Great Expectations

Two questions, somewhat related, regarding the propositions featured in your column yesterday, Tom.

Will there be enough moxey left in the Police Department, and cops left on the street, to do the intensified, focused and proactive policing that must accompany "stop-and-frisk" come January?

How long will the new mayor be committed to this, once the afore-mentioned bills come due and the tides of public and media opinion begin to shift away from his strategy toward city finances, tax cuts, etc., or come crashing down on him in a tsunami of criticism for overly-aggressive tactics when some young man whose uncle is on city council gets tossed?

Tom, you mentioned "stop and frisk" and the increased use of security cameras as two of Michael Nutter's ideas to take on crime.

What do you think of each tactic?

Thanks for your question.
No doubt police are expensive. And it happens to be one of the areas of the budget that receives little or no federal or state money to help defray the cost.
There was a Clinton Era program that subsisized police, but that was not renewed in the Bush Years.
Right now, 63 percent of all city employees are emplyed in public safety. That is a category that includes police, the d.a., sheriffs office, prisons, courts and public defenders.
And, Public Safety uses up $37 or every $100 spent on city government in Phila.
So, yes, it is expensive.
Using a (veteran) police officer as an example, it costs $100,000 a year to put one on the streets. That's salary, OT, fringes and shift differential cost.
Nutter has said he wants to put 500 cops on the street. You can do the math. That is an additional $50 million.
Long answer/short: Policing is expensive and costs can rapidly escalate.

-- Tom Ferrick

I am in favor of anything that works.
Both are worth trying but, you got to keep in mind two caveats:
When does stop and frisk become stop and harass?
Surveillance is only as good as the people who are monitoring the cameras.
As to the civil liberties aspect to surveillance, I cannot get too excited about it. If you go into any store or on any college campus in town or into many subway stops, there is camera surveillance.

Thanks for a very thoughtful article yesterday. One of the stats you cited spoke to something that I have wondered about for a while - the increase in the murder rate while other property and violaent crime have not increased. Given the seemingly personal nature of many of the homicides, this seems to suggest that the police is unable to control the most emotional and irrational crime, but seems to be performing at a fairly constant level on the types of crimes that (it seems to me) can be dissuaded through effective law enforcement.

Also, I think the recent slowing of the murder rate speaks to the uncertainty, if not randomness, of the murder rate. After being about 10% above last year for most of the year, we are now about even. As far as I know, there have been no significant policy changes and there has not been change in the leadership. No one really has offered an explanation and perhaps there is not one. That said, I have been disappointed that the Inquirer hasn't reported this recent decline as actively as it reported the higher rate earlier this year. The tally graphic seems to run with lower frequency as the numbers approach last year's level. I'm not saying that we should celebrate, but we should no the facts.

That's a good question.
In terms of broad trends, what has been happening is a general decline in all crime since 1995, through 2002 or 2003.
This is true not only in Philly, but in other big cities as well. Though at differing rates.
Since 2002, though, (in Phila. and elsewhere) the number have been heading up again.
Not all, but some.
Murder leads the way.
But, comparing 2002 with last year, we've also had a 24 percent increase in robberies, a seven percent increase in aggravated assaults, a 3 percent increase in burglary and an 11 percent increase in all drug offenses (sale and purchase.)
To complete the pix, we have had a decline in the following crimes: rape -4%, motor vehicle theft -12 percent.
That last number continues a trend in a dramatic decline in car theft in the last 7 or 8 years.
My analogy is that murder is like lightning. Dramatic, violent but limited in its effect.
The rest of crime is like the rain. It falls on a much broader area.
The question is: is this recent rise in crime a blip or an anomoly? Or is it the beginning of a longer-term rise in crime.
And two other questions -- neither one easy to answer. Why is it rising? What can be done to stop it?

-- TF

Steve Volk has argued that much of the murder rate is due to wide-spread drug trafficking in the City of Philadelphia. It has been implied that the city downplays role of heroin and other drug trafficking b/c it makes Philadelphia an undesirable vacation destination for tourists. It seems that the message that Philadelphians are randomly getting shot for no clear reason is more frightening to tourists than drug trafficking is. Maybe if Philadelphia acknowledged that we have a problem with drug trafficking and worked with the feds, our murder rate would drop. Ignoring the drug trade hasn't reduced the murder rate yet.

