Violent Crime

By Alan Gottlieb When the British newspaper the Telegraph asked readers which of six suggested measures they would like to see introduced in the House of Commons, the response was surprisingly tilted toward one significant proposal. Of the six suggestions, which included setting a flat tax and placing a term limit on the office of prime minister, what drew more than 86 percent of reader support was a proposal to repeal the handgun ban of 1997. This is an unscientific poll, but the results should signal to U.S. gun prohibitionists that their habitual use of the United Kingdom as an example of domestic tranquility where guns are concerned just took a direct hit in the credibility department.

While wearing a locator bracelet as a condition of his parole, Burlington City resident Ronald "Bang Boy" Kinston allegedly ran a gun- and heroin-distribution ring as a leader of the Bounty Hunter Bloods gang. He was arrested in August when authorities discovered in a car four semiautomatic handguns that were being delivered to him from North Carolina. Law-enforcement officials say they then seized more than 300 "decks" of heroin, distribution paraphernalia, cash, and hollow-point ammunition from Kinston's house.

Violent crime went down 3 percent overall in Philadelphia last year, but results varied significantly among the 23 police districts. The Ninth District, including the western part of Center City and Fairmount, reported the greatest reduction: 27 percent. The 16th District, in West Philadelphia, and the Fifth District, in Manayunk and Roxborough, reported decreases of 15 percent or more. The Third District, in South Philadelphia and southeastern Center City, and the Seventh District, in the Northeast, reported the largest increases in violent crime: 12 percent.

THE ANNUAL COST of violent crime in Philadelphia averages more than $472 per person, or a total of $736 million in 2010 alone. That's just one eye-popping conclusion of a new study examining costs associated with violent crime. The yearlong study by the Center for American Progress that was released Tuesday analyzed the direct and intangible costs associated with murders, robberies, assaults and rapes in eight U.S. cities, including Philadelphia. Direct costs are those borne by residents and city governments for increased spending on policing, prosecuting and incarcerating violent offenders; and by the victims of violent crime in medical expenses and lost income; as well as foregone tax revenue to cities.

The dealer and his lookout were peddling crack on a Camden side street. It was midnight in Whitman Park, a desperate neighborhood in a desperate city. An undercover officer made a buy. Camden Police Lt. Greg Carlin's radio crackled: "Move in, move in. " When the unmarked cars raced up, the dealer, a big guy in black, froze in the headlights. His lookout took off. Carlin hit the gas down a one-way. Other officers ran after the lookout, darting across an intersection. Carlin and another officer bore down on the fleeing suspect, tackling him before he made it into a patchwork of yards.

The Rev. George Charles Hoeh was a dynamic and well-loved Episcopal priest, a self-made millionaire and a thoroughly exuberant member of the human race. Even the detective investigating his murder remarked, "I haven't talked to anybody who didn't like him. " In his priestly life, Father Hoeh walked among the flock of his small, secure neighborhood parish in Brooklyn and served as confessor, comforter and social conscience. But he walked more dangerous paths in private life - on those frequent occasions when he abandoned Brooklyn for the relaxation of his commodious retreat in the affluent Sweetwater section of Mullica Township, N.J. It was there, on a Friday in June last year, that Father Hoeh, 58, carelessly invited home a stranger, a young man who called himself Paul and said he was from Minnesota.

There was a time - say, three years ago - when Philadelphia was "Killadelphia," and many people seemed to think the city was about as safe a place to walk around as a lion's den at feeding time. While acknowledging that the city is still far from a utopia, Mayor Nutter, Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey and other officials joined yesterday to laud a 10 percent across-the-board drop in violent crime in 2009. Oversized color charts, situated inside North Philadelphia's 22nd District's roll-call room, bore the fruits of a year of progress: Homicides fell 8.4 percent, from 333 in 2008 to 305 last year; aggravated assaults fell 10.2 percent from 9,350 to 8,398; rapes dropped 13.2 percent, from 1,105 to 957, and robberies were down 6.5 percent, 9,343 to 8,738.

The sun was going down two evenings ago as Art Benica described to a gathering how a young woman was slain last year while working as a night clerk at a motel in Virginia Beach, Va. He told how the woman had screamed, begging two robbers not to hurt her. He told how the two thugs took $230 from the cash register and then discussed who would kill her. The woman killed by a shot to the back of the head was Benica's sister-in- law, Julia Benica....

Mary Previte gets angry when she thinks about it. "I watched this little 14-year-old charged with murder bobbing for apples with the other juveniles," said Previte, superintendent of the Camden County Youth Center in Blackwood. "He slurped up the activities like a 9-year-old, as though he had never done anything like this before. "I watched him bob nine times to compete with the other kids, and I watched him compete so hard at musical chairs. I said to myself, 'Who did this to this child?

