his family in whatever prayers you say to whatever God you worship.
While I don't advocate the police exercising extreme prejudice (my head says no but my heart says different)when they capture this killer, I do (again) demand the gutless DA's office to ask for the death penalty and not plead this out like they did with Officer Skerski's case. I think it is an insult to every policemans memory to not go the distance. For the bleeding hearts who argue that it is inhumane to execute people, my sincerest wishes that you get a clue. When the sentinals of a society of laws are gunned down with no regard, the punishment must be equal and swift. It's time to hold the line and say no more. His family deserves that closure and we need to demonstrate that we will protect our protectors.

I would first like to give my respects to the families of both sides of this tradegy. My heart goes out and prayers as well. My main objective of this blog is give some thougthts on where we are as a city at this moment. We are at war here in the United States, especially in our own Philadelphia and right now our soldiers here, are our Philadelphia Police. They should be respected and looked up to, they risk there lives everyday for US. And if you don't believe this, then I am sorry for you, maybe you should put yourself in the line of fire everyday, and then think about it again. I would just like to say to our police force, hang in there, you have many prayers going out to you and you are appreciated.

As the father of three (3) Phila Police Officers (2 current and 1 former) I would like to send my families personal condolences to the family/friends/co-workers of Officer Cassidy. As an officer for 25 years Officer Cassidy experienced many hazardous situations and many pleasant ones. His death however, is one tragedy neither he nor his family deserved. Yes, its a tragedy and the worst part will be if the courts and the people of Phila pander and defend the piece of filth that committed this tragedy. I fear for my sons everyday just like Officer Cassidy's family did and until the courts,our legislators and the bleeding hearts that sympathise with these offenders, open their eyes and decide "enough is enough" these tragedies will continue and "they" and the citizens of Phila will only have their police officers to protect them.

A writer at the Ink points out that Lewis, whose mother states she confessed to him, has no "history of violent crime," or one of the best predictors on reoffense in men of a given age range.

However, Lewis did have more than one type of conviction, and more than one charge within a type of conviction. Studies suggest that people with numerous types of convictions, or numerous charges involving harm to people (drug dealing, car jacking as opposed to simple theft of a car with no people involved) are not good candidates for early release, parole, or probation.

Because Lewis realized that with his pending drug charges, after his aquittal of drug dealing after completing rehab, and history of theft as a juvenile, he knew that a gun charge would result in significant time, and acted accordingly. He shot Officer Cassidy.

There is a rationale that drives criminal decision making, self-preservation. So it makes sense for judges to be conscious of releasing someone who has more to lose in his mind if he is caught committing another crime then if he commits still one more crime that buys him time on the outside.

Hence, Lewis pulled the trigger.

Lewis really was not, given his record's combined presentation, a good candidate for anything but a halfway house or high quality programming in prison.

Yet in Philly, a criminal like Lewis is so common that the city is overwhelmed with them. There are no spots for them in placements that optimally protect the public. So judges take risks with public safety.

It doesn't help those of us in the mental health/addictions treatment work who are trying to identify and cope with such cases if there are not enough locked placements on the inside, or in locked halfway points in the community.

Street's "free the prisoners" liberalism doesn't serve the needs of this population, nor public safety. I often wonder why Street puts this burden on families who are not able to cope with such levels of addiction and criminality. Clearly, Lewis has a support system that he was not ready to be placed back into. Without more probation and parole officers, without more police, without more locked placements, there is no way to serve addicts who have turned to crime without endangering and destroying whole families.

Let's see if Abraham files charges against the people Lewis "confessed to", kept him overnight and whoever bought him his bus ticket.

Ms. "tough on crime" ought to be able to knock these out of the park.

"John Jordan Lewis," AKA "Akim Melvin Atwell" is a criminal. It was a matter of CHOICE for Lewis. No one forced him to mark his hands The one on his left hand reads "N.P." for North Philly. The tattoo on his right hand reads "H.P." for Hunting Park. He marked his hands for the world to know..that he is a singularly special and powerful person with whom the world must reckon.

