Mayor Street, facing the prospect of another violent year in Philadelphia, defended his anticrime programs yesterday and declared, "I'm not prepared to concede that our efforts have been in vain."
Street, joined by top aides and cabinet members, told the Inquirer Editorial Board that he planned, among other things, to expand efforts to combat truancy and curfew violations as a way to stem the violence.
"We're going to fight through this," he said. ". . . We're not a whipped crew."
Street's defense of his administration came as the homicide rate continues to rise and mayoral candidates roll out their own crime-fighting plans, which often contain implied criticism of the mayor.
Street said he was not criticizing the public-safety proposals of the men who want to succeed him as mayor, but his words and reasoning were a sharp rebuke to mayoral candidates such as former Councilman Michael A. Nutter.
Nutter has pledged to declare a crime emergency in crime-plagued neighborhoods on his first day in office, and he suggested this week that Street should step down if he can't make Philadelphia safer in 10 weeks.
The mayor said yesterday that declaring a state of emergency would be "a tragic and unfortunate error."
It would, he said, damage the city economically and set back by decades police-community relations. A declaration would tell residents, Street said, that "you're less free in this neighborhood than other neighborhoods."
Street also derided calls for massive increases in the number of police hires and police surveillance cameras, saying that proponents do not understand, or are not being honest about, how prohibitively expensive those actions would be.
U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah (D., Phila.) has proposed putting up 1,000 crime cameras "by the end of our tenure in office" - presumably over two four-year terms.
The city currently has 18 cameras up, and Street said he would add more this year but did not cite a specific number.
Crime has become the top issue in the mayoral campaign because of the surge in shootings and killings since 2002, when the city had reached a 17-year low with 288 homicides.
Last year, Philadelphia had 406 homicides.
As of 11:59 p.m. Tuesday, there had been 26 slayings, compared with 16 for the same period last year.
The mayor noted that violence had increased in many other cities, and said that if there were clear answers on how to respond, "we'd be sharing across the country."
