Posted on 05/25/2007 2:30:46 PM PDT by neverdem
Please keep in mind, as the governor calls for gun rationing instead of crime control, his budget proposal (which is about priorities) CUT millions of dollars in public safety funding -- including the Attorney General and Blueprint for Safer Philadelphia funds.
There are a number of comments by Philadelphia Chief Inspector Joseph Fox, head of detectives.
As part of the Committee of the Whole, various media reports were cited. Punishment enhancements or mandatory sentences for the small number of offenders who commit the disproportionate share of the crimes will, by definition, lower crime rates. Efforts by judges and others to avoid these punishment enhancements simply enable continued criminal activity. Numerous articles in the media reports below cite the failure to appropriately sentence criminals in Philadelphia – this has been a problem since 1999 or before.
Media Reports
Philadelphia Inquirer- September 6, 2006
"Democrats call for gun laws . . . ."
Stiff punishment of people who commit crimes with guns is the key to stopping gun violence in Montgomery County, Castor said.
Philadelphia Inquirer- July 18, 2006
"An uphill fight to stem violence"
"We've done everything that the Police Department can do," (Police Commissioner) Johnson said. What's needed, he said, is more cooperation from the community and tougher sentences to keep repeat, violent offenders in jail. "We're locking up the same exact people over and over again," Johnson said.
Philadelphia Daily News- May 16, 2006
"That doesn't happen overnight," said the city's top detective, Chief Inspector Joseph Fox, referring to the heavily armed Frankford teens. "They suddenly don't get that urge overnight. The feeling is, 'It is not a big deal. Nothing is going to happen to me.'"
"You can blow all the smoke you want about tougher gun laws and about restricted gun sales," Fox said. "But if [the courts] are going to let these 14-, 15-and 16-year-old kids walk around with a possession-of-a-gun [charge] and don't lock them up, then you are asking for this kind of violence to continue in the city."
Chief Inspector Fox bemoaned cases in which criminals are convicted of shootings and given short sentences of six months in prison or two years of probation. "If you don't put them behind bars today, you will be carrying them out in a body bag tomorrow," Fox said.
Philadelphia Daily News- April 17, 2006
"HOW LONG IS TOO LONG?"
Robert K. Reed, deputy chief of the criminal division for the U.S. Attorney's Office here… Reed said his office, as part of its community outreach, tries to educate the public about the law.
He acknowledged sentences can be harsh – the average sentence for Hobbs Act armed robberies in the region since 1999, when Project Safe Neighborhoods began, is more than 25.6 years – but said neighborhoods victimized by gun violence are safer as a result.
Without mandatory minimums, he said, federal prosecutors would never get defendants charged with violent crimes to cooperate with the feds. "When defendants are faced with spending 40 or 60 years in prison, that gives us the leverage that then causes these defendants to decide it's better to cooperate," he said.
Reed said decisions by defendants to cooperate with prosecutors has enabled the feds to crack 100 murder cases in the region in recent years, most of them in Philadelphia. "If we didn't have mandatory minimums, we wouldn't be as successful as we are. It's a critical component to stopping violent crime," Reed said.
Philadelphia Inquirer
January 23, 2006
"Many homicide victims had records; More than 70 percent of those killed in the city last year had been arrested at least once."
More than 70 percent of those killed last year had been arrested at least once, according to police statistics, and some were hard-core street thugs. Two years earlier, the figure was 64 percent.
"The drug culture and the gun culture are just so prevalent, and the people who play in that culture are either the victims or shooters," said Chief Inspector Joseph Fox, head of detectives. The majority of the killings, however, were "bad guys on bad guys," Fox said.
Not surprisingly, those arrested in most killings also have criminal records, often long ones. Last year, of 205 people arrested on murder charges, 161 had at least one previous arrest – 79 percent.
Grant Coleman – also known as Grant Green – was a killer who ended up a victim. Court records show that Gant had been in and out of juvenile-reform programs, including a stint in Texas.
In June 2001, Gant, then 19, was arrested in Philadelphia on charges of auto theft. He said he was "renting" a Mitsubishi Galant from a woman in exchange for cash and crack. He admitted in court that he was a drug dealer. He was found not guilty of auto theft.