Now, that Lewis is in police custody and the world is watching and total failure continues. If you take a hard look, you will see inside a criminal mind. Initially, Lewis will confess and express love to his family and sorrow for the death of a cop.

On one hand he loves his family but on the other side, he makes their life hell on earth. Some people will mistake his fragments of feeling guilty and goodness as proof that he is a misunderstood youth--a decent person. However, you are only observing criminal sentimentality. Like the crime who has MOM tattooed on the same arm that is punching his girl friend in the face. Criminal treat their family like personal possessions. Over and Over they demand, intimidate, threaten, betray, disappoint and exhaust their families. And the family feels guilty for letting the criminal down.

Two days after the officer was murdered and robbed in cold blood, Lewis was surrounded by police and court personnel last Friday, inside the criminal justice center. He showed up for a status hearing on a minor drug charge -- a day before he was identified as the main suspect. Only a criminal could pull that off. Remorse for the dead officer, if existent, was short lived.

All the basic myths about criminals will be addressed in the Lewis Case. Getting over the shrinks is the next step. Lewis was abused, he was an orphan (Lewis told the shelter staff he was an abused orphan from Delaware). The media will note that Lewis is a disturbed young man who is a product of adverse family situations and oppressive social conditions. For the past 30 years, this is how society react to crime and the criminal. And this is why the crime rates grow.

We blame his mother, family, school teachers and community for turning him into a criminal. We will ignore that Lewis did not "like" school, was bored at work and victimized by his family. Lewis has drug related criminal charges. IT"S DRUGS and not THUGS. Lewis is a misguided decent young man. And soon there will be a TOTAL FAILURE of CONVENTIONAL WISDOM.

The only way to change the behavior of the criminals is to change the way they think. And Filthy Philadelphia also has to change the way it thinks. Wrong is wrong and no more excuses. Consequences and behavior. Stop justifying criminal behaviors. We need to change the way we think.

Joyce raises good points, that the research is supporting -- which is why I caution Nutter and City Council not to put too much faith in tax incentives to hire ex offenders.

Business does hire ex offenders, but the offenders don't take to the jobs. They are still using the addict's thought process, "stinkin' thinkin'" to try to pull the next con.

Look at the facts -- Jerome Whitaker had jobs. He got hired, but he just didn't do what he needed to do to stay. Mustafa Ali -- had a job and a business. John Lewis -- had a job at the franchise he would later rob.

These men all have one thing in common -- they got hired sans tax incentives but chose to commit violent crimes anyway.

I think tax incentives are good in the right context for hiring ex offenders, however, I also believe there is reason to suspect that businesses who hire ex offenders already will simply use them.

Getting an ex offender reintegrated into the workforce is not the primary obstacle, contrary to long-held political feeling.

Ec offenders have to be clean, sober, and dedicated to staying that way, as well as screened and treated for depression and mental illness, and counseled about behavior problems, coping, anger, and redirected to healthy work ready attitudes.

It helps I think to identify the low wage man as the hero, not the thug with the money. The man who gets up and works steadily in spite of whatever assaults to his ego are perceived.

This is what the rest of the world does.

The best way to help these troubled men is NOT to release them back into a community where their male role models use ineffective decision making, and exhibit a criminal mindset. These young men identify that as "manly" and imitate it.

The ex offender needs to be out of the urban environment that is so rich with bad influences, access to substance abuse and abusers, and in a place where normal is defined normally.

That is going to work better than tax incentives in decreasing recidivism.

I would recommend that Nutter direct the social workers placing soon to be ex-offenders to NOT put the men back in their original community if they judge that area to be high in crime and high in number of deficient male role models.

It's really important to get ex-offenders out of the city altogether. Whether with relatives in non-urban areas, or in placements such as halfway placements in areas with employers who hire ex-offenders regularly and which are in areas where the cost of living is cheaper -- it's critical to get these guys in places where there are sufficient healthy black male role models.

This is not difficult at all. If the ex-offender has to be placed in the city, it should not be in the area where he grew into a life of crime. If the family is enabling, he should not be placed with his relatives.

