Under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, violent crime has dropped 44 percent in four years. Once considered the nation's most dangerous city, New York is now one of the safest. Homicides fell from 1,995 in 1992 to 984 last year - a 51 percent decline. The murder rate now approaches the rates of the 1960s, before crack, street dealers and 9mm handguns eviscerated neighborhoods.
Philadelphia's overall crime rate has dipped in the last two years, but robberies have spiked and the homicide rate - twice that of New York's - has hardly budged.
A bipartisan group of Philadelphia legislators is eager to replicate New York's achievements. Led by State House Majority Leader John Perzel, they are pressing Mayor Rendell to copy New York's crime-fighting tactics and expand Philadelphia's police force.
At their invitation, former New York Police Commissioner William Bratton, architect of that city's law enforcement revolution, is scheduled to speak at a legislative hearing today at the Convention Center. Rendell is expected to attend the session, which will begin at 10 a.m.
New York's success has been sullied recently. Three weeks ago, a Haitian immigrant reported that officers brutally beat and sodomized him. His hospitalization triggered the arrest of four officers in the worst, though by no means the only, instance of police brutality on Giuliani's watch. The incident has sparked accusations that police have trampled citizens' rights in their zeal to save the streets.
``It's not just the bad guys who fear the police,'' said Rick Curtis, an anthropology professor at New York's John Jay College of Criminal Justice. ``It's everybody.''
It's the positive side of the New York experience that the Philadelphia legislators want to bring here.
