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15th District Town Hall Meeting

15TH DIST TOWN HALL MTG AT ST JOACHIM’S CHURCH (GRISCOM-CHURCH)3-16-10 AT 7PM

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Crime Report From Ground Zero

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.

Walking the walk to cut city’s crime

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DA Seth Williams And Absentee Landlord Among Presenters At Tonight’s Civic Meeting

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”.

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Frankford’s Police Service Area and ReadyNotify PA

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 alertsInstructions on signing up can be found here.