How Mayor Kenney's Response to Richard Ross's Resignation Misses the Point
Reality Check: How to Ignore a Gun Crisis
WURD's afternoon host on how the Mayor's response to Commissioner Ross's resignation this calendar week misses the point
Aug. 23, 2019
Philly has a funny way of showing how much it cares nearly its ain gun violence crisis.
Merely days after a horrific shoot-out in Nicetown, which could have easily added to the metropolis'due south escalating homicide rate, a weird plot twist unfolds in Philly with the abrupt, didn't-run across-that-coming resignation of Police Commissioner Richard Ross. Residents and, indeed, the nation, are stunned by the timing of it.
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Mayor Kenney and City Quango President Darrell Clarke, meanwhile, reacted to the news of Ross'due south abrupt resignation with disappointment—but said zilch virtually the Philadelphia violence crisis that Ross clumsily presided over.
Allow'southward non gloss over that or pepper it with toppings of hollow platitudes saying the man was a "stellar" chief. He wasn't: gun violence keeps going upwards and his department's homicide sectionalisation hasn't yet croaky through a dismal, below-national-boilerplate 40 percent murder case clearance rate. It was as if, in Philly, the police chief job description didn't include managing such. Kenney, strangely, showed way more than emotion and frustration almost gun violence and outgunned officers while reacting to Nicetown, than he always publicly showed for higher levels of violence in distressed Philly neighborhoods and outgunned residents.
How do y'all non mention or link a law principal'due south resignation to a homicide charge per unit that's on path to shell the record set but last year? That number is at present at 216, as of this writing, which is 5 percentage higher than the same time in 2022 (still higher than much larger urban cousins New York City and Los Angeles). Certainly, the Mayor should explain and tackle his law agency'due south ongoing and unresolved problems with racism and sexism. But he should find every opportunity to also hash out and link that culture with how the city and a city police force commissioner is supposed to handle rising gun violence. The Council President should, also.
Mayor Kenney and City Council President Clarke reacted to the news of Ross's abrupt resignation with disappointment—but said naught most a Philadelphia violence crisis Ross clumsily presided over.
Increasing gun violence and strings of mass shootouts in a major urban center should be the about important focus of a constabulary chief. A police department drowning in its own culture-of-bias feces is more likely unable to finer counter that violence. City Hall should acknowledge that information technology is the instance. A new tone on Philly's violence problem is needed, something that suggests a fresh standard of leadership on the effect that moves the city forward and tells everyone the situation is intolerable… versus template statements on how much we'll miss the final commish.
To many of Philadelphia's Black residents—a customs which is, sans seasonal sports successes, a torn universe apart from the remainder of the city—the timing is as downright shady as the reason for which Ross resigned. Just days after he engineered Maurice Hill'southward peaceful exit from that North Philly rowhouse—being praised by Mayor Kenney equally the "best law commissioner in America"—he'south out on the street himself? Is that because, WURD listeners wonder, he let a blackness homo survive an attack on constabulary? Ross has denied he was pushed out, but as conspiracy theory equally it is, it's hard for some to come across anything less given how much leeway he'd already gotten from Kenney and the residue for failing to exercise his chore well for so long.
How Kenney and City Quango handle that, on top of everything else, throughout the course of a choice procedure for the next constabulary chief is anyone's guess. It'south unclear if Kenney, who'due south virtually to home-run slide into a second term unchallenged, even really cares about the sensitive racial aspects, beyond the "optics," as he put it, of beingness a white male. Reaching for a quick optical boost every bit if he was reaching for a stick of gum to douse bad breath, Kenney quickly called on Deputy Commissioner Christine Coulter to somehow make this all less painful. That move looked like classic frantic damage control: find the most senior woman around and maybe that puts a good coating on the rampant gender bias fire engulfing the Philadelphia Police Department. He then spends about twoscore percentage of his Ross resignation argument praising the achievements of Coulter.
A police section drowning in its own culture-of-bias feces is more than likely unable to effectively counter that violence.
Is that considering his mind is already made up on a permanent replacement? Or is it to make upwards for the fact that he moved and then fast he tripped over Coulter's ain liabilities: She's one of 11 defendants in the aforementioned federal civil rights lawsuit Ross just took a sword for, and not just named in it, only also someone accused of discriminating confronting 2 Black women in it. If that'southward not enough, at that place's still the foggy details of her alleged involvement in a deadly 1994 police chirapsia cover-up that ended in a $250,000 settlement.
None of the higher up looks good. Philly is in desperate need of a splash of different. At present would be a practiced fourth dimension for a credible, well-funded, plenty-is-plenty Contained mayoral candidate to challenge the presumed winner in November 2019. But Philly politics are the one thing that never ends up like a novel. In fact, it reads more like the faded transmission in a used machine. It volition be, tragically, business organization as usual and an attitude from a collective of career politicians who won't bother irresolute it, because, ultimately, less than a quarter of registered voters turned out… and they didn't seem bothered by any of this.
Charles D. Ellison is executive producer and host of "Reality Bank check," which airs 4 to 7 p.m. Monday through Th on W URD Radio (96.1FM/900AM). Cheque out The Denizen's weekly segment on his show every Tuesday at 6 p.g. Ellison is likewise main of B|E strategy and the Washington correspondent for The Philadelphia Tribune. Catch him if you can @ellisonreport on Twitter.
Photo courtesy DPP Law 
mcmillanbultempap.blogspot.com
Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/how-to-ignore-gun-violence-richard-ross/
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