I haven’t been commenting on  crime stories about Frankford in the media since you can read them elsewhere and I don’t have much to add to them.  The Inquirer on Sunday had a front page story (Walking the walk to cut city’s crime) about the new crime fighting strategies that have reduced crime in the city and specifically in Frankford.  We have previously noted that improvement and applauded the police for their fine work.

I am commenting now though because that story might create the impression that the only thing we have going on in Frankford is crime.  Frankford is a big place with over 30,000 people living here and going about their business peacefully every day.  The story made the point that a six square block area of Frankford “bordered by Frankford Avenue and Arrott, Leiper, and Harrison Streets, is one of 60 hot spots identified in a Temple University study as the city’s highest-volume crime areas.”

Coincidentally I live in that area and the view from here is not all that bad.  One of the points made in this story is that crime is a very local thing.

Ramsey set up foot patrols in 2008 in the city’s five busiest police districts, using officers fresh out of the Police Academy. Police soon noticed a drop in shootings, Deputy Police Commissioner Richard Ross said.

“We believed adding foot patrols was going to be effective,” Ross said, “but we wanted to measure how effective.”

That led to the partnership with Temple’s Jerry Ratcliffe, a criminology professor who conducted the study on Philadelphia’s most violent street corners.

Ratcliffe and his colleagues analyzed and mapped crime data for 2006, 2007, and 2008, revealing clusters of crime within just a few blocks. Most shooting victims are shot within a few blocks of their homes, Ratcliffe found, and he noted that violence often bred more violence, presumably in the form of retaliation.

“Philadelphia’s got really small neighborhoods, and I think many people’s lives revolve around a few streets,” Ratcliffe said. “When something happens, everyone knows about it, and you can’t let people in that neighborhood know you let something slide.”

This implies that the criminals among us live in a small area and do their business there.  That kind of makes sense and explains why I live in this crime hot spot and see little of it on my block.

Now what I would like to see is a study by Temple University to explain what brought these criminals to live in this neighborhood in the first place.  Would anybody like to venture a guess.

A standing room crowd showed up for a full agenda at tonight’s Frankford Civic meeting.  DA Seth Williams stopped by to discuss his office’s new iniative of assigning his assistant district attorneys to geographic areas.  He feels that this will allow them to better understand and relate to the needs of the community.  Sounds kinda like the police departments PSAs.  Here’s video of Seth talking about Frankford’s issues.

Also at the meeting, Jason Dawkins from counsel-woman Sanchez’s office spoke:

• of her reservations about the obesity tax pending in counsel stating that coming from retail and small business, she was concerned about increased taxes hurt small business.
• He also talked about Smedley school at Bridge and Charles Streets becoming a Renaissance school.  The plan proposes to turn around about 30 schools over the next three years by bringing in new leadership from education management organizations (EMOs), charter schools, or teams of District educators.
• Spoke again of the city’s “Spring Into Your Park” cleanup scheduled for April 10th.  He has to possible projects and are looking for input
• He’s got recycle bins, get into contact with him if you need one
• tomorrow at Sankofa Freedom Academy at 1 pm, they have their rescheduled Black History Month presentation
• THEY ARE PLANNING FOLLOWUP STAKEHOLDERS AND TOWN HALL MEETINGS ABOUT THE HALFWAY/DRUG HOUSE TASK FORCE! Remember the last one?  It was a year ago and apparently there’s been some steady progress.  No firm date has been set.

Carla Sastio came in to talk more about Philadelphia’s Recycling Rewards.

The business owner of 4102 Paul Street, sitting at the corner of Torresdale and Paul St, came in because he’s seeking a zoning for retail sales of aftermarket wheels and tires.  The place is currently zoned commercial but because he wants to be able to take the tires off of cars, it has to be zoned as auto repair.  There were concerns over where he would be storing all the tires after another tire joint burned down two of it’s neighboring houses.  His zoning hearing is March 9th at 2:30 pm.

The owner of 1715 Harrison Street came in looking to get zoning to convert it from a 2 family home to a 3 family home.  He stated he lives in New York and that he’s owned up to 100 properties in Philadelphia at one time.  He admitted to having one outstanding L&I violation for having key locks on every room which usually means its a being used as a boarding house.  He said 5 people were living there now.  The owner left after his presentation.  Later on Pete Specos spoke of taking 3 weeks and 4 letters to get into contact with the owner, and that there were 3 or 4 violations on the property.  He also said all three floors of the house were occupied and that when he went to the location, it was a “pig pen”.

Police office Sgt. Rosenbaum came to last night’s Northwood Civic Associaton meeting to speak about a few things including the newish initiative of PSAs.  The 15th district is being broken up into three sectors: from the Frankford Creek to Bridge Street, Bridge to Unruh, and Unruh to Rhawn.  And so while a captain still has responsibilities over the district, lieutenants have been “promoted” to oversee each area.  Also, instead of officers rotating throughout the district, the same 60 officers are going to be around all the time.  Meetings are held on the second Tuesday of each month on the second floor of Frankford hospital in their conference room.  Pete Specos is the community co-leader.

