Cherelle Parker and David Oh have described themselves as “tough on crime” candidates. There is no doubt public safety and, thus, crime is one of the Philadelphians’ top concerns, exit polls after the primary told us as much.
但费城的问题似乎不在于犯罪的严重性，而在于犯罪背后的原因以及我们应该如何解决它。
The question isn’t whether crime is terrible; it is. It’s what’s behind it and how do we fix it.
“We are talking about kids between 11 and 15, from what I understand, shooting at each other, and then after that, you have ATVs and quads and dirt bikes racing down the streets,” said Oh, referencing recent issues in Chinatown and Center City.首先，我们需要知道的是，“严厉打击犯罪”只是一种华而不实的措辞，旨在针对我们城市和整个国家最害怕的人。自称将“严厉打击犯罪”的政治家会告诉你，他们应对这种问题的解决方法就是使用国家暴力。可事实是美国已经是全世界监禁率最高的国家，但犯罪仍然是一个问题，特别是毒品滥用和枪支暴力。
First, let’s clear some things up; the term tough on crime is a platitude aimed at the most fearful in our city and country more broadly. Politicians who call themselves this are telling you that their answer to systemic problems in our city is state violence. America is already the most incarcerated country on the planet, and crime is still a problem, as are drug abuse and gun violence, more specifically.
本报记者拍摄Photographed by Metro Chinese
尽管有政治上的说法认为犯罪率上升的趋势是由过于自由的司法管辖区的刑事司法改革造成的，但谋杀案在由共和党和民主党管理的城市中的上升幅度大致相等，甚至红州（共和党）的谋杀率是所有州中最高的。有证据表明，导致犯罪率上升的原因大多是国家层面的，比如：贫困、就业难、政治不确定性，以及新冠疫情对贫富地区的不平等影响等。
Despite politicized claims that this rise resulted from criminal justice reform in liberal-leaning jurisdictions, murders rose roughly equally in cities run by Republicans and cities run by Democrats. So-called red states saw some of the highest murder rates of all. Evidence points to broad national causes driving rising crime, such as poverty, opportunity, political uncertainty, and the unequal effects of COVID in poor urban and rural areas. 警察“拦截盘查”的做法从来没有起过作用。评审和法院发现，黑人和棕色公民更容易被警察拦下来盘问，而非法武器的回收率却不到2％。研究还发现，这种盘查会对个人身心以及他们所在的社区产生严重的不良影响。
“Stop and Frisk” has never worked; peer-reviewed studies and the courts have consistently found that black and brown citizens were more likely to be stopped and that illegal weapons were recovered less than two percent of the time.Studies have also consistently found that these sorts of stops had terrible psychological and physical impacts on individuals and their communities.类似于“拦截盘查”和“严厉打击犯罪”的意外后果是，越来越多的犯罪目击者不太愿意站出来为警方提供线索，警方也没有足够的警员调查严重的犯罪。这个问题已经在费城上演了。在80年代，费城警察局破获了该市80％的凶杀案；在2010-15年期间，这一数字下降到了65％；而到2016年，凶杀案的破获率仅有一半；而如今，已经低到不足一半。
An unintended consequence of policies like stop and frisk and the broader tough-on-crime narrative is that crime witnesses are less likely to come forward, and police have fewer officers to investigate serious crimes. An issue that’s already playing out in Philadelphia, in the 80s, the Philadelphia police department cleared 80 percent of homicides in the city; between 2010-15, that number dropped to 65 percent. By 2016 the number of homicides dropped to half; now, it’s less than half.费城的罪案破获率与其总人口最接近的两个城市凤凰城和圣安东尼奥形成了鲜明对比。从2016年到2020年，凤凰城和圣安东尼奥的罪案破获率分别为63.2％和65.2％。相比之下，费城在同一时期的破获率仅为44.8％。Philadelphia’s clearance rate starkly contrasts Phoenix and San Antonio, the two cities with the total population most comparable to Philadelphia. Phoenix and San Antonio cleared 63.2 and 65.2 percent of homicides, respectively, from 2016 to 2020. Compared to Philadelphia’s clearance rate of 44.8 Percent over the same period.
