Deadly Force in Philadelphia

"an undercurrent of significant strife" between the PD and the community? This deswcribes much of America. Better trainjing, and better community relations may help, but the persistence of rasism and machismo in the locker-room must be addressed.

It stands to reason that if some police use too much force, others use too little. That is, to avoid shooting a suspect, they are injured themselves. The public and the media don't cares when that happens. The decision has been made that reducing force is the singular goal. The real problem, though, is using just the right amount of force, That is a difficult matter and, though it is the proper goal, nobody seems to recognize that.

Power is, and always will be, a struggle for primacy.

The Founders warned that there would be people like the nuts in the Nixon White House who insisted on a stronger Executive, and they intentionally devised a balance of power which would, if implemented, limit much of the excesses of a monarchy.

It turns out that the nuts won. We are now paying the price, and the cost will continue to grow. Literally, the Executive has seized the power to spy on the people, to conduct war on his own, and to kidnap people off the streets, transport them to secret locations, torture them, and deny them access to lawyers, courts, and their families. And nothing has happened. All of this nightmare has accepted by the people, as they have been spoon-fed the ticking time bomb scenario and the need for Jack Bauer, the good hearted agent who must occasionally do evil to keep them safe.

More to the point. We live in an era in which the police may kill (or arrest) people for any reason or for no reason, and nothing happens. This should not be surprise. It is part-and-parcel of an out of control Executive, and an imbalance on Constitutional power sharing.

Congress won't do anything about it, especially now. As a result, we must insist on a more fair judicial system -- a system in which the judges pay attention to the law and not serve as hand maidens to the Executive. The time for fear must end.

What we really need is to start retraining potential criminals from the ground up, maybe starting in early childhood, to learn to respect our laws and the police who protect them.

Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey is well respected "within the police community", but he has a history in DC that indicates questions should be raised. When he was police chief in Washington, he would appear before reporters and talk about how necessary protest and demonstrations have been to making changes in our society, including civil rights. Then, he would send out his police forces to spray chemicals on demonstrators and arrest them en mass. The DC police even went around arresting people in houses the NIGHT BEFORE demonstrations were scheduled to take place. The city had to pay out millions for trapping people in a public square and arresting everyone there. He kept the peace by violating Constitutional rights.

This is the normal course for a police chief in the capital of the world's second largest (by population) democracy. Somehow, the police chiefs understand that keeping order is more important than allowing open democracy to function. They get their orders quietly from the White House and they follow them or they just understand what the White House wants and make sure it happens.

Ramsey had his chance to create major reform in Philadelphia and, from all indications, he failed. His department has gotten away with excessive use of force for many years. Time for change.

http://terryreport.com

Of course police brutality and racism is a problem and warrants serious attention. However, it certainly seems as though many in our society, including the media, want to make the police scapegoats for a lot of the troubles of inner city life. But they're not. The problems and the fear of inner city life are much more related to civilian-on-civilian violence, a reality that demagogues like Sharpton and media talking-heads like to ignore.

How many police departments have signed on to the voluntary federal program?

Part of the problem is that there is no accountability for police misconduct, and they don't have to keep records of killed by police. I keep hearing about the "good cops", but where are the 'good cops" when cops are beating or killing unarmed citizens? Where were those cops in the killing of Eric Garner? We have that blue wall of silence, and we do not have that many so called good cops" as long as that exists.

I lived during the Frank Rizzo years. If Mr. Rizzo did not stop the lawless mobs coming down from North Phila. their would be no Philadelphia left. The lawlessness in North Phila. was and still is a disgrace. Temple University is still in No mans land. You could not go to Shibe Park for a ball game. When will the minority population stop their criminal behavior? The insanity of never ending crime in the minority neighborhoods must stop. In N.Y.C Harlem has grown from a crime ridden area to a growing and healthy neighborhood. Some black leaders are sowing hatred where there is none. This race war should be over by now.

It is the systematic use of state violence against people of color in the United States that makes the US’s recent sanctions against Venezuelan authorities ridiculous. Imagine how US citizens would feel if Latin American countries started to sanction US public officials. Perhaps this should be done, if for no other reason than to provoke debate.

In light of the overwhelming evidence that state repression in the United States has a classist and racist character, it would be a good idea for US society and government to dedicate itself more to self-critique than to the critique of other states, which sometimes passes (as happened in Panama 1989) from verbal critique to armed critique and armed intervention.

It's funny that you should mention the time period of 2007 to 2014. During that time, 11 officers have been murdered in Philadelphia (3 were killed while off-duty). Several others have been injured, but have survived.

Philadelphia is a very violent place. We actually tend to have a higher per capita homicide rate than other large cities, like Chicago, whose homicide rate is more commonly publicized.

http://guncrisis.org/2014/01/15/philadelphia-still-suffering-higher-homi...

http://guncrisis.org/2014/07/09/philadelphia-stays-ahead-of-chicagos-hom...