More than anything, a city wide discussion in crime plagued neighborhoods on enabling families versus healthy families must start. Ms. Glover-Henry provided a place for her relatives to "get clean" as she said on TV.

Really, that is not the healthiest choice for her or for the relatives, and it's certainly not appropriate to have a daycare in the house where a relative is "getting clean" and sober.

That's why locked placements for detox/rehab have to be encouraged over the do-it-yourself method. The family unwittingly just created a platform for the addict to support his habit and commit crimes.

The "dirty laundry" can't be hidden anymore.

If Johnson really wanted to help that part of the black crime plagued neighborhoods, he wouldn't romanticize letting people out of prison or "not arresting our way out of the problem."

Prison is where a person gets assessed for all possible explanations to their presentation and get treatment. Detox, rehab, programs, mental health care and medical of all kinds -- the only problem is when the inmate is not in for LONG ENOUGH for him or her to get into the better choices, healthier skills, and make significant changes.

Families are not doctors and can't just hide their addicts from view and hope they figure it out with a big meal from "Big Momma." Street has the same delusion -- his nephews and other relatives are doing the same thing, and Street's response is to try to be "big momma" with houses, freebies, etc. -- anything to keep them out of prison.

But if your relatives just leaves detox and rehab, to commit crimes and drug out, or get drunk, you really have only one option -- jail.

Jail is where the people who are stuck in toddler mode have to go to find the limits of their behavior and acting out. If they can't act right, they go sit alone for a while until they have figured out what they need to do.

No family can do this for a grown adult offender. That's why I urge people to do it when the kid is small -- the "naughty chair" and time out is hard work to enforce, but there really is no other way to get some restraint in kids.

Joyce above is right that too many Philly adults are spoiled brats just like the Reid kids, with no expectations enforced upon them. This is much much harder to do if Dad is not in the picture.

This is why I must disagree with the DN editorial touting tax incentives unconditionally for hiring exoffenders -- exoffenders get hired, but like toddlers, aren't ready to work.

Parenting classes for anyone with an addict in the family are crucial, even if an adult child. I recommend AA and Al-Anon, and hope that it becomes utitilzed in every house of worship in Philly. Exoffenders are going to get hired, but not for high wages, and not for the cushy jobs. Is there even such a thing as a cushy job? Romanticizing and excuse making such as "I can't work no job that doesn't have..." is not a healthy mindset, yet exoffenders are the most likely to take every slight to heart and glower over it.

Tax incentives are interesting, but it's not going to grow good employees. I really support having inmates do alternative sentencing, which should be expanded, but also, having inmates working while inside is critical, and should be a critical consideration on deciding parole/probation. This is where more parole/probation/warrant officers come in. With an exoffender, consequences (like toddlers) must be swift and immediate for them to learn good behavior.

We can heal this, but we have to really assess where the blockages and failures are.

Let's truly honor all the deceased current and former PPD members by addressing their needs -- two cops on patrol, never just one (as with Skerski and Cassidy), better pay, more civilian staffing, improved buildings, and no more merry go round court system that lets someone right out who only was just arrested.

Having a system where anyone practically can bail out, not show for court, and continue to commit crimes while waiting to be sentenced on the LAST crime committed is absurd.

This lack of basic criminal justice infrastructure is wretched -- cops deserve, as does the public, some assurance that a suspect will be held if they pose a risk to witnesses, a flight risk, or a no-show risk.

EVERY other surrounding county, and every other state, holds high risk suspects until their court date -- that way their crime spree is put on hold, and the hard work of arresting them pays off.

This is needed for anyone with charges of intent to distribute, robbery, assault, gun charges, even domestics in some cases.

If you see that someone can get arrested and get right out, how are you ever going to be happy to be a witness? How are you ever going to want to work with the system? How can you prevent yourself from having the urge to use the cheapest, most guaranteed solution yourself -- the gun from the trunk of the straw buyer's car?

The system that allows 1/5th of every Philly resident to have a bench warrant and run around loose wreaking havoc in their neighborhoods has to end with this administration.