Well, it depends on how you look at the numbers.
The drug sale offenses are down 15% since 2002, which may indicate a lessening of the drug trade.
On the other hand, these offenses are closely tied to arrests -- and it may simply mean there are fewer arrests on the street.
I am not familiar with Steve's article on this.
I will tell you that when it comes to homicides, disputes over drugs is a significant cause. But, then, so are arguments.
As to a problem with drug trafficking, that is not a new phenomenon -- though the drugs of choice change. Remember when it was crack cocaine? Now it is snortable heroin.

TF

I think one of the basic problems is that it's hard to find factors that have change enough to explain the change in rates. It would make me feel better if there had been a clear change in the drug trade and in gang turfs that coincided with thi recent increase in murders - at least that would give a plausible explanation.

There does seem to be a certain casualness to the many of the recent murders, but perhaps I am forgetting what it was like in the past when the murder rate was even higher. I do wonder whether that mid 1990s - early 2000s economic boom didn't have some impact. Home ownership really skyrocketed in the black community nationwide (I don't know about Philly) and there seemed to be more optimism. Employment numbers were also terrific during this period.

This was also a period of prison building and the enactment of the federal three strikes laws. More people could be arrested and there was a credible threat that sentences would be long. We may not have the same credible threat due to overcrowding today, and perhaps even people in the initial wave are getting out of prison. I don't know if there is data on release rates and the like, but they could be useful.

Both explanations seem plausible, and certainly are not mutually exclusive.

I agree with MJB that drug trafficking and abuse, particularly heroin, are major issues for Philadelphia. They underpin a host of social, medical, economic and criminal justice problems, including homelessness, joblessness, HIV, prostitution, property crime, uninsured ER & hospital admissions, etc. And the next mayor needs to take a hard look at whether the "three-legged stool" of enforcement, treatment & prevention are being well resourced and coordinated in application in this city. My sense: they are not.

Whether or not drugs drive violent crime is debatable. The corellation between drugs and violence may actually be less direct, more tangental. One hypothesis is that persons who have a life-long history of drug abuse, or who are children of heavy drug users, are more inclined toward impulsive, violent outbursts than those who have no or little drug abuse history. Whether there is a physiological effect ("hard-wiring" problem) of long-term drug abuse in individuals or not hasn't (to my knowledge, at least) been empircally established. However, it's very plausable.

As is the hypothesis that those who lived as part of "drug-tolerant" sub-culture for extended periods of their lives, or were raised in one and have been exposed to abuse (physical, sexual or emotional) as a result, and engaged in or were exposed to impulse-driven behavior, including domestic violence, neglect, etc. (more of a psychological, sociological "software" problem).

The point is there are no simplly diagnosed causes, and likewise no "cookie cutter" solutions. Substance abuse, particularly heroin abuse and diverted prescription opiates (oxycodone, etc.), are persistent and rising problems, respectively, in Philadelphia and many other cities.

But these addictions may not be driving the violent crime as much as the "gangsta" culture that surrounds the violence perpetrators and victims, as well as the drug traffickers. Gangs, whether neighborhood-based or nationally-affiliated (Crips, Bloods, Latin Kings, etc.) are a rising threat to the city and region, as well. The "code of the streets", where even the most inoccuous sligt requires immediate & forceful response that escallates upwardly until fatal, is perpetuated by gangs. The next mayor, police commisioner, health commissioner and school district CEO should get together on these fronts ASAP.

Visually, in South Philly, where people forget that there is a historically AA community since the 30s and 40s due to the ship building and shipping, that was mixed with Italians, Jews, Germans, and Irish, there is now a remnant of hard crime that survived as a tradition.

This hard crime is grift, fraud, prostitution, drugs, dogfighting, numbers, and it is as Italian as it is African American.

What I see as a cause of violence is simple -- drugs and alcohol. Treatment for health problems, especially depression and addiction is highly stigmatized in the south philly ethnic groups, and crime is romanticized. Everybody who's grown up here knows someone who is in crime, and it is treated discreetly.

The new people moving in are the only ones who are taking action. This has caused more arrests in multigenerational drug and crime families.

Newbies are the only ones who are scolding the parents and grandparents for unsupervised kids, or for saying nothing when a kid walks up to the local numbers taker and says "I want a ticket." Newbies are the ones saying if I can pay my property taxes (to fund police and prisons), you can too, and you will or you'll have your house foreclosed upon.

