10,000 men called to end crime

With the number of homicides in Philadelphia inching past 300, police and community officials are now calling on black males in the city to curb violent crime.

Last week, Philadelphia Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson and civic leaders called for 10,000 men to sign up Oct. 21 to patrol the streets and reduce crime in the area.

Johnson specified that all men, no matter their race, nationality or employment are more than welcome, but that the program does indeed call out specifically to black men.

According to Johnson, those that suffer most from violence and crime in this city tend to be African Americans, citing the 2,883 deaths of blacks since 1998, which account for 85 percent of all murders.

"It's time for men to stand up and make our neighborhoods safe," he said. "We have an obligation to protect our women, our children and our elderly."

While the notion may seem grandiose, Lawrence Sherman, director of the Jerry Lee Center of Criminology, said the effectiveness of such a program is debatable.

"There is no evidence that volunteer patrols, regardless of their ethnicity, can have an effect on gun crime," he wrote in an e-mail. The data, he explained, points instead to paid professionals as effective homicide prevention.

But Johnson remains confident, evoking the power of the Million Man March of 1995, when over one million African Americans convened in the country's capital to stand together for Civil Rights.

"It's like saying years ago we would never get a million men in Washington, D.C.," Johnson said. "People said 'a million men would never work.' Well, it did work. People give us little credit at all for what we can do."

Though he openly acknowledged the danger involved, Johnson said the volunteers would be police-trained in conflict resolution and would be supported by city police.

As for Penn's involvement in the plan, Vice President for the Division of Public Safety Maureen Rush said Penn's police budget and security force makes volunteer peacekeepers unnecessary around campus.

"We are fortunate that the University takes the safety and security of our community very seriously and allows Public Safety to be able to deploy a higher number of uniformed police and security officers than the city police would have at their disposal to patrol the same area," Rush said.

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