Commissioner Outlaw addresses Jefferson Hospital shooting and rising homicide rates in Philadelphia

Commissioner Outlaw addresses rising homicide rates in Philadelphia

Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw joined FOX 29's Mike Jerrick and Alex Holley to talk about the rising homicide rates in Philadelphia, the deadly shooting that occurred at Thomas Jefferson University Monday and a viral video featuring a Philadelphia Police Officer.

PHILADELPHIA - Commissioner Danielle Outlaw joined Good Day Philadelphia to talk about the rising homicide rates within the city, the Jefferson Hospital shooting, and other crime-related headlines on Wednesday.

During the interview, Commissioner Outlaw addressed the shootout between four Philadelphia police officers and the suspect of the Jefferson Hospital shooting. She emphasized the bravery and courageousness of the officers who faced off against the suspect who was shooting rifle caliber bullets at them.

Two of the officers were injured during the shootout and Commissioner Outlaw again pointed out that these officers were trained well and responded appropriately to the situation.

"These officers, all four officers, ran towards the gunfire. And we're not talking about little pellets, we're talking about rifle rounds here. The bullets are huge and that's why the two officers that got out of this unscathed, it could have been way worse," Commissioner Outlaw explained before saying the officers were "beyond brave, beyond heroic" in their actions.

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The officers that was shot in the arm will require multiple surgeries, according to the commissioner. She did explain that these situations took a lot of emotional and mental energy.

She explained that officers in Philadelphia are often walking into unfair fights when walking into situations involving an active shooter as you never know what kind of weaponry they will face or the mentality of the shooter.

In the next portion of the interview, Commissioner Outlaw began to address the rapidly increasing rate of homicides in the city of Philadelphia. At the end of September, the city passed the grim milestone of over 400 homicides. To date, there have been approximately 422 homicides.

One thing that the Philadelphia Police Department is noticing in these violent crimes is that the perpetrators are getting younger and that more women have been a target of the violence.

"These last couple weeks, this week wasn't as bad as the week before," Commissioner Outlaw explained. "But you know we started off seeing increases. Over the last few months or so, we started to see some steady declines. But with all of that said, we're seeing that our shooters are younger, our victims are becoming younger, and then we're also seeing more women as being victims. we're also seeing women on the other side as suspects."

She explained that traditional crimes and victimology is changing increasingly.

However, she went onto say that the increased sharing of videos of crimes has been very helpful with having more people coming forward in less amount of time. Commissioner Outlaw said that these bits of evidence are also incredibly helpful in tying together an investigation.