My question is how can the papers be so accepting, so unquestioning, when people stand up and claim to have the keys to saving the neighborhood from itself? Kenny Gamble, for example, and Rahim Islam, of Universal Properties, far from "developing" housing on most of the property they hold, slow private development by not building on most of what they own. This KILLS the equity needed to create better neighborhoods and fund police. Also, all those vacant lots are a haven for illegal activity when the sun goes down.

If the papers interviewed the people who are really responsible for reporting the drug corners and demanding that the police move in and make drug arrests, which has resulted in our ward of going from 6 murders a year to zero this year, then you would get an earful about the effect of Gamble's spotty performance as a neighborhood transformation guru.

From Hawthorne to SWCC, Gamble and Universal hold on to and DON"T build on more properties than they do. This keeps the already low taxes on those lots still low, attracts crime, prevents private builders from taking a chance on the block because they are all waiting for Gamble and Islam to do something, and cheats the city out of millions of dollars in potential new property tax revenue and other revenue sources.

Gamble says this "preserves" neighborhoods. What it does is overlooks the drugginess of the old 'hood, and pretends it needs to be "kept as it is."

This antipathy to change is a toxic force. Most of the areas where the drugs are still dealt openly are not far from where Universal claimed it was going to build entertainment corridors, businesses, commercial interests, and affordable housing. Instead, these are some of the lots that NTI had to borrow money to clean up, fence, green, and monitor. These bad redevelopers cost they city more and create a pocket for crime to stick.

10,000 men volunteering on those corners is not likely to change a thing until those lots and empty shells are renovated, the Royal sold, and the myth of politically generous builders who get cheap property that they mostly hold while building a small portion are held accountable.

All the vacant city property is a magnet for crime and blight, and the property that the RDA has sold to "low income" buyers or builders has zero oversight or follow up.

Compared to the lots that get sold at sheriff sale, the nice new properties that people buy who have zero tolerance for crime do more for the neighborhood.

Why is it taboo to give credit to the private market for the effects on cleaning up the crime in the neighborhoods? Why is it dogma that the "affordable housing" builders always work as well as the private market?

Why can't the press be honest about the programs that are not working that retain crime? Poorly kept PHA scattered site housing, where you have to be a drug dealer, apparently, to get a house is a constant source of crime and arrests. Why don't any journalists interview the PPD who makes the arrests of residents of this troubled housing? Why can't residents request that PHA sell housing that isn't working and that innoculates the community with repeat crime?

Let me give you an example -- in the 17th police district, the PHA scattered site housing (owned by PHA) along Carpenter St. from about 15th to 24th St. was the focal point of drug crime and shootings, stabbings, and murder. Once enough arrests were made and PHA evicted certain tenants, the situation improved to very little crime. Yet the drug dealing is ongoing from most of the scattered site PHA property in the 30th ward. This is property that could be sold off, and assisted or active living complexes for seniors built by PHA instead of trying to house able bodied youngsters who are hanging on the corner all day taking drug orders.

This is Philly's biggest cause of crime -- that it is supported by an entrenched unquestioning unchanging approach to housing and welfare. The programs are poorly supervised unless they are new. Yet these properties, which pay NO property taxes are the source of most of the cost to the city in public safety.

PHA has to pay property tax, period. Everyone has to contribute. The city has to sell in an open, competitive process, the vacant and empty property it holds and not to family and friends, but to the highest bidders. And the myth of the "community activist" who gets cheap property that they do nothing with has to be dealt with. As Wilson Goode, Jr. referred to it these guys are "poverty pimps" who hold up more progress than the create.

Criminals who have a safe haven will create large swaths of crime. Until the average person can have a say in what properties are allowed to be used by criminals, it will be impossible to clean up the Section 8/HCV properties, the PHA properties, and the low income housing builders' vacant lots that are a huge source of ongoing, reliable crime.

Why does PHA need its own police force? If PHA housing is such a source of crime that the Philly police dept. won't deal with it, then that says something.

PHA should pay property tax to support the PPD, and any property that is the source of more than one complaint about drugs and crime, or of numerous evictions related to drugs, should be sold to the highest bidder in the private market. PHA needs the ready cash for worthy projects.