Ask anyone in criminal justice/social service, and they'll tell you the same -- bail is overused, and bench warrants are too high a percentage. No-shows are common, and just further clog up the system, creating costs for courts and police who must show each and every time.

I knew a cop who went to testify in a car theft case that had been continued for TEN YEARS.

TEN YEARS people. He didn't even remember the case. How much do you want to bet that the car thief continued working while waiting for his court date? TEN YEARS AFTER GETTING ARRESTED. He's still loose. Charges didn't stick.

This is a system created to reward criminals.

Philly's criminal justice system from soup to nuts is weakened to the point of being completely unable to handle the volume created by the city itself.

Asking anyone to wear blue in such an environment makes a mockery of the job.

What ever happened to MORE, the Mayor's Office for the Reentry of Ex-Offenders?

With money from the Dept. of Community and Economic Development, with a website www.phila.gov/reentry that is supposed to be for job training/placement, medical, housing, mentors, social gatherings, mental health, volunteering, and each month was supposed to present a business, politiican, organization, practitioner, researcher, ex-offender, or faith partner who is "making a significant contribution to the reduction of recidivism within Philadelphia."

It was supposed to review best practices using the evidence, and propose or utilize those programs here.

The groups own materials cited a figure of some 35,000 prisoners released from the Philly prison system every year.

I understand that the current recidivism rate in Philly is about 56%, which is better than it had been.

Why is Street mum on what worked, as well as forthcoming about what didn't?

I'm getting the impression that instead of examining what has been done and if it worked, that Philly just creates layer upon already dysfunctional or poorly accounted for layer, trying to build a new city on the old layer.

This is all a management issue. I think that the upper layers in city finance have to use best practices in management, and that includes making painful changes like reducing redundancy by awarding the best performer and eliminating or reassigning resources elsewhere.

Even the best-intentioned mayor has to be a CEO first and foremost; fortunately, Nutter is well positioned by education and background to be just that.

The era of the nonmanager as head manager of the city has to have ended once and for all. Benchmarking, annual reports for each department or city funded agency, auditing, normal hiring and firing, 401(k)s instead of pensions, copays, and performance reviews that dictate salary are critical, with of course making nepotism illegal. Period. Sure some people do a good job who are relatives, most don't.

MBA trained managers, as with NYC and Chicago, have to become the norm as directors, board members, and senior staff. And not the online MBAs, but truly the best qualified.

Philly really needs to hire those with college degrees for positions. Too often city employees have no idea how to type, how to use computers that are up to date, or how to troubleshoot their office equipment when there's a problem. This is basic efficiency that bogs down city offices.

There is no way to get crime under control without a whole city that performs to basic levels of common business practice. This likely includes contracting out for updating records and services so new systems and turn key operations can be enacted. All of this is especially critical in any matter having to do with crime.

Phila.gov could do a lot more. PPDonline.org is awesome, but could do a lot more even still. There should be a way to download video from a camera phone or digital camera to augment a complaint about crime for example. If people can youtube.com their puppy, we should be able to use these tools to fight crime and complain to L&I.

L&I is way behind the times after years of political tampering for cronies. You can say that about the whole city enforcement mechanism from taxes to crime, to code violations and dumping. There should be a way to complain about RDA conveyed properties that are years behind schedule and to expect an answer or to be sure that the RDA re-takes and competitively sells the properties.

That would build the tax base and the confidence of the city, improving education and funding recidivism programming, not just the well-intentioned friends of Street, but real movers and shakers with proven national results.

Philly has decimated its tax base needed for funding enough police so that they don't get killed responding alone to a gun call. All the property that is in city ordained limbo has to enter the market place, and citizens' complaints have to be made fast, online, and with supporting attachments like photos, video, and anything you could upload to Facebook or Youtube. It's easy, and other cities are doing just that.

Think of the vacant property that Street tried to clean up but really needs to be put back into the private market. This is how to build up a tax base for enough police.

RDA should have a complaint online website that cc's the mayor or managing director's office. So should PHA. This stuff that is causing crime in its decrepit state should go into private hands.

