When I first heard that Marge was joining the police academy, I thought it would be fun and zany, like that movie Spaceballs. But instead it was dark and disturbing. Like that movie -- Police Academy. - Homer Simpson
The big story large news from yesterday was the decision by Mayor Nutter to change the residency requirement for police recruits. Formerly, a potential new police officer needed to live in the city before he or she could even enter the academy. They also needed a Pennsylvania driver's license to apply. Now, they won't need the PA driver's license and they won't have to move into the city until six months after they graduate into the force.
This one always seemed like one of those no-brainers to me but I assumed that since it hadn't yet been done, despite support from City Council and the FOP, that there must be some super complicated process required for the change. Turns out... not so much. According to the Daily News story:
Mayor Nutter yesterday announced that the city has relaxed its residency requirement for wannabe police officers.
"This waiver removes a key barrier to recruiting the best and the brightest," Nutter said.
The Philadelphia Civil Service Commission granted the waiver, allowing nonresidents to become police recruits.
So all it took was for Nutter to ask for it and the Civil Service Commission to "grant a waiver" and poof... a 50 year tradition goes the way of the dodo. So why the wait? Turns out, as I found out from the Inquirer coverage, the answer - at least for the last 8 years - starts with a J ends with a T and has "ohn Stree" in the middle:
Efforts to relax the requirement have been stymied for years. In 2001, Mayor John F. Street - an ardent opponent of waiving the one-year rule - vetoed legislation approved by Council that would have done away with it.
Why would a mayor stand in the way of a change that could accomplish two very important things - (1) help find the best and brightest people in the country to serve on the police force and (2) give people a reason to move into the city and make it easier for them to do so? All I can think of is that it comes down to politics. (Surprise!)
Bring in a bunch of new folks and it becomes less easy for the party to control them or (horrors) they may actually be Republicans or Independent voters. New residents are the wild card in elections. As the city has shrunk, a big part of the reason may have been that folks became disillusioned with the elected leadership. Rather than stick around to vote that leadership out of office, they voted with their feet. A larger percentage of those who stuck around were folks who could be reliably counted on to support the machine and its candidate. Independent Democrats and folks from the Republican or third parties had fewer and fewer people in their natural bases of power.
Anyway, that's my theory. I welcome anyone else who wants to rabble rouse over what is actually a pretty good step in the right direction.
Comments (10)
Dan:
You miss a really important point. One of the reasons that the police are despised in so many Philadelphia neighborhoods is because few if any of them are really familiar with those neighborhoods. The lack of familiarity really impedes community policing efforts.
Also, we don't really know the racial breakdown of the department but anecdotal evidence is pretty damning. It is somewhat ironic that Philadelphia schools do such a bad job that those who graduate from those schools can't qualify to join the local police force. On this measure, I actually agree with John Street. Opening the residency requirement may make it less likely that folks are hired from our poorer communities, even if those communities have 50% unemployment rates for all practical purposes.
Posted by Mike Cunningham | February 12, 2008 11:55 AM
The City cannot be the employer of last resort. These people will have to become Philadephia residents. Bravo Mayor Nutter! Dan, you're theory is basically sound. The related piece is that the former Mayor wasn't really focused on achieving results, so he wouldn't have realized that this was a way to improve policing.
Posted by Truthbetold | February 12, 2008 1:26 PM
Truthtold: I agree with you that the city can't be an employer of last resort but it is simply a "cop out" to not be able to find a few hundred qualified individuals in a city of 1.4 million people.
Posted by Mike Cunningham | February 12, 2008 2:44 PM
It should also be noted that the entire process of taking the civil service exam discourages lots of the best candidates from applying. The process needs to be completely rethought and perhaps scrapped altogether. Nobody who has a choice is going to wade through the paperwork to find a job if they can avoid it.
Posted by Anonymous | February 12, 2008 2:54 PM
Mike - if the City wants to be a dynamic organization, it cannot only hire people who have lived in Philadelphia for one year. It's just absurd. No other organization in the City limits itself in that way for good reason; you don't get the best and brightest by requiring residency for one year prior to even applying for a job!!!! Thank goodness Mayor Nutter has changed this for cops...I hope Council changes it for all jobs.
Posted by truthbetold | February 12, 2008 3:36 PM
Points well taken.
Posted by Mike Cunningham | February 12, 2008 5:28 PM
About time that Philadelphia stopped being so insular and provincial!
Posted by Anonymous | February 13, 2008 4:09 AM
Question: 6 months after the new recruits enter the force, will the city actually enforce their becoming city residents? Or come then, will that one "slight detail" all be forgotten? For the straightforward fact is that Philadelphia is very limited in terms of its being able to provide places any quality person would want to live here and now (which is why it's having such difficulty finding quality candidates locally in the first place!) And those currently running the city -- which now appears to include Mayor Nutter (sorry to have to announce that, folks) -- certainly aren't doing anything to correct that. Just the complete opposite.
Right now existing laws are being violated all over the place by those assigned to uphold them.
So given that, why would anybody in their right mind believe that after the 6 month period is up that the residency requirement law regarding the new police officers will be upheld? For what are we saying? An exception will be made for that one law but not all the others? Get real! For that's the tongue-in-cheek joke of this whole thing. And all insiders -- plus outsiders with brains that actually function -- know it. (Er, except the outsiders with brains don't quite see it as "funny.")
Anyway, picture a future Philadelphia policed by officers who have no personal stakes here, who can be as shoddy and reckless as they wish, because it's not their neighborhood. For that's what this is ultimately all about just to be totally real about it. It's coming, and what do you do to stop it? Suggestions anyone? Or is it now being fully concluded that Auschwitz II is not such a bad thing after all?
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