The city's focus under Street on "housing" the poor did little to screen those poor for criminal activity or restrict housing to families with a no history of arrests for neighborhood killing crimes.

The expose on the PPA was great. Where are the same exposes on the OHCD, the RDA, PAID, PCID, and the Real Estate Unit of the Dept of Revenue that collects (I mean doesn't collect) the $700 million (per Mark McDonald of the DN) in overdue property taxes?

We can actually afford to spend the money we once got from the Justice Dept to address crime. We just have to collect property taxes and put the money to good use, and dare to question the administration of poverty programs where there is criminal activity. Anyone who claims that there no use in examining the local anti-poverty and housing programs for criminal activity is a criminal himself.

So where is the balanced devotion of the papers to request this info on crime in public housing or RDA conveyed properties? Since PHA has a police force, those records should be easy to get.

As long as the emperor has no clothes, crime in Philly will remain one of the top ten employers, which seems to be why Street chose to avert his eyes to his supporters, the brothas and sistahs, who preside over this crime with impunity. From Shamsud-din and Faridah Ali, Ron White, and the "get down or lay down" crowd, why is there no further investigative journalism on the political entrenchment of crime in the Street administration? Nutter will inherit these people who are paid staffers.

Nutter will inherit a system where there will be huge resistance. Without help from investigative journalism, he has to rely entirely on the FBI.

Why are you guys waiting for the next FBI press release on municipal corruption and drugs? You're not going to find the answer in a stack of academic treatises. The answer is simple -- arresting and charging the criminals can't depend upon limited prison space. The prison space has to be tailored to the number of criminals in Philly. 9,000 beds is obviously way too little. We likely need county prison or locked units like the CEC space to hold 15,000 to 20,000 given our history of entrenched corruption and large scale criminal activity.

We are going to need a curious press again to cope with crime -- that means no more sacred cows beyond inquiry lest you be picketed.

Mr. Ferrick, have you read the latest version of Black Brothers, Inc., the Violent Rise and Fall of Philadelphia's Black Mafia?

Why so little interest in the subject of the close connection of politicians, to the cadre of influential black politicos who have had business and personal connections to known, prosecuted, drug felons?

As long as the press thinks it's politically incorrect to discuss black organized crime, BOC will rule Philly and be Nutter's thorn in his side as he tries to enact ethics and campaign finance reform, collect overdue taxes, equalize assessments, or balance the budget by cutting off the low performers.

As long as Philly's press pretends that there was never a long, hard history of corruption and crime in Philly institutions like the NOI, then it's never going to know where to look to see the crime and corruption now.

That means that the black muslim movement, the very ones who are marching, and gathering to protest crime and "take back" the neighborhoods never left the neighborhoods. If you go to the prison complex on State Road, you have so many women in black head to toe wraps you think you're in Saudi Arabia.

The press has to know that some of these guys don't stay rehabilitated, but use their religion to declare that society's prejudice and hate causes their continued criminal activity. It's not their education level that prevents them from getting the American dream, it's not their work history, training, continuing education, or control of family size to limit child support payments, it's society that "causes" them to not work legitimately.

I frankly can't buy it. Neither can Bill Cosby, Juan Williams, and host of other successful, educated black men, such as Nutter, who are asking hard questions about the assumptions that predicate the black power, Uhuru, "open the prisons to let out our menfolk" movements?

When is it going to be OK for a journalist to ask Sylvester Johnson if he feels that his majid is part of the problem in the past, and the present? Is it a better policy to have a separation of mosque and state in Philly? Johnson is endorsing a political movement, the black muslim movement, that is a big part of the crime problem in the past, and more recently. When is the press going to demand that these groups open the books?

Elmer Smith wants to totally ignore the conflict of interest that is obvious from having the black muslims try to paint themselves as organizing to fight crime. Who at the paper is going to dare to call him on it? He's a smart man with a deep, hard blind spot. That's what gets young black men killed.

I can't get how the public is so leery of pointing out why Sylvester Johnson and John Street think that 10,000 men, 50% of whom at least have done time, most of it recent, at Curran-Fromhold-istan, and other fine Black Muslim fortresses, think that a troubled group in Philly is somehow a rich source of solutions to crime?