This is about decreasing crime, so the politicians have to listen to people complain about properties that are ongoing sources of crime. You can't candy coat that while the new PHA stuff is super, the old scattered site stuff is scary, unkempt, and at least filthy on its best day. I'd like to forward the photos I have to Carl Greene using PHA's online complaint form that cc's the PHA police. Oops. PHA doesn't have one.

Not to pick on PHA, there is a host of badly functioning city agencies that contribute to the problem of crime through difficulty in communicating with them using modern methods. L&I's online complaint form needs improvement.

PCA needs an online complaint form. CLIP or community life improvement programs, was supposed to be a new way of doing what L&I is mandated to do anyway. It claims that compliance is up to 90%, but that is certainly not true for the whole city.

Do we really need a new acronym with every administration to do what a taxpayer funded agency is supposed to already be doing?

The Streets Dept. needs its own online complaint form for down traffic lights, missing or damaged street signs, etc.

I'm sick of "sealing" old buildings. That detracts from neighborhoods. Why not have a complaint lead to lien collection on the property so that the city doesn't have to spend money to board it up repeatedly, but can have a private owner invest in creating a new building by getting the chance to buy it, asap? Why is this simple idea such a radical one here?

You can't just slap a lien against a property and wait. You have to initiate lien collection as a city, not just for taxes. Water, Gas, and fines are reasonable, fair reasons for the city to enforce laws and collect revenue. This is for public safety.

Boarding up anything should be abolished and the properties sold.

Information about how much a building has been fined should be available online to any Philly resident, and if the fines are over a certain amount, the citizen should be able to forward this info online to the Dept. of Revenue Real Estate Collection Unit or the Sheriff to formally request foreclosure proceedings.

If the city can't hire enough employees (I suspect that will be the case right away) to respond to the huge demand, then contract out among a representative number of law firms with real estate or foreclosure departments.

There is a way to do this without undue delay. However, the big obstacle will be the politicians who come to ask for favoritism, so this must be made explicitly illegal.

I suspect Nutter has firm ideas on how to write legislation that make illegal a request by a politician or city agency to favor any person or business that requests exceptions to city enforcement rules.

Fumo's manse taxes are a good example of why this is necessary. The public should have the right to sue the BRT or any city agency for conflicts of interest. In this case, the BRT should be liable in not updating his taxes to a reasonable value that is a similar equivalent percentage of tax to value in the surrounding neighborhoods.

Having locally beholden pols on the BRT Board is really inappropriate as well, as the BRT has to be inviolate, impermeable to political influences.

This impacts crime. If we can't afford to have two cops responding to an armed robbery with gun complaint, we can't have a police force that protects itself within reason.

We can't sacrifice their lives because we want to corrupt the system for contributors to our local pols. That is what Philly has become.

Are people going to cry? Sure. So do babies.

How did this turn into a forum on helping the poor ex-offenders and the lack of housing issue? Boo-hoo, poor killers don't have jobs or a nice house, so it's the reason they kill. Get real.
You wail about our city is going down the tubes while you make excuses for the thugs that deminish the quality of life in the city.

That's the whole point of the Street administration -- he stated that offender reentry was a main goal, along with NTI, etc.

I'm pointing out in my post that it's not working, and that the city needs to cut costs while collecting revenue in order to fund police.

Look at today's DN article on tax incentives for reoffenders -- really a rehash of Street's proposals from his working group that turned into MORE, the Mayor's Office for Reentry of Ex-Offenders.

I'm asking the papers, like you, not to take the old school liberal democratic approach without looking at the numbers to see what works.

Some of these programs are working, many are not producing measurable results. I'm also so overwhelmed with grief still about the murder of Officer Cassidy, that I want the issues raised to stay in the forefront.

The DN editorial today, how did that grab you? Tax incentives to hire ex offenders have become a proposal that hires at 150% of the federal minimum wage to get a decrease on a city tax that Nutter promised to abolish, the business privilege tax, or BPT.

Also required would be "tuition reimbursement."

I just am trying to point out that these programs are unrealistic. Tuition reimbursement? Even the jobs that hire only college grads most often do not have such a benefit.