This is not a defense of shootings by officers (unless you want it to be). Officers are using their guns too often these days, and something has to be done about it. I'm just suggesting that there may be more at work than mere recklessness or racial enmity, or other factors which permit an easy narrative of "us vs. them", or otherwise place responsibility wholly on the officers. It may also be the case than many officers, working in areas with a high rate of violence, simply want to be the one who walks away.

No account of Philadelphia's police department is complete without mentioning its former police commissioner and city mayor, Frank Rizzo. Such was the impunity of the police at the time that I used to see policemen collecting "parking permits" from my neighbors so they could park their cars in illegal spots during the week. Those Saturday morning collections were part of a police culture that was little different from organized crime.

"The team did not make a judgment about whether the police were firing too often."

While the article makes the obligatory mention of the MOVE bombing that occurred 30 years ago, it fails to address the fundmental issue of whether the officers (working in America's poorest big city, and one of its most violent) actually are disproportionately resorting to lethal force where it is not necessary. Any consultant can come in and make various internal policy recommendations to address what "could be" factors in the number of shootings, but I doubt implementing these recommendations will change the basic fact that these officers will continue to encounter armed, dangerous and lifelong criminals on a daily basis, in some of the most dangerous neighborhoods (i.e., those outside of Center City and its adjacent gentrified neighborhoods which I imagine NYT readers are familiar with) in the country. 85% of suspects involved in these shootings were in fact armed, as the report notes. Arguments that officers should opt for non-lethal force or "shoot to incapacitate, not kill" when confronted with armed suspects are divorced from reality. To the extent officers need to make split second decisions, it is because it only takes an individual with a gun a split second to shoot at an officer. Solution: don't be a criminal and carry a gun.

Asking a police department to improve it's disciplinary system for excessive use of force has proved unrealistic, and it's surprising that DOJ took this route. Accountability is only possible through an independent investigative and prosecution process. Philadelphia should create one forthwith.

How can this discussion have gone this far with no mention of guns? Philadelphia has lost 8 policemen (and women) in the last 8 years. Every member of the police force gets an annual reminder that the person they are confronting probably has both the means and the motivation to kill them. As long as there is no chance of any regulation of who buys what type of gun this is what urban policing will look like. We have to realize this is one of the many consequences of our national choice to have an unrestricted second amendment.

Police excesses are not new. In fact, it has been shown that anybody with authority over somebody else can, and may use it inappropriately, and lead to 'abuse of power'; hence, the need for continuing education in handling difficult situations, in aiming to de-escalate whenever possible, and find ways to stop shooting at the least provocation. Audiovisual methods in real time must be on the 'on-switch' whenever a police officer is on duty and interacting with the public, so that disciplinary action can be swift, wherever the evidence falls. But after-the-fact study is awful, when compared to 'an ounce of prevention'. Currently, the hiring of officers not up to the task, psychologically and otherwise, may be a good start in resolving a protracted problem, so only folks with demonstrated truly humane qualities apply. A high order indeed, but essential for 'smooth sailing'. Something similar to finding a good teacher, whose aim is to promote learning and living in peace with each other.

I have not read the Philadelphia report but the Ferguson report is fatally flawed. All of the traffic law enforcement issues identified as racially motivated can be explained completetly by race-blind age and population demographics. Holder did not control for this so the conclusions of the report are not supportied by the data. There may be widespread racism or widespread, and expected, traffic violations by a young population that is 2/3 of the total or there may be both. Who knows? However, age and population demographics do predict the result and must be assumed to be the main driving force until proved otherwise.

390 shooting in 7 years seems excessive, but you would have to get all the facts before passing judgement. I taught use of force and police are allowed to use deadly force when they believe themselves or others are in danger of experiencing death or serious bodily injury. I taught Officers not to shoot at moving vehicles unless they are in eminent danger. Our officers must give a statement within 48 hours and they can have legal representation. If a Officer uses deadly force, he or she are removed from duty and their weapon is confiscated. If the force was ruled justified, they must be examined by a psychologist before they are returned to duty.

Considering what our nation has gone through lately, I'm very disappointed at the sensationalist implications of the editorial's headline--"Deadly Force in Philadelphia"-- and also disappointed that the editorial made no reference at all--none, zero--to the findings contained in Mr. Blow's column, "Officers' Race Matters Less Than You Think".

My encounters with the police in Philadelphia after living here for 65 years have been mixed. When we were teens, we were randomly picked up for loitering or trespassing (walking across the base ball field of a closed rec center) and either driven to the far part of the district and dumped onto the street or taken to the district, put in a cell without our belts and waited for our parents to pick us up. Another encounter had an officer wondering who was Bob and who was Robert? Today the problem in Philadelphia is a lack of outside oversight. The Inquirer publishes shocking stories of police malfeasance and little seems to happen to these officers. Overall, I haven't really encountered police since youth but others who have have sometimes felt their wrath.

