"It's a war going on," said Donald Cave, who spoke during the gathering at Longstreth Elementary School. It's gotten so bad, Cave said, that his brother in Iraq recently contacted him to ask, "Do you need meto send you anything?"
Southwest community members, organizers and elected leaders gathered the same night that Commissioner Sylvester M. Johnson and other ranking police officials began patrolling high-crime areas across the city. The patrols are designed to bolster police presence by putting 140 officials on the streets once a week from 6 to 10 p.m. Johnson kicked off the program during a roll call at the 25th District in North Philadelphia.
Capt. Daniel Castro was among the senior officers on patrol last night - not as a supervisor, he said, but as an extra pair of eyes and ears to support police officers on the beat and the communities in which they work.
"When we were growing up, we played dodgeball. Kids today are playing dodge bullets," said Castro, who leads the forensic-science unit. "The other thing that's frustrating is, we're dealing with a culture of don't snitch. . . . We can't lock up people if we don't get information."
Despite the well-publicized deployment of 80 additional officers last month, along with continuing displays of police presence, violence continues to rage in Southwest Philadelphia.
On Sunday, a man named Steve Rodgers was found shot to death in his apartment in the 7000 block of Woodland Avenue. In the 1900 block of South Redfield Street, a woman was shot several times on Friday night - she survived, and police arrested her ex-husband, Bruce Robinson, 26, charging him with aggravated assault.