And the whole reason companies hire ex-offenders is to get them at a minimum wage to start. Offenders and the liberal public have to accept that minimum wage is the starter wage in the working world.

If that min wage is good enough for the young ladies at the donut shop who wept for Cassidy, why is it not good enough for the shooter who killed him?

My point is that ex-offenders ARE getting hired. Jermome Whitaker had a series of jobs he wouldn't keep. Mustafa Ali had a job and a business. Lewis worked at the shop he later robbed.

So the endless focus on jobs for ex-offenders doesn't hold water.

But the paper is fixated on that as a first line solution. I agree with the above poster that a better criminal justice response has to be the first line in attacking crime.

The city needs revenue, and has all this property. So sell the property for the best price in a competitive forum, and do the things police and the DA have been requesting.

That's the point. We can't have all these big federal funded city agencies, because those federal funds are going, going, gone.

We can't hold all this property and do nothing with it while cops are dying.

That's the point. PHA can't be the largest landlord, the RDA can't hold all these properties and do nothing, same for all the other alphabet soup agencies that the city has used to "fight crime and poverty" that haven't.

The killers don't understand, and the super extra liberals don't understand.

You have to work the job you get from what you bring.

You get paid what you bring. You have to earn more than that.

What a Lose!
I completely understand why the news reporters were so emotionally attached to this story. It was another tragegic story about how a crime fighter was murdered.
However, so few men are this devoted and loving with their families that it is almost like losing our own father. The kind of father so many children need but could never have. It is so rare! The children in this world need fathers to love and care for them! Fathers who play and actively guide their children. He was a good cop and had great character! He had a great sense of humor with his children and others.
Most importantly he was a kind soul! Many men should learn how to be such a model citizen! Everyone should look at his family photos on channel ten website to see this example of a beautiful family!

What a Lose!
I completely understand why the news reporters were so emotionally attached to this story. It was another tragegic story about how a crime fighter was murdered.
However, so few men are this devoted and loving with their families that it is almost like losing our own father. The kind of father so many children need but could never have.It is so rare! The children in this world need fathers to love and care for them! Fathers who play and actively guide their children. He was a good cop and had great character! He had a great sense of humor with his children and others.
Most importantly he was a kind soul! Many men should learn how to be such a model citizen! Everyone should look at his family photos on channel ten website to see this example of a beautiful family!

My heart broke to watch the dignified funeral proceedings for Officer Cassidy.

It also is a culmination of the grief I felt for the retired officers who had to keep working for health care benefits that were killed.

Plus all of the officers that have been shot with impunity, but thank God, lived, cause me tremendous heart ache.

That's why I think that the continued emphasis of the papers on re-entry and jobs is a misleading, because Philly already does a notable job in this area. How much more can we do? Hand ex-inmates a live for free card? We should abolish the BPT in order to create jobs for ex-offenders and law abiders equally.

The paper wrote:

"Critics of programs like PREP wonder why ex-offenders should get any sort of preferential treatment for jobs that law-abiding citizens can't get. But the more these people get reasonable jobs and become productive members of society, the less likely they are to end up hurting innocent people. Plus, there's an economic incentive for the city. The prison budget in 2000 was $131.4 million; in 2006, it was $194.3 million. In the long run, it's smart public policy to help ex-offenders get jobs."

The city can't keep pretending that just because the rest of the nation has a high incarceration rate that we don't need to so more to create locked placements here.

The city underincarcerates, period. Shooting after shooting, crime after crime, murder after murder, the perps are awaiting trial on other crimes on the outside.

Or ex-offenders are reoffending because they know their probation/parole officer is completely overwhelmed. I have to call the PO of someone who goes back on the drug corner so the PO can keep up with them. What does it mean if citizens have to volunteer to help the POs keep up on their charges?

It means that the criminal justice system, with long court waits, too few Probation/Parole Officers, and cops getting shot in the head, means that we have too little capacity.

Tax incentives won't create that capacity, and ex-offenders committed to going legal are working right now, some on my own block, in construction, rehabbing houses as they rehab their lives.

Just as prison is no substitute for jobs, jobs are not substitute for prison.