Is anyone else blown away by the obvious irony? I can't tell you how many local black muslims I know and black power enthusiasts took all that anger and loaded into their children, who are now child-like adults doing time for hateful, scary crimes. One neighbor has two sons in prison, one for rape, and one is in a halfway house for dealing and using crack. This story is duplicated over and over in Philly.

Another neighbor, he's the only son out of a large number who isn't in prison. One stole, one is a sex offender, a violent one. Yet this is considered just normal for black men. Yet the women all went to college, some to grad school, and are doing really well, earning large salaries working for the city.

If you have a whole city of families like this, it starts to really seem inevitable that black men go out of their minds and commit crimes against their own.

It has to be OK to talk about what works in a family, and what doesn't. Having violent, angry communities, creates violent, angry children who grow up unable to live on the outside.

A man talking to a drug dealer on the corner is not bad, but it's no substitute for having a father in your life. If people won't get married before they have children, their kids pay the price. There's no substitute for a full time father.

The community black, white, asian, latin, whatever, has to be brave enough to stand up and say that kids need dads who live with them, who raise them, who love their mothers. You can't fake it.

You can't phone it in. And you can't duplicate it with guys on corners trying to "talk sense" to young folk.

If you have a man and a woman too immature to have a marriage, you have a man and a woman too immature to parent successfully. Instead of marching, why not use relationship counseling? Instead of trying to pay for women who have children, why not enforce child support fully instead?

Instead of trying to allow felons to vote, why not try to teach that if you commit a felony, you forfeit the right to vote?

Instead of the local papers trying to preserve the welfare status quo, why not admit that it failed in many respects, especially as there was no requirement that addicts not be allowed to receive welfare?

We created a crack addled city and the babies of the moms who could nurture their alcohol and drug addictions have grown up.

PA should fund abortions via Medicaid for anyone as other states do. Anyone who applies for aid of any kind should be drug tested, and referred to treatment. Of course, an addict with a monthly stipend will never get sober.

Anyone who has a member of the family convicted of a crime should not get welfare, AFDC, or such. Supporting moms whose baby daddies are in prison has to stop. It makes criminality normative. It removes the incentive to do the hard work of being legal.

Philly is in denial that it needs to fine tune and fix how it conducts its support of multi-generation abuse, addiction, and crime. Housing is riddled with prostitution, addiction. Low income supports often support the 24/7 hardcore party lifestyle.

At some point, the bipartisan examination of how criminals survive has to be closely examined. We have a duty to make it impossible to survive living your life in crime.

Seizures of drug houses have to increase. It's working, but obviously, it's not a large enough program. A mom who says she can't control her son will find a way when she is faced with losing her home.

This isn't rocket science. Why throw up your hands and say there's no way we can know what works? The Justice Dept. library is filled with resources, studies, and other information that shows what works.

Stop and frisk -- works.

Seizures of drug dealer's property -- works.

Well run social programs that don't allow addicts and criminals harbored within them -- works.

Enough police and enough court and prison/parole/probation capacity -- works.

$700 million in uncollected property taxes collected to pay for the amount needed to address crime -- it works.

Pretending that we can fit the crime problem into prison space that was too small when it was built -- doesn't work.

Marching -- doesn't work.

Celebrity BBQs against crime -- doesn't work.

Town watch -- works.

Sentencing long enough for the harshest drugs, such as crack -- works.

Neighborhoods that are all one income, all one race -- don't work.

Diverse neighborhoods of many ethnic backgrounds and incomes -- work.

Why are some of the papers' writers so narrow about solutions to crime? Annette John-Hall wrote "Hope from a call to action" in a kind of obliviousness.

"Little ones in size small "Stop Killin' " T-shirts clung tightly to their dad's hands amid the throngs of black men," she wrote. Is that hopeful? That's sick and tragic.

"One of the most hopeful scenes among the many I saw in the stream of volunteers who answered the 10,000 Men: Call to Action campaign over the weekend were the large numbers of African American fathers who came with their sons," she writes.

"It was something I wish everyone could have seen, a scene that dispelled the perception that all black kids are gun-toting criminals, that all black men are uninvolved baby-makers." I'm not aware that anyone, anywhere has ever said that "all" black men are gun toting criminals or uninvolved baby makers. But some are, and more are in the black community than in others. This is the kind of hyperbole that proves a point, but not the one the author intends.

