PHILADELPHIA - The incoming mayor of this city is proposing a plan of aggressive police tactics, including limiting the movement of people in high-crime neighborhoods and directing officers to increase searches of people on the street for illegal weapons, all in a desperate effort to curtail gun violence and stop the murders of young black men.
Mayor-elect Michael Nutter, angered by the brazen shooting of a police officer and a persistently high number of murders that threatens to top 400 for a second consecutive year, has vowed to declare a crime emergency as soon as he enters office.
Nutter also plans to bring the police force to full strength for the first time in years, saturate high-crime communities with officers, limit or prohibit street gatherings and establish curfews in those neighborhoods.
The mayor also wants to change municipal employment practices to give former prisoners a better shot at being hired by the city and to give a three-year tax credit for businesses that hire former offenders.
"Last year, 406 people were killed, 70 percent of them black men," Nutter said in an interview.
"If it were anything else, an explosion or a health outbreak, the federal government would have our city on lockdown trying to find out what's going on with agencies we haven't even heard of.
"But it's one homicide here, one there - people doing bad things to each other," said Nutter, a former city council member. "It's ripping the heart out of the city. It's damaging the morale of the city. It's damaging all of us."
Nutter said the shooting of police officer Charles "Chuck" Cassidy in a Dunkin' Donuts in Philadelphia highlighted the need for tough reforms.
"The shooting - I call it the assassination - of police officer Chuck Cassidy has transcended the issue of race, and put the problem out there so that everyone in Philadelphia could understand it," Nutter said.
Parts of Nutter's proposal have been used in other cities to reduce crime. The District of Columbia has employed a curfew in the past. Aggressive "stop and frisk" tactics have been put into place in Los Angeles, and Minneapolis. .
In Philadelphia, the overall number of murders rose to 406 last year, an 8 percent increase from the year before. Police are overwhelmed with cases, said Lieutenant Mel Williams. Eighty detectives are working 372 cases, solved and unsolved, for this year alone. There are hundreds of such cases from previous years.