Several months after that, he was charged with raping a 15-year-old girl. He eventually pleaded no contest to sexual assault and corrupting a minor. He spent 15 months in jail while the case wended its way through the courts.
Gant was sentenced to time served and immediate parole. He registered under Megan's Law as a sex offender.
Philadelphia Inquirer- November 25, 2005
Letters – "Penalizing all gun offenses may save lives" (written by Joseph Fox, Chief of Detectives, Phil. P.D.)
Pick any recent shooting on the streets of Philadelphia ("Slayings this year surpass 2004 total," Nov. 15). Now, take a closer look at the shooters. You will find they have one thing in common. Virtually every single one of them has a violent criminal history; virtually every one of theme has been arrested for a crime involving the illegal possession of a gun – some of them numerous times – and virtually every one of them received mere wrist-slaps for those crimes.
Those wrist-slaps have made Philadelphia's criminal court system into a mockery of justice, a dangerous mockery. A relatively small number of judges are causing irreparable harm by refusing to sentence violent gun-toting thugs to significant jail time. The thugs who "own the streets" in some of our neighborhoods know full well they have no fear of punishment from our courts, except for the most heinous of offenses. Sometimes, not even then. And so they carry their guns with impunity, display them proudly, fire them indiscriminately, and kill and maim each other with no thought of the consequences.
Yes, it is too easy to buy guns. Yes, there are many sociological reasons contributing to our violent culture. Efforts to address those aspects of the problem must continue.
However, what seems to be getting lost in the search for ways to stem our city's gun violence is the principle of holding people responsible for their own actions.
Carrying a gun illegally is punishable by up to five years in prison. The time has come to demand that our courts take illegal possession of guns seriously. No more slapping of wrists, not even for the first offense. We can no longer afford to wait until there is a victim on the other end of that gun before we get tough.
The voices of the good and law-abiding citizens of Philadelphia need to be heard. It is time to challenge our most lenient of judges and demand they toughen up. And if they don't, they need to be exposed and voted off the bench.
Philadelphia Daily News- March 10, 1999 [1]
"Good law, bad usage"
. . . . "Mayor, isn't it true that your judges don't enforce the mandatory sentencing law? Isn't the part of the problem in Philadelphia?" Yeah, the mayor admitted, it is. "Isn't it ironic," he says sadly, "that when I talked about having written the mandatory sentencing law, it came right back to bite me?" . . . .
. . . . District Attorney Ed Rendell fathered the 1982 state law that mandates five years in prison for gunpoint robbery.
Rendell launched the new law with privately funded TV ads featuring real prisoners talking about the horrors of life behind bars, while legendary Hollywood menace Jack Palance hissed, "Use a gun, go to jail – no ifs, ands or buts."
That first year, the mayor remembers, "gunpoint robberies went down 18, 20 percent." Then, he said, "Philadelphia judges who didn't like mandatory sentences started finding ways to pervert – and I don't mean subvert, I mean pervert – the law."
A favorite hug-a-thug judge trick was, and still is, to downgrade the gun in a gunpoint robbery to an "instrument of crime." That downgrades the crime from a first-degree felony to a second-degree one, and allows the judge to sentence the thug to months in county jail instead of years in state prison.
. . . . At the time, Rendell said, "It is extremely frustrating the way many Philadelphia judges have compromised verdicts to avoid the law. The problem is devastating. It is almost a sinister act."
. . . . Truth is, since that first hopeful year after it was passed, the mandatory-five law has been as dysfunctional as the hug-a-thug judges who refuse to enforce it. Rendell calls their refusal "reprehensible."
[1] Comment – Failure to sentence criminals in Philadelphia - a problem even in 1999.
-30-
I know. My Mom’s hometown is in the little finger on the west side. Good solid people and as blue as the rest of the state. The remainder of the county is almost completely Californicated.
Amen to that!
Those were the colors the networks used to use for years and years:
Blue = Republican
Red = Democrats
They only changed it recently because some Dims complained that Red made them look like Communists.
Rendell also cut the number of snowplows prior to the Valentine’s Day storm that trapped motorists in excess of 12 hours on the commonwealth’s highways.
If you throw a rock into a pack of dogs, the one that yelps is the one that got hit.
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