"But what brought them there - 10,000 strong - was a crisis. The need to be part of the solution to restoring their poisoned communities, to save themselves, their families, and their endangered brothers." Aren't all people brothers? Isn't it a crisis for every resident of the city? I don't know a single city resident of any race that doesn't think so.

"If he sees his father and other black men as a positive role model, it lets him know that this is the right thing to do," said Richard Leach, who was with his 8-year-old, Kyree. "It starts within the home. You can't blame everything on the police."

I'm not sure I can blame ANYTHING on the police. The writer doesn't get any clarification. Why the police are demonized by blacks is a mystery to me, and more evident than any "demonization" of black men who commit crimes, as this statement illustrates. Even blacks are pointing it out. But years of bashing the very entity the black community needs most, which is more representative than ever, is counterproductive, yet systemic. This "system" is more toxic than any alleged in the article.

"It's vital to bring the sons out," said Wendell Jenkins of Wynnefield, there with Wendell Jr., 12, who carries the weight of worry at such a young age. "I would hate to lose my friends to gun violence. I want it to stop. I'm scared," she writes.

Most of these guys are coming in from the suburbs to the inner city. Maybe instead of trying to keep the inner city all one class and race, we should encourage their brothers to join them where the schools are better, and the streets safer. Cheap housing and low taxes is creating a donut of poverty and crime in the midst of a booming economy, so why keep people in the city? Yet this writer is one of the liberals who call for "housing" and "property tax forgiveness" and "stopping foreclosures." This robs the city and the children who are trapped here.

"Every man who is father has a responsibility to be a father for someone who doesn't have one. If a kid you know gets shot, that's blood on your hands, too." These kids wouldn't have been conceived if they didn't have fathers.

The fathers have to be in their lives, and we have to promote policies that enforce that. Those fathers have to pay up, and be responsible full time. New ideas are needed.

"My own father wasn't always at home. His job as a merchant seaman had him splitting his time between home and the freighter he called home four to six months out of the year." This writer's father was married to her mother. He was a father when he wasn't working to support the family. That's not being a father "part-time." There's no way you can make this dad equivalent to the men who only see their kids infrequently, don't live with them, don't help raise them, and don't pay child support. We have to be honest about the nature of the problem. Women are having babies without being married, with no intention of even living with the father, or even of having the father be a father. This is a direct contradiction of the mores of previous AA generations. Every black senior says the same thing -- that wasn't how we did it in our day.

"Now imagine a whole generation of boys - and girls - who don't have that kind of accountability and love because their dads have disappeared." What about the social policies that make this possible, even desirable, for a whole group of people? Let's be honest.

"And it's these life lessons that teach them how to negotiate minefields of racism, conflict and deal with anger, which comes from being demonized like no other segment of society." Mustafa Ali was not demonized for being black. He's demonized for having a family and choosing instead to assasinate two other fathers. The black community has too many members who are not listening to what the larger community is really saying about them. The larger community isn't saying that black men are demons. The larger community is bombarded with the reality of the homicides, crime, and normalization of crime in the name of being a victim. The large community of all races, rejects the inner city notion of victimology justifying crime.

"And as if being wiped out by systemic forces isn't bad enough, black men are also accelerating their demise by their own hands." Systemic forces? I'm not pulling the trigger, and neither is "the system." But there certainly is a system that makes public housing the housing for life, for generations, and welfare the income for life. That system is a liberal, democratic one in Philly. Maybe it's time to look at cities where a more conservative view has turned things around. Can this writer face such a new idea? Or are her politics and assumptions hardened in place?

"In Philadelphia, half of last year's 406 homicide victims were black males ages 15 to 29, overwhelmingly killed by other black males. That's a staggering number, when you consider black men make up only 4 percent of the population." Right, so how is any other "system" of other people responsible for this? Really is there a white system that causes this? What is it? Where is it? Who runs it? Isn't this a simplistic notion that ran out of steam by the end of the 70s? We have a multi racial city council, black mayors, we have a city that has built affordable housing, that has one of the largest public housing landlords in the country. Maybe what we need is less, not more of the old ideas about housing and poverty.