Maybe the Philadelphia PD need to hire more white police officers?

I may be accused of keeping my head in the sand but in the 45 years I've lived in this city I have never had a so called bad, even impolite, encounter with officers of our police department. Like most of us in our nation the vast majority of our citizenry from whom our police officers are drawn are decent honest people. No one is perfect and maybe I'm lucky, but I think our cops are OK.

Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey should be commended for acknowledging this endemic problem and contacting the Justice Department.

It's not just the police. It was reported several years ago that when Lynn Abraham was DA, Philadelphia set a record for the number of cases in which the death penalty was invoked. Guess who this was applied to more than other groups?

Lynn Abraham is now running for Mayor.

Where there is crime there is violence.
Where people are poor there is crime.
If we spent more time, effort and money on our own cities instead of trowing it away on "foreign aid" AKA bribery, maybe we would not have the highest crime rate in the western world. Maybe we could also spend more effort in stopping white collar crime which costs us even more than the petty crimes of street gangs.

It's interesting to note that the vast majority of police shootings involved armed suspects. (59 of the 390 shootings cited involved unarmed suspects.) De-escalation is a fine strategy, but it fails as soon as the suspect ignores a command to drop the gun.

It is clear that the race of the mayor and police does not matter as both in Philadelphia are black. The issue can be seen as lawlessness and what can be done to change culture in this country starting from the United States Supreme Court that has given law enforcement wide berth to "stop and frisk" to prosecutors who choose not to prosecute wrongdoers, all wrongdoers.

While the program offered by Justice clearly is an important resource that police departments can tap for guidance, the recommendations seem tactical; and while tactical recommendations are important to achieve real movement, they address the symptoms while not getting at the heart of the problem.

What are the real motivating impulses that cause a police force to be excessively violent? Racism is something that should be vulnerable to greater political participation by African Americans and Hispanics, as it might in Ferguson, KS; but excessive violence to the point of irresponsible brutality seems to be a problem we've seen with police organizations as long as there have BEEN police organizations. What are the causal factors?

Does the Justice Dept. program focus on uncovering real causal factors and in recommending actions to address them? It should.

The Times has attacked law enforcement in all its facets -- from officer-involved shootings, to secret grand juries, to jail correction officers. The uniform criticism has been to call for less aggressive enforcement efforts. But nowhere in any of the coverage does the Times examine the day to day lives of law enforcement officers and the violence that they are charged with policing. Newspaper people are pretty ignorant when it comes to what happens on ghetto streets, in the jails, and in grand juries. And so their preaching for reform is not based on well-informed analysis. It's the blind trying to lead the blind.

Deadly Force in Philadelphia?

There’s a problem with Philadelphia's use of force policy, but there's also a problem with this editorial, which shockingly omits the salient fact in the report: "The report found that the overwhelming majority (81 percent) of the suspects in police-shooting incidents were black, while a solid majority (59 percent) of the officers who fired their weapons were white. For context, Philly's population is about 44 percent black and 36 percent white."

This is ANOTHER report about police attacking black people, often unjustly, how could that go unsaid in this editorial? The stuff about procedure and policy is secondary to the fact that in American cities, large and small, police are shooting black people, to varying effect and for often without justification.

While the report says Caucasian were not likely to be unarmed, I think it’s obvious that since they’re not being interacted with as often and probably not profiled in their communities, that’s not surprising. If Caucasians were stopped as often in Staten Island as blacks are in Harlem, I’m sure there would be more encounters with armed Caucasians.

The “radical political group” was MOVE, all the members of which had the last name AFRICA, for goodness sake! They killed 11 BLACK people, including 6 children and destroyed 61 homes in a BLACK neighborhood. And just as then, this was under a black mayor.

Turn your eyes homeward. How long do NYC cops have before they are required to give a statement? Is it still 72 hours? They should be required to be interviewed before leaving the scene.

Just understand that the function of assorted civil rights offices in Federal agencies is to find racial bias (at least against blacks) whether or not it actually exists. Perish the thought that anyone would expect blacks to be responsible for their own conduct - or criminal behavior. Looked at the FBI Unified Crime Reports on crime in the US? Looked at the racial differences?

