Sylvester Johnson: Blind
Failed Police Commissioner Criticizes Mayor Elect
Commissioner: ‘Stop-and-frisk’ risks unrest
As Sylvester Johnson wraps up his job, he calls Michael Nutter’s strategy a disaster.By Andrew Maykuth and Barbara Boyer
Inquirer Staff Writers
The city’s top law-enforcement officer says Michael Nutter’s proposed “stop-and-frisk” policy would be a “disaster.”Departing Police Commissioner Sylvester M. Johnson said the presumptive mayor’s promise to invoke the more aggressive law enforcement strategy would undermine the community rapport that Johnson feels he has developed in six years on the job. He said the next commissioner “is going to have a problem” with discontent - or worse, civil unrest - if that goodwill is undermined.
“What Nutter is saying - this stop-and-frisk is going to be a disaster,” Johnson said in an interview with The Inquirer. “What he’s saying, too, is that he wants a police commissioner to be harder. Well, harder on what? . . . Do you think locking people up is making a difference?”
There is so much to unpack in these first few paragraphs, that I almost don’t know where to begin.
Let’s start with the first sentence: The city’s top law-enforcement officer says Michael Nutter’s proposed “stop-and-frisk” policy would be a “disaster.”
Earth to Sylvester Johnson: your current “policy” is the disaster. Until the recent “lull” (described pithily with a Metro headline “Only One Person Killed in Philadelphia Yesterday”, sorry no link), the murder rate was on pace to beat least year’s murder rate, which beat out the year before that! There are fewer cops on the street (admittedly not your fault) and you’ve basically adopted a strategy in which ordinary civilians are invited to police their own neighborhoods: what will you do when one of them gets shot? Furthermore, “stop-and-frisk” is already policy here in Philadelphia, and while I’m troubled by questions of Constitutionality, I don’t understand this pretense that something untested is being thrown into the mix.
He said the next commissioner “is going to have a problem” with discontent - or worse, civil unrest - if that goodwill is undermined. What good will? The relationship with between communities and the police in this city is badly damaged because the cops don’t come when you call, they don’t cultivate relationships with neighborhoods, and they’re damn quick on the trigger when they DO show up. So let’s can this talk undermining all that good will: when my house was broken into and my girlfriend’s purse (including her ID) were stolen, your cops, Commissioner, not only failed to show up after two calls to 911, they explicitly discouraged her from filing a report when she traveled to the district office to fill out the forms.
Moving on:
I mean, and he gives the opinion that he’s going to run the Police Department, not the police commissioner. He will run the Police Department - ‘I will do deployment.’ Well, how are you going to deploy? He’s never been a police officer in his life, yet he knows more about deployment than we do. Um, Commissioner? Your own cops don’t think you know much about deployment either:
“Redeployment, we definitely need redeployment,” says Fraternal Order of Police spokesperson Gene Blagmond, criticizing the department’s myriad specialized units. “Not slamming the current commissioner, but there’s definitely a need for a change. We need somebody who understands that patrol is the lifeblood of the Police Department.”
“As evidence of the improved relations, he cited last week’s turnout in response to the call for 10,000 men to participate in community patrols and to defend their neighborhoods against crime.
“To have 10,000 men show up - Afro-American men - to join partnership with the Police Department has to show you that there’s not that much dissension between the police and the community,” he said.”
Didja ever think these men turned out because they love their communities and they’re tired of the police, under your leadership, abandoning them?
And then the rest is whining that the problem has nothing to do with his leadership: it’s all someone else’s fault, whether it’s the critics who are so unfair to criticize the “fair and compassionate” Commissioner, the criminals who use guns against the police (who woulda thunk it?), and of course the entire United States’ fault: “this country is very, very violent.”
Philadelphia can do better than this: the departing Commissioner should stop taking potshots at the Mayor-elect.
One Response to “Sylvester Johnson: Blind”
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October 30th, 2007 at 12:50 pm
a woman in my neighborhood - Heather, a Guardian Angels member - has investigated the 10,000 men idea, and found that it is designed to keep women on the sideline (they can provide support, and supplies like food and beverages)
This seems to emminate from a nation-of-islam propoasl.
Sylvester Johnson is done…his goose is cooked, and his legacy as police commisioner will be one of surging murder rates, increased crime, and an apathectic attitude from the police department.