"And all of this crisis has been met by apathy. A black problem. Let them solve it." Actually, I hear the majority community in PA saying let's end welfare as we know it by having work to welfare, and have that embraced instead of having liberals call this the "cause" of this "system" that creates criminality. A majority has spoken, but there are certain members of this press that just can't hear it. No one has left the black community "alone" to "deal with it" but the black community has often rejected the solutions that worked for other ethnic groups. No one is leaving the "black" community "alone" to solve this, because all of us pay taxes to support solutions. But the solutions that are working are the very solutions that black liberals won't hear.

"We can argue whether it really is just a black problem created by black people, but that's a waste of time." I can't understand how anyone who pays taxes can be accused of not being part of the solution. As a member of the majority community, I bristle, I'm offended. My charity, my work, and my taxes support this community of which I'm instead accused of "demonizing." Instead of cherishing the opportunity to live fully, to many in the inner city perpetuate the same mistakes. How can I prevent that?

"For once, black folks aren't waiting for someone else to swoop in on a white horse as bodies continue to fall." Aren't they? Street still begs Harrisburg to pay for a school system that is supposed to be supported with property tax collection. Instead, Street opts not to collect property taxes, especially in the neighborhoods where the schools are needed the most, and property taxes are collected from owners the least.

When is the black community going to demand that taxes be collected to have schools that are good enough? You can't have 50% of the owners in West and North Philly never paying taxes, and then cry that education is rejected for blacks by whites. Blacks have the solution, and instead, they choose pols who won't collect that money. The system that oppresses blacks is a system that is presided over by black liberals who want cheap, easy votes. Taxes are out of date, no one is collecting them at a reasonable rate, and no one is demanding that their community step up to contributing their share. Isn't this really the solution -- to demand that neighborhoods pay their taxes on time, in full to fund schools and public safety? Shouldn't PHA pay property taxes like all landlords? Why is cheap housing more prized to black liberals than great schools? The power is already in the hands of the black community to fix things.

"The next few weeks, when volunteers go through orientation at neighborhood sites, will determine whether the feel-good call-out will become a legitimate movement or just a consciousness-raising pep rally." The solution requires no "movement." The sixties are over. But a movement to do what successful school districts do has to begin. Cheap and uncollected property taxes are cheating schools, services, and public safety. But pols claim that we have to "preserve" the very neighborhoods that are killing black youth, trapping them in bad education and limited job opportunity. Why not allow the neighborhoods to be multi-racial, and multi-income? Income diversity is key to safe streets.

"I tried to raise my son the best I knew how - but there was a place in him I couldn't touch," said Dorothy Giddings, who lost her son, Andre, along with her mother and a family friend to a brutal triple slaying in 2005."

Is this a surprise? A revelation? Should someone have the courage to promote or demand marriage before illegitimate child after illegitimate child? Instead of pretending that this racism by whites, perhaps look at the family composition of many races? Americans are getting divorced more than ever, but they at least were married to begin with. This protects children. Marriage is about society protecting children legally. Ignoring it is ignoring the needs of children.

"Addressing 10,000 men, Gidding said: "We gladly take a step behind you where we should be. Women aren't supposed to be on the the front lines." So let's support better child support collection, and mandatory child support payments by all city employees. Every city employee who owes child support should have his wages garnisheed to support his children, and no mother should get any government subsidy until this happens. Anyone in prison should have their wages garnisheed for child support first.

"Please," she implored, "our sons need you." It's too bad this lady didn't say "YOUR sons need you." That's where liberals have utterly failed in their enabling and permissiveness. Women can hardly conceive that these sons are the sons of their fathers. Fathers are not even referred to as fathers.

This is suicide. Why does the paper cling to this tired old extreme liberal viewpoint when the rest of the state, even the rest of the country, has changed? There's not going to be the support from Harrisburg in the claustrophobic view of crime, because most of the rest of the state sees it as insanity.

A man who I was not friends with, trespassed on my property, wrote down my license plate number and turned it into small town, and one lg. town of his police officer friends to cite me (even tho I was NOT doing anything wrong) he told all three of them to cite me for speeding. So I had to pay three tickets. Now I want revenge, any ideas? Also if my car ins. goes up, I will really want revenge. But for now the answer is to simply cancel and buy yet another ins. Letting him my enemy win again. I eye witnessed him doing the trespassing and stealing of the numbers off my license plate, If I had of been armed and shot him dead, would the law have upheld me or thrown me in jail for 25 years? Just curious. You know how tricky the law is.SC