In my own Philadelphian family, we have one uncle who was police commish of a large, decayed neighboring city directly across the Delaware. He had this job for several decades and I would always quip that whenever he wasn't wearing that city's uniform, he was sporting the expensively tailored silk suit of our favorite South Jersey Cosa Nostra family. I who work as a Federal law enforcement employee see the utility of having Homeland Security Investigations "implants" here in Hammond, Indiana who are not visibly Feds, where we have similar intractable problems of police brutality. Whenever the DOJ gives an area large earmarks for law enforcement they want to ensure the tens of millions are being properly spent, as is the case in northwestern Indiana. The goombah mentality is so firmly entrenched in Philly, and not restricted to one white ethnicity either, that you'll never see its disappearance, as the goons commemorate the late lamented Frank Rizzo and perpetuate their above-the-law approach to law enforcement.

Naysayers- I am a 60 year old white man who lives in the middle of no where. I have a nice new car. I am not a criminal, do not speed, only run stop signs going uphill on ice in the winter (all the time- I live in ice all winter).
THERE ARE SEVERAL TOWNS WITHIN AN HOURS COMMUTE which I avoid because I am afraid of the police.
This is not totally a black problem, or a city problem. It is a cops vs society orientation which we need to address. More troubling, it seems to get worse as the finding for public safety moves from funding by property taxes, to funding by income and sales taxes. The police are financially more and more dependent on the populations they target as troublemakers.

This editorial provides a soft and fuzzy description of a shocking and brutal situation. Police response should be measured, proportionate to the situation, appropriate, but instead it is often militaristic, governed more by the rules of war than the constitution, much as a force of marines might approach retaking a town in the middle east from the Taliban.

Eric Holder does indeed deserve praise for his work.

They should focus on the relationship between deadly force and a corrupt and unresponsive police force - otherwise known as the Philadelphia police.

Here is quote from a retired NYP offcier..."better to trialed by 12 than carried by 6"

1. Eric Holder and the Justice Dept. have political motivations that undermine their credibility
2. citing the number of times police fired at suspects is meaningless without analyzing the circumstances
3. referring to police actions 40 years ago is irrelevant to 2015 but is meant to be inflammatory
4. when a community has a high crime rate and a large number of individuals who commit crimes,there is inherntly "significant strife" between those individuals and police.

DoJ's COPS office is a good start, but it's painfully clear that so much more needs to be done. Congress has long been reluctant to cast a critical eye on policing in the US and too many members have lived through a time of rapidly rising crime rates that few predicted would ever drop so quickly to change their minds now.

De-escalation is the one of the most important parts to a police officer's job. It is part of what does (or at least should) make them police officers. We can't say that deadly force should never be used, but it should be a last resort, not a way to control a situation. Failure to de-escalate too often results in collateral damage as well. Washington is willing to assist, but it can't do much on its own, especially in the cases of police departments stalling for time... or a new administration.

Holder created a voluntary program for police depts who ‘want’ to remedy bias and excessive deadly force? Suppose they don’t want to ‘seek assistance’ to remedy it? This should not be voluntary. Complying with the constitution and law and order should be compulsory.

Suppose some cities think their police ‘force’ is just fine thank you, and say, we don’t need no stinkin outside help from the feds, so mind your own business? Rather an unfortunate name—a police ‘force’ using deadly force. So they can just keep killing people? And we will shake our heads sadly as we see more death by cop on TV? Especially now with videos of violence so frequent. Good television viewing! How much of this can we take?

Commissioner Ramsey spoke on a panel on Cspan. Said he reduced police shootings by 80 pct in Wash. DC after requesting a DOJ review there, and using more decision making training and other reforms.

The media should publicize comparison of what’s worked in various locations and what methods they used. Hold those up as an example to the non cooperators. Compare and contrast. That would also make good TV viewing. Hello, Ken Burns?
There are some police depts that have actually fired or prosecuted, and jailed abusive cops. This needs more media publicity, NY Times.

Deadly force is being used everywhere. While the focus of this report is Philadelphia, we see the same story unfolding everywhere, daily. Police resort to firing weapons first now, and within seconds of their arrival. Preserving citizens' lives is no longer a consideration. Racism is rampant.

It used to be that police would shoot out suspects' tires. This week, a young unarmed man in Georgia was shot dead in a vehicle that wasn't moving. In Los Angeles, video surfaced of a border patrol agent killing the car's occupant. In Michigan, a video surfaced of police brutalizing a 59 year old African American motorist. In Los Angeles, incredibly, two police officers who killed an African American young man with Autism in 2010 sued the department for discrimination and retaliation and won a $4 million award that is $3 million more than the family received for the wrongful death of their son.

The Guardian reports that as many as 545 police killings were unreported each year over the last eight years.
"The revelation called into particular question the FBI practice of publishing annual totals of “justifiable homicides by law enforcement” – tallies that are widely cited in the media and elsewhere as the most accurate official count of police homicides."

Congress needs to step in. Police brutality is a national problem and needs to be addressed as such.

http://www.rimaregas.com/2015/03/the-week-in-racism-and-police-brutality...