New York, Los Angeles, and Houston, the three largest cities in the country reporting homicide clearance data to the FBI, had clearance rates of 67.6, 70.1, and 47.2 percent, respectively. Philadelphia has the lowest clearance rate of any of the ten largest cities in the U.S., reporting homicide clearance data to the FBI, according to Department of Justice Statistics.
在费城贫困的少数族裔社区中，凶杀案的破获率更是降至16％至22％不等。
In poor minority sections of the city, the closure rate for homicides drops as low as 16 to 22 percent.
本报记者拍摄Photographed by Metro Chinese
与此同时，枪击案的破获率也大幅下降，从1969年的86％降至2020年的不到20％。
Clearance rates for assaults with a firearm have also fallen substantially from a high of 86 percent in 1969 to less than 20 percent in 2020.还需要知道的是，80年代和90年代如此高的破获率并非因为警方进行了出色的调查，抓住了实际的凶手而是因为他们操纵了法庭，制造证据，欺骗并殴打嫌疑人，迫使他们承认没有犯下的罪行。Let’s be clear many of the arrests made in the 80s and 90s didn’t happen because the police conducted stellar investigations that caught the actual killer. They had such high clearance rates because they manipulated the courts, manufactured evidence, lied to and beat suspects into confessing to a crime they didn’t commit.
All this while their bloated budget continues to grow and grow, while service for those most at risk continues to shrink along with taxes for the richest in the city. The Budget for the Philadelphia Police Department has grown from nearly 600 million dollars in 2006 to a current budget of around 800 million dollars and a proposed budget in the fiscal year 2024 of more than 855 million dollars.市议会议员肯德拉·布鲁克斯（Kendra Brooks）在谈到警方未能满足社区需求时说：“我们正在写空头支票，而没有获得投资回报。”“We’re writing blank checks and not getting a return on our investment,” said City Councilmember Kendra Brooks about the Police Department and its failure to meet the community needs.
Mandatory minimums have decimated communities across Philadelphia by incarcerating a generation of black and brown men in the city, mainly for low-level drug offenses. Beyond the obvious mass incarceration and mass supervision narratives based in fact, other often ignored narratives come into play for communities impacted by mass incarceration and the war on drugs.
The first is the impact of dehumanization caused by conditions in jails and prisons have on incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people and their families. The inhumane and dehumanizing conditions in jails and prisons cause long-term physical and psychological damage to those who endure them.
The second significant impact of mass incarceration and the war on drugs is that this felonization of a generation has created a class of permanently unemployable people in our city. Sure, a handful of companies might hire people convicted of felonies, but the vast majority don’t, creating both worker and job shortages simultaneously.
本报记者拍摄Photographed by Metro Chinese
“禁止勾选”（禁止雇主在初次面试时询问求职者是否有犯罪记录的政策）政策并没有像政策制定者希望的那样有效，以遏制这种经常带有种族主义的歧视。其结果是，那些希望成为有生产力的社会成员并为家庭提供生活所需品的人无法实现这一点，因此他们只能通过非法手段为家庭提供食物、住房和其他需求。
Banning the box hasn’t been nearly as effective as policymakers would have hoped to curb this frequently racist form of discrimination.A consequence of this is that people who might want to become productive members of society and provide for their families can’t, so they fall back into criminal behavior to provide food, housing, and other needs for their families that they are unable to through legal means.
Politicians like Parker and Oh are great at pointing to problems like drugs and violent crime, using their victims as mechanisms to create fear and outrage at the failure of the policies of the previous administrations. Yet, they never seem to come up with real solutions; just more of the same.
本报记者拍摄Photographed by Metro Chinese
像前共和党参议院候选人一样，欧大卫指出肯辛顿是费城问题的一个根源，他们说得对，这确实是一个重大挑战，而且已经持续了几十年。几十年来，费城一直过度监管、镇压和强制驱逐无家可归者的营地，这些营地通常属于那些瘾君子。
David Oh, like former Republican senate candidate, points to Kensington as a prime example of what’s wrong in Philadelphia, and they’re right that it is a significant challenge for the city and has been for decades. For decades Philadelphia has also used the same tactics of over-policing, crackdowns, and forced evictions of encampments of unhoused, often drug-dependent people in the area.
“Drug addiction is one of the biggest contributors to crime, and yet David Oh and Cherelle Parker stood against the safe injection site, a concept that has been proven to work in other places,” said Steve Costanza, an addiction specialist in Kensington.
Operation Sunrise in 1998 cracked down on crime and blight following the broken windows model. In recent years, Mayor Kenney has repeatedly deployed sweeps of the unhoused and every time, these tactics have failed and made the problems seen in Kensington worse.
While Philadelphia Police Department (PPD) has many dedicated officers who risk their lives every day and try their hardest to make a difference, it also has a long history of corruption, brutality, and racism to go with tough-on-crime policies that have never worked, nor have they’ve ever been asked to prove those policies work. Politicians keep stating the obvious and throwing more money at the police, demanding they solve problems they aren’t equipped to solve.
The Philadelphia Police Department is the fourth largest in the country, yet it has the lowest homicide closure rate among the ten largest cities in the nation; during the same period, homicides increased in Philadelphia by 80 percent. The Department has 6,000 uniformed police officers, yet 2,500 are assigned to patrols across the city. That means there could be as many as 22 patrol units for high-crime areas to as few as 11 for low-crime areas.自2018年以来，该部门未能达到在10秒内接听911电话的国家标准，但就像许多PPD问题一样，这取决于你住在哪里。如果你住在一个以白人为主的社区，你在911紧急事件中得到911响应的可能性是你住在黑人或棕色社区的两倍多。如果你的911电话是高优先级电话，那么警察到达那里所需的时间越长，优先级越高，而且比其他任何城市都要长，根据城市控制办公室在2022年对PPD进行的审计。
The Department has failed to meet the national standard for answering 911 calls within 10 seconds since 2018, but like so many issues with PPD, it depends on where you live. If you live in a predominantly white neighborhood, you are more than twice as likely to have that needed 911 response for your 911 emergency as you are if you live in a black or brown community. If your 911 call was a high-priority call, the amount of time it took an officer to get there was longer the higher the priority call, and it took longer than any other city, according to an audit performed on PPD by the City Controller Office in 2022.
It is important to note that Philadelphia’s homicide rate has fallen by 15 percent in the last two years as the city has deployed several violence prevention strategies, including youth engagement, educational and business opportunities, and mobile behavioral health intervention units. Larry Krasner’s office has also instituted policies focusing more on violent crime while deferring non-violent crime, leading to more violent criminals off the street while relieving some of the overcrowding in Philadelphia’s County prison system.
虽然帕克提出了一些减少费城暴力犯罪的可怕想法，但其他想法符合当前和历史数据。
While Cherelle Parker has some terrible ideas for reducing violent crime in Philadelphia, others align with current and historical data.帕克计划扩大费城青年项目“PHL Taking Care of Business Program”，改善生活质量问题，包括清洁街道和商业走廊、资助基础设施如路灯、增加更多监控摄像头、修缮住宅，并为被排除在就业市场之外的人提供体面的薪酬工作，这将对减少犯罪问题有所帮助。Parker’s plan to expand programs for Philadelphia youth, the PHL Taking Care of Business program, to improve quality of life issues by cleaning streets and commercial corridors, funding infrastructure like streetlights, adding more cameras, repairing homes, and providing decent-paying jobs to people locked out of the job market would go a long way toward reducing crime.
Parker and Oh’s plan to increase the police forensic department’s budget would go a long way toward solving the backlog of unsolved violent crimes in Philadelphia and getting violent criminals off the street.
No matter which of the two candidates from the major parties wins the election in November, they have a tough road ahead if they want to tackle drug addiction and violent crime in Philadelphia. They won’t get anywhere on either issue if they don’t get smart about the problems and stop playing to people’s base instincts with nonsense tough-on-crime rhetoric.