Several of you have ambitious, long-term plans to address the root causes of violent crime, which citizens cite as the top issue of this campaign. But tell us what you'd do in your first year as mayor to make sure there is less violent crime in Philadelphia in 2008 than in 2007. Bob Brady Cutting crime in Philadelphia will be my top priority as mayor. During my first term, I will put 1,000 additional police, parole and parent truancy officers on the streets. I will work with the Philadelphia police, who have endorsed me, to put more officers in the neighborhoods and reengage neighborhood policing.

By Julie Stewart and Pat Nolan Faced with an intolerable level of gun violence in Philadelphia, many legislators feel an urgency to do something to fix the problem. But the new mandatory prison sentences for illegally carrying a gun in the city are not the answer. The bills, introduced by State Sen. Lawrence Farnese (D., Phila.) and State Rep. John Taylor (R., Phila.), would impose a two-year minimum prison sentence on individuals caught in the city with a gun that did not belong to them.

The Boston Marathon bombings have reminded Americans that we can never let down our guard against terrorism. But Mayor Nutter has rightly pointed out that the daily carnage from violent crime in the nation's cities also demands attention. Nutter wants to see violent crime, like terrorism, attacked from a national as well as a local perspective, opening the door for more federal aid for municipal police. America hasn't done much at the federal level to address violence since President Bill Clinton won congressional approval of the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. The bill was passed with support from law-and-order Republicans before Clinton was crippled by the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

Mayor Nutter hailed the continued decline in crime across the city, drawing particular attention to the precipitous drop in homicides in the first three months of 2013. Nutter, appearing Monday before The Inquirer editorial board, cautioned that "a quarter does not make a year. " But the homicide and violent-crime stats for the first quarter of this year are the lowest of his 5+ years in office. ... Last year began with a violent three months, Nutter said, and the police "spent the rest of the year trying to recover.

AS LAST WEEK ended, after Mayor Nutter was the guest of honor at a virtual Whack-a-Mole festival, he turned and fired. Not at the Inquirer for its lengthy series documenting his failure to collect almost $300 million in unpaid real-estate taxes owed on 100,000 delinquent properties, not at unions that condemned him as a union buster, not at an acidic cartoon by Signe Wilkinson and a scornful column by Your Favorite Columnist. Instead, Nutter fired off a letter late Friday afternoon to the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations that brutally bashed (better late than never?

AS A LIFELONG resident of this city I have seen and heard of a lot of things. What happened to me recently made me so mad that I wanted to get up and just leave this city. I received a $50 citation for putting out my trash early. Are you kidding me? The fact that the city wastes time and money on something like this is absurd. OK, so I find out that trash is not allowed out until after 7 p.m. and I put mine out around noon the day before. The reason is, I worked 2-11 that day and didn't want to have to do it at 11:30 when I got home.

HARRISBURG - Kathleen Kane, a former prosecutor from Lackawanna County, made history twice Tuesday when she took the oath as Pennsylvania attorney general, becoming the first woman and first Democrat elected to that post. With hundreds of people cramming the Capitol Rotunda floor and dozens gazing down from staircases three stories high, master of ceremonies Dan McCaffery, Kane's onetime rival, said to soaring applause: "You're witnessing history. " Thus, too, began an unusual dynamic in the Capitol.

When Mayor Nutter took office in 2008, he set some audacious goals for ending Philadelphia's long run as one of the nation's most violent big cities. Within two years, homicides had dropped by nearly a quarter and shootings by more than 15 percent. But the flush of early success has since been tempered by the city's toughest streets, where violent crime has proven once again to be deeply rooted. Progress in recent years has been more incremental. And with homicides - the most closely watched barometer of crime - ground has been lost.

When Mayor Nutter took office in 2008, he set some audacious goals for ending Philadelphia's long run as one of the nation's most violent big cities. Within two years, homicides had dropped by nearly a quarter and shootings by more than 15 percent. But the flush of early success has since been tempered by the city's toughest streets, where violent crime has proven once again to be deeply rooted. Progress in recent years has been more incremental. And with homicides - the most closely watched barometer of crime - ground has been lost.

AS A FORMER law-enforcement officer, homeland security inspector and intelligence analyst for both federal and municipal jurisdictions (and a law-abiding registered voter), I have written to my elected officials to plead for their support in common-sense solutions to recent rising trends in violent crime, to include tragedies such as the mass-murder at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. As a citizen with a specific skill set in crime suppression, I believe in the inalienable right to self-defense, and am aware of the statistical disparities between crimes committed by legal, responsible gun owners and those who succumb to criminality or are afflicted with a mental-health disorder.