Sgt Rosenbaum also talked about Philadelphia Ready Notify Pa.  A system from the Department of Homeland Security which was set up to notify community residents of fast breaking news.  It was designed to notify you via your cell phone(text message) or by email in the evens of emergencies, severe weather, road closures and crime alerts.  Instructions on signing up can be found here.

We got an email from Mike  Newall a month ago looking to do an interview a couple weeks ago for a story about crime and development in Frankford for a new Philly-centered news website called Metropolis.  Inside his four part series he scored some notable misses(like Friends restaurant was opened for under a year, it was Mozaic that opened during a so-called reneasance). Anyways check out all of his piece, it’s nice to see Frankford get some in depth attention.  Although it does make me cringe when the title of part one is “The Frankford Story: In a Free Fall”.  It’s like he asked someone from Mayfair for the title.  If he had come in and done just that story it would have been the regular bullshit that Frankford gets from the area media.  I am so sick of hearing where Frankford has been.  Yes it sucks.  I know how awesome it used to be.  Try telling me why it sucks now and point out some things I can do to start changing it.  So this bastard spends the next three articles doing just that.  It is by far the most comprehensive report on the past, present and future of this neighborhood I have ever seen.  And it’s a testament to this so-called “media revolution” that it should come out of a web based outfit as opposed to print. If paper and ink are too valuable to waste on forgotten places like Frankford, then let the printing presses die.

Part 2 covers the crime and drugs. Crime reporting to me is generally sensational, but tell me everything you can come up with about the drugs, especially about the drug rehab houses which he talks at length in part 3.  I think the more residents know about how they open up and operate, the better prepared they are to fight it.

Part 4 is my favorite and most important to helping understand what’s going in Frankford now.

Here’s a quote from the piece about the political infighting I always considered too nuanced to even try bringing up:

Factions at war

It’s civic and business organizations are beset by nasty political fighting. Frankford has had had three city council representatives in the last four years – Rick Mariano, Dan Savage, and now Maria Quinones-Sanchez. All three have tried to stuff the boards of the local organizations with their own followers and now it’s all a big mess.

The Frankford Civic Association has had some recent success in fighting the zoning of recovery houses. But the civic consists almost entirely of Savage supporters seemingly more focused on winning the former councilman his seat back than taking bold action for Frankford. For her part, councilwoman Quinones-Sanchez has been no great friend to civic association, seemingly putting politics above constituent need.

“The political fighting is destroying the neighborhood,” said Rita Lugrine, a member of the Frankford Community Development Corporation.

But at the end of the day, what am I, a lone resident, able to do to help?

“We’ve been telling the community folks, pick a parcel of land, come up with an idea, shop it around to developers,” said Michael Thompson of the City Planning Commission.

I’m gonna think on this one, I’ll get back to this.

Overall I’m a huge fan on this piece of reporting, if this is how the future of reporting is going to be, it’s going to be an exciting time, not just for Frankford, but for any forgotten section of Philly. Mike Newall is a Philadelphia reporter who writes about neighborhoods. Yeah he does.

Captain Frank Bachmayer, 15th police district, held a town hall meeting at St. Joachims Tuesday night.  30 people attended the one hour meeting to get the latest news on the crime situation in the neighborhood.  As we have previously reported, overall crime is down in Frankford when compared with the same period in 2008.  This change is attributable to changing tactics in combating crime.  Violent crimes have shown the most decline with things like burglary being a more difficult situation to manage.

The issue of police response time was raised first.  Response time is based on what is going on at that time and what priority the incident is compared with other calls in line.  A disorderly crowd of teens will have a lower priority than a burglary or robbery.  In addition, the implementation of the Police Service Area (PSA) pilot project may impact on response times because officers are now limited to answering calls within their assigned sector.  Previously they were able to jump from sector to sector.

Several people raised specific questions about drug activity on their block.  Those issues were noted and a followup was promised.

A question was raised on when should a person call 911 versus calling the district directly.  If there is an immediate issue, regardless of what it may be, you should call 911.  This includes what some may think of as minor problems like truant high school students.  Call and let the police decide how to respond.  If they do not respond right away, the call will still be logged and a record of it will exist.  Call the district if you have an ongoing problem with a situation.  Drug sales on a corner day after day or prostitutes making a nuisance of themselves would fall into that category.

Toward the end of the meeting one person noted that all of the issues raised were essentially about quality of  life in Frankford.  While the crime rate continues to decline, the relatively minor issues take on major importance to people who are thinking of moving here or others thinking about relocating.   This was the best attended town hall meeting that I have seen.  The folks there were aware, concerned and reasonable.  They were not looking for miracles but they were looking for reasonable solutions.  The group lingered for a good ten minutes after the meeting broke up talking together and exchanging information and experiences.