Gillison, the mayor's chief of staff and a former public defender, emphasizes that "the New York Miracle," radically suppressing violent crime, didn't happen over four years or eight. "It took 10 or 15 years. Everybody took the same approach. There was this consistency."
Philadelphia is relying heavily on community policing. "We have to put police in the position of really being partners in the community with a skeptical - and I say justifyingly so - populace," he said, to get residents to trust the cops. "The right way to do this is to have the community understand that unless you stand up and help us, we can't get any further with what we're doing."
In community policing, cops patrol the same area repeatedly, often on foot or bike, becoming a familiar, reliable presence in the area. They help report broken streetlights and nuisance buildings, listen to the neighborhood's concerns. "Guess what? The cops get some credibility," Gillison said. "What we have to do is talk to each other and respect the fact that communities know how to heal themselves if we give them the opportunity and we support them." Gillison, a lay minister and man of abundant faith, sensed my skepticism. "I know, that sounds too simple. That can't be what we're going to do. But we've had amazing results."
David Kennedy, director of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice's Center for Crime Prevention and Control, adopts a markedly different approach: Identify the city's most violent and consistent offenders, then work with them directly to reduce crime. Kennedy has used his program, often called Operation CeaseFire, with mayors and police in more than 50 American cities, though not Philadelphia.