When indicated by law, prison time has to be enforced. Or we have "open season" on the PPD and any law enforcement officer crazy enough and big-hearted enough to work here.

Yes, Officer Cassidy was a real man in a city with real men in short supply.

That's the piece of the puzzle that is missing. Tax incentives would not have helped the criminal in "Crime and Punishment." Roskonikov? He did it for the thrill, the power, the entitlement he felt that he should live a certain way.

Their POs and their COs have to be on them, saying, you are going to be a man and hold a job, pay child support, etc., or I'm shippin' ya back to the hole.

People who've worked in a prison population often marvel at how good social services are, but the courts often don't really give the amount of time needed. People bail out in Philly, because if they can get bonded, the city saves money.

But these people bonded out are a true hazard to themselves and others. We have to be honest that we can't bail out everyone but the "Dateline" candidates.

You bail some of these guys out, and they are going to go right out and drugged up, get drunk until they are brain damaged, and they are going to hurt you or yours. These are the guys who don't get that their idea of partying is my idea of a brain injury.

This on top of ADHD, ADD, impulsive, diagnostically intelligence limited fellas that didn't get a lot in the way of moral reasoning. There are people who will NEVER benefit from a tax incentive type program, and I support the tax incentive program PREP and all the reentry programming.

But we can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

Some of these guys came out of their mother with impairments and injury too severe for our art to fix. They will never be good community release guys.

It is expensive to incarcerate them, but it's more expensive not to.

Roskolnikov.

Some of these guys party until their coke habit gives them a mini-stroke, over and over, until their unable to get back what intelligence or impulse control they once had.

These guys are not going to do the job thing for long. They're bramaged. Permanently bramaged.

It really should be that a medical assessment of brain injury/functionality is used to determine bail, parole, or probation along with the usual factors.

A judge lets a guy bail out who is seemingly reasonable after drying out, but goes right back into the old hood, the old ways, and goes into the toilet again. For every guy that killed a cop, you can make the case that they had severe medical issues that they were not addressing or that medicine could not address in terms of brain injury.

Philly has a huge number of permanently injured offenders who just keep offending until they get killed, kill someone, continue being a one man crime spree, or get enough time on the inside until they are physically unable to reoffend.

It is what it is. We should be studying how to see what can be done, but until we figure it out, they are a core group that is numbering in the 30,000 or so in a city with a prison capacity of 9,000.

We let out 35,000 inmates a year in Philly, from just the Philly system. Most will get it together, but the core that can't because of injury you can see on an MRI will not. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome or Effects, "crack babies," poor to no prenatal care, low birth weight, premies with brain injury, people who've sustained brain injury from drugs, alcohol, polysubstance abuse at a hard level, this stuff is permanent.

We have to target the right people to keep inside.

What a Lose!
I completely understand why the news reporters were so emotionally attached to this story. It was another tragegic story about how a crime fighter was murdered.
However, so few men are this devoted and loving with their families that it is almost like losing our own father. The kind of father so many children need but could never have.It is so rare! The children in this world need fathers to love and care for them! Fathers who play and actively guide their children. He was a good cop and had great character! He had a great sense of humor with his children and others.
Most importantly he was a kind and caring soul! Not self-pity. His heart was devoted to his family and community. He protected all of us and we were safe because of him. Many men should learn how to be such a model citizen! Everyone should look at his family photos on channel ten website to see this example of a beautiful family!

Problem 1: Where are the strong, positive male rolemodels? It takes a male to make a baby and this is another example of the effects of a sperm donor instead of a father.

Problem 2: Judges need to lock these criminals away and keep them away. If Lewis was afraid of the consequences of armed robbery then maybe he would not have done it. Consequence is not part of our vocabulary anymore,

NO more excuses! I'm tired of hearing that I know that I shouldn't have done it! There are many people out of work,homeless and raising children. They are not out there commiting crimes and worse brazeningly cold blooded killing people and our police officers.Even, mentally ill people know better than to carry a gun or to kill a cop! Control yoursehow lf! You are in control of the wheel in life. Let go and see crazy it will be!