Great Philadelphia Leadership

Wyatt Earp over at Support Your Local Gunfighter is a Philadelphia police officer, and marks an unfortunate milestone for the city: the 200th murder of the year.   Read the whole thing.   He doesn’t have good things to say about Commissioner Johnson’s last act of “leadership”:

Look, when you take someone who has been behind a desk for half their career and put them in patrol for the summer, who is that helping? No one. They don’t want to be there, so they’re not going to be stopping cars and rushing to priority jobs. But, when the media asks, the brass can say, “We’ve increased the amount of officers on the streets!” It’s a shell game.

Yup.  I talked about that a few months ago here.  Until the city politicians actually face the problem, instead of deflecting blame to Harrisburg or elsewhere, this is going to continue.  The city’s politicians lack the political courage to do anything.  The only thing that will work is taking the criminals off the streets and keeping them off the streets.  It’s my understanding that the courts, jails and prisons in the city have become a revolving door.

I think it’s a tough thing to for the politicians to face, because to go into a bad neighborhood and say “We’re getting the criminals off the streets, and we need your help” means telling folks that you’re going to lock up someone’s brother, child, nephew, husband or other loved one.  It means people will have to take responsibility.  It’s far easier for the politicians to deflect blame, whether it to be to Harrisburg, guns, drugs, what have you, so no one has to take responsibility.   There may be things Harrisburg can do to help, but the problem won’t abate until someone stands up and admits what the problem is.   I may have my disagreements with Michael Nutter, but he’ll be an improvement over the circus clowns that currently run city hall.  Hopefully he